Tours

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Purpose

Documenting some thoughts around tours.

Archetypes

On the mansion/historical/art tours I feel you encounter these types.

• the know-it all - has a shelf of books at home about the location. Might have some work-based experience with the subject of the tour. Might actually be a blood relative of the home owners. In some instances, reading the Wikipedia a few minutes before will elevate you above them. With certain guides (guides, an archetype filled with many sub-archetypes itself) there will be a persistent tension between the know-it-all the entire time. Could overlap with some of the other archetypes.
• the retired couple - the guy is wearing a heather grey t-shirt and the woman takes very deliberate iphone photos the entire time. They are more traveled than you. They have been to basically every house tour on the east coast and are thus a good resource for finding new places. It’s possible a group selfie will take place or they’ll ask you to take a photo.
• The young person with a camera - Completely social media focused. Will not be able to recall a single guide fact given at the end of the tour.
• The quiet solo guy - I feel I settle in here generally. Overall pleasant, but doesn’t really contribute much. A couple of questions locked in. Might thank everyone for sharing the tour experience with them at the end. The only thing said.

Tour Blending

Whenever I go on a tour, invariably there’s mention of a previous tour. A tour, despite the amount scripting, tends to have some organic growth. I’ve never been a guide, but I wonder if there’s instruction to ask for information from guests to add to interactivity. (I have also been on tours where out front the guide will state they are a field specialist and all other domains they will try their best, and thus welcome input.)

But about those types of mention of tour groups,

Sometimes it’s in reference to properties of the previous guests

• “Where are you folks from? Last week we had someone all the way from Sweden”

But other times it’s relevant to the subject presented, some input that enriches the experience for everyone such as a personal fact or connection with the location.

• “If you look up there last week we had a question on that spire, and it turns out…”

This has lead me to wonder if any of my input has ever made its way into the annals, though this is never my goal and I question the originality of my input to a guide who sees countless faces.

Glass House

I went to the Glass House, a residence of Philip Johnson over the weekend and went for the self guided tour. Each house on the premises had guides stationed outside. This resulted in me having a lot more personal interaction with the guides than I normally would have, because for the most part it all one on one, and I could be as free as I wanted before flitting between buildings.

Trying to recall bits of input of mine that might have registered with the guides.

In viewing “Da Monsta” I mentioned that standing below the right side, it almost felt like being beneath a ships prow.

This seem obvious, and surely the guide had heard that before.

The Study

In another house which was meant to be a library and a study, specifically built to house one man, I mentioned to the guide my connection to Levittown, where I was raised. She had stated that (here’s some connection to another group) previous guests had mentioned the Glass House itself was quite small, but she used the original Levitt starter homes as a means of telling the relatively small size of homes of that era, compared to present homes.

My input here was to say that the house resembled an observatory with the domed ceiling, but it was like (hopefully not approaching pretension here) a kind of library observatory where instead of outward the focus was inward. She seemed to appreciate this and I told her about the Levittown Memorial Museum and left.

The gallery

In the gallery another woman was watching me, probably trying to gauge if I were there to ask questions or to just take pictures. We ended up talking and I mentioned that I noticed the works of art on the wall appeared to be rotatable through circular guides in the top of the ceiling. I mentioned that it reminded me of a book, like you could leaf through these large scale paintings. She said “Yes, it could be like a book. In fact, he had a rolodex in mind here.”