Wanna Really Know Brooklyn? Then, See This Man!

There’s one very important item that should be on the bucket list of every New Yorker: A tour of New York City!

It’s not unusual to find native New Yorkers who’ve never climbed the stairs of the Statue of Liberty, never seen the inside of the United Nations or gone ice skating in Central Park.

Bed-Stuy resident , 81, already has checked the New York tour off his bucket list a few hundred times. But he’s had a little incentive: Elliott is a volunteer tour guide for Big Apple Greeter.

Elliott got involved with Big Apple Greeters in 1997. Late one evening on 1010 WINS, he heard a radio ad ask, “How would you like to take somebody around your block and around the city? Then sign up to be a volunteer greeter for Big Apple Greeter…”

Elliot signed up, and since then has been escorting people from all over the world around New York’s five boroughs.

Ask him about the best candy stores in mid-town. He’ll tell you. Where’s the hottest hotel in New York City that’s under the radar? He knows it. What are the top-3 Indian restaurants in the East Village? He’ll name them. Where can you see the hottest street graffiti in the city? He’ll show you.

He knows the history behind the buildings, the political changes of the neighborhoods and special city secrets, like where roses grow out of the concrete. After all, many of the neighborhood’s developments and changes, he was there to witness.

But the borough of Brooklyn, naturally, is his favorite: “I have what I call, “Brooklyn’s Answer to Manhattan,’” he said. “Manhattan has Central Park; I take them to Prospect Park. There’s the New York Public Library; I take them inside of the Brooklyn Public Library; I take them to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, the Promenade... They leave loving Brooklyn.”

Big Apple Greeters was founded by Lynn Brooks, the wife of City Hall reporter Stan Brooks. Mrs. Brooks felt that many potential visitors to New York City shied away, because they thought it was too dangerous, too expensive and just too overwhelming.

She wanted to change that image and show people that New York is a great big small town with diverse neighborhoods, mom-and-pop stores, fun places to dine with friendly residents who will go out of their way to help an out-of-towner feel welcome.

With a few financial backers and the help of her husband as the mouthpiece, Brooks was able to enlist a team of volunteer greeters who take out-of-towners for tours around their own neighborhoods, for free!!!

“Here’s the key thing to being a good greeter,” says Elliott, who grew up and Harlem, but has lived in Brooklyn for the past 46 years. “We have to package a tour ourselves, and almost like a performer, make it magical.”

The greeters receive an email every Wednesday with a list of tourists and the neighborhoods the tourists are interested in visiting, explains Elliott. Each greeter then browses the list and picks out who they’d like to host, based on their own degree of knowledge and/or interest in the neighborhoods requested.

Everyone inevitably asks for a tour of Manhattan, Ground Zero, the Financial District. But Elliott usually chooses those groups that also include Brooklyn and Harlem on their list.

“If a visitor asks for Bed-Stuy, which is rare, very few other greeters will be willing to pick that up. So it’s usually me,” said Elliott. “And the same goes for Harlem.”

But Elliott says he loves showing off the charm of Brooklyn, particularly the Promenade, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Prospect Park and the beautiful brownstones of Bed-Stuy.

Elliott clearly loves what he does for a living, and it shows: Chafin Elliott was named “Big Apple Greeter of the Year” in 2005. He is warm, talkative, has a zeal for life and in many ways, is a big kid.

“I love working with families that have children,” he said. “Because then I get to throw in places like Dillard’s Candy Store, Toys ‘R Us in Times Square and the petting zoo!”