New York City is bursting with tours, of landmarks and neighborhoods and less predictable destinations, historical or gastronomical or criminal.  Then there is Timothy Levitch’s tour of “the great living landmark that shows up five days a week.”  This would be rush hour at Grand Central Terminal, as described by Mr. Levitch, 45, who has attracted a cult following over the years for his beat-poetry style of leading tours.  Bebop tourism, he calls it. His solos are free-flowing verbal improvisations built on standards of Manhattan history and architecture.  These days, Mr. Levitch, widely known as Speed, increasingly riffs on the humanity of the city itself, often in angular, funny soliloquies that use his command of the city’s history as mere guideposts.  Mr. Levitch spent his teenage years in New York infiltrating landmark buildings. He got his nickname back then from a friend, he said, after scampering up to the terminal’s roof on a night of urban exploration during which he also scrambled across the windowed corridors high above the terminal.  Wearing a double-breasted jacket and a loud tie on Monday night, he met five customers for his Midtown Rush Hour tour at the information island in the middle of the terminal’s main concourse.  “The whole thing is a love flirtation between time and space,” he said.  Looking out over the crush of commuters crisscrossing in the race to their trains, Mr. Levitch declared them to be “in the throes of the great rush,” and defined the commuter as someone who believes that “every single godforsaken human being currently on this planet is in my way.”  He told those on the tour that their role for the next 70 minutes would be to serve as a Greek chorus, observing and communicating with the rush hour, but not “committing to the rush.”  This is Speed’s style, an experiential approach to tours that he calls “cruising.”  “It’s an active appreciation of the beauty of your immediate surroundings,” he said. “You’re embracing the beautiful, creative possibilities in every moment.”  He does fall back on filler material, names and dates and all the historical details one can now find easily online. But his style is to deliver long, spoken-word stream of consciousness, using history only “as a way to go further into the now.”  Mr. Levitch said he grew up in Riverdale and in Ossining, N.Y., and attended the Horace Mann School and then New York University, where he studied to be a playwright.  “I figured I’d be a tour guide until I got a toehold in the theater,” he said. “But then the tours became my theater.”  In the 1990s, Mr. Levitch narrated tours from a trolley in Central Park, and on double-decker buses throughout Manhattan, for Apple Tours and the Grey Line. Eventually, he began to give his own tours.  In Grand Central, he cited Moses as the king of tour guides, having spent 40 years wandering the desert with a group, without one customer asking for a refund.  “He was clearly kind of like an early Charlie Parker in the history of bebop tourism,” said Mr. Levitch, who touched upon the architecture and history of the terminal and other nearby spots, but seemed more intent on redefining rush hour as something other than an unpleasant march.  “They’re only trying to work you into the dance,” he said of any possible collisions with commuters.  Walking backward as he led the group, Mr. Levitch bumped into a scowling commuter who did not brighten even when he said cheerily, “I like your style of commute.”  He is only a tour guide, he said. New York itself is “the great teacher” that uses traffic to teach patience, and uses buildings and neighborhoods as parables.  Outside, on 42nd Street, Mr. Levitch told the group to massage “the skin of the city teacher” — the concrete sidewalk beneath their feet.  Yellow cabs are really “emblazoned love chariots,” he said, just before one honked as he led the group across 42nd Street. He told his followers to take notice of the sound.  “Connoisseur that honk,” he said. “That kind of staccato chord — that’s the sound of misguided animosity.”  Mr. Levitch has lived for several years in Kansas City, Mo., where his mother now lives. Lately, he has been splitting his time, staying in New York to offer tours by appointment.  He offered the rush hour tours regularly on weekdays in the fall, and hopes to start them up again on a regular weekday schedule. Slots on the tours go for as much as $60, with discounts for students and groups.  At the end of the tour on Monday, Mr. Levitch reminded the group that rush hour was a vital part of the combustible engine that is Midtown Manhattan, where, he said, it might seem as if we are all commuters, “with our own destinations and our own arrivals.”  But, he added — delivering the line with a dramatic uppercut followed by a series of bows — “We’re all running for the same train.”  Who He Is Tour Guide  Telling Detail He says his tour of Grand Central Terminal is intended as “an elixir to heal hatred of rush hour.”  A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 2016, on page MB4 of the New York edition with the headline: Tour Guide as Beat Poet. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Mr. Levitch, known as Speed, gives experiential tours of New York City that are replete with his trademark free-form soliloquies.