Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Your Guide to Weird Shit in the Empire State

Have you ever insisted on eating at a particular place because it had a giant plaster chicken out front? Do you drive out to the middle of nowhere to photograph neon signs when you need to relax? Have you ever rearranged your commute just to drive by the haunted-looking house? If so, then Weird New York by Christ Gethard will help focus your travels through the Empire State. This book is part of the Weird US series. My fellow New Yorkers, you have a lot to be proud of!

This book is good for hours of amuseument. It covers every variety of weird shit. There are people, like the Witch of Wall Street, the Naked Cowboy, the Fox Sisters, and Albert Fish. There are properties with more personality than your average human, like the Doll Death House, the Poor Man's Penthouse (a small house atop a warehouse in Syracuse, hidden by a billboard), and the Land of Broken Dreams. There are roadside oddities like Nipper the Dog in Albany, and the Muffler Men of the Magic Forest amuseument park in Lake George. Haunted cemeteries, clawfoot people, incest villages, UFOs, abandoned mental hospitals -- it's all here, all that and more. This was a Christmas gift from my parents, and they complained of its distinct downstate focus, but there's good stuff all over.

The book is 258 pages long. I sincerely wish it was longer. I don't know much about the rest of the series, but if this book is any indication, it's a must-have for people who just drive around looking for weird nationwide.