La Conversation, Paul Delvaux, 1944

Rian James, Dining in New York, 1929. Dust jacket artist unknown.

This is a New York booklet written for New Yorkers. James offered a unique slice of the New York dining scene just before the October 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. The good times were to end soon after.

While there were a ton of contemporary guidebooks published about New York City, very few delved into the restaurant scene. James’s punchy one-line descriptions tell you a lot more than many a detailed review. The writing has some jazz age jargon such as “Beeway” for Broadway and “black and tan” for an establishment that has race mingling between Blacks and Caucasians.

Some excerpts:

MAXL’S – 86th St. near 3rd Ave. Tyrolean Sausage and Sauer Kraut and Tyrolean high jinks after theatre.

THE BLUE RIBBON-145 W. 44th St. German. German cuisine, and plenty of German celebs.

HENRY’S – 69 W. 36th St. Swedish. Roll your own hors d’oeuvres, from a huge center table.

CEYLON INDIA – 148 W. 49th St. East Indian. Curried dishes that are hotter than a Sophie Tucker finale.

DINTY MOORE’S-46th St. west of Beeway. Irish Corned beef and marv lemon pies and giant baked potatoes. Favorite of Ziegfeld, Berlin, Will Rogers, et al.

HOTEL ALGONQUIN – 44th St. bet. 5th and 6th Aves. The snootier of the literati lunch here. The pastry is grand.

GYPSY TEA SHOP – 435 Fifth Ave. Your fortune, from tea leaves, gratis, and all you want to eat, for 75¢.

GREENWICH VILLAGE INN – 6 Sheridan Sq. What customers from Hoosick Falls would he disappointed at not finding.

THE EVERGLADES – Beeway at 48th St. An extravagant floor show with considerable costume economy, and ex-Vanities girls to sit it out with you.

THE MADHOUSE – 169 W. 133rd St. All the name implies. For colored whoopsters chiefly, but whites admitted. Come here after all the others have closed, and SEE things!

For more excerpts and more about the author, see Stuff Nobody Cares About.

Photo: The Cary Collection Text: Stuff Nobody Cares About

bucky finds a damp cardboard box of kittens abandoned in the alley near their home. he brings them inside, wraps and dries them with care and uses the heat pad that soothes his shoulder to keep them warm. they take the kittens to the vet because you can tell theyre all sickly, and steve can see how this is going to end (because, after all, what is he but a stray that bucky couldnt help but take in), yet bucky insists. lovingly, he cleans them with damp cloths as if it were their mother’s tongue, and gets up every hour on the hour in the night to feed them. still, every few days like clockwork one of them dies. steve slips from their bed to find bucky in the harsh kitchen light, mourning, milk bottle forgotten and growing cold on the table. he is devastated for each one as he cries whilst cradling their little bodies, and steve cradles him. you did your best, steve tells him. in the end only one lives; her fur had been the most stubborn to clean, but now its a soft, brilliant white. when she opens her eyes they’re blue. theyre going to keep her. she likes to curl in the palm of buckys hand, purring, her body warming the metal plates. steve and his dark humour says they should call her alley, and though bucky finds it funny they compromise and call her alpine - ally for short.

rock formation pictured in the kodak pocket guide to nature photography, 1985.

advertisement for benson & hedges cigarettes, 1973.

Dragobrat, Ukraine. March 2025

Patti Hansen for Anne Klein F/W 1976/77.

Carpe diem - Esa Riippa , 2024.

Finnish , b. 1947 -

Etching/aquatint on paper , 33 x 22.5 cm.

steve rogers is such a wife guy about bucky. he loves his beautiful murder wife and you will know about it

Boris Zadvytsky - Lights (1964)

Deana Lawson, Girls with Oiled Faces