Guide to New York Nitelife (1958)

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GUIDE TO NEW YORK NITELIFE
by Danton Walker (of the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS--ed.)
New York, Putnam
1958

Pg. 7:  The remark most frequently heard about New York is that "it's a nice place to visit, but--"

Pg. 38:  The term "cafe society" might have been created to describe EL MOROCCO's patronage.  No one can be quite sure who invented that term to describe those floaters who seem to live in nite clubs, doubtless hanging like bats from the ceiling by day, only waiting for night to fall.  Lucius Beebe, then a columnist on the N.Y. _Herald Tribune_, claimed it and when a movie of that name was made in Hollywood, acted as technical (Pg. 30--ed.) adviser.  But Maury Paul, for long society columnist (Cholly Knickerbocker) on the Hearst _Journal-American_, disputed this.  Elsa Maxwell defined cafe society as "people who don't get invited to homes."

Pg. 41:  Perona (of the El Morocco--ed.) claims the rather dubious distinction of having invented the "hot-foot."

Pg. 79:  (Sammy Fuchs of Sammy's Bowery Follies, 267 Bowery at 3rd Street--ed.)  Sammy collects Skidrow slang and hopes some day to compile a dictionary, which will include some of the newer definitions such as "belly robber" (a chronic drunk who never eats), "gravedigger" (the cheap wine also known as "Sneaky Pete"), etc.

Pg. 97:  HICKORY HOUSE (144 West 52nd Street, opened in 1933--ed.) also claims to have originated "jam session" and "sitting in"--part of the vocabulary of the cool set.

Pg. 154:  New York cafe society did not discover the new Harlem until the Prohibition era when, largely due to the weekly _Morning Telegraph_ prattling by a perferved press agent named Lee Posner, "slumming" trips to Harlem became the thing to do.
(Of possible interest for "the Big Apple" in the MORNING TELEGRAPH and then in Harlem use--ed.)

Pg. 174:  He (Barney Goldman--ed.) also told me that in the course of working with Chinese he discovered some rather amusing facts about their food.  It was Li Hong Chong (Li Hung Chang in our history books), special envoy to Washington from the Mancho Emperor, who introduced chop suey into the United States.  It was impossible for Chong's chef to get all the oriental herbs necessary for his cuisine, so he turned to native vegetables, such as celery, onions, etc., and chop suey (literally "hash" in Chinese) was the result.  The dish became so popular in Washington that Chong would hand out recipes to his guests, and from there the fad for Chinese food spread throughout the country.