New York is made of its infinite stories. The city is saturated with narratives—fact over fact, moment after moment. We walk through this jumble, often crossing invisible boundaries, with different customs, histories, and zoning laws. To learn about the city and be entertained in the process, thousands of people take walking tours. Even as corporate dollars pour into big budget events like the Olympics, the Gates, and the Westside Stadium, the street is where everyday folk really get to experience urban culture. Tourists aren't only those people who step off the plane; they're everyone who ventures off their beaten paths—and whether you're a rookie or a hard-boiled New Yorker, chances are there's something to learn. How many Upper West Siders, for example, know about Manhattanville? How many have walked through Grand Central's Whispering Gallery without sticking their noses into those corner ceramic tiles? Who notices the edible Japanese Knotweed or Burdock in Central Park?

Don't worry, cosmopolitans—even for novices, guide Justin Ferate says, "It takes about three hours to become a New Yorker." At once, walking guides offer a kind of 'cultural capital'—by teaching the everyday things like how to cross the street like a local (Answer: jaywalk)—while also re-enchanting brownstoned façades, encouraging participants to think twice about their taken-for-granted lives. A walking guide is a kind of street intellectual who ties together unseen histories with street-level experiences into a raucous zeitgeist of the streets.

There are plenty of tours to choose from. There are 1,267 licensed guides who specialize in everything from Sex in the City tours to architectural preservation; from Native American culture to literary pub crawls of the Village. But after two years of tours and interviews, the following guides should fill most anyone's interests—the activist, the naturalist, the studious, the curious; those with parents in town, or even those who would rather strike out on their own. Listed in no particular order, here are guides worth checking out.