UCLA class in fictional "Big Apple whores" this fall

[Laurence Horn]

>Yes, the fictional "Big Apple" whores have made UCLA. An not as an
>internet hoax, either. Incredible. UCLA!!!!
>...
>Barry Popik
>...
>...

That is pretty amazing.  No connection with UCLA linguistics, though,
and it is an extension class, so I won't burn my diploma, even if it
has clearly depreciated a bit.

Of course the claim "We're not making this up" is quite accurate.  It
should just have been continued "...but rather perpetuating a hoax
initiated by Salwen, the man who did."  Might have cut down on
enrollments, though.

--Larry, who just spent the last week enjoying some excellent
non-warm beer in and around London.

>...
>http://www.uclaextension.edu/plato/ClassDescriptions.htm
>...
>http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:baMDBYyhqisJ:www.uclaextension.edu/plato/ClassDescriptions.htm+%22big+apple%22+and+evremond&hl=en
>...
>#25
>
>NEW YORK, NEW YORK
>
>Friday - 10:00 a.m.                                        Fall Term
>2005 (14 Weeks)
>
>Coordinator:  Ira E. Bilson                          Co-Coordinator:
>George Alexander
>
>
>Course Description
>If Paris is "The City of Light," Rome "The Eternal City" and London
>"The City of Warm Beer," then what is New York?
>
>"The Big Apple," of course.  But how many people know that this
>nickname comes not from jazz musicians of the 20th Century, but from
>one particular bordello that graced [or disgraced] lower Manhattan
>at the start of the 19th Century?
>
>A young, beautiful and aristocratic Frenchwoman, Evelyn de
>Saint-Evremond, skipped out of The City of Light just a step ahead
>of the guillotine in the late 1790s and came to NYC where, at the
>beginning of the 1800s, she opened an elegant bordello in lower
>Manhattan.
>
>New Yorkers being New Yorkers even then, they truncated her name to
>"Eve" and she, amused by the anglicization/biblicalization of her
>name, began calling her pretty young staff "my irresistible apples"
>and her male clients soon dubbed their visits to her place as
>"having a taste of Eve's Apples."
>
>Because New York then appears to have been widely known, at home and
>abroad, for its large number of whorehouses - elegant, so-so and
>rough - several variations of the word "apple" [such as "The Apple
>Tree," "The Real Apple," etc.] came to be synonymous with the City.*
>Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the City Council and the New York
>Tourist Agency would rather you believed "Big Apple" derives from
>jazz musicians' term for making it big, but...
>
>We digress.
>
>New York City was, for a brief period after the Revolutionary War,
>the nation's capitol.  Even before that, however, NYC had already
>become the first among equals of colonial cities and, over the last
>200 years, has eclipsed all the others.
>
>How did this happen?  In large part, NYC owes its greatness to
>geologic good fortune, nature having given it resources with both
>hands full.  It was blessed with a superb harbor, at the mouth of an
>extensive, large river [the Hudson] valley, with sheltered, deep
>waters abutting solid bedrock.
>
>
>*We're not making this up.  See The Society for New York City
>History's website [salwen.com/apple.]
>
>The synergistic effect of that wide, deep, swift-running river
>coming out of a broad, fertile up-country and flowing around a
>series of granitic islands made NYC a world-class harbor and a
>"natural" for oceanic trade.  It also helped that the islands had
>good, hard bedrock at shallow depth so that it supported large
>buildings.
>
>First the Dutch and then the English capitalized on NYC's
>advantages; the city that was New Amsterdam became New York.
>Immigrants poured into NYC in the late 19th Century and early 20th
>Century and while most of the Irish, Jewish, Italian,
>African-American and Puerto Rican newcomers were not exactly greeted
>with open arms, their sons and daughters struggled to succeed - and
>did so, in so many different fields.  And as they succeeded, so did
>the City itself; it grew and prospered until it came to symbolize
>the vitality, the intellect, the wealth and the vision of the United
>States.  Not everyone loved New York, then or now, but everyone knew
>what New York stood for, everyone harbored some admiration for it
>and almost everyone wished he or she could be a New Yorker.
>
>During the 20th Century, New York became the nation's principal
>financial and commercial center, its entertainment center, its
>fashion center, its communications center, its sports center, its
>intellectual center, its medical center, a pivotal political center
>and, perhaps more than anything else, the nation's glossiest, most
>elegant display window to the world.
>
>It has inspired architecture [the Empire State Building; the
>Chrysler Building; the World Trade Center] and song after song after
>song:  New York, New York [A Helluva Town!]; New York [Start
>Spreadin' The News]; I'll Take Manhattan [the Bronx and Staten
>Island, too]; Autumn in New York; Take the A Train; On Broadway;
>42nd Street; Give My Regards to Broadway; Stompin At the Savoy;
>Broadway Melody; How About You?; Another Rainy Day In N.Y. City;
>Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby; There's A Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for
>New York; Take Me Back To Manhattan; I Happen To Like New York; The
>Sidewalks of New York; Lullaby Of Broadway; Harlem Serenade;
>Manhattan Lullaby; Do You Miss NewYork?
>
>In this SDG, we will examine how New York came to be such a leader,
>a trend-setter in so many fields and where, in the sadness of post
>9/11, it stands today.
>
>
>Course Outline
>1.         History of New York
>
>2.            Immigration
>
>3.            Education - P.S. System, CCNY, Private Schools
>
>4.            Entertainment - The Great White Way, Jazz, Musical
>Theater, Vaudeville, Broadcasting
>
>5.         Central Park
>
>6.         The Brooklyn Bridge
>
>7.         Sports Teams- Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Mets, Rangers, Dodgers
>
>8.         Great Personalities - La Guardia, Walker Lehman,
>Giuliani, Clinton, Gershwin, Stanwyck, Boss Tweed, Vanderbilt, Al
>Jolson
>
>9.         Wall Street, Commerce
>
>10.       The Museums and Great Philanthropists
>
>11.       Politics - Tammany Hall - Machine politics, wards, patronage
>
>12.       The Erie Canal
>
>13.       The Subway System
>
>14.            Architecture - Skyscrapers and the Slums - RCA Complex
>
>15.       The Fashion Industry
>
>16.       Triangle Shirt Waist Fire - The impact on the labor movement and
>occupational safety
>
>17.       The World Trade Center Attack - 9/11/01
>
>18.            Greenwich Village
>
>19.            Publishing - Intellectual life
>
>
>Bibliography:
>There are a thousand good books on New York and very few cover all
>of the areas we will study.  One of the few that is fairly
>comprehensive is Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York (High Life and
>Low Life From 1850 to 1950) Syracuse University Press - Available on
>Amazon.  Also Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City,
>Henry Holt and Company
>