For New Yorkers, The New York Post is like a member of the family. Sure, it can be sensationalistic and vulgar. (Sometimes both at the same time.) Once and a while some critics may even find it a bit racist. But the Post is our paper, and we love it no matter what. Besides, what else are you gonna get for a dollar these days?
Now visitors can see New York City through The Post's legendary headlines. Metro Sightseeing (sister company of Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises) and the newspaper have teamed up to offer The New York Post Headlines Tour, a double-decker ride through the tabloid city.
The tour, which departs from 57th Street and 7th Avenue at 10AM and 2PM every Thursday (tickets are $49), takes you from the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, former haunt of "Queen of Mean" hotelier Leona Helmsley to the Marble Collegiate Church, where Donald Trump met his second wife, Marla Maples in 1987. That marriage ended in 1997, but not before giving the Post one of its most famous headlines ever: "The Best Sex I Ever Had!"
As the bus winds its way downtown, guide Dennis Lynch offers a Page Six-worthy rundown of boldface names: Liza Minelli and David Gest (who were hitched at the Regent Hotel) Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley (who honeymooned at Trump Plaza) to Alec "The Bloviator" Baldwin (as the Post calls him) and Matt Lauer (both of whom are identified with Rockefeller Center), and Tupac Shakur (who was attacked in Times Square) all get name-checked. So do some of New York's darkest tabloid figures, like Bernhard Goetz and Joel Steinberg.
As you can tell by some of the points of reference, New York's tabloid heyday peaked with the 1980s. Looking out at Manhattan from the top of the New York Post Headlines Tour in 2013, the city looks very different than it did back in the day: It's cleaner, better-run, and packed with far more tourists than it was when the Post cost 25 cents. Besides, as anyone who's guiltily clicked on a link to TMZ or skimmed a copy of US Weekly at the supermarket checkout line knows, New York is no longer the center of the scandal universe. Similarly, newspapers can no longer claim to dominate in sensationalist coverage of the celebrities and power brokers. But if you enjoy nostalgia, and have a soft spot for the foibles of the rich and (in-)famous, this tour is for you—even if you're a Daily News or New York Times reader.
Photo by Matt Haber
