After a wisdom tooth procedure, Dom Gervasi went straight to Red Hook so an Australian couple could experience their third Made in Brooklyn Tour before flying back to Sydney.
Gervasi, 57, is the founder of Made in Brooklyn Tours. After graduating from Baruch College, the Bensonhurst native spent 16 years working at a hardware production company specializing in data and voice communications and network security. During the recession in 2009, Gervasi was laid off and forced to make a career change.
While traveling through Greece and Italy, he found inspiration in the local businesses and the people who ran them. When he returned home, he wanted to discover what locals were making in Brooklyn.
“I got on my bike with my clipboard, and I would create a map on Google Earth,” Gervasi said. “I put all the places that made things in Brooklyn, ride my bike around, visit them, get off the bike with the clipboard, figure out where I’m gonna go next.”
Dom Gervasi, founder of Made in Brooklyn Tours, has spent 15 years introducing visitors to Brooklyn’s small businesses and neighborhoods.Photo by Emma Delahanty
On one of his expeditions, Gervasi was invited on a private tour of Gillies Coffee Company on 19th Street and Fourth Avenue. The hospitality he received stuck with him and opened his eyes to the possibility of producing tours for others.
An instructor in an entrepreneurial course offered by the city’s Department of Small Business Services inspired the name Made in Brooklyn after Gervasi took the class while considering creating tours with the same theme. As soon as he left the course that day, he bought the URL.
Sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Amazon Local helped Gervasi promote his tours when he first started.
In 2011, his tours involved full days of walking, even in 90-degree weather, and drew larger crowds. But over time, he realized that intimate groups of no more than 12 people and tours lasting no more than three hours would leave a more lasting impression.
The Red Hook tour — one Gervasi had not led since the COVID-19 pandemic — was the first tour he designed.
“I’ll do a walk in a neighborhood,” Gervasi said. “I’ll make, and I’ll walk that route, and I might come late at night just to see who’s around, when places are open. For this tour, I was originally doing Thursdays, but then I was visiting the neighborhood and seeing that places weren’t open.”
To create the tours, Gervasi scouts neighborhoods and ensures businesses not only offer quality products but also welcoming environments, which means using different tactics to get to know local business owners.
“I’m this big bald guy, and they think I’m this inspector,” he said.
For Gervasi, however, it is about more than visiting places in Red Hook and mapping out points of interest with facilities such as restrooms, access to public transportation and other amenities. He wants people on his tours to understand the history of a place by introducing them to business owners and offering behind-the-scenes looks at how the businesses operate.
Using press releases and the New York City Landmarks Commission as resources, Gervasi does extensive online research, taking time to learn about businesses in the area and their stories. During his tours, he lets business owners tell those stories themselves.
“They’re like superheroes,” Gervasi said. “They have an origin story, they have an arch enemy, they have allies and you can learn that story. I learned that story.”
All the stops on Gervasi’s tours must fit the Made in Brooklyn theme and usually fall somewhere along the creative spectrum. As long as they add character to the neighborhood, they are a good fit, according to Gervasi, who always makes sure to end his tours on a high note.
In February, Gervasi celebrated the 15th anniversary of Made in Brooklyn Tours, but said that even after 15 years, he is still learning the business and how to better promote his tours to English speakers around the world despite ongoing challenges.
“The cost of travel has gone up,” he said. “The hassle of getting into the United States seems to be more difficult. I’ve never had a tougher year.”
Like the creative businesses he highlights on his tours, Gervasi has had to get creative to keep his small business running. In such an unregulated industry, he finds promoting his tours locally and using partner channels such as Viator and GetYourGuide to promote them internationally helpful.
After being laid off during the 2009 recession, Dom Gervasi created Made in Brooklyn Tours to spotlight the borough’s local businesses and makers.Photo by Emma Delahanty
As a proud small-business owner, Gervasi is passionate about entrepreneurship and wants to encourage others to start businesses of their own. He also wants New Yorkers — whether they are originally from South Brooklyn or moved to the city from other countries — to become more interested in understanding what makes the city where they live unique.
Starting his own business and becoming a tour guide was not something Gervasi was encouraged to do. Growing up in an Italian household, his family wanted him to pursue a career in medicine. After a year at New York University, he transferred to Baruch College and graduated with a business degree.
“My father wanted me to be a doctor. So, he was pushing me, all sorts of ways,” he said. “I do not want to be a doctor.”
Without financial support from his family, Gervasi helped people with computers to pay for college. Years later, in addition to leading tours, Gervasi cares for his mother full time.
Competing with companies such as Gray Line and Big Bus New York, Gervasi needed to create a niche experience to attract customers.
That has given Gervasi an “edge,” because he “takes you off the beaten track tours,” said David Sharps, a friend of Gervasi and local business owner.
The revival tour in Red Hook lasted three hours and began at Pier 12, offering a view of Manhattan and the peninsula. After a brief history lesson about the area, Gervasi led the group to its first stop, the Red Hook Pinball Museum.
There, museum worker Kevin Murray gave a short history of the space and the pinball machines, explaining how the older models worked by showing their insides.
Kevin Murray, a worker at the Red Hook Pinball Museum, shows visitors the inside of a vintage pinball machine during a Made in Brooklyn Tour led by Dom Gervasi in Red Hook.Photo by Emma Delahanty
The tour continued to Widow Jane Distillery, then to a viewpoint overlooking the city, New Jersey and Governors Island.
After providing tours in the area for more than a decade, Gervasi has become a familiar face in the community. But with the tour paused for several years, he was unfamiliar with some of the newer businesses in the neighborhood.
Right before the tour, Gervasi met Meya Ebbersen, co-owner of Frø, and later brought the group through the Danish rye bread shop to hear its story.
Ebbersen and her business partner opened Frø because it was something that “doesn’t exist here,” she said. They saw an opening in the market and began producing the bread in Red Hook.
Leaving Frø, Gervasi led the group to a cidery where worker Ezra Fiovi, who had met Gervasi years earlier, gave a short tour of the space.
Visitors watch the art of glass bending during a stop at Flickinger Glassworks in Red Hook.Photo by Emma Delahanty
“This is a hole in the wall neighborhood,” Fiovi said. “It feels like you’re getting out of the city.”
Following a tour of Flickinger Glassworks, a long-standing glass-bending studio in the neighborhood, the group was taken to the back of the studio to view the art of glass bending.
Gervasi walked the group to several more businesses in the area, as well as a surprise stop at Sharps, a 112-year-old boat that is now a waterfront museum, before concluding the tour, making sure he never lost the essence of the community.
“If your goal is to really enrich yourself with what Brooklyn has to offer, then you have a compelling need that needs to be fulfilled,” Gervasi said. “And I’m filling that need.”