Vol. 2, Number 1	Spring 1999 issue

 

at Amazon.com!

Oh, I've been given all the reasons for hating CityTripping, a new New York City guidebook by recent Yale grad Tom Dolby. Designed for college-age students who don't really know what to do in The City, the book has been called "an AAA guidebook on acid" (by the Yale Herald) and "trying too hard to be hip" (by my ex-boyfriend.) To be fair to the grapevine, I have to agree. CityTripping is full of a silly, elitist hipness that I can't stand-although it's hard to say whether it's contempt or a weird kind of envy that causes my dislike. (Kind of like a secret society-only bigger.) But despite my concerns about CityTripping's hipster attitude, my first impulse is to give Tom Dolby a break. After all, judging a guidebook by its style is a little like judging a roadmap by its palette. It doesn't matter if the highways are puce or purple, just as long as you get where you're going. And so, to test the merits of the hipster guide to the city, I set off for New York armed only with CityTripping, my good friend Michael Ellis, and my other good friend, the ATM card.

My goal: to have as much fun as possible in twenty-four hours.

FRIDAY

6:55 pm: Grand Central Terminal
Even though I've only been here five minutes, I think I have already discovered the book's major flaw: no maps. Okay, no sweat-there are subway maps on the wall. But really-no maps? In a guidebook? Michael and I examine the wall map and climb on the downtown F train. And spend the next 20 minutes...

7:20 pm: Lost in a Sketchy Neighborhood
Did I say that having no maps was a "major flaw"? That may have been a euphemism for "huge, major, life-threatening flaw."

7:40 pm: The Yaffa Cafe
Sketchy neighborhood aside, Tom Dolby is off to a good start. The food is nice and cheap, plus really, really good. Combine that with the crazy-kitchy decor and the spiffy crowd and you get what Dolby calls "the most band for one's buck of anywhere I've seen." I would have to agree. But then again, I just got here.

9:15 pm: KGB Bar & Beauty Bar
Tom Dolby enthusiastically describes the "clandestine feel" of KGB as something akin to a Communist hangout, but the effect is mostly achieved by hanging some red velvet on the walls. The Beauty Bar, too, is really just a bar in a unique setting. We move on.

9:40 pm: Korova Milk Bar
This place, on the other hand, has followed through on its theme completely (except that the drinks aren't laced with drugs). Modeled on the bar in A Clockwork Orange, the Korova Milk Bar has duplicated the "submissive-mannequin" motif of the movie set, and the walls have the same black-and-white stripes with "Moloko" painted all over them. We're relaxed and happy, but we have also discovered the book's second major flaw: no prices. Except for a restaurant rating system with only two categories, CityTripping rarely mentions how much you can expect to shell out-and believe me, the looks on our faces when we paid as much for our $7 drinks as we had for our dinner were not a pretty thing to see.

10:15 pm: Nuyorican Poet's Cafe
Rack up another point for CityTripping. Here we are on semifinals night of the Nuyorican's apparently ongoing poetry slam. The emcee introduces the evening by giving astrological advice on our love lives. He is smoking a black cigarette. Looking around, I notice that almost all the cigarettes in the place are black or brown.

The featured poet for the evening is the Reverend Pedro, who ends his act by passing around a can labeled, "HELP ME, I CAN SEE." The five semifinalists who follow keep up this kind of brilliance for hours, coming up with lines like (I love this) "The milieu / will kill you." Cute rhymes aside, though, I would advise anyone to visit the Nuyorican on a slam night. I learned more about politics in three hours here than in the past three semesters at Yale. If Jon Benet Ramsey had been black, "wouldn't her black parents now be locked up?" Well, wouldn't they?

2 am: BED
We were going to go clubbing, we really were. But we're tired, all right?

SATURDAY

10:56 am: Annex Antiques Fair/Flea Market
There is so much stuff here. Don't ask me how, but I think I just started a handkerchief collection.

12:03 pm: Museum of Modern Art
In all honesty, I would go to MoMA even if I didn't have this guidebook. Still, Dolby's description is accurate, and even lets me know in advance that I should expect a crowd. But we have discovered the third major flaw of CityTripping: no cross streets. Now, MoMA is not that hard to find, but it seems like the extra effort it would have taken to include little touches like prices, maps and cross streets might be worthwhile. I mean, it wouldn't make the book too much less cool to look at, would it?

3:20 pm: Cafe Gitane
After three hours in MoMA, Michael and I head downtown to the Cafe Gitane (after taking Intro to Film, you don't pass up a chance to eat in what Dolby compares to "a set from a Godard film"). Just as the guidebook says, the restaurant is full of "pretty Euro-patrons," including a leather-clad man and woman with long sideburns and extra lipstick, respectively, speaking German at a table near the front. Sadly, the wait is 20 minutes, and we're tired and hungry. We wander out into SoHo to see what else we can find...

3:35 pm: Café le Gamin
To be fair, the Café le Gamin is not, strictly speaking, in the guidebook. But its sister café, Les Deux Gamins, is, so I feel justified having lunch in this pretty little French restaurant. The waiter is from France. The patrons are from France. I think the water is from France.

5:17 pm: Grand Central Terminal
Tired and full of crêpes, we're ready to head back to New Haven. I am three handkerchiefs heavier and ninety dollars lighter. A fair trade, I'd say.

By the end of my trip to New York, I have come to the same conclusion that I started out with: a guidebook should be valued by where it takes you, not how it reads. I had more fun in the city this time around than I've ever had on my own. And even though the "hip" attitude of the book (which laughs at itself just as often as I laugh at it) may once have seemed to describe a totally alien, sexy, completely inaccessible world, the past twenty-four hours have changed my mind about that. Dolby's guidebook has made the little necessary dent in the glass bubble that I've always seen hanging around the New York "scene." It isn't my ticket in, mind you. It just shows me that I don't really need one.