For travelers weary of soporific travel tomes, crowded buses and minders with megaphones, another option is arriving: the audio tour... These aren't the museum guides of old...

[The Boston Audissey] guides listeners through alleyways once used by escaping slaves to a soundtrack of cracking whips, shouts, and heavy footsteps... Later this month, Boston-based Audissey Guides will starte releasing tours of Seattle, Hollywood, and Miami Beach.

[The Chicago Audissey] is narrated by a Jewish hip-hop spoken-word artist who at one point performs his own ode to the El train. The tour offers theories on why baseball's Cubs are cursed, and why the Chicago Tribune building is important (it's where Cousin Larry worked in the TV show "Perfect Strangers").

[The Seattle Audissey is] packed with music and local voices, and visits the original Starbucks and Skid Row, and what was once Seattle's biggest brothel.