Immigrant New York

My mom was the only member of the family born in America, my dad an immigrant, as well as all of my aunts and uncles. English was spoken and strictly enforced, however occasionally Italian was used to drive home a point or between my parents when they tried to keep something from us.

Raised in the mostly Italian section of Greenwich Village, a daily experience was walking along Bleecker Street and shopping from the pushcarts. Fruits, vegetables, even dry goods sold from wooden carts with wagon wheels that were literally pushed down cobblestone streets.

Sundays would many times bring us to Jewish section of Delancey street for discount clothes shopping.This was usually followed by a trip to Katzs deli, for crispy, hotdogs, pastrami and fresh crunchy garlicky pickles. Even to this day I am still amazed that my dad who was born and raised in Italy and owned Italian restaurants genuinely loved this deli.

This was still an era of pushcart men, old and worn out, but never the less hardworking immigrants who sometimes worked for pennies profit to be able to send there children to school and make them “Americans”.

Mostly Italian and Jewish, they looked and even smelled the same (like garlic) and usually spoke each others language. Listening to some leather jacket vendor screaming across the street to the sock man in Yiddish and without taking a breath turning and speaking to the stock boy in English and then greeting us in Italian was something that is indelibly burned into my consciousness.

This tour takes you from the Jewish Lower East Side, to Little Italy and finally to Chinatown and covers the Polish, Ukrainian and Puerto Rican neighborhoods and culture.

We experience the knish, the bagel, and the cheese and pasta vendors and discuss the famous, entertainers, politicians and gangsters, including George Burns, Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin, Enrico Caruso and Sun Yat Sen

This is a first hand experience from a guide that actually lived the experience as opposed to many who have only read the books !

Tour can be customized by adding a visits to the Ellis Island Museum, Jewish Museum, Museum of the Chinese in the Americas