Microcosm Publishing, 256 pages, trade paperback, $9.99
When I think of travel guides, I usually think of overpriced glossy books detailing trendy tourist spots to check out were I a jetsetter on an unlimited travel budget and not a broke writer trying to find a cheap place to eat and a free wireless internet connection. Enter the Zinester’s Guide to NYC. This handy little book is more than just a travel guide — it’s a veritable survival guide to living in New York, whether you’re there for a day, a year, or a decade.
Editor Ayun Halliday (of East Village Inky fame) and her crew of contributors have assembled an eclectic, in depth, and often highly opinionated collection of listings covering virtually anything you’d need or want to do on the cheap in the city that never sleeps. From cheap and reasonably priced vegetarian-friendly restaurants, to where to score free internet 24 hours a day, to suggestions on where to bring a date, Zinester’s Guide to NYC has you covered for anything you could possibly want to do or see in the city.
The Why Am I Here section provides a number of sources to hunt down activities in the city, and their list of annual events, broken down by month, covers just about everything you’d be interested in doing, whether on a Friday in January or on a Tuesday in July.
Those seeking intellectual stimulation should look no further than the guide’s list of museums and art galleries, including the best times to get in cheap or free. Checking out one of the numerous lectures in the city is another great way for armchair intellectuals to get their think on.
For those with the urge to shop, the guide lists a host of independent businesses in which to spend time, whether window shopping or actually dropping your hard earned cash. As an obsessive bibliophile, I thought I knew every bookstore in the five boroughs, but was surprised and delighted to find a few new ones to check out. Their list of record stores is equally exhaustive, including detailed info on the genre specialties of each shop, so you’ll know where to go to find that rare Elvis Costello single or that KRS-One album you need to complete your collection.
The guide is filled with humorous illustrations throughout, as well as maps allowing those without the luxuries of expensive smart phones to navigate their way through the various neighborhoods mentioned in the guide. The layout of each section is simple and straightforward, though not always uniform throughout, and the small font is a bit of a challenge for the visually impaired, but the sheer amount of info crammed into every page would have made for a volume twice its size if presented in a larger font.
Overall, Zinester’s Guide to NYC is an indispensible resource for anyone spending any time in New York, and lives up to it’s self-description as “a top to bottom, on-the-cheap, warts-and-all exploration of the city that never sleeps” — and priced at less than 10 dollars, it is also more affordable than the vast majority of mainstream travel guide offerings on the market.