NYC tourists seeking authentic experience take late-night rat tours
There is a new rat race in town.
Tourists are flocking to the Big Apple to check out its exploding rat population — and tour guides are tailoring excursions to introduce them to the city’s most beady-eyed natives.
Kenny Bollwerk maps out late-night rat routes near Rockefeller Center and in Flushing and Sunnyside, Queens.
Luke Miller, owner of Real New York Tours, adds a stop to Columbus Park near Chinatown for tourists with a yen for vermin.
“They are like the new celebs in New York City with all the press they are getting,” said Miller.
Such fascination may have begun seven years ago when New York City’s most famous rodent, the Pizza Rat, drew 12 million viewers to an online video of it trekking down subway stairs while dragging a full slice.
“Rats are like a New York City mascot,” said Bollwerk. “People want to see it for themselves.”
Bollwerk’s free walking tours of rat hotspots include busted-up sidewalks and construction sites where the rodents squeeze themselves under fences and through sidewalk cracks, and restaurants in Sunnyside and Forest Hills where garbage is piled high, and abandoned outdoor dining shacks provide rodent refuge.
Up to 10,000 people at a time tune in to Bollwerk’s “RatTok” live streams on TikTok as he explores rodent-infested areas.
In some videos, he sprays a peppermint repellent around the sites and encourages viewers to call 311 to report them.
Rat populations grew exponentially during the pandemic thanks to ample shelter and food from dining sheds.
Outdoor dining was “designed without a plan to keep the rats from becoming its biggest patrons,” city Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said earlier this month.
There were over 60,000 reports of rat activity citywide in 2022 — a shocking 102 percent increase from 2021, according to Health Department data.
So far this year, there have been over 39,000 reports of rat activity.
The city launched a crackdown in 2022 that included new rules for securing garbage and what times it could be put out.
Mayor Eric Adams — who has publicly declared his hatred of rats — announced in April that “rat czar” Kathleen Corradi would lead the charge to eradicate them.
Clearly, not everyone shares Hizzoner’s musophobia (which includes mice. too)
“I loved it ever since I started watching it,” said “RatTok” fan Patrick Norris of St. Louis.
“It made me want to go there and actually see the setting and the scenery and, you know, ‘What’s behind this corner? What’s behind that corner?’”
Norris traveled to the Big Apple earlier this year and visited a construction site on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside that was a haven for rats.
“It was awesome,” he said.
Aaron Lidwell and his wife Christine visited from Altoona, PA in April with hopes of seeing rats.
“It’s one of those things you just have to see,” Lidwell told The Post.
The couple accompanied Bollwerk to a construction site where rat tails were peeking out from beneath plywood at a construction site.
While most would run, Lidwell had a different reaction — he reached down and gently pinched some of their long, pink tails.
“Kenny’s livestream went nuts,” he said.
For David Fraticelli and his 12-year-old daughter Noelia of the Bronx, rat tours have become a highlight of summer vacation.
Noelia has become a regular in Bollwerk’s TikTok videos.
Now, her friends tune in to see if she makes a guest appearance.
Noelia has since learned all about the animals and what people can do to curb them.
Rodents can spread over 30 different diseases to humans including salmonellosis, typhus, and Lyme disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fleas that traveled to humans from dead rats spread the Black Death, which wiped out 25 million Europeans by 1351.
Noelia said her goal is to warn the younger generation.
“Rats and very dangerous and infect our communities,” she said.
