A Review Essay
Reading new guidebooks about potential destinations is no fun. Even just flipping through them is a nerve-wracking experience, as you imagine the potential humiliation of being underdressed for dinner, of being unable to afford to order anything more than a cup of coffee, of badgering your lover into traveling to a remote spot in a scary neighborhood to sample an obscure (to you) cuisine, only to find the place has gone out of business by the time you arrive.
That’s why—or one of the reasons, anyway—I love reading guidebooks from the past. None of this stuff matters anymore. You can’t be underdressed for dinner at the Pavillion, (NYC’s first truly great French restaurant, which grew out of the World’s Fairs) or bring a woman to the wrong room in Luchow’s (open from 1882 to 1982) anymore. For that matter, you can’t be tricked into ordering an unsatisfying “health food” meal based around cottage cheese—as opposed to the delicious fish
options—at Brownies (which was either featured or parodied in The 7 year Itch,) anymore, either. And, as a bonus, superannuated guides are among the most scorned ephemera of our culture; used bookstores, at least if they know what they’re doing, won’t stock them, and certainly wouldn’t pay you for yours. Church booksales, maybe the occasional down-on-its-luck thrift shop, are the only emporia indiscriminate enough to waste space on such worthless treasures.
But the liberation such guides offer is not merely from fear of potential bamboozlement and humiliation. In the immediate present we actually need to know how much stuff is going to cost. This would make a genuine temptation of Arthur Frommer’s Dollar Wise Guide to New York (1966), which promises unfailing pricing accuracy: “our aim is to show you precisely how much each element of your trip will—transportation, hotels, meals, nightspots, tours, shopping—will amount to in dollars and cents.” And it is conveniently pocket-sized. Kate Simon’s New York Places and Pleasures (Meridian, 1959) on the other hand, would be very dangerous as an actual guidebook. You sit down to figure out where to go for lunch, inviting the possibility that you will emerge from your reading, starving but edified, only at dinnertime.
Simon’s book is an insider’s guide, written chiefly to point out possibilities that the jaded city-dweller might overlook. You can gauge Simon’s attitude toward tourists by what she calls them: “outlanders.” She’s perfectly ready to help them find their way around—but that’s NOT what she had in mind when she wrote the book. Her descriptions of the sights and smells of a walking tour through Spanish Harlem (an open air market, the smell of chuchifrito and mofongo, stands selling ceviche, radios playing dance music, and animated discussions of “beisbol” and hitting “hon rons”), and of the experience of shopping in the original Loehman’s women clothing store amid semi-clad shoppers (no dressing rooms) ready to pounce on one another’s cast-offs, are brilliant novelistic set-pieces. The tips she throws in about stores, restaurants, and museums would appeal much more to the bleary-eyed denizen than the outlander. What tourist wants to know that there’s a secret back room in which you can avoid the piano & zither duo? Her book, it could be argued, has always been better as a work of imagination than as a source of practical hints for urban navigation. It allows you to sink deep into the role of the all-knowing urbanite, as long as you stay in your easy chair.
Although Simon’s is easily my favorite supperannuated guidebook, the Underground Gourmet (1970) while something of a one-note wonder, is almost as absorbing a read. It’s the anti-Zagat; compiled by two guys (Milton Glaser and Jerome Snyder—with those names, you gotta trust them) equally compelled by their bellies and their stinginess. Despite being at least as self-consciously utilitarian as Frommer’s little guide, it is also deeply, almost dementedly, impassioned. The rules are fairly restrictive: the book only includes places where you could, in 1970, get a whole dinner for $3.00 or less. Really, the book is the portrait of a personality type: the guy who is an absolute compulsive about finding deals, who has unfailingly exacting and reliable tastes—this is almost out of his hands, given that he suffers from a compulsive personality disorder—but who, for some reason, cannot rest easy until he has validated his own brilliance by passing on his finds to those qualified to appreciate them—even knowing that his recommendation could ultimately destroy this once mighty secret pleasure. Maybe this power-fantasy, of destroying one’s own brilliant discovery through the untrammeled force of one’s recommendation, is the whole point of the enterprise? Glaser and Snyder warn: “There is the nagging philosophical problem which we grapple with constantly, namely: what negative effect does discovery and publicizing of a relatively unknown restaurant have on its basic character and style” (Some Thoughts page, unnumbered).
Restaurants come alive in their treatment. And they evoke a more innocent day when a low
price was license to eat anything, guilt free. They make various low-profile joints sound like enchanted islands, oases within the city. Electra, a Greek diner with unfailing service, impeccably prepared food, and authentic, delicious Greek specials every day—and open 24 hours—is the image of a place I am always seeking but haven’t yet found outside of this book. The brief section on food carts, despite a disclaimer that they don’t endorse eating standing up, is particularly fecund of culinary daydreams. On the whole, set in the hazy, semi-inconceivable past of NYC in 1970, this little book, at its best, is Calvinoesque, a kind of gastronomic Invisible Cities.
Apparently, the Underground Gourmet, in its more earthly and practical incarnation, achieved a good deal of popularity. My copy is an updated, newly revised edition for 1970 (the first printing was 1966). I have also come across a spin-off, The Los Angeles Underground Gourmet. Unfortunately, this volume, first printed in 1970, can’t hold a candle to its progenitor. It’s slimmer, but advertises itself as a “complete guide.” The failure to restrict to cheapo joints drains the project of its particular flavor and leaves one unsatisfied. Most of the reviews are almost grudging. One complete review reads: “dishes here are prepared with fresh vegetables. Delicious whole-grain breads, homemade soups, and there’s a lovely crab ‘thing’ with melted cheese and pistachio nuts.” Of course, there is the occasional thrill of elliptical mystery, as in the near-haiku: “Agreeably surprising food: fresh vinegary salads,
terrific fish.” And despite conveying very little information, “a crazy fried apple blintz that’s oddly tasty” has its appeal. Despite such incidental poeticism, however, many of the two or three line reviews suffer from undigested repetition of the “health food… healthy foods” variety. If the original NYC version is a hot, satisfying, $3.00 bellyful, the LA volume is an inoffensive, bland meal almost redeemed by a crazy, oddly tasty dessert.
The mid-sixties must have been a time when New York City seemed overwhelming, or inconceivable, as a whole; it inspired specialized guides of the narrow-slice variety. Besides the cheap eats format of the Underground Gourmet, there is also The Night People’s Guide to New York. The weirdness of this pocket-sized nighthawk’s bible is hard to capture. That it has three introductions and prefaces, all taking contradictory stands, may give you some idea. One is a few pages by a name author (Jean Shepherd) intended to work the magic of name recognition. The
other two go head to head: one describes the committee that worked together to gather information; the other offers an allegory about a young man discovering the nighttime city, drawing a young woman into his ways, marrying her… and going on to write this very book himself with her aid. The book oscillates between proselytizing for a revolutionary lifestyle (explaining the various napping schedules that allow you to live in the wee hours and still hold down a 9-5 job) and worrying that you’ll need aspirin for the inevitable 4am headache. The fine print reveals a city that does indeed sleep, although with a strong tendency toward sleepwalking. Despite invokes the thrills of a world beyond the need of rest, the book comes closer to the truth in describing the sublime thrills of a silent Grand Central at 2am. As reading material, the advantage of this one is the brief overview essays by neighborhood. They are engaging and forcefully written. A bonus is the hilarious opportunity presented by applying hindsight to the book’s prognostications: the lines describing “the district which real estate men and some shop keepers have been trying to rename ‘East Village,’ as if by invoking the word ‘village,’ high rise, high rent, and high spenders would magically appear” (54). Equally amusing is the idea that Chelsea (here called “Lower Midtown”) has potential as a nighttime hangout: “the idea is this: there’re plenty of people out at night in the Village below us; there’re plenty of people out at night in Times Square above us. What we’ve got to do is start bringing those two crowds together to this section between.” (79). Less amusing is the description of Gays in the village as “tolerated, but like Africans under Apartheid.”
The aforementioned Arthur Frommer’s Dollar-Wise Guide to New York (1966)—which appears to have been written by the great man himself—has a certain cheesy charm like that of an unfamiliar—if distinctly mediocre—sitcom. While you’re reading, it’s almost mesmeric, but when you pull yourself away, you wonder what kept you interested. The section on “discotheques,” though, approaches self-parodic genius: “Can you possibly go back home without having learned to do the frug, the Watusi and the hully-gully…? Maybe, but in case you can’t here’s the run-down….” One of the pleasures of all these books is the effect of making the familiar strange. Frommer does this beautifully: “a proper discotheque, in case you haven’t heard, is fitted out with stereophonic equipment that makes recorded music—rock ‘n roll, Big Beat, the Beatles—sound as if it were played by live musicians.”
The only one of these guides that I’ve come across in a later reprinted edition is, unsurprisingly,
also the oldest: the famed WPA Guide to New York City (1939; reprint Pantheon, 1982). Unfortunately, the writing doesn’t come close in quality to the illustrations (tons of striking photos and some wonderful pencil sketches and woodcuts of the Lower East Side)—it has none of the personality of the other guides, sounding as if it were drafted by a committee. There is plenty of Blue-Guidish historical info that is, no doubt reliable, if you go in for that kind of thing (unlike Frommer’s random and unconvincing claims—he dates Luchow’s all the way back to 1822, either via typo or because he thought it sounded good). At first I was disappointed that the restaurant listings contain no written descriptions—but I’ve become progressively more enamored of the telegraphic explanations of various ethnic cuisines: “Greek: Balkan Cheeses, Fried Squid, Boiled Dandelions.”
Scattered Speculations on the History of Pita and Sushi
The history of ethnic foods is hinted at in each of these guides. Taken together, stories of the rise of fall of various dishes and cuisines can be told. In all of them, for instance, Japanese cuisine is a familiar presence, although it is defined by Sukiyaki. Teriyaki demands explanation; Sushi appears, not as an oddity, but as a low-key, “authentic,” insider favorite. (Indeed, raw food seems to have been fairly common in those heady days: middle-eastern places served Kibbe raw, and Simon mentions “raw meat sandwiches” in passing as if the reader would know what they were). One then common Japanese dish seems to have receded in the face of Udon and Sushi: “ochazuke,” apparently prepared by pouring tea over the ingredients. In these histories, defamilarization is again a perk: I will never tire of reading that “Pierre’s makes the falafel sandwich by first cutting off a large slice of the Holy Land bread so that the circle of bread forms a pocket.” (247). Ah, for such days of innocence, before every supermarket in the country stocked that weirdly sweet-stale version of pita that is so cloying to the palate.
There are other strange transformations to be noted: Sam Goody’s was once highly thought of as a place where the sales people knew their stuff and prices were as low as they could be; B. Altman was a huge, upscale department store that happened to have a used book section. But I must stop myself before I either atomize these books into bits of historical evidence or descend into nostalgia. Simon, for one, takes an admirable attitude toward the rapid course of change in the City; it would be easy enough to fall into a mindlessly nostalgic, preservationist stance in the guidebook business. After all, tourists are drawn to old stuff like bugs to a hot light bulb.
I’ll admit that I picked up the first of my collection for a purpose: heading to the subway, I snagged Simon’s book out of the Strand’s $0.48 bin, thinking that I could use it to crib info to set stories in mid-century New York. By the time I’d bought my subway token, I realized that it was much more than a crib sheet, and now that I’ve been exiled to the Midwest I enjoy it even more. But it’s not just because it permits a particularly well-rounded daydream
of city life; reading these outdated guides also reveals something of the underlying reality of the city. In her section on nightlife, Simon notes, with a jaunty tone, “Some of the specific places mentioned here may have disappeared when you get around to them, but there will very likely be comparable substitutes in possible imitations of Greek tavernas or cave restaurants or whatever one’s imagination devises, to be quickly followed by others.” Here is the magic and promise of city life: you can find anything you can dream up if you look hard enough. Just don’t expect it to be there when you come back.
NB: this essay was written in 2000, when the dream of the Old New York with its autochonthous business establishments had not yet been obliterated. Thanks to Lorin Stein for commissioning this piece and offering editorial suggestions for an issue of a Journal that was never to be.
