Letter from the Founder: Untapped New York's Response to Coronavirus in NYC [Updated]

Tours and Experiences:

• All tours and Insiders events for the next two weeks are postponed. If you have bookings to our public tours that are being postponed, you will receive an email regarding your booking. We are offering rescheduling and credits, which can be applied to any of our experiences and have no expiration date.
• Bookings will continue to be taken for future tours and dates are available on many of our tours through the rest of the year
• We will evaluate the situation weekly thereafter and provide clear, transparent updates through our website, social media, and by email to affected guests.
• For our wonderful guides: We are ensuring that all of our tour guides are paid for the work done prior to today and are reaching out to each guide to check in with them and to remind them to send invoices for their work so they can be paid. We recognize how difficult the situation is for all freelancers out there and are doing our best to support our guides through this.
• What we’re working on for the future: Our Chief Experience Officer Justin Rivers is working directly with our guides on developing new experiences that can launch in the future (and developing new tours himself!). We are working on adding public tours and Insider events for May and through the summer, so you can look forward to experiences like accessing the Little Red Lighthouse, the Marble Cemetery, and many more very exciting events which will be announced shortly! You can keep on the lookout for our schedule of Insiders events here and our public tours here.

Editorial Content

• We will be publishing a daily digest of coronavirus news each morning, pulling together the relevant information that is helpful (and hopefully also sometimes uplifting). Here is today’s digest. You can sign up for our daily newsletter here.
• Maintaining our editorial content schedule: We will be doing what we do best, provide historical and well-researched context to current events, along with surprising information to make you smile or see the city (virtually) with a sense of wonder. Here are some latest articles: 13 Times Broadway Went Dark, NYC’s Former Quarantine Islands and Hospitals, The Strange Story of Typhoid Mary.
• For a daily uplift, I’ll be recording a piece on the cello each day and putting it on my Instagram and Twitter. It’s been 20 years since I graduated the Juilliard School, so I’m a bit rusty but I hope the music therapy can benefit anyone going stir crazy over the next few weeks.
• Launching a Podcast? We’ve had requests from our readers to launch a podcast! You read our minds, and since we’ve been attempting to launch a podcast since 2015, we have all of the equipment ready to go and even some scripts written. We hope we can get this off the ground soon.

How You Can Help:

This will be a difficult time for Untapped New York financially, like many other small businesses in New York City. We believe we can make it through the 2+ months this situation is currently expected to last. If you are able, you can help us out in five ways:

1. Read and share our editorial content! Sign up for our daily newsletter here.
2. Buy a Gift Card: Look forward to a future tour or experience with us with friends and family.
3. Book tickets to a future tour: dates are available on many of our tours through the rest of the year.
4. Become a member of Untapped New York Insiders

We want to hear from you! Untapped New York was created as a community, and this remains our utmost priority. Do not hesitate to reach out to us for any reason, even if to chat. Your messages to us during this time have been heartening, inspiring, and uplifting. We can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and by email. For questions about tours, contact tours@untappedcities.com. For questions regarding our Insiders member events, you can email insiders@untappedcities.com. For editorial and general comments and questions, email info@untappedcities.com.
Michelle Young and the Untapped New York Team