Book Description
The most comprehensive, stylish, and practical guides to New York City’s hippest shopping districts.
As chic as the city itself, these one-of-a-kind maps and guides to the hottest shopping districts in New York City feature select boutiques, caf?s, and salons on every block in the neighborhood. That’s hundreds of haunts for haute couture, exclusive design, and offbeat accessorizing. Fashion. Interior decor. Restaurants. Galleries. Whether you’re looking for sumptuous silk pajamas or the perfect velvet blazer, Egyptian linens or a lacquered credenza, Biedermeier candlesticks or original gifts custom wrapped according to the Japanese art of tsutsumi, the
Pratique reveals where to find them, along with the caf?s with hidden back gardens and the bars with the best pomegranate martinis.
Packaged in a handy snap-shut wallet with a color-coded fold-out map, the
Pratique cleverly references stores with similar styles to help shoppers find more of what they like. Restaurants are also listed by type and include a price bracket, helping diners quickly pinpoint a favorite cuisine or new culinary experience. Store addresses, phone numbers, hours, and website info are all included. Sleek and affordable, these indispensable neighborhood guides are like nothing else–why look like a tourist, even if you are one?
“The must-have map to the area’s shops and restaurants”–American Way Magazine
Customer Reviews:
Best Way to Organize Your Soho Shopping Spree!.......2007-03-29
The Practique Guide was my Bible during my weekend shopping trip to Soho. The map and descriptions were excellent, informative, and accurate. I highly recommend it for someone who is trying to maximize their shopping experience in a short period of time. Including restaurants was also really useful. The only important piece of information that it does not include are price ranges for the stores. Including a pricing key would better help those looking for designer bargains.
The ultimate New York shopping guides!.......2006-11-16
The two editions in this exciting new series are the "must-have" accessories for any New York shopping trip. The starred recommendations helped to maximize my time and I felt like I was living my own "sex in the city" experience! Any New York visitor that wants to feel like a local should pack these two on every trip.
Book Description
Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window gets an affectionate kick in the butt in this homage from master crime writer, philosopher, and equal-opportunity offender Kinky Friedman.
It's a case of malaria versus murder when private dick extraordinaire Kinky Friedman comes down with a tropical disease, in the jungle known as New York City, and is confined to his loft on Vandam Street in lower Manhattan, a prisoner in his own home with only his cat and black puppet head as company (neither of whom are great conversationalists).
With little to do but stare out the window in between bedridden bouts of fever and hallucinations, Kinky calls on assistance from the stalwart Village Irregulars, who proceed to dish out their own uniquely skewed brand of tea and sympathy, turning the loft into a virtual Mardi Gras of confusion and drunken debauchery.
Suffering almost as much from company overload as from his fever, Kinky welcomes a rare moment of calm as he finds himself once again alone in his loft. Resuming his position at the kitchen window, he spots a pretty young woman in an apartment across the street. What he hopes might be titillating turns terrifying, however, as a man joins the woman and proceeds to attack her. Sure that he's witnessed a crime, Kinky calls in the cops, but, upon investigating his claim, they can find neither a victim nor an apartment across the street. In addition, no one else saw or heard anything that would ndicate a crime had taken place. Was it foul play or merely a fevered dream?
Convinced that their friend is about to slip off into the land of eternal slumber, the Village Irregulars increase their vigilance and in the process raise the Kinkster's irritability level to an all-time high. Not to be deterred, however, Kinky sticks to his story and is rewarded when a few days later he sees the man in the apartment again, but this time with a gun.
Outrageous, audacious, and ingeniously crafted, The Prisoner of Vandam Street is vintage Kinky: irreverent, clever, and full of the hardened philosophy and mordant wit that has earned him a vast and devoted readership. But what more would you expect from the writer The New York Times has called "The world's funniest, bawdiest, and most politically incorrect country music singer turned mystery writer"?
Download Description
Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Rear Window gets an affectionate kick in the butt in this homage from master crime writer, philosopher, and equal-opportunity offender Kinky Friedman.
Customer Reviews:
Good read.......2005-09-02
This is the first book I'd read by this author and I enjoyed his kinky sense of humor. If you're feeling down, read this book and you'll feel better quickly.
More!.......2005-01-24
Reading Prisoner of Vandam Street wasn't just something to read when I couln't sleep, it was an excuse to be awake to keep reading!As often true with Kinky Friedman books, I experienced edge-of-the-chair suspence while laughing at Kinky's unique humor and both edgy and polished use of language.Being hard-of-hearing, McGovern's misunderstandings are what people get frustrated by when I make similar mistakes. Had Kinky been well, would he have noticed the battering across the street?Had Kinky been well, and had he noticed the battering across the street, and had been able to investigate without the Village Irregulars + 3, would he have been able to protect the battered?
Very disappointing..........2004-11-01
I was hesitant to express my opinion on this latest of Kinky's novels, feeling perhaps it was my own failure to "get it" that made me dislike this horrid drivel so intensely, but after realizing the majority of reviewers found "The Prisoner of Vandam Street" so repugnant, I felt somewhat better (I guess) that I am not alone in my disappointment in this novel. I like Kinky, I am a fan of Kinky's earlier novels so this is not easy to say. This novel is just plain B.A.D. I can only hope this is just a phase the Kinkster is going through and is not what we can look forward to. Judging from his other recent novels ("Kill Two Birds" immdiately comes to mind), sadly this seems not to be true. Kinky has lost his touch. His fiction/mystery efforts are lazy, boring, repetitive, and devoid of plot and interesting characters. I'm not taking another chance on buying these doorstops new from now on. I'll just wait until they land on the 10 cent pile at the Salvation Army.
Sigh. And he was one of my favorites.
A dismal, unfunny waste of time.......2004-08-06
I like Kinky's books, I really do - they revel in political incorrectness, and usually are full of witty observations, humourous if implausible adventures involving a likeable (and familiar) cast of characters, name-dropping and clever word-play. This novel, Kinky's latest, has none of those qualities, it is instead a tiresome exercise in banality and repitition.
What plot there is relates to Kinky coming down with malaria after a drinking binge with McGovern, and after about 50 pages of him hallucinating and talking nonsense in the hospital, he is sent home with orders for rest and relaxation in his loft on VanDam Street. What follows is more of Kinky sitting around talking nonsense at home, and in the midst of his delirium he thinks he witnesses a crime of domestic violence in the building across the alley. The police and the Village Irregulars are not sure whether this episode was the product of Kinky's feverish imagination, or a real crime.
The book ultimately includes line after line devoted to cat turds, and to throw in a little something different Kinky makes McGovern nearly deaf throughout the novel, (for no reason explained in the book), and so McGovern is constantly repeating everything said, although he of course never gets it right. There was one chapter in the novel, more than halfway through, that had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the rest of the book, and I believe was borrowed from a magazine piece Kinky had recently done. It involved the recent passing of one of his parents, and in it he reminisced about life in the family ranch in Texas, and the joy his parents brought to the kids who went there for camp. Other than those few pages, it is clear Friedman's heart just wasn't in this book, as the whole thing seemed thrown together with no regard for his readers, just to deliver a manuscript to his publisher. Let's hope Kinky cares enough about his many fans to put some effort into his next book.
Hitchcock's Rear Window, Kinky-Style.......2004-07-08
Confined to his New York apartment at 199B Vandam Street for six weeks after contracting malaria--the "only truly deadly strain" of the disease--private detective Kinky Friedman (not to be confused with his creator, author, country singer, and potential future governor of Texas Kinky Friedman) happens to see, Rear Window-style, a woman brutally beaten in an apartment across the street. The problem is, feverish and delirious as he's been, Kinky does not make the most convincing of witnesses, and neither the police he summons nor his gang of variously accented, frequently inebriated cronies--the so-called "Village Irregulars," the collective Grace Kelly to his laid up Jimmy Stewart--believe him. When further investigation suggests Kinky wasn't imagining things, the game, as he and Sherlock like to say, is afoot.
But the mystery in The Prisoner of Vandam Street is in a sense beside the point, entertaining though it is, for Kinky Friedman's novel is a departure from standard mystery fare. The author's prose is bursting with word play and Conan Doyleisms and pop culture references and irreverent philosophical musings. If at times it borders on the cloying, his writing is far more often downright funny:
"Now, I'm not making light of people who are deaf or losing their hearing. I am not mocking a disability that afflicts millions of Americans as they grow older, effectively cutting them off to varying degrees from the hearing world. All I'm saying, and I'll try to speak loudly and slowly and enunciate clearly, is that they should get medical help or a hearing aid or a large, metal ear-horn like the kind that was used in medieval times, and stop constantly blaming hapless, sensitive friends like myself for mumbling."
Friedman also has a serious side, evidenced in the book's closing parable and in the sweetly moving, brief chapter on his--Kinky the character's as well as Kinky the man's--continued sense of loss after the death of his parents.
In short, mystery lovers with a taste for off-color jokes and pun-punctuated prose will get a kick out of Kinky.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
Average customer rating:
- excellent book
- must have book for visiting the village
- A really fun book by obvious natives
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Greenwich Village, Including The East Village and Soho: A Primo Guide to Shopping, Eating, and Making Merry in True Bohemia
Robert Heide , and
John Gilman
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0312118694 |
Book Description
In Greenwich Village find out how in 1895 the Washington Square Arch, symbolic portal to Greenwich Village and the East Village, was officially christened in gala pageantry attended by Grover Cleveland. Read about Village Bohemians like Marcel Duchamp (Nude Descending a Staircase) and John Reed (The Day in Bohemia and Ten Days that Shook the World), who demanded independence for Village residents and visitors from the top of the arch in 1916, declaring it "Little Bohemia." Marvel at the exploits of Maxwell Bodenheim, Joe "Professor Seagull" Gould, Ruth (My Sister Eileen) McKenney (who lived at 14 Gay Street), Edna (named after St. Vincent's Hospital) Millay, Elanor Roosevelt, Barbara Streisand, Tiny Tim, Sam Shepard, Edward Albee, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, and other Village "Bohemians."
Locate Keith Haring's Village murals and shop and Haring's Pop Shop, Religious Sex on St. Marks Place, Alphabets, Little Rickie, Grover van Dexter's Second Childhood, and Bleeker Bob's eclectic record emporium.
Take a bar run to old McSorley's, the Eerie Pubs, the Lion's Head, and the White Horse, where Dylan Thomas drank all night. Meet celebrities at Angelina Boone's Pennyfeathers on Sheridan Square or have an egg cream at Stingy Lulu's or the Gem Spa.
Eat the best croissant this side of Paris at Chez Claude. Sip espresso and cappuccino at the Reggio, Caffe Dante, the Bleeker Street Pastry Shop, or De Robertis Pasticceria.
Listen to poetry at the Cornelia Street Cafe of see anew play at Theater for the New City, La Mama, the Nuyorican, of the Ridiculous. Visit the site of the first off-off Broadway theater, the Caffe Cino. Check out the jazz and cabaret scene at Five Oaks, Marie's Crisis, the Vanguard, or the Blue Note.
Enjoy the gastronomical-pizza at John's Southern cooking at the Pink Tea Cup, Polish fare at the Kiev or the Veselka, falafel at Mamoun's, pastrami, kielbasa, chopped liver, sauerkraut, yellow mustard, and Cel-Ray tonic at Katz's. Buy some fancy foodstuffs at Dean & Deluca's and Balducci's. Have your coffee ground at the Porto Rico.
rTake a unique, self-guided tour down wild Christopher Street to the Stonewall, Boots and Saddles, and the Caffe Passione. Follow in the footsteps of freewheelin' Bob Dylan down the twisting alleys of Minetta on a "Positively Fourth Street" walk. Follow the zigzag/East-West walk and see East Village skinheads and their green-haired girlfriends wearing nose rings walking their pitbulls in Tompkins Square Park. Take all the walks, including the Broadway Shopaholic Walk to buy Avirex leather jackets, complete stereo sets, and futon mattresses, an walks through the historic West Village and SoHo.
Added Attractions: Robert Heide's Village play
American Hamburger, Tom Lohre's artwork, Phil Cohen's photographs, detailed maps, Greenwich Village history, original poetry, ghost stories, architecture, and much more.
Customer Reviews:
excellent book.......2007-09-18
This is a terrific book, informative and there is a fantastic section which includes Robert Heide's personal memories from his days in the Village and with Andy Warhol. I live in the Village and after reading it my own vista has been enlarged. I strongly recommend it to everyone!
must have book for visiting the village.......2000-08-16
I went to greenwich village last month and I spent a week in the village. I picked up this book to guide my adventures and I was so glad that I did.
A really fun book by obvious natives.......1996-10-23
Some really great excepts of this book can be found at www.Greenwich-Village.Co
Book Description
The Rise and Fall of Artist's Soho documents how a little-known industrial neighborhood in New York unintentionally became--for a brief period--a nexus of creative activity. Part personal memoir, part cultural history, the book examines how a group of urban pioneers were able to transform a neighborhood, while also creating new and classic works of American art, music, dance, and theater.
Taking advantage of loft occupancy laws that allowed artists to live in buildings not available to the general public, a band of enterprising and creative people began settling in New York's SoHo (so called because it lies South of Houston Street), renovating previously industrial spaces for personal living and work space. Fueled by word-of-mouth-and unsupported either by local or national governments or wealthy individuals-the area grew to be a center for artistic creation. This book not only discusses how the artists came and why, it also focuses on some of the most creative, describing both their lives and work.
Such an ideal situation-totally unplanned-could not last forever; the author shows how market forces squeezed out this art utopia, to be replaced by a shadow of itself, "SoMall," with the coming of trendy chain stores, boutiques, and restaurants. European tourists crowd the streets, but the real SoHo is long gone, never to be recreated in quite the same way again.
For anyone interested in the history of New York's Bohemian neighborhoods or the art and culture of the last 3 decades, SoHo is must reading.
Customer Reviews:
Rambling.......2004-03-03
Author Kostelanetz was a long-time Soho resident and writes a personal account about the history of Soho as an artist's neighborhood. The most interesting parts of the book are the beginning in which he describes Soho's slow transformation from a daytime industrial district into the thriving artist colony it was to become. I lived in lower Manhattan for much of the same period and can recall many of the people and places he describes.
The problem with this book is that there is no story, no narrative trajectory, no structure. The chapters appear to be loosley based on certain themes, although even those are hard to discern at times. There's nothing chronological; it's just a rambling collection of reminiscences with no cohesion or thread to hold it together or make it engaging. The author's nostalgic point of view (criticized in the Publisher's Weekly review above) would be fine if he stayed with it and honed in on it; but as is, it's just an uneven mish-mash of nostalgia and memories weaving in and out of splatterings of facts, with no order or trajectory. I have to honestly say I only got halfway through this book, so it may have improved by the end. But it just wasn't worth it for me to force myself through what felt like literary packing peanuts when there's so much other good stuff out there to read.
It needn't be this way. For example, Legs McNeil authored an excellent history of punk rock taking place mostly in New York at about the same time as this book (see "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" elsewhere on Amazon.com). The latter shows that a recent period of New York history can be conveyed in oral remembrances in a way that both informs and captivates the reader. Such an approach would have taken more labor and forethought -- something that is sorely lacking in this volume.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Balance of Detail/Fun, History/Geography.......1998-12-08
Want to know the Village's history? Want to know about all the odd buildings you walk by every day? Want to read about where Bob Dylan played before he was famous? Where did F. Scott Fitzerald eat & drink(there's no sign on the restaurant, even today)?
A nice reference whether you live here, work here, pass through, or plan to visit jsut once.
The text is well-written, informative, and readable.
The only down-side: it was published in 1992 and is getting a bit dated. The listings, particularly the restaurant list, are particularly vulnerable to the aging process. In the Village, the restaurant list will be outdated by tomorrow...
Average customer rating:
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Ear Inn Virons: History of the New York City Landmark--James Brown House and West Soho Neighborhood
Andrew Coe
Manufacturer: Odyssey Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 9622177182 |
Book Description
Dwarfed by industrial buildings and new residential towers, the little brick and wood-frame James Brown House is the spiritual hub of Manhattan's West Soho neighborhood. The building's present incarnation as home of the popular Ear Inn watering hole is only the latest in a long and fascinating history. Ear Inn Virons traces the heritage and legends of this New York City landmark; through this tale, it also chronicles the history and culture of the vibrant West Soho neighborhood. When the house was built in 1817, the district was being transformed from swamp and sandy hills into a residential neighborhood. Its first owner was James Brown, according to legend an ex-slave who fought in the Revolutionary Army. Over the decades, the house's fortunes have followed the rise and fall of the neighborhood, from middle class homes to bustling waterfront to near-abandonment. In the 1970s, the area was almost a ghost town when a group of struggling artists stumbled on the building and transformed its bar, then a seedy waterfront dive, into the Ear Inn. Now West Soho has been rediscovered by developers and high-tech firms, and the neighborhood is changing almost beyond recognition. As long as the James Brown House still stands, however, its history will not be forgotten.
Heavily illustrated with maps and period illustrations, Ear Inn Virons is the definitive history of the James Brown House and West Soho neighborhood. In addition to documenting the broad cultural and historical forces that molded the district, the text is peppered with colorful tales about riots, gangsters, Irish bartenders, the daily life of longshoremen and a ghost named Mickey. • Surprising and amusing history of a house built in 1817 and its vibrant downtown neighborhood • Newly researched and definitive architectural and cultural history of New York City locale • Literary excerpts • Local color and broader issues discussed, including September 11 • Many black and white and color photographs and period maps • Invaluable guide for West Soho and neigborhood exploration • 40 illustrations, many in color • 3 maps
Customer Reviews:
Meant to Be?.......2004-03-15
John Canoe is an artist essentially living his life in isolation. He sells his work through his affiliation with a cooperative of artists, and also works as a school teacher. While John has many acquaintances, he doesn't have anyone that he can truly call a friend. Early in the book his mother reminds him that at age 33, he needs to be looking for a meaningful relationship so that he can marry and have children. Even in his adulthood John struggles with his identity, his mother is white and his father is black and his experiences with racism from both races have left him wondering where he fits in. John shares a close relationship with his mother, who lives in Chicago, but has a strained relationship with his father, a notable physician, who divorced his mother years ago.
Susie Chang works for a publishing company and is an amateur poet. She is an American born Chinese woman that has more or less been cut off from her family. Susie is constantly at odds with the cultural norms and expectations of her family, even her move across country and away from her family is frowned upon.
Susie and John meet at a Collective opening and it is practically love at first sight. What ensues is a whirlwind relationship wrought with ups and downs ranging from typical relationship issues, such as problems with communication, to more complicated issues like familial rejection.
ONE FLESH had the potential to be a five star book. The primary plot of the story was thorough and fairly unique. My problem with the book was that the author introduced too many subplots that he never resolved. These subplots could have provided interesting twists and turns but instead they acted more like a dangling carrot. I would love to see a sequel that would address some of the unresolved issues and provide an update on John and Susie's relationship. Overall, I enjoyed the book and believe it would make for a great book club discussion.
Reviewed by Stacey Seay
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Average customer rating:
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Go Fish, Snoopy! (Selected Cartoons from I'm Not Your Sweet Babboo!, Vol 1)
Charles M. Schulz
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
General
| Comic Strips
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Hunting & Fishing
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ASIN: 0449207870
Release Date: 1985-08-12 |
Book Description
A hilarious collection of cartoons featuring America's favorite canine -- Snoopy! And the rest of the Peanuts gang!
Average customer rating:
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Go Fish, Snoopy!
Manufacturer: Fawcett Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Hunting & Fishing
| Humor
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ASIN: 9992621354 |
Books:
- The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II ('The rape of nanking', in traditional Chinese, NOT in English)
- The Simple Sounds of Freedom : The True Story of the Only Soldier to Fight for Both America and the Soviet Union in World War II
- The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle
- The Technique of Film and Video Editing, Fourth Edition: History, Theory, and Practice
- Thunder Through My Veins: Memories of a Metis Childhood
- To Benning and Back: The Making of a Citizen Soldier - My Journals of Daily Life in U.S. Army Basic Training and Officer Candidate School, from Private to Second Lieutenant, from First Call to Lights Out, and Yes, Everything in Between.
- To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A.
- Tom Taylor's Civil War
- Treat People Right!: How Organizations and Employees Can Create a Win/Win Relationship to Achieve High Performance at All Levels
- Triumphs And Tragedies: Corregidor And Its Aftermath
Books Index
Books Home
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- Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence
- The Cambridge Companion to Mozart
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- Apple Training Series: Desktop and Portable Systems
- Women at the Crossroads: A Prostitute Community's Response to AIDS in Urban Senegal
- 1995 Ffsa Independent Guide to the T. Rowe Price Funds
- The Share Economy: Conquering Stagflation
- Leaves of the Banyan Tree
The Pratique Guide, The Meat Packing District and The West Village: Shopping Block by Block (Pratique Guides)
The Curious Shopper's Guide to New York City: Inside Manhattan's Shopping Districts
Wallpaper City Guide: New York (Wallpaper City Guide New York)
Suzy Gershman's Born to Shop New York: The Ultimate Guide for Travelers Who Love to Shop (Born To Shop)
The Best Things to Do in New York City: 1001 Ideas
