The Cruise
Timothy Levitch is a couchsurfing New Yorker who earned himself a cult following with the eccentric monologues he delivered for Gray Line Tours. Perched atop those double-decker buses, he danced and waged war with a Manhattan that was, at least in the ’90s, worthy of philosophy: the Empire State Building is the catharsis of phallic emotion; Central Park is for transcendentalists, not runners; Dylan Thomas drank himself to death here. Levitch’s portrait falls in the shadow of his own gigantic self-portrait—even the Twin Towers exist only to dizzy him, for he is a virtuoso narcissist, not mediocre like the private enemies he publicly and extravagantly berates.
Levitch’s own philosophy is cruising, which is about searching for beauty and individuality; about leisure and opposing full-time employment; about getting laid. He rails against his uniform because looking like the other tour guides can only tank his romantic prospects. Policemen, managers, and elderly relatives constitute the anticruise. He spends his life evading the bastards, rambling around the city, reminding anyone who will listen that Manhattan’s gridded streets were once meandering lanes. ∎