Kayton Bruce - Radical Walking Tours of New York City

Copyright 1999, 2003, 2016 by Bruce Kayton

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kayton, Bruce.
Title: Radical walking tours of New York City / by Bruce Kayton.
Description: Third edition. | New York ; Oakland : Seven Stories Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022694 (print) | LCCN 2016023067 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781609806897 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781609806903 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: New York (N.Y.)--Tours. | Walking--New York (State)-
NewYork--Guidebooks. | Social movements--New York (State)--New
York--History. | Radicalism--New York (State)--New York--History.
Classification: LCC F128.18 .K38 2016 (print) | LCC F128.18 (ebook) |
DDC 917.47--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022694

Seven Stories Press
140 Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
http://www.sevenstoriescom/

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to all of those
who were born in the wrong era

All doctors know that youre healthier if you walk and heres a wonderful way to exercise your mind as well. Bruce can start you off and before you know it youll be fascinated by the radical history of New York. I remember the Village in the old days.

When Woody Guthrie came to New York in 1940, he first stayed on the Upper West Side with Will Geer. Thats when he wrote This Land is Your Land in February 1940. He first called it God Blessed America for Me. In spring 1941, Woody was writing Columbia Dam songs in Portland, Oregon. Mill Lampell, Lee Hays, and I were writing union songs in New York. I wrote to Woody that he should join us and he stayed for a week in the East Village at our place on Fourth Avenue and Twelfth Street (southwest cornerbuilding since torn down). He came in on June 23, 1941. Hitler had invaded Russia a day or two before, and Woody said, I guess we wont be singing any more peace songs, will we?

The Almanac Singers returned east in September in 1941 and we lived at 130 West Tenth Street off Greenwich Avenue in the fall and the first hootenanny in New York was held in the basement. But at $100 per month the rent was too much for us and we moved to the Dome on Sixth Avenue for just $60 per month. We brought the term hootenanny east from Seattle (Woody and me) and in 1946, there it was in New Websters Dictionary of American Language: Hootenannya gathering of folksingers.

Whats the future of the Village? Grow-grow-grow, money-money-money. If the human race is here in a hundred years, cities will show the world how to work togethercreating community gardens and little things all over. But there are contradictions in life all the time. I had a chorus ten years ago (Street Singers) and we took it down to Third Avenue and Eighth or Tenth Street for a festival. And we had a little parade around the block, when all of a sudden someone yelled out the window, Quit trying to improve the neighborhood, no one can afford to live here anymore. New solutions create new problems.

Pete Seeger

It has been great meeting people from all over the country, and the world, who have read the book and come on a tour. That the first edition sold out was very gratifying, and surprising, given the conservative political atmosphere and increasing consolidation of the media. Its not easy selling books in America these days, unless youre a woman attacking feminism, a conservative attacking liberals, or a Black attacking your community. I am always glad to hear from tour-goers that my tour made their trip worthwhile, because they were bored to death with most of what passes for tourism in this city.

Although I have had many great experiences with the people I take out on tours, Id like to share with you some of the negative incidents over the years. I take many radicals out on tours, but I also get out-of-town, conventional tourists who dont always quite know what theyre getting into. The tour leader who books me for a private group is usually progressive but the group itself can be very conventional.

The un-like-minded ones are easy to pick out: Hes the white, middle-aged guy standing with his arms folded across his chest and smoke coming out of his ears. Hes never been exposed to many of the subjects I am lecturing on, and since I overdose people on information, he usually gets very frustrated because Ive done my homework and stuck to the facts. Also, after twelve years of giving tours, I have heard most of the comebacks to my material, so am very quick to answer, frustrating the guy more. Though New York City no longer features any of the great soapbox speakers of the past, I hope I have upheld that tradition with some of the arguments on my tours.

Some of the negative and ridiculous comments or questions Ive had on the tours include the following.

After one hour and forty-five minutes of a two-hour tour of Harlem, during which Id immersed the group in Black history, some for the first time, I was lecturing in front of the Schomburg Center (a library research center), which contains more than five million items on Black history. I was focusing on the Harlem Renaissance, and all of the greats who had walked up and down those steps (Kwame Nkrumah, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, etc.), when a women asked me if the great writers, artists, and poets of the Harlem Renaissance were Black. Apparently, because of a racist upbringing and education, she just couldnt be sure that the words great and Black could go together. She was just being honest and asked this in a very innocent tone of voice. Though my initial impulse was to strangle her, I exhaled and answered calmly, Black.

I also give a new tour called the Radical Lovers Tour of Greenwich Village. In it I talk in detail about Eleanor Roosevelts lesbian relationship with Lorena Hickok. It never fails to upset people, who insist that Eleanor was heterosexual and are insulted by the truth. Im always amazed that on my tours I cover bombings, revolutions, and various mass murders, but the one term that seems to disturb people the most is lesbian. Our society still has a long, long way to go to become a progressive society of freedom for all.

I also have been attacked by people, who seem to think that they were in for one of those mindless shopping or food tours, for giving opinions. These people get furious at me for saying negative things about former mayors Ed Koch or Rudy Giuliani, and say that Im not being objective. I explain to them that what theyve read in mainstream print is far from objective, but it takes years to erase the brainwashing most Americans undergo. Others get very upset that I attack the rich because rich people have done so many good things.

I also get many attacks from people not on the tour, who hear what Im saying in the street and start yelling at me. Since my tours are so detailed, these people typically get bored by my speech and leave before Ive finished my presentation, but its still startling to hear people yell out, Im glad Abbie Hoffman is dead, or Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves to die, or Go back to Russia or China (yes, I still get that line). Most mainstream tour guides Ive spoken to dont get any type of heckling, but Ive heard a lot in the past five years.

Overall the tours have been going well since the first edition of this book was published in 1999, but I have not been able to do my City Hall Area tour for a number of years due to then-Mayor Rudy Giulianis sealing off City Hallwith police, metal detectors, and fencesfrom the citizens who pay for it. Giuliani, at one point, even forbade City Council members from holding press conferences on the steps of the very City Hall they work in, and they had to do a civil disobedience to win the right to stand there. I couldnt wait until his neo-fascist regime ended so his paranoid fortress could be dismantled, but one of the unfortunate results of 9/11 is that the fences around City Hall have not come down and people are kept far away from the government they are supposed to control.