NYC Rat Tours in Chinatown with Kenny Bollwerk

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Free cancellationExcellent qualityLikely to sell out

1/9

Duration1h 30m

GroupUp to 12

Mobile ticketAccepted

Following the Rats Through Chinatown's Trash and Alleyways

You walk through Chinatown's alleys and backstreets with Kenny Bollwerk for 90 minutes, learning how restaurant design, trash systems, and building infrastructure shape rat behavior and urban wildlife patterns. The tour includes rat stickers and postcards, and covers both what the city is doing about rodents and what gaps remain in the strategy. It's part comedy, part infrastructure lesson, and entirely focused on the grimy realities of living in a dense city.

1h 30m

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Chinatown's urban rat world

Meet Rat Daddy guide
Walk through alleyways and side streets
Learn about urban wildlife and rat behavior
Discover restaurant infrastructure and trash ecosystems
Understand environmental factors affecting rats
Explore food waste and sanitation impact
Observe human behavior influence on rats

The Experience

Someone's pointing at a gap between a restaurant's back door and the pavement, then crouching to peer into the shadows. It's Kenny Bollwerk, the person behind Rat Tok, and he's about to spend the next 90 minutes walking you through Chinatown's backstreets to show you exactly where and why New York City's rats actually live. The tour isn't what you'd expect — it's not a nature walk or a pest control lecture. It's more like a comedy show that happens to be about rodents, mixed with real urban infrastructure knowledge and a genuine curiosity about how the city actually works.

The walk moves through alleys, side streets, and the kind of corridors most tourists never notice. Kenny points out how restaurant design, trash schedules, and building gaps create the conditions rats need to survive in dense neighborhoods. You'll learn why certain blocks have more activity than others, what the city is actually doing about the problem, and what still isn't working. The commentary is sharp and funny — he's built a massive following online by making this stuff genuinely interesting instead of gross. Along the way you get rat stickers and postcards, which sounds small until you're actually holding them and realizing you just spent an hour and a half learning about urban rodent ecosystems from someone who's made it his thing.

Chinatown is the setting because the neighborhood's density, restaurant concentration, and infrastructure make it the most active zone in the city. The tour covers the real mechanics of how food waste, building design, and sanitation all feed into where rats congregate. It's the kind of detail you don't get from a standard city tour, and it sticks with you — not because it's shocking, but because it actually explains something about how New York works that you'd never thought to ask about.

What’s included

Your 90-minute walking tour includes entry, Kenny Bollwerk's live commentary on rat behavior and urban infrastructure, rat stickers, and rat postcards. The tour covers Chinatown's alleys and side streets, and explores how restaurant design, trash systems, and building gaps shape where rats live in the city.

Good to know

Moderate physical levelWheelchair accessibleStroller friendlyPets welcomePublic transport nearbyNot for pregnant travelersNot for heart conditionsNot for back problems

Operated by NYC RAT WALKING TOURS

Is this one for you?This works for anyone curious about how cities actually function beneath the surface — locals who've never thought to ask why rats congregate where they do, tourists looking for something completely different from the standard tour circuit, and anyone who finds the intersection of urban design and animal behavior genuinely interesting.