'Club Bada Bing, Come On In And Fuhgeddaboudit!" says the tour guide's sweatshirt. Welcome to Soprano Tours, the latest way for New Yorkers to spend a Sunday afternoon, boarding a bus in Manhattan to spend three hours visiting the New Jersey haunts featured in the hit mob TV drama.
It's an offer Sopranos fans can't refuse. The weekly sell-out tour pulls in fans from as far afield as Kenya, Germany and Britain. For $30, you get to see Satriale's pork store, Pizzaland, the Bada Bing Club, St Cecilia's (the Soprano family church), and the cemetery where Soprano burials are filmed. All in the gritty wilderness that lies north of Manhattan.
You also get free cannoli (a Sicilian cream-filled pastry) courtesy of tour guide Chris Lucas, who, of course, is a "resting" actor - and appears in the background of the third series.
Chris makes clear from the first what we won't be seeing: "We don't go to Tony's house. It is a real family home. The people who live there got so sick of fans ringing the doorbell day and night, that the cops put a stop to anyone going near it."
The trip also steers clear of any real life mobsters - much to the disappointment of some tourists.
"One New York couple got totally the wrong idea. They thought we were going to see places where real victims of mob killings were buried," says the amiable Chris, as he poses for a photograph.
Recent passengers on the tour have included "Johnny Toothpicks", a New Jersey-based fan who apparently believes himself to be a genuine mobster, and "Soprano Sue", a former New York detective who follows the show's production crew everywhere they go and has started her own website, sopranoland.com.
The tour starts with a trip through the Lincoln Tunnel, which links Manhattan to New Jersey and is the first shot of the show's opening credits. As the coach pulls out of the tunnel, Chris plays us the Sopranos theme tune (by British band Alabama 3). For an awful moment, he looks like he might start singing along, but decides against. Then it's on through the toll booth and into Jersey, passing through Newark, North Bergen, Hoboken and Jersey City - all authentic Sopranoland.
If you're not a Sopranos fan it's difficult to know what else would bring you here. The bus passes through depressed-looking areas broken up by landfill sites, toxic waste treatment plants and derelict factories. Even the local place names sound grim: New Jersey Turnpike, the Pulaski Skyway. Now and then Chris mentions that such and such a place was used to shoot a scene, and everyone pushes their cameras to the window and clicks away.
"Look to your left," says Chris excitedly. "There's the Hudson County Correctional Facility. That's where a lot of real-life mobsters have been put!" Click, click, click.
We take in local landmarks that regularly feature in the show, restaurants where the characters have been filmed, a local garbage company that features in the third series, and the grey-green waters of the Hackensack River, where Tony Soprano sails his boat.
Our bus pulls up outside the Skyway Diner, on the outskirts of Newark. It is here that Christopher (Tony's nephew) was shot in the second series, and Chris informs us that it has also been the scene of some non-fictional mob shootings.
Then it's on to the Satriale's Pork Shop, where the Soprano crime family holds its meetings. In the programme, the shop front is adorned with a plastic pig, but in real life, it's just an exterior (the interior scenes are all shot on a purpose-built sound stage). The windows are barred and the only indication that this is a butcher's is a sign that reads, "Veal cutlets, $6.99 a lb".
All the same, it's photo material and the Soprano fans dutifully snap away at the bare facade of the brick building. We whiz past the local Holy Name cemetery where Soprano family burials are filmed, and St Cecilia's, their local church, where Tony's wife Carmela flirted dangerously with the parish priest.
The last stop is the trip's high point. Stranded on the shoulder of the busy Route 17 is Satin Dolls, a table-dancing bar, the Bada Bing club of the series, where Tony Soprano goes to let his hair down after a hard day's racketeering.
It's dark inside and looks exactly the same as it does on television - with one exception. The girls here are scantily dressed rather than topless. This being New Jersey, nudity is banned in bars selling alcohol.
Men rush to have their pictures taken with the dancers, who seem to enjoy their new-found fame, while manager Ed Horta holds forth on the attention the show has brought his bar. "Before the Sopranos, no one outside of Jersey had heard of us," he says. "Now everyone wants to come here. It's been great for business."
And for him, too. Horta has persuaded the show's producers to give him a screen test. "It'll probably just be as an extra, but, hey, you never know!" he grins.
Back on the coach, there's a Sopranos trivia quiz (Did you know that the show's Silvio Dante is, in fact, Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band?), followed by a guide to mob language. Chris holds up handwritten cards with words such as "shake down" (extort money), "lam it" (go on the run) and "flip" (to become a rat).
Eventually, we lam it back to Manhattan, with people already talking excitedly about tonight's episode on the US cable channel HBO.
Getting off the bus, I find myself thinking about booking again for next week. Perhaps I need therapy - but we never did pass Dr Melfi's office.
Way to go
Getting there: BA (0845 7733377 ba.com) flies to New York from £189 return
The Sopranos Bus Tour is run by On Location Tours (410 9830, imar.com) every Sunday at 2pm. It costs $30, reservations required. The company also runs tours to Sitcomland (Friends, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show $20) and Sex In The City ( $25).
Further information: nycvisit.com/site.html
Time difference: GMT -5hrs.
Flight time: 7hrs.
Area code: 001 212.
From TV to reality
Seinfeld
Kenny Kramer claims to be the inspiration for the show's character of the same name. He takes you around the sites, gives you a stand-up comic show and a pizza, soda and Snickers bar, to be eaten, à la Seinfeld, with a knife and fork.
Cost: $37.50.
Contact: Kramer's Reality Tours, New York.
Tel: (212) 268 5525.
Dallas
Long gone but not forgotten, the most famous location in TV history still opens its doors to tourists. Southfork Ranch is open 9.30am-5pm every day for guided tours. See the gun used to shoot JR and Lucy Ewing's wedding dress, buy Texan memorabilia at the visitors' centre and have lunch at Miss Ellie's Deli.
Cost: $7.95.
Contact: Dallas Southfork Ranch Meetings and Tours, Dallas, Texas.
Tel: (972) 442 7800.
Dawson's Creek
Dawson, Joey, Pacey and Andie's fictional home town of Capeside is actually Wilmington, North Carolina - it is filmed half on a specially-built set, half on location. The weekend walking tour, which begins in March, takes in exterior locations such as Capeside High School, the marina and the local high street where Dawson and friends discuss the meaning of life. There is also a tour of the studio used for interior scenes.
Cost: $10 per person. Minimum of 10 people per tour.
Contact: Screen Gems Studio Tours, Wilmington, North Carolina.
Tel: (910) 343 3433).
