Philadelphia's fictional history tours

[snopes]

The Philadelphia Trolley Works guide is as nice and funny as can be. Now, if only she had a better handle on history.

In a 90-minute ride packed with out-of-town visitors last week, our guide opined that Betsy Ross single-handedly made half the Revolutionary War uniforms; Chinatown was founded in 1840 by railroad workers; and modern-day Center City is home to 1.5 million residents.

Look over there, folks. See the Federal Reserve? "They're sitting on $8 billion worth of out-of-circulation cash ready to be burned," she exclaimed.

Interesting tidbits? You bet.

True? Not exactly, in spite of the guide's repeated pronouncements that the Philadelphia story is so fascinating, "I don't have to make it up."

http://www.philly.com/philly/columni...ory_tours.html

[zabia]

Man, that is kinda sad. I know that it is silly, but I tend to be a bit more trusting of tour guides. If they say something that I know is wrong then I will take everything else with a grain of salt. However, if I am somewhere that I have no knowledge of before hand, I know that I will absorb all of it and forget to check later. Then silly me will end up repeating the same bullhokey.

(Adding to the sad, I can say this with personal experience on my first trip to England at 19. After a couple of years, learned many things I learned on that trip were urban legends. Silly gullible me.)

[chillas]

Originally Posted by zabia

Man, that is kinda sad. I know that it is silly, but I tend to be a bit more trusting of tour guides.

Unfortunately it seems that tour guides often end up being vectors for urban legends.

[Ramblin' Dave]

My first ever guided tour was of Arlington Cemetary, on the eighth grade class trip. The tour guide pointed out Abner Doubleday's grave and said, "He's the man who invented baseball." I had just read a book about sports ULs, of which that is probably the biggest. As a result, I always take most of what tour guides say with a grain of salt.

A bill was introduced into City Council a couple of days ago that would require city tours gudes to be certified and (presumably) actually know what they are talking about.

What they really need are tour guides who talk about some of the odder things that have happened like - Tony Lukes - where money rained when a paper bag full of cash fell off a passing car from the overhead expressway (as best as anyone could figure, a stripper had set her paper bag of tip money on her car when she got in a forgot to put it insige when she drove off. The bag fell off the car when she was on 95 and a small part of south Philly got a cash bonus), or City Hall, where a guy climbed out a 6th floor window onto some scaffolding and started thowing his clothes onto the street below. (Nekkid, on city hall scaffolding, yelling obscenities is no way to go through life.) Now that's the kind of stuff the makes a city interesting.

[snopes]

Tour guides will show you historic Philadelphia on foot, trolley or double-decker bus, in a horse-drawn carriage, while riding a Segway or even as you blow a kazoo on a boat with wheels.

But can you believe what they say?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...DES?SITE=FLTAM

It's not a kazoo. It's a yellow plastic gizmo that looks like a duck's bill and makes a quacking sound. I might be wrong about this, but I think that the delegates used them to mark the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

[Andrew of Ware]

Originally Posted by zabia

Man, that is kinda sad. I know that it is silly, but I tend to be a bit more trusting of tour guides. If they say something that I know is wrong then I will take everything else with a grain of salt. However, if I am somewhere that I have no knowledge of before hand, I know that I will absorb all of it and forget to check later. Then silly me will end up repeating the same bullhokey.

(Adding to the sad, I can say this with personal experience on my first trip to England at 19. After a couple of years, learned many things I learned on that trip were urban legends. Silly gullible me.)

Sorry about this. I used to be a tour guide in York Minster and I tried to tell the truth - and straighten up a few 'misfacts' that tourists may have picked up about the church. (York Minster is such a fantastic building that you don't have to make up 'facts'.)

By the way - England is full of 'Ghost Tours' (even Ware has occasional ghost tours). I am sure sure all 'snopesters' will take them with a huge bag (let alone a grain) of sailt. They are fun - nothing more than that.

[Floater]

Originally Posted by Andrew of Ware

By the way - England is full of 'Ghost Tours' (even Ware has occasional ghost tours). I am sure sure all 'snopesters' will take them with a huge bag (let alone a grain) of sailt. They are fun - nothing more than that.

Even Stockholm has them and I must say that this is a very good piece of advice here too. It's probably universal.

[Electrotiger]

I've trianed my fair share of tour guides for a vareity of venues (zoological, cultural, art, architecture, history, science, astronomy) in a vareity of interpretive styles. As a skeptic (and snopester ), my number one rule to new interpreters:

Always, always, always do your own research.

It doesn't matter what the zookeeper said, or what the guy in your last group said, or what the internet said (especially what the internet said) or sometimes even what the books said. If you're in doubt at all, then don't repeat it.

A lot of the problem is that tour guides typically hate having to answer, "I don't know" to a guest's question. I've heard guides spout off total BS to questions because they didn't want to look like they were unversed in the material. And invariably, there'll be someone you interact with who has more knowledge on the subject than you do.

I always told my crews to not be afraid to tell visitors that they don't know an answer. Typically, I phrase it something like, "You know, that's an excellent question, and I'm not sure what the answer is," then try to spin it off into some other sort of teachable moment on a related subject. For kids, I'll often tell them that they can find all sorts of great information in online encyclopedias or in the library.

Little factoids like the examples in the OP are easy to learn, remember, and repeat. A good rule of thumb is, if the guide sounds bored, they are. If they sound like they're just mechanically spouting off a memorized spiel by rote (what we called a 'walking signpost'), that's exactly what they're doing.

A good interpreter will be excited about the material, convey that excitement to the audience, be open, free-form, and engaging, and not be afraid to answer "I don't know" to a question.

[Penny]

I once went on a trolley tour of a country town in Australia. As we passed the town's cathedral, the tour guide explained to the group that the church bells were mechanically rung and it was all automated. As I happen to be good friends with the local bellringers and had rung there myself the previous day, I was somewhat offended

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Electrotiger

As a skeptic (and snopester ), my number one rule to new interpreters: Always, always, always do your own research. It doesn't matter what the zookeeper said, or what the guy in your last group said, or what the internet said (especially what the internet said) or sometimes even what the books said.

Bless you.

We get complaints all the time from people who insist that a fact we've stated is wrong because a docent or tour guide told them something different -- and those people are "experts" who dispense "official" information, so they couldn't possibly be wrong. Such people don't realize that docents and tour guides often have little or no expertise in their subject areas and are simply passing along without question whatever erroneous (and sometimes ridiculous) information has been fed to them.

A perfect case in point: Several years ago I took Barbara to Stagecoach Inn, a local historical site. (It is, as the name implies, a hotel dating from the 1870s. However, the original had to be relocated several decades ago due to freeway expansion, and it burned down a few years later, so what exists now is actually a museum housed in a structure built according to the hotel's blueprints and stuffed with a bunch of furniture and knick-knacks that may or may not be appropriate to the era and region of the original.)

We took a tour of the museum, and while the docent was explaining the background of various objects in the front parlor, she pointed out a piano along one wall. They weren't sure when the piano was manufactured, she said, but it had to have been built before 1890 -- because that was the year pianos were standardized at 88 keys, and this piano only had 55 keys.

As the rest of the tour group headed into the next room, I hung back in the parlor, puzzled. I play the piano, and the piano in question certainly looked like it had a standard 88-key keyboard to me. As I began counting the keys, I quickly realized what was up. I burst out laughing, then caught up with Barbara in the next room and whispered in her ear.

Yes, the piano had 55 keys. It had 55 WHITE keys. It also had 33 BLACK keys, which some fool had neglected to count.

If you're in doubt at all, then don't repeat it.

Unfortunately, too many people don't have a good sense of what sort of information they should question.

- snopes