MUSEENYC / Services / Hire a local friend
Hire a local friend
Not a tour guide. A New Yorker who loves this city and wants to show it to you. Plan the day together, or hand them the keys and see New York like a local.
Seeing a city alone is harder than anyone admits
You walk straight past the place you would have loved, because nothing tells you it is there. You eat early, at the end of a bar, looking at your phone. You spend half the day working out the next thing instead of doing it, and you fly home with the feeling that most of the city went unseen.
We know, because we have done it all over the world. Every time, the same wish: somebody local with us. Not a tour guide with a flag and a script. A friend who lives there, who would just take us to their places, tell us what is worth it and what is not, and sit down to eat with us.
That is what this is. Not a tour: a day hanging out with a New Yorker who is genuinely excited about this city and cannot wait to show it to you. Walk, eat, have a drink, wander into somewhere you would never have found, and talk the whole way. You stop navigating and start noticing.
You choose how it goes. Tell us what you are into and shape the day around it — a neighborhood, a cuisine, a night out, the things on your list. Or do what most people end up loving: hand over the plan, follow along, and see the city the way the people who live here do.
And it does not stop when the day does. Your friend stays a text away for the rest of your trip: the restaurant question at eleven at night, the which-train question, the is-this-actually-worth-it question.
- Price
- On request, and confirmed in writing before you book
- How long
- Half day or full day, by arrangement
- Paying
- Paid in person when you meet, before the day starts. Meals, drinks and anything else bought during the day are paid for by whoever buys them.
What you get
- A New Yorker for the day who is genuinely into this city, not a guide reading from a script.
- Your way: tailor the day to what you love, and change your mind as you go.
- Or theirs: hand over the plan and let your friend take you where locals actually go.
- Someone to eat with, drink with and talk to. The meals you would otherwise eat alone at a counter.
- The places a visitor does not find alone: the side street, the bar with no sign, the view nobody posts.
- Photographs all day, as many as you want, so you go home with pictures of yourself in New York and not just of New York.
- After the day, text your friend with questions for the rest of your trip.
How to book it
Use the form below, or email us. We reply with availability, the price and what is included, in writing, and nothing is confirmed until you say yes. If the weather would ruin it we will tell you and move it.
The full terms, including cancellations, are in our terms. Booking this changes nothing about what we write on the rest of the site: nobody can pay to appear on MUSEENYC.