Monday-0, Tuesday 3, Wednesday-0
Posted: Jul 18, 2012 | 1:10 AM
No gigs yesterday on Monday, and none on Wednesday, but three on Tuesday with
Heat index over 100 f. A Heat Advisory. Three tours, one day.
With all the daytime walking tours I gave the heat stroke run-down:
Stay hydrated. I will seek shade. Note seriously if you have dizziness, fatigue, shortness of breath, cramps, white skin, red skin (I love those last two contradictory symptoms), or nausea. Let us know asap if this comes up so we can get into ac or throw water on your head. (Heat kills more than winter cold or lightning.)
Tour 1:
10:20AM-11:45AM
A 'one hour' Downtown Tour from the Battery to Wall Street and back. Five groups totalling 21, with several children in tow. I'm only paid for 1 hour, but a few of these tours a month, and that is almost my cellphone bill or the cable bill.
One group's girl gave her head a good whack after she dropped something and picked it back up. After the tour they were about to get on the Statue of Liberty line for the ferry.
I asked the girl: 'Do you feel dizzy?' -She replied: "Yes. Very."
I told the parents to get her inside the Customs House / American Indian Museum (a cooled environment right there) to cool her off, sit her down, get ice for her head, and seriously consider medical attention (concussion? that's serious!).
I told them it is better to get something taken care of in Manhattan than on a ferry or Liberty Island. Their Statue of Liberty tickets are good all day, after all!
(Also, why was she dropping things and whacking her head? She may already have had symptoms of heat exhaustion.)
Also on board, another Dutch group! I love taking the Dutch on tours of old Nieuw Amsterdam. Lots of heritage. Most of it good, especially compared with the British and the Spanish.
12:15
Lunch with a couple of fellow guides that I hired to help me do a tour for 85 low-income high school youth from across the USA who are in a program to teach them about Mergers & Acquisitions.
The culmination was two schools, each representing a major drug store chain, battling it out for control.
My tour was the follow up the next day.
Tour 2:
2ish - 4:30
Financial Heritage and History for future Financiers from inner cities.
I find it surprising how few people seem to know the formula for Profit (Revenues minus Cost). I think it appropriate for Financial District tours.
I brought Profit up when I pointed out the Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company Building. Monopolies are quite profitable (highest revenues minus lowest costs). They basically charge as much as we could possibly afford.
It used to surprise me that people don't associate the Rockefellers with monopolies or oil. That's the power of quality real estate development! ie Rockefeller Center, Trump Tower...
I touched on the tension between monopoly and the public interest of having competition. I try to bring in a social angle when doing financial tours for high school youth. Basically: Profit is good, but not when it harms people, especially lots of people.
Things picked up, though, especially in cooler climes.
Maybe they started tired and hot; after all, the tour 2-4pm (actually 1:45 with client and the voyagers arriving almost 45 minutes later. So the tour was really 2:30-4:30. This coincided with the day's high temperature,
and...
their M&A camp ended yesterday, and today was the first day they got to visit NYC and shop! Tough competition. All that stood between them and shopping in air conditioned tours was my Financial District sunstroke excursion.
But eventually they got engaged, especially after we distributed water to all the students in the middle of the tour.
They were interested in the World Trade Center, the Bull, the seaport as nursery of modern retailing and department stores, the origin of stock trading in NYC and its links with gambling, the real estate deal between the Dutch and the Natives -- did they really buy Manhattan? Did the Natives sell anything? What were they talking about? Was $24 worth of 'trinkets' really a rip off? The customs houses, and a tavern with a lot of heritage.
The tour went well. They were very happy.
Tour 3:
Manhattan from Midtown to the Battery and back.
Then it was up to midtown for a 5pm tour, mostly in a cooled coach bus that was an hour late.
Getting us back on schedule took a bit of strategizing. I had to balance the tour covering enough that the passengers wouldn't complain about missing anything with their need to eat and their strong desire to shop and roam Times Square to their satisfaction. I had two customers to please.
I had a great rapport with them. They were really into it, asking great questions.
Done at 9pm.
I crossed Wall Street five times on Tuesday.