Beyond the north lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., a dozen high-school students from York, Pa., are taking snapshots and chattering as they peer through the tall wrought-iron fence that secures this city's most famous home. ''Why can't we go in?'' one boy asks, hanging by one hand from one of the rungs.
Atop the White House roof, two uniformed Secret Service agents stand with their weapons drawn. Several more guards patrol the sunlit garden, with its budding cherry trees and manicured lawn. Along this closed section of Pennsylvania Avenue and the adjacent Lafayette Square, there are also mounted U.S. Park police, several parked patrol cars, security cameras and rows of newly installed steel posts to thwart would-be car bombers.
I am there, too, talking to CNN's Larry King on my cellphone. Well, not exactly talking. Listening, to be precise. "The White House is a bit of a fortress these days -- albeit a graceful looking one," the legendary TV interviewer tells me.
Welcome to the newest weapon in the savvy traveller's arsenal: the cellphone. I'm listening to an audio guide that I've bought for $5.95 (U.S.) on the Internet at TalkingStreet.com, which offers celebrity-narrated tours of New York, Boston, Washington, and soon Toronto and more than a dozen other domestic and foreign destinations.
It's a lively and richly detailed walking tour of 15 Washington landmarks, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the Capitol Building, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and all those granite monuments to past presidents. For a full week, I can take in the stops at my leisure and in any order I want, by simply dialling up a local telephone number on my cellphone, and keying in the number of the sites as I go.
"Our interest is to make these tours as rich as possible, with other voices, not just dry readings from a guide book into a phone," explains Miles Kronby, executive producer of New York-based studio Candide Media Works and creator of Talking Street. "We're aiming for something well beyond that. Something vivid and interactive, to make you feel like you're in the middle of it all."
The host on the Washington tour is Larry King, who lived and worked in the city for two decades as a reporter. In Boston, rocker and city native Steven Tyler of Aerosmith narrates a "Rebels and Dreamers" tour, which covers the Boston Tea Party, Fenway Park and the Big Dig. In New York, the tour guides to different neighbourhoods are actor Sigourney Weaver and comedian Jerry Stiller.
Talking Street is among the first companies in North American to exploit the cellphone as a tourist guide, but the trend is spreading fast. Travellers can tune into the Shot Heard Round the World to learn about the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Mass., or dial up Walk the Talk in Hong Kong and get the lowdown on the city's history, shopping, architecture and restaurants.
In Canada, a company called Murmur has signs posted in Toronto and Vancouver neighbourhoods that allow visitors to call in to hear the story behind buildings and spaces in the cities.
"The city is full of stories, and some of them happen in parking lots and bungalows, diners and front lawns," the founders explain on-line at murmurtoronto.ca. "The smallest, greyest or most nondescript building can be transformed by the stories that live in it."
The trend is being driven by the ubiquity of cellphones, combined with tumbling airtime and roaming charges. It has also spawned other non-traditional cellphone uses, such as text-messaging scavenger hunts (sponsored by companies such as Nike), in which participants use camera phones, Wi-Fi and GPS devices to locate clues and complete a course, often for prizes.
"The economics have finally met the capabilities," says Scott Hilton, chief executive of Spatial Adventures of Ashburn, Va., which offers seven tours of U.S. museums and historic sites, including Cell Phone Safari at the Sacramento Zoo and the Shot Heard Round the World tour in Concord. "For a younger demographic, the cell is a lot more than just a communication device. It's for entertainment, text messaging, music and pictures."
Talking Street's Kronby, a 39-year-old Toronto native, says he came up with the idea while strolling through a market in Istanbul, frustrated because he didn't understand a lot of what he was seeing.
"I was aware of all this history around me that I wasn't fully appreciating," says Kronby, who came to the United States to get a degree in interactive telecommunications at New York University.
The enormous potential of cellphones and other hand-held communication devices -- BlackBerrys, MP3 players and GPSs -- hasn't yet been fully tapped, he argues. Already, he's thinking of tours that would allow travellers to see maps, download related video images and read text, all in the palm of their hand. "That's absolutely where we see this going," Kronby says. "A lot of people in the cellphone industry are thinking about phones beyond simply a medium for voice calls. We want to see what the cellphone can do."
But traditional printed guidebooks, such as Fodor's or Lonely Planet, aren't about to throw in the towel. Most publishers already do a large chunk of their business through their websites and are always looking for new ways to deliver information to travellers. "We see cellphone tours as complementary to what we do," says Pete Wheelan, Lonely Planet's senior vice-president of strategic marketing and business development. "Multiple devices are converging as people use them to plan their trips, and while they're on the road."
Lonely Planet, for example, is already providing content to cellphone providers and makers of various wireless devices. "We want to deliver the content where you are and when you want it," he says.
Douglas Stalling, an editor at Fodor's, agreed that cellphone tours aren't competition because they "supplement the viewing experience." Indeed, its guidebooks often make note of available audio tours. On the White House, for example, I can read when the structure was completed (1800), who its first occupant was (John Adams) and what president put in running water (Andrew Jackson).
I've been inside the White House many times as a reporter. I've stood in the rose garden, had coffee in the President's private third-floor dining room, attended news conferences in the ornate East room and jostled for space inside the cramped media briefing room. What else could I experience, standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue? Quite a bit, it turns out.
Larry King continues in my earpiece: "My job on TV is all about getting famous figures to reveal themselves. We're going to get the marble talking. We're going to get these landmarks and monuments to relax a bit and share their stories."
Supplementing King's competent narration, Talking Street's well-produced recording features audio news clips, commentary from historians, as well as firsthand accounts by witnesses and re-enactments by actors.
On my cellphone, historian Michael Harrison is explaining, for example, that the designers of the White House and the leaders of the new republic wanted a simple house that "wasn't laden with the symbols of dynastic power," that was dignified, but not imperial.
I learn that multiple renovations and redecorations over the decades have transformed the White House, turning what was once Franklin Roosevelt's swimming pool into the current White House briefing room for reporters. "This is an American House," King explains. "Americans, after all, love to redecorate."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, an avid golfer, put in a putting green, and King points out that it was Teddy Roosevelt who added the West Wing, which contains the oval office and the other working rooms of the White House.
The White House was never meant to be the impenetrable fortress it is for most visitors today, King insists. It was meant to be open to the American people. But long before Sept. 11, people were questioning the wisdom of the open-door policy.
King urges me to press "one" on my cellphone to hear about "probably the wildest party" the White House has ever seen. I can't resist as I listen to an actor recreating one eyewitness' vivid account of Andrew Jackson's 1829 post-inauguration party.
"The whole house had been inundated by the rabble mob," the witness explains. "We came too late. The president, having been nearly pressed to death and almost suffocated and torn to pieces by the people in their eagerness to shake hands with him, had retreated through the back way and had escaped to his lodgings at Gadsby's."
Instantly, the listener understands how access to the White House -- and to the U.S. president -- has over the centuries become as tightly controlled and stage-managed as it is today.
I leave the White House and head down 17th Street toward the expansive National Mall, the park that stretches 3.6 kilometres from the steps of the Capitol to the Potomac River. I'm headed for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which sits in the middle of a stand of oak trees, hidden from the bustle of traffic that surrounds the Mall.
I've been here many times before -- with my kids, on my bike and with out-of-town guests. It's the most visited memorial in Washington, after all. The 58,000 names on the wall, dug into the clay soil of the Mall, are powerful symbols of a war that still churns up emotions among many Americans.
I listen to Maya Lin, who designed the memorial in 1982 as a 21-year-old architecture student, explain why the names on the wall are in chronological, rather than alphabetical order. Jan Scruggs, who spearheaded the memorial project, says on the phone that he and other veterans can touch the names of their fallen buddies "and sort of move on."
Even more effective is an actor who reads a letter from Michael McAninch, a 22-year-old soldier from Houston, to his parents shortly before he died in combat in 1969.
"Right now, I'm sitting on the steps of our hootch, looking out over the rice paddies and fields to the South," McAninch writes. "I don't know how to describe Vietnam or what it's like for me being here. It's totally alien is all I can say. . . . I hope . . . when I come home I'll be able to forget that I was ever here and return to my old self."
As he speaks, I look for panel w.18 on the wall. And there, two lines from the top, Michael McAninch's name is carved into the black granite. In an instant, the voice on my tiny Motorola flip-phone compresses nearly four decades of history, connecting me with a name on the wall -- a son, a brother and a fiancé to someone.
Pack your cellphone
TOURING TIPS
Use an earpiece. It's more comfortable for listening to long messages while walking.
The Talking Streets recordings must be heard from a single cellphone (if you and a friend each use your own cell, for example, you'll both pay). You can, however, dial in multiple times from the same phone.
Tour rates can be charged to your cellphone bill or a credit card. The Washington tour ate up about half an hour of minutes with each stop lasting a few minutes.
CELLPHONE TOURS
Talking Streets (Boston, New York, Washington): The company offers four tours, including two in New York, narrated by celebrities, supplemented with expert analysis and historical audio clips. Access can be ordered on-line for around $7 at http://www.talkingstreet.com.
HandHeld History (London): The company offers seven walking tours of the city and its historic sites. Each costs $3.50 and can be ordered by phone at 44 (901) 814-3210 or at http://www.handheldhistory.com.
Murmur (Toronto, Vancouver): Signs are posted at multiple sites in all three cities with local access telephone numbers. There is no cost beyond cellphone airtime charges. Montreal tours due to relaunch this spring. For more information, visit http://www.murmurtoronto.ca.
Walk the Talk (Hong Kong): The tour, which can be purchased in bookshops and leading hotels throughout Hong Kong, offers insights on history, shopping, architecture and restaurants. The package includes a map, and a prepaid SIM card with two hours of air time that can be used on most GSM mobile phones. For more information, visit http://www.mobileadventures.net.
Reykjavik Art Museum: The dial-in numbers are posted next to works of art and the information is free. The museum will lend phones to visitors. For more information, visit http://www.listasafnreykjavikur.is/thjonusta/gsm_leidsogn.en.shtml.
Sacramento Zoo (Sacramento, Calif.): The zoo offers Cell Phone Safari tours featuring detailed information on the animals and exhibits. The dial-in number for the walk is 703-286-6545 and the cost between $5 and $10. For more information, visit http://www.SacZoo.com.
Audio Tour of the Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.): An eight-stop tour of the plaza where the epic battle took place. The cost is around $9 and can be ordered by calling 703-286-6523 For more information, visit http://www.spatialadventures.com.
Shot Heard Round the World (Concord, Mass.): The tour tells the story of the opening volley of the American Revolution at the Minute Man National Historic Park. The cost is around $5 and can be ordered at 703-286-2775. For more information, visit http://www.spatialadventures.com.