Things to Do in Bensonhurst

The resident guides at Uncle Sam's New York Tours masterfully navigate the city to give sightseers a smattering of historic sights, hip bars, and chic shopping locales. Leisurely strolls allow tourists to savor the sights of each stop, as opposed to whizzing by on a tour bus or being launched past from a trebuchet. Engaging guides steer guests down Wall Street and dive headfirst into the Greenwich Village digs that have been frequented by creative geniuses for decades. After dark, pub crawls traverse the entrances of some of New York's most hallowed watering holes, and nightclub tours lend tastes of the New York nightlife, along with glimpses of reticent celebrities in rare chicken-dance performances. Uncle Sam's sightseeing sages also conduct private luxury tours, ferrying guests about town in private SUVs and stretch limos.

The founder of Shen Tao Studio, William Hedberg, named his business after a Chinese phrase evoking the wisdom acquired from studying the mind and body. His own studies began with an investigation of dance, gymnastics, athletics, and martial arts. William integrated his findings into a series of movement classes and a line of custom-built training equipment designed to leave you with “the simple experience of your own body." The studio's classes, workshops, and rehabilitation therapies lean on these minimalistic, modular structures to strengthen the mind-body connection in a playful style.

Shen Tao Studio holds its group and personal training sessions in a spacious studio with picture windows and hardwood floors unhindered by columns or cardboard cutouts of Star Wars bounty hunters. The space’s 14-foot ceilings amplify crystal-clear sonics projected by a Bose audio system.

The art-deco splendor of Radio City Music Hall melds with the show's sets to create an otherworldly atmosphere Time praised as a "perfect union of site and spectacle." Backdrops of oversize gears and coiling snakes rise to the top of the 60-foot proscenium arch, and projections show off eerie sand paintings on the surrounding walls. Anthemic rock music by Australian electropop prodigy Nick Littlemore blasts through the pipes of the Mighty Wurlitzer, modified to twist ominously like a sinister American Bandstand dancer.

Before opening his own studio, owner and passionate yogi J. Brown spent more than a decade working as an independent yoga instructor. He credits this experience with creating Abhyasa Yoga Center's personal and inclusive atmosphere that welcomes students of all experience and skill levels. Each of the studio's 15 certified yoga instructors have been trained by Brown, resulting in a cohesive schedule of classes practiced in a therapeutic, breath-centered style. Though yoga's physical postures can help students increase strength, flexibility, and patience when training wild spirit animals, Brown and his fellow yogis encourage patrons to perform each pose at their own level of difficulty and link their movements with Ujjayi breathing techniques to sync the body and mind.