Tour Guides Test Limits of a Truly Free Market

W ith a little bit of rap (about King George III, of all people: "He was a meany and we were so teeny"), a healthy but not overbearing dose of history and a whole lot of nerve, two recent college graduates are rattling the genteel world of Washington tour guides.

Ben Hindman and Brody Davis are giving tours for free.

Working only for tips, the two friends in bright orange caps are attracting tourists who find themselves looking at the Mall's attractions, knowing little more than that the really tall one has to do with Washington; the squat, columned one is where Forrest Gump liked to hang out; and the one with the dome is where the president lives, or something like that.

"A lot of tourists really don't know anything about Washington or history," Hindman says. "We thought we could entertain people and get them interested in history at the same time."

Not entertained are the city's professional guides, who "really don't like us," says Hindman, 24, a Bostonian who found the inspiration for DC By Foot in Berlin, where he took a tour from a tips-only guide.

"This has been their livelihood, and they don't like us giving it away," Davis says. "They are professionals, and they think we don't know anything."

Actually, says Tom Whitley, who handles marketing for the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, D.C., "it would be foolhardy for highly skilled guides to get into some kind of a fight with people trying to pick up tours out on the street. Let's just say that it's much more likely that a person who wants a qualified guide will go out and get a professional guide."

The guild's code of ethics frowns upon soliciting for tips. Hindman and Davis figure their business is the ultimate expression of capitalism. They offer a service; people determine its value and pay accordingly.

Although traditional guides say they provide accurate and compelling stories about Washington and the nation's great symbols, the two buddies fresh out of Vanderbilt University say they checked out the competition and were underwhelmed.

"We went on the other tours, and they were really pretty boring," says Davis, 22, who worked as an intern for senators Bill Frist and Joe Lieberman before diving into the tour business.

So Hindman and Davis studied, obtained D.C. tour guide licenses and asked their former history professors to share Washington stories. They concocted a script mixing tales of heroism and nation-building (the birth of lobbying at the Willard Hotel, the stirring John Adams-Thomas Jefferson friendship, the strange but true explanation of why the Washington Monument is two-toned) with wacky bits that would probably come only from the minds of kids fresh out of college.

For example, your average professional guide, while summarizing the Revolutionary War, probably doesn't ask tour groups to "march like you're British" and lead the tourists skipping down the path.