So how\u2019d you become a tour guide?<\/strong><\/p>\nI lost my corporate job pretty suddenly in May of 2023. The week prior to getting laid off, I\u2019d been at a really low point and was on Glassdoor applying to a bunch of jobs, including as a tour leader for a company that was launching its D.C. market. The day after I lost my job, I had an interview. They found out I did stand-up and gave me the job on the spot, and I started a week later. After I started, I was like, Oh my God, this is so much fun. I love talking to people, I love meeting people, I love talking about history. It\u2019s really good for stand-up because you have to be in front of people and present and hold their attention for two hours. The Mount Vernon tour was literally six hours.<\/p>\n
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Photo: Rachel Coster\n <\/p>\n
What made you move to New York?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was enough to make a living, being a tour guide in D.C. and doing stand-up, but I knew I needed to move to New York. I visited in October of 2023 and met my boss, whom I\u2019d never met in person, and he was like, \u201cYou could just move markets here if you want.\u201d I moved in January 2024 and immediately got my license to be a tour guide. Ironically, it took my company \u2014 they\u2019re a big, global company \u2014 a really long time to get me started. I was on the struggle bus my first three months in New York and was working as a production assistant in Philadelphia to make ends meet and commuting back and forth between D.C., Philly, and New York, because I was still having shows in D.C. That was kind of a nightmare.<\/p>\n
I finally started the tour-guide job in March of 2024. I started with Grand Central and really enjoyed it, but the salary wasn\u2019t enough to live in New York. This past spring I was working four jobs: as a nanny, a tour guide, a lacrosse coach, and doing stand-up. I started doing the Met tour earlier this year. I was pretty new to it, and I don\u2019t have an art-history background, so I decided to make TikTok videos to help me learn more about the Met. I was not expecting people to be so interested in it. People keep asking, \u201cHow do we book a tour with you?\u201d Now I\u2019m trying to figure out how to meet that demand and schedule private tours.<\/p>\n
How do you balance your day job with your nighttime stand-up career?<\/strong><\/p>\nStand-up is my No. 1 priority. Stand-up is my relationship, it\u2019s my baby, it\u2019s my job. It\u2019s everything to me. I really try to prioritize it, and I think it\u2019s my background in playing sports where I\u2019m used to always going, and I\u2019m a Virgo, so I love a calendar. My calendar would send a colonial person into a coma. I try to schedule accordingly, but I always prioritize doing spots and doing stand-up. Tours work really well with my comedy schedule because they\u2019re usually two hours, and I do one to two a day. My mom has this saying that I use all the time: If you have a task in front of you that you don\u2019t want to do, you say, I choose to make this fun and easy. It weirdly works.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s a fun fact you\u2019ve learned as a tour guide that stands out to you?<\/strong><\/p>\nOne fun fact that I think about a lot and I talk about a lot is that New York is the only original colony of the 13 that was founded on the basis of economy and not religion. It was the only Dutch colony. I think that\u2019s a super-interesting way to contextualize why New York is the way it is and how it\u2019s become this metropolis and center of commerce, because of that original ethos. When you think about why a cup of coffee costs $12 or why we have to explain to our loved ones what a broker\u2019s fee is, it all goes back to the original founding. It\u2019s also why this is a place where people come to make their dreams come true, because it\u2019s the land of opportunity.<\/p>\n
The Egyptian collection is the largest collection of Egyptian objects outside of Cairo, because there was a partage between the Egyptian government and the Met for 30 years where we provided the resources, mostly funded by J.P. Morgan, to excavate in Egypt because the Egyptian government didn\u2019t have the resources, and we got to keep 50 percent of the objects. That was the deal, that was the partage. When I have kids on my tour, I\u2019m like, \u201cLet\u2019s say you have a backyard full of treasure, and you know that there\u2019s treasure back there, but you can\u2019t dig. Your friend says they\u2019ll dig for you, but they get to keep half of it. Is that fair?\u201d It\u2019s really interesting because kids are so honest, so they will give you their real take. Some people will say yes, some people say no, and it\u2019s up to debate.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your favorite piece in the Met? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt changes all the time. There was this piece this summer that was on loan from the Fine Arts Museum in Boston, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer Sargent. There was a special Sargent and Paris exhibit that was on this summer, which was unbelievable. I think I went 20 times. The funeral flowers by Van Gogh, that piece I\u2019m always coming back to.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a really cool exhibit called \u201cCasa Susanna.\u201d It\u2019s this trove of Polaroid photos that were found by two antique dealers in New York at a flea Market in 2004, and it\u2019s all these photos of men who were cross-dressing in the 1960s. The photos are amazing. The women are amazing. The perspective of what an ideal woman looked like in the 1960s and how that reflects domesticity and femininity is really cool. They were real people who were living their lives as businessmen in the Financial District, but then they had this secret other life where they got to express themselves together, and it\u2019s a beautiful example of the way that art can transcend social norms and exist in a vacuum, and we get to see it now. It\u2019s on through January.<\/p>\n
Is there a popular art piece in the Met that you think doesn\u2019t deserve the hype?<\/strong><\/p>\nThere\u2019s the tomb of Perneb, which is not overhyped \u2014 it\u2019s really cool \u2014 but it\u2019s the first thing that you see when you walk into the Egyptian wing, and there\u2019s often a line to get in because it\u2019s so tight there. When I\u2019m giving tours and I see the line is really long, there\u2019s literally another tomb around the corner called the tomb of Raemkai. It\u2019s not as big, but it\u2019s very similar and you get the same sense from it.<\/p>\n
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Photo: Rachel Coster\n <\/p>\n
What about an unpopular one you wish more people would pay attention to?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Met is constantly changing its stuff. Because they have 2 million pieces on hand, I think they do secret move-arounds on the Wednesdays they are closed. I\u2019m always trying to notice things. There are Faberg\u00e9 eggs right by the Met roof elevator. Lorna Simpson, who\u2019s an American photographer, has this really cool exhibit called \u201cSource Notes\u201d that I\u2019ve been loving. She uses sources from Ebony and JET magazines and then melds them together to make these really cool screenprinted collages. I think that\u2019s not getting its flowers enough, because there have been so many special exhibits this summer.<\/p>\n
What about Grand Central?<\/strong><\/p>\nI love the story of the eagles at Grand Central. There\u2019s two eagles \u2014 they\u2019re from the depot, because the Grand Central Depot was first built in 1871 and that was like the OG building on 42nd Street, and then when they knocked it down and they were building Grand Central Terminal, they got rid of these eagles. They didn\u2019t really care where they went. You know when you\u2019re moving and you\u2019re trying to get rid of stuff and you throw it on the sidewalk or beg your friends to take it? That is literally what they did with the eagles. In the \u201980s, they found one of the eagles in the Bronx in an overgrown backyard. In 2004, they found another eagle in a monastery in upstate New York. I\u2019m always like, If you have any leads on the ten other eagles \u2026<\/p>\n
Do you have any hot tips about the Met to share with our readers?<\/strong><\/p>\nSomething I didn\u2019t know about the Met is that you can make appointments with the drawing and prints departments to see some of the objects that they have in their possession but aren\u2019t on display. My friend, who\u2019s an artist, took me to see Rembrandt\u2019s Drypoint Princes. The Met owns three versions of Christ on the Cross \u2014 there are 17 versions of them, and it was a life-changing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I totally teared up and lost my damn mind. I don\u2019t think a lot of people know that you can do that. You just have to be a member of the library, and then you can make an appointment. I\u2019m going to try to make an appointment this fall to see some of the Sally Mann photos because they don\u2019t have any of them on display.<\/p>\n
Do you have any favorite shops in the city?<\/strong><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a really good consignment store by the Met that has its own art museum of Pucci and Birkins and Chanel that I love going into; it\u2019s called Michael\u2019s, and the most fancy ladies in the Upper East Side consign their clothes there. I love James Veloria; that\u2019s my favorite vintage shore in Chinatown. I really like Goods for the Study; it\u2019s a really good stationery store. I\u2019m a Virgo, so I love my notebooks. I have to run an errand today at B&H because I have camera stuff I\u2019m looking to upgrade, and I get my film developed at this really good place in Chinatown called Eliz Digital.<\/p>\n
What you\u2019re wearing is totally art. I talk about this too on my tours where I\u2019m like, \u201cWhat kind of art do you like, what kind of movies do you like? What kind of cult designers do you like? What kind of stores do you shop at?\u201d People will think they\u2019re not connoisseurs of art, but I\u2019m like, we\u2019re constantly consuming art. It\u2019s just a matter of investigating what you like.<\/p>\n
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