Adam Selzer: Tour Guide to the Real Chicago
If you’re in the market for an interesting guided tour around Chicago, author, historian, and self-proclaimed smart aleck Adam Selzer might be just the guy you’re looking for. Through Chicago Student Tours, he offers a number of themed adventures that can be customized to fit groups visiting the Windy City.
On his RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT! The Chicago Crime Tour, visitors will hear the stories and see the places associated with Chicago’s infamous past. From the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to obscure tales dug up during his extensive research, Adam will fill in all the gory details as you trek about town in the footsteps of Al Capone, Bugs Moran, and other iconic crime figures.
The Chicago Political Tour is a slightly different beast, though still filled with the stuff of legends as Chicago has long been home to some colorful political characters. Stops on the tour revolve around men of history, including Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. No doubt more contemporary politicians, such as President Barack Obama, also make the grade.
There are also guys like mayors Long John and Big Bill, not to mention Levi Boone who was a member of the Know Nothing Party – his day’s equivalent of the Tea Party. Though Selzer strives to be fair and balanced in his storytelling, he is admittedly partial to the Chicago’s very own Bull Moose Party.
The Chicago Ghost Tour is a hallmark of Selzer’s work. Having started his tour guide career with a focus on haunted sites, Selzer has authored Your Neighborhood Gives Me the Creeps: True Tales of an Accidental Ghost Hunter and The Weird Chicago Blog to detail his experiences.
To give you an idea of where he’s coming from, Adam posted this bit on his website: “He says that he isn’t quite sure he BELIEVES in ghosts, but looking for them is a lot of fun, and you tend to find a lot of fascinating things besides ghosts on a good investigation.”
And then there’s the Smart Aleck’s Guide to Chicago which brings elements of the other three tours to bear. Taken from his Smart Aleck’s Guide to American History, this “is a hilarious, irreverent ride through Chicago past and present.”
One participant who took a group out with Selzer said, “Adam was hilarious, informative, level-headed and able to keep the students engaged through the whole three hours. The history was great, and I didn’t roll my eyes at ghost stories once — and I’m a science teacher!”
The really special thing about Selzer is that he does his own research, so he really knows his stuff. Whether it’s digging through archives and rumors to learn more about the Foolkiller Submarine or Charles Hull’s dead wife, Adam puts in the legwork to verify his accounts. The fact that he’s also witty as can be is an added bonus.