Terms of Service

What MUSEENYC is

MUSEENYC is an independent editorial guide to New York City — restaurants, bars, rooftops, clubs and music rooms, museums and galleries, parks and public space, practical guides to getting around the city, self-guided walking tours, and writing about the city. Everything here is our opinion, formed from visits we made anonymously and paid our own way for.

Nobody pays to be included, and nobody can pay to be removed, to be scored higher, or to be added to the M List. If that ever changes — if we run a sponsored piece or take an affiliate link — it will be labeled as such on the page it appears on.

Paid products

MUSEENYC is free to read today. We may offer paid products or services in the future. If we do, the price and any terms that apply will be shown clearly before you pay, and nothing already published here will be charged for retroactively without notice.

Tours and services we run

Our trip planning, local friend days, guided walks and bike tours are booked through the form on our services pages or by email. We confirm the price, the date and what's included in writing before anything is booked, and before you pay anything. They are separate from the guide: booking with us never affects what we review, how we score it, or the M List.

• Who comes. Guided walks and bike tours are private. We take one party at a time and never join separate bookings together.
• Your guide. Walks and rides are led by a New York City licensed sightseeing guide, who carries the license and will show it on request.
• Paying. Walks, rides and local friend days are paid in person at the start, and we prefer cash. Trip planning is paid before we begin. Whatever the method, the price is agreed in writing first, and there is nothing to pay to inquire.
• Photographs. Taking pictures of you during a walk or a ride is part of what you are paying for. We send them to you afterwards and they are yours to keep, print and post wherever you like. We will not publish a photograph you are recognizable in, here or anywhere else, unless you tell us we can, and you can ask us to delete our copies at any time.
• Cancellations. If we cancel, for weather or any other reason, you get a full refund or a new date, your choice. If you cancel, the terms we confirm when you book apply.
• Walking tours. You walk at your own pace and your own risk, on public streets with traffic, uneven pavement and stairs. Tell us beforehand about anything that affects how far or fast you can go, and we'll plan around it.
• Bike tours. You must be able to ride a bike confidently, including in traffic, and follow the guide's directions and the traffic laws. Wearing a helmet is strongly recommended. Every rider signs a separate waiver before setting off, and anyone under 18 needs a parent or guardian to sign for them.
• Hire a local friend. A day spent with a New Yorker who shows you around their city. It is paid in person when you meet, before the day starts. You meet in a public place. Meals, drinks, tickets and anything else bought during the day are paid for by whoever buys them. Bars are for 21 and over. After the day your friend stays reachable by text for the rest of your trip, for questions about the city.
• Trip plans are recommendations. Opening hours, prices and availability change, so confirm the details that matter before you rely on them.

Reviews are opinion, not fact

Scores, rankings and the M List are editorial judgments — our honest opinion, formed from a real visit, and nothing more. Reasonable people disagree about restaurants, and we're frequently among them. Nothing on this site is a statement that a business broke a law, a health code, or any other regulation; if we thought that, we'd say it plainly and mean it literally, not imply it through a score.

Details go stale. Opening hours, prices, door policies, cover charges, menus and whether a place is still open all change without warning, often the week after we publish. Check with the venue before you build a night around anything you read here. We don't guarantee that any information on the site is current, complete or accurate.

Guides and practical information

Our guides cover things that change on someone else's schedule: subway and bus fares, ferry routes and schedules, bike-share pricing, museum hours and free-entry times, beach seasons, tipping norms, taxes and store policies. We check them when we publish, but they change, sometimes without notice. Confirm anything that matters with the service or venue itself before you rely on it.

MUSEENYC is not affiliated with the MTA, NYC Ferry, the Staten Island Ferry, Citi Bike, NYC Parks, or any museum, library or public agency we mention. Tipping and money advice is general information, not financial, legal or tax advice.

Self-guided tours: your own risk

The free walking tours on this site, the ones we call Self-Tours, are routes and information, not a guided service. Nobody from MUSEENYC is with you, and you decide where you go and when. That is the opposite of the guided walks above, which you book and which someone leads.

• You walk them at your own risk. Watch for traffic, bikes, uneven pavement, stairs, weather, heat and the dark, and turn back or skip a stop whenever you need to.
• Stops marked private are people's homes and private buildings. View them from the public sidewalk only: don't open gates, enter doorways, or photograph into windows.
• Follow posted rules, closures and the directions of anyone in charge of a space. A stop can close, be under construction or be off-limits on the day you visit.
• Distances, times, walking directions, transit options and coordinates are estimates to help you plan, not guarantees.

Tour maps and walking directions are provided through Google Maps, a third-party service we don't control. Routes it suggests may be inaccurate, closed or unsuitable, so use your own judgment on the ground.

We're not the businesses we write about

MUSEENYC is independent. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, or operated by any restaurant, bar, club, museum, park, shop or other place mentioned on this site — including places on the M List or stops on a tour. A high score is not a business relationship.

Business names, logos and trademarks that appear here belong to their owners. We use them only to identify the place we're writing about, the way any publication naming a restaurant does — not to claim any connection to it beyond that.

Events, venues and your own judgment

Events are run by third parties, not by us. Ticketing, entry, refunds and cancellations are between you and the organizer.

Bars and clubs set their own age limits and admission policies, and much of what we cover is for people of legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly, follow venue rules and local laws, and use your own judgment about where and when you go.

Links to other sites

We link out to venues, ticket sellers, Google Maps and other publications. We don't control those sites and aren't responsible for their content, their accuracy or their privacy practices.

Our content

The writing, photography, scores, guides, walking tours, maps we've made, printable guides, the MUSEENYC name and the M mark belong to MUSEENYC and are protected by copyright and trademark law.

You're welcome to:

• Link to any page here, anywhere.
• Quote a short passage — a sentence or two — with clear attribution and a link back.
• Download and print our tour guides, and any trip plan the free planner builds for you, for your own personal, non-commercial use, and share a link to them.

Please don't:

• Republish whole reviews, guides, tours or listings, on any platform.
• Sell, rehost or redistribute our printable guides, tour maps or trip plans, or use them to run paid or commercial tours, without written permission.
• Scrape or bulk-copy the site, including to build a database or train a commercial model, without written permission.
• Use the MUSEENYC name or M mark in a way that implies we endorse you.

Want to use something? Ask — museenyc.art@gmail.com. The answer is often yes.

Tips, pitches and anything you send us

If you send us a tip, a photo, a pitch or a correction, you're confirming it's yours to send, and you're giving us permission to publish and edit it here and on our social accounts, with credit where it makes sense. You keep ownership of what you sent. We're not obliged to publish anything, and we don't treat submissions as confidential — so don't send us secrets.

You're responsible for what you send us. If something you submit isn't actually yours to send, or gets us into a dispute with someone else — a copyright claim, for instance — you agree to cover the reasonable costs that causes us.

Using the site

Don't attack the site, don't try to break into anything, and don't use it to break the law. That's the whole list.

No warranty, and the limit of what we owe you

The site, including our guides, tours, maps, printable guides and the trip plans the free planner builds, is provided “as is”. We don't promise it will always be available, error-free, or right about anything in particular. A trip plan is built from what we have written up, not from live opening hours or availability: check before you travel across the city for something.

To the fullest extent the law allows, MUSEENYC isn't liable for any loss, injury or damage arising from your use of the site or from anything you did because you read it here — including a disappointing dinner, a queue, a closed door, a cancelled show, a missed train, a closed path or a wrong turn on a walk. Nothing in these terms limits any liability that can't legally be limited, and if you're a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.

Corrections

If we've got something wrong — a fact, a price, a closure, a name, a route — tell us at museenyc.art@gmail.com and we'll fix it. We'd rather be corrected than be wrong.

If you run a place we've written about

Email us. We read everything, and a factual error gets fixed as soon as we can confirm it. If a tour stop is your home or business and you'd like us to change how we describe it, tell us and we'll look at it.

What we won't do is take down or soften an honest opinion, formed from a real visit, because it's unwelcome — including places with an M. Nobody can buy their way onto this site, and nobody can buy their way off it either; a review that could be edited away by a complaint wouldn't be worth reading in the first place.

Copyright complaints

If you believe something on this site infringes your copyright, email museenyc.art@gmail.com with: the work you own, the page and the material you believe infringes it, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorized, and a statement that your notice is accurate and that you're the owner or authorized to act for them. We'll review it promptly and remove material that infringes.

Resolving a problem

If you have a problem with the site or anything on it, email us first and give us 60 days to try to put it right; most things are fixed faster than that. To the extent the law allows, any claim relating to the site must be brought within one year of when it arose, and only on an individual basis, not as part of a class or representative action.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, and any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts of New York County, New York.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, that part is trimmed and the rest stays in effect.

Changes

We may update these terms; the date at the top will change when we do. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the new version.