2. Swimming Across Canal Street

The “Swimming Across Canal Street” tour is led by our very own Robert Brenner, who gives Untapped Cities’ Gritty Old Times Square tour. Today most people think of Canal Street as the shortest distance between the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan Bridge. But Canal Street is also a living remnant of New York City’s gritty, industrial, vice-ridden past. Brenner started hanging out on Canal Street as a teenager in the 1970s. It was an exciting milieu of artists, punk rockers, hip hoppers, squeegee men, sex workers, Jewish radicals, and Chinese housewives. Though it is gentrifying rapidly, there are still traces of its seedy history—if you know where to look. Along the way, we will make brief side excursions into Soho, Tribeca, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. The tour will finish up with an (optional) sit-down meal in a Chinese restaurant with a shocking past. And we will answer the timeless question: was Canal Street ever really a canal?

Times: May 5, 6, and 7 at 11 AM