Things to Do in Guttenberg

Golf Manhattan's virtual-golf facility combines the experience of a day at the links with a wide variety of creature comforts and game-sharpening lessons. PGA tour simulators re-create more than 50 courses from the world over in immaculate detail, while clients swing provided clubs and practice golf-cart wheelies in cushy chairs. The launch monitor and simulator accurately plot the trajectory and physics of each shot onto digitized fairways, and track important statistics, such as ball-spin rate, launch angle, and how many virtual divots each player has to fill in. Lessons with Class-A PGA professionals, PGA apprentices, and teaching professionals correct slices and fades, and a 46-inch television in the golf lounge pipes in the latest news from PGA tours. An onsite locker area equipped with a jacuzzi, sauna, and steam room limbers swinging arms for important skins games.

Blake Eastman, a psychology professor at the City University of New York, is like a lie detector that’s always on. When he meets strangers, plays poker, sits in on corporate negotiations as a consultant, or turns on the TV and watches politicians speak, he analyzes dozens of nonverbal clues and subtle behaviors that betray an individual's true feelings and intentions. "I've always been a natural at it," he says. "It's part of who I am." But through his education and independent research he’s gotten better and can now pinpoint every indicator that shows a person is hiding their emotions or outright lying––from their microexpressions to their wooden nose growing 2 inches.

During interactive group classes Blake outfits his students' observational tool belts with the knowledge to read body language, detect lies, or improve their dating lives. Classes engage with multiple activities that range from video analysis to role-playing. As images of apologetic celebrities and athletes flash across the screen, Blake pinpoints telltale microexpressions that crawl across each liar's face. In the game "two truths and a lie," students take turns trying to deceive each other as the class hunts for the lie and its tells. The skills in each class lay a foundation for what Blake calls a lifelong effort to learn what someone is truly thinking or feeling.

Tour guide Susan Birnbaum steers tourists and locals alike through streets that contain even more history and life than appear on the surface. Over the course of about two hours, you'll explore the restaurants, cafés, and food stops that populate the Belmont section of the Bronx, known as New York's "real" Little Italy. Prep your palate for five or six visits to mom-and-pop establishments, where fresh-baked breads, pastas, and pizzas make regular appearances. A charming neighborhood that housed waves of twentieth-century Italian immigrants, Belmont still bustles with delightful cigar rollers at La Casa Grande Tobacco Co. and enticing aromas wafting from the Arthur Avenue Retail Market. Tour-takers can pull back the curd-colored curtain on the cheese-making process while witnessing a live cheese-making demonstration. Intrepid cultural seekers will also learn neighborhood facts along the way, stopping to pay homage to the corner where Dion and the Belmonts gave an a cappella voice to the woeful plight of teenagers in love.

Most painters don't have a body count on their website. Danny Setiawan is the exception—he’s artfully slathering 292 people with paint in 2012. He's been painting traditionally since he was a child in Indonesia, but after graduating from Parsons The New School For Design in New York, he shifted his brush from synthetic to living canvases, layering participants’ skin with lush koi fish, patterns, and re-creations of famous masterpieces. As he told The Today Show, Setiawan became a body painter to imbue his artwork with more relevancy. "You cannot ignore a piece of art if it's painted on a human body," he said, echoing the sentiments Da Vinci expressed when Da Vinci added a miniature Mona Lisa to the forehead of the Mona Lisa.

Since he began filling his portfolio with body paintings, Setiawan's work has been far from ignored. In addition to visiting with Kathie Lee and Hoda, DenArt Studio has been recognized by Last Call with Carson Daly, as well as American Airlines, American Express, and Stoli. Many of his clients are not only attracted to the studio's colorful portfolio but also by its unique services. Guests can commission an artist to paint them clothed or unclothed as individuals or couples, expectant moms can opt for a maternity body-art session, and Halloween celebrants can enlist the studio's help bringing their costumes to life with body paint. At the onsite photo studio a photographer captures the resulting images in dramatic detail. Attendants can also paint each other at a casual Art on Live Canvas workshop, and ambitious artists looking to become the next Danny Setiawan can enroll in a body-painting or makeup course.

Two people step off a nearly 30-foot scaffolding. If this were a television show, an authoritative voice would sound the warning, "Do not try this home." But this isn't a television show. This is Hollywood Stunts NYC, an operation helmed by stunt professionals who teach students how to safely and believably pull off gasp-inducing spectacles for film, television, stage, and theme park audiences.

Inside a 4,000-square-foot facility that rises to 40-foot ceilings, experienced stuntmen and staged-violence choreographers run training programs ranging from weekly classes to three-week intensives. Beneath instructor supervision, students learn the art of leaping, tumbling, falling, and fire stunts through using apparatus such as trampolines, air rams, and flying harnesses. The training facility also spans greenscreen and bluescreen studios. And since New York possesses one of the world's most vibrant production scenes, teachers place emphasis on industry etiquette so students know the right way to throw a chair at agents, casting directors, and stunt coordinators. Beyond training burgeoning stunt professionals, Hollywood Stunts NYC's team stages kids' birthday parties, as well as rents its facilities and equipment for production work.

The scuba pros at Village Divers get students off land and into the water with a catalogue of scuba classes and certifications and a cache of rental equipment. Their Open Water Diver scuba-certification course transforms guppies into scuba-certified guppies with classroom and onsite pool training. They can coordinate diving events for full Open Water certification, or they can issue referrals for students to complete their certification at another location. The instructors also delve further into the underwater arts with advanced courses in technical diving, underwater photography, and wreck diving—often taking trips out to the sunken ships of Wreck Alley and the abandoned castles of local fishbowls.