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    Uncle John's Plunges into New York
    Uncle John's Plunges into New York
    Uncle John's Plunges into New York
    Ebook425 pages4 hours

    Uncle John's Plunges into New York

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

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    About this ebook

    From the number one source of bathroom reading, an illustrated guide to trivia surrounding the City That Never Sleeps.

    You think you know New York? Fugeddaboutit!

    Uncle John takes you on a whirlwind tour of the greatest place on Earth! Discover fascinating history, odd facts, and the unique people who make New York the Big Apple of the world’s eye. Read all about . . .

    ·      UFOs visit the Empire State

    ·      What ever happened to Crazy Eddie?

    ·      The history of bagels & The New Yorker

    ·      The Kingdom of Zog & other lost landmarks

    ·      New York’s grumpiest tourist: Charles Dickens

    ·      Could you pass the Ellis Island immigration test?

    ·      The New York Times crossword puzzle goofs

    ·      The Borscht Belt comedians

    ·      The incredible natural phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge

    ·      The public library, the subway, and the city’s narrowest house

    ·      The Naked Cowboy and Lady Liberty’s big feet

    ·      People who actually tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge

    ·      No soup for you!

    And much more
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2015
    ISBN9781626860902
    Uncle John's Plunges into New York
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

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      Book preview

      Uncle John's Plunges into New York - Bathroom Readers' Institute

      Start Spreadin’ the News!

      Welcome to the Concrete Jungle

      The editors of the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have outdone themselves with this special (let’s call it irregular) illustrated edition all about the world’s most fabulous city—New York!

      No other city is as impressive as the Big Apple. The sheer size of it! The excitement! The entertainment! Millions of people—from first-time visitors to lifelong natives—have been mesmerized by the dizzying array of high-rises, the bright lights, the nonstop action, the celebrities… and the traffic jams. The Big Apple really does have it all, and so does this book, complete with dazzling photos that bring the stories to life!

      Like every edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, this volume is a treasure trove of the most offbeat and hilarious topics, fascinating facts, little-known history, and astounding mysteries—plus trivia, quotes, and really strange stuff about the city that never sleeps. So settle back with an Italian ice, and dig into the best of New York:

      Origins. The rise of skyscrapers, Central Park, the Apollo Theater, and the New York Public Library (where, according to the rules, you must wear clothes).

      People. Have you heard about swindlers who actually sold the Brooklyn Bridge? Can you spot a hipster in a crowd of New Yorkers? And what’s with the guy who plays guitar in Times Square, wearing only a cowboy hat, boots, and his underwear?

      Mystery and Intrigue. Delve into the New York City murder case that inspired Edgar Allan Poe, witness the birth of the New York Mafia, and ponder what’s down in the sewers (lots of things, actually).

      Go Outside! Escape city life with a visit to a park on top of a Manhattan wastewater treatment plant, stalk the famous hawk that nests on Fifth Avenue, and marvel at the city’s celestial event—Manhattanhenge.

      Yum! Sample New York’s culinary delights, from foods as ubiquitous as bagels, soft pretzels, and Reuben sandwiches to rare delicacies like Nesselrode pie.

      Eww! Try not to touch anything as you uncover the city’s dirtiest problems, including sewage overflows, trash pileups, dog poop, and bedbugs.

      Strange, but True. Gasp in disbelief at New York’s wildest weather, weirdest news, looniest laws, and wackiest hoaxes—including the 140-year-old hot dog at Coney Island and newspaper accounts of life on the Moon.

      Note: It turns out there’s a whole state out there called New York. Travel to odd pit stops, view strange statues, explore heart-stoppingly beautiful parks, and learn about the day Niagara Falls was turned off.

      But before you go, we want to give a big New York shout-out to every member of the talented team that contributed to this book, all of whom deserve a knish, a hot dog with everything, and a supersized egg cream. And now you get to reap the benefits of their hard work.

      Happy reading!

      And as always…

      Go with the flow!

      —Uncle John and the BRI staff

      Hole in One

      In more than 100 years of bagel making, New Yorkers have acquired such a passion for the doughy bread that it has become an internationally known icon of the city. But the bagel isn’t actually a native New Yorker.

      Tower of Bagel

      Bagel Tales

      There’s a lot of debate over how bagels came to be. One story says a 17th-century Austrian baker wanted to make a gift for King John III Sobieski of Poland, who saved Austria from a Turkish invasion. The king was a famous horseman, so the baker shaped the dough like a stirrup. (The Austrian word for stirrup is bügel.)

      Another story goes like this: Around 1610 the first bagel, called a beygl in Yiddish, came out of a Jewish oven in Krakow, Poland. Historians say the doughnut-shaped rolls were designed to be gifts for Jewish women with infants—the hole in the bread represented the gift of life and the crusty roll was a useful teething ring. Also, unlike other breads, bagels could be boiled before the Jewish Sabbath, left until after the religious observance 24 hours later (Jewish law forbade cooking on the Sabbath), and then quickly baked to perfection. People loved them.

      No matter where they came from, bagels invaded the United States in the late 19th century by way of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. Vendors typically sold them as street food, but by 1907, one group of prominent New York bagel makers had founded the International Bagel Bakers Union to protect their recipes. Not just anyone could join; only the sons of former members were eligible. The union’s leader, Moishe Soprano, was tough and no-nonsense—he secured contracts with nearly all the bakeries in the New York City area, ensuring bagel-making consistency for decades. A union contract also gave the consumers peace of mind—Soprano and his bakers kneaded their dough by hand, unlike lower-end bagel makers outside the union who, rumor had it, often kneaded the dough with their feet.

      New York bagel

      Bagels for All

      After World War I, Canadian bagel maker Meyer Mickey Thompson tried to create an automated bagel maker. He failed because his invention was too expensive, but his son Daniel succeeded in creating the Thompson Bagel Machine, and started churning them out in the 1960s in a six-car garage in New Haven, Connecticut. Thompson Bagel Machines could produce about 400 bagels an hour at minimal cost. Bagel bakers Harry Lender and Florence Sender took it from there, using the machines to mass-produce frozen bagels and selling them to supermarkets everywhere.

      In 1988 Americans ate an average of one bagel a month. Five years later, it was a bagel every two weeks and growing.

      Bagel Bits

      • In North America, there are two types of bagels: The New York version and the Montreal. The New York contains salt and malt, and is boiled in water and then baked so that it’s puffy with a moist crust. The Montreal is smaller due to a larger hole, and has no salt. It’s boiled in honey-sweetened water and then baked in a wood-fired oven, making it crunchy and sweet.

      Gregory Chamitoff introduced bagels to outer space.

      • To New York’s chagrin, the first bagel in space was the Montreal version. In 2008 Canadian-born astronaut Gregory Chamitoff lifted off in the space shuttle Discovery with a shipment of 18 sesame-seed bagels from his cousin’s bakery in Montreal and delivered them to the International Space Station.

      Tax collectors shuttered H&H Bagels in Manhattan for three hours in 2009 until the owner paid his back taxes.

      • In the spring of 2009, New York State tax collectors shut down H&H Bagels in Manhattan (popularized on the TV show Seinfeld ) for failing to pay $100,000 in back taxes. For three hours, customers stood forlorn outside the closed bagel emporium until owner Helmer Toro came up with a $25,000 payment that allowed H&H to reopen.

      Montreal bagel

      Big Bagel

      According to Guinness World Records, the world’s largest bagel was made by Bruegger’s in Syracuse, New York.

      Weight: 868 pounds.

      Diameter: 6 feet.

      Thickness: 20 inches.

      The Swingingest Borough

      New Orleans is often cited as the birthplace of jazz, and Chicago, Harlem, and Kansas City are recognized as critical launching pads for the music. But the borough of Queens is where the coolest cats chose to crash when they were beat, ya dig?

      What a Wonderful Neighborhood

      In 1943, after more than two decades of traveling and performing, jazz great Louis Satchmo Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, settled down for the first time and bought a house at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, Queens. It remained his home until his death in 1971, and after Lucille passed away in 1983, the two-story house became the Louis Armstrong House Museum. To this day, the interiors are preserved as the Armstrongs left them, and the den features an extensive archive of Satchmo’s personal reel-to-reel recordings. And although Armstrong mostly maintained a level of modesty appropriate for a man who grew up in the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, he did allow himself certain household indulgences, including a kitchen with all its appliances built in (including the blender) and gold trumpetlike faucets in the bathroom.

      Louis Armstrong plays the blues.

      Why did Satchmo settle in Queens? The cultural diversity and domestic possibilities that Queens offered are best summed up by Armstrong himself: I am here with the black people, with the Puerto Rican people, the Italian people, the Hebrew cats, and there’s food in the Frigidaire. What else could I want? He wasn’t the only jazz great to call Queens home.

      The Saints of St. Albans

      Many notable musicians made their homes in the Queens neighborhood of St. Albans, particularly in the enclave of Addisleigh Park. A list of the notable residents reads like a poster for a jazz festival:

      Fats Waller plays the boogie-woogie.

      • Fats Waller (173–19 Sayres Avenue): This master tickler (jazz slang for piano player) and writer of such classics as Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Honeysuckle Rose came to the neighborhood in 1938. Many jazz historians name him as the first African American to call Addisleigh Park home. His house boasted a Steinway grand piano and a built-in Hammond organ.

      • Count Basie (174–27 Adelaide Road): A native of Red Bank, New Jersey, Basie and his wife, Catherine, lived in Addisleigh Park from 1946 to 1971. The Basies were popular among neighborhood youths for generously granting access to their backyard pool.

      • Ella Fitzgerald (179–07 Murdock Avenue): The First Lady of Song never had a stable home as a child. Her parents separated when she was young, her mother died when she was a teenager, her stepfather abused her—and there were stopovers at reform school, a period of homelessness, and a short stint working as a lookout at a New York bordello. But as a teenager, she won an amateur talent show at Harlem’s storied Apollo Theater, and a star was born. She moved into the house in Queens with her husband, bassist Ray Brown, in 1949. The couple divorced in 1953, but Fitzgerald stayed put until 1956.

      • Milt Hinton (173–05 113th Avenue): A resident of Queens for 50 years until his death in 2000, Hinton was a bassist and sideman for a staggering number of artists (as a studio musician, he appeared on 1,174 recordings), including Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, and neighbors Louis Armstrong and Count Basie.

      • Cootie Williams (175–19 Linden Boulevard): From 1947 to 1953, this star trumpet player of the Duke Ellington Band lived in a three-story Tudor-style house that featured a prominent fairy tale-inspired turret. Another notable musician lived there in the 1960s: Godfather of Soul James Brown.

      Trumpetlike fixtures give the golden bathroom of the Louis Armstrong House Museum extra flair.

      Royal Flushing

      The Flushing Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, is the final resting place for two prominent jazz trumpeters: Louis Armstrong (1901–71) and Crown Prince of Bop Dizzy Gillespie (1917–93).

      The 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero lights up the New York City skyline.

      You Know You’re a New Yorker When…

      • You’re living in a 350-square-foot studio apartment that costs $2,000 a month… and you think it’s a fantastic deal.

      • Your navigational directions are east, west, uptown, and downtown.

      • You’ve never been to the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or Times Square on New Year’s Eve, but you have seen Ground Zero at midnight, and you’ve walked the Highline.

      • You say the city but mean Manhattan.

      • You sprint to catch the subway even when you’re not in a hurry.

      • You consider yourself multilingual if you can curse in more than one language.

      • Westchester is considered upstate.

      Manhattanhenge

      Want to see a perfect sunset? Twice a year, you can get your wish right here in Manhattan.

      Manhattenhenge occurs only twice a year.

      Let the Sun Shine

      Most of the time, the tall buildings in Manhattan block the sunset. But twice a year, above 14th Street, the sun aligns with the streets’ east–west grid pattern and sets perfectly between the buildings. It lasts only about 15 minutes, but it’s so striking that people stop on the streets to watch. As solar rays light up the towering buildings, a glowing orange light filters along the streets.

      The reflection off the buildings also scatters the sunshine, sending bright light along the north–south avenues. Because the phenomenon resembles sunsets seen at England’s mysterious Stonehenge ruins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, calls it Manhattanhenge.

      Perfection…Almost

      Stonehenge was built by the ancient Celtic Druids to mark the exact moment of the spring and fall equinoxes, when the sun rises and sets due east and due west of true north. But Manhattan’s street grid was established in 1811 for efficiency, not science, so it’s slightly off center—it’s turned 28.9 degrees from true east and west, to be exact. As a result, the city’s equinoxes occur on different days each year. Usually, the dates are in late May and mid-July. But if you miss the exact dates, not to worry. The day before or after Manhattanhenge also creates a celestial glow—it’s not quite as magnificent, but still pretty good.

      According to Tyson, who calculates the dates each year for the museum’s planetarium, the best way to see Manhattanhenge is this:

      Position yourself as far east in Manhattan as possible, but ensure that when you look west across the avenues you can still see New Jersey. Clear cross streets include 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, and several streets adjacent to them. The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building render 34th Street and 42nd Streets especially striking vistas.

      Patience stands guard outside the New York Public Library.

      The Library Inspires New York

      During the Great Depression, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia named the stone lions outside the New York Public Library Patience and Fortitude, to remind New Yorkers that they could survive the economic disaster. In addition, the library ran a store in its basement, offering groceries, food, tobacco, and clothing at reasonable prices.

      They Got Punked!

      Even gritty New Yorkers are gullible. Here, we’ll take a trip through some of the silliest hoaxes ever perpetrated on a city (supposedly) full of skeptics.

      Astronomer Sir John Herschel was a victim of the Sun’s hoax too.

      The Great Moon Hoax

      Perpetrator: The New York Sun newspaper

      Story: The paper printed its first issue in 1833, and by 1835, it was looking for a circulation boost. So to drum up interest, editors announced the upcoming publication of six articles covering renowned British astronomer Sir John Herschel’s fantastic new discoveries of life on the Moon: forests and seas, cranes and pelicans, herds of bison and goats, flocks of blue unicorns, sapphire temples with 70-foot pillars—even a race of batlike humanoid creatures. According to the Sun, the articles would be reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science.

      The day the first article appeared, Sun sales were 15,000; by the sixth day, they were over 19,000, the highest of any New York paper of the time. Other newspapers, racing to catch up, claimed to have the original Edinburgh Journal articles too, but they actually just reprinted the Sun’s stories.

      Two illustrations that appeared in the 1835 New York Sun depict life on the Moon.

      Exposed! There were no Edinburgh Journal articles. In fact, that journal had gone out of business several years earlier. And Herschel, perhaps the most eminent astronomer of his time, was totally ignorant of the hoax (and then amused by it until he got sick of answering questions about Moon men). The articles were reportedly written by Sun reporter Richard Adams Locke. The Sun never formally admitted the deception, but it did publish a column speculating that a hoax was possible. Regardless, the paper got what it wanted and circulation remained high.

      The 140-year-old hot dog

      The 140-Year-Old Hot Dog Hoax

      Perpetrator: The Coney Island History Project

      Story: In 2009 and 2010, the Astroland amusement park at Coney Island was being demolished to make room for new games and rides. On Wednesday, February 24, 2010, the old kitchen building of the block-long Feltman’s restaurant on Surf Avenue was scheduled to go. (Charles Feltman was credited with the invention of the hot dog in 1874, and also with hiring the young Nathan Handwerker, who eventually struck out on his own and opened the

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