Touts About Town

TO BECOME A tour guide in New York, one must pass a city licensing exam. For years, this test was a joke, a tiny hurdle not just for would-be professionals but also for part-timers or those on a lark. Once in a while a columnist would ride a double-decker bus and take a potshot at an uninformed guide. The Guides Association of New York City (GANYC), which includes some 200 of the busiest guides, long agitated for a new test.

In April 2003, that new test arrived, with Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) commissioner Gretchen Dykstra proclaiming, "This new exam raises the bar for a key New York City profession and industry." The test was praised in the dailies. Justin Ferate, the bow-tied veteran guide who wrote the test, was honored with a "Public Lives" profile in the New York Times.

Soon a backlash began. The new test, which was more demanding than its predecessor, would be required not only of new aspirants, but also of the 1300 currently licensed guides; they would have to answer 130 correct on a 150-item test. While some guides welcomed the challenge of a tougher test, most thought it set a dangerous precedent. They criticized DCA for effectively revoking their licenses while not cracking down on unlicensed out-of-town guides, for not consulting with a variety of guides when devising the test and for approving a wide-ranging test irrelevant to specialized tours.

The backlash roiled GANYC. Two of the group's board members had participated in meetings concerning the new test and also recommended Ferate as test writer, but they expected a committee to evaluate the exam. According to Dykstra, there wasn't enough money for a committee. After some bitter meetings in which a few members accused GANYC leaders of sabotaging their livelihood, the whole board resigned.

The concerns emerged at a June 16, 2003 hearing of the City Council's Committee on Consumer Affairs. Dykstra gave no quarter, leaving before the guides gave Committee Chair Philip Reed an earful of complaints, and Reed promised a follow-up.

Many members of GANYC urged a boycott of the test, and I planned to join. Yes, I understood why a new exam was needed, but how could it evaluate my fitness to give walking tours of Brooklyn? Does the city really want to stop me from showing people Park Slope or Williamsburg just because I don't know where Jackie Onassis lived?

As the March 31 deadline approached for all previously licensed guides to take the new test, DCA blinked—and backed off its policy. Not only would all licensed guides be grandfathered in, DCA said, the passing grade on the test was lowered to 97 out of 150, reflecting the average grade of the first few hundred test takers.

Those changes, curiously enough, were buried in a DCA press release, which might explain why the story has been ignored by the dailies. The press release emphasized another important change: Out-of-town tour companies were to be required to use licensed tour guides. New York-based buses face their fair share of criticism, but veteran guides argue that the profession is truly undermined by out-of-town buses that employ guides without a sufficient knowledge of New York City. At the June 16 hearing, Dykstra—to the dismay of many guides in the audience—claimed interstate commerce rules prevent the city from regulating such tours.

The press release didn't explain why DCA blinked. Perhaps Dykstra realized the city was creating outlaws out of some veteran contributors to the tourist industry. Guide Sheila Evans, who lives in Reed's district and helped lead the protest, observed, "I think commissioner Dykstra was under the impression that all tours were standard. As people opposed the test, she began to realize that many guides do very specialized work, and that these tours are very well done and very important."

The compromise did preserve one element of DCA's original plan. Those scoring 120 or above on the test now get special mention on DCA's website. That web list, in PDF form, is pretty lame; those scoring high marks get asterisks, but there's no contact information on the list.

With little to lose, I finally took the test myself. (There are two versions.) It was certainly more wide-ranging and rigorous than its predecessor, though it's still geared to guides giving introductory tours by bus. (A few questions concern what routes buses can take—irrelevant to walking tours.) The test certainly can't evaluate, say, guides who give rock 'n' roll tours, eating tours or neighborhood tours. I recall zero questions about Coney Island and only one about Williamsburg—two neighborhoods where I operate.

As other test-takers have groused, it was highly didactic, with mini-commentaries Ferate has described as little stories "that will hopefully become part of a sightseeing guide's tour presentation." (Thanks, but I work from my own scripts.) I soon learned I didn't need to read the preceding two or three paragraphs of history, so I whizzed through the three-hour test in about 45 minutes.

The test included many appropriate questions. It's important to know that the destruction of the original Penn Station spurred the city's landmarking process—and that Stanford White designed the Washington Square Arch, that the Brooklyn Museum has a vital collection of Egyptian art and that punk rock was spawned at CBGB.

Still, there was an overemphasis on the built environment and its history, but too little on sports, shopping, political history or even restaurants—all subjects a general tour guide might want to discuss. A committee could have smoothed that out; not everybody has Ferate's take on New York.

A few questions were silly. Who cares what European city is equivalent in physical size to the Bronx? (Paris.) I immediately thought of a much better spatial question: What's the ratio of Prospect Park to Central Park, given that the former looks about one-eighth the latter on the MTA subway map? (Answer: Prospect Park is two-thirds the size of Central Park.)

Any test is subject to carping. Still, without the commitment and funds to fully vet an exam for general guides, much less create tests for specialized guides, DCA's compromise was inevitable. Sure, I'm glad that I passed (with a grade of 124) and now get an asterisk on the DCA website. But I hardly consider myself qualified to give a general city tour. Instead, I've been immersing myself in the details of two neighborhoods unmentioned on the test I took.