The Lower East Side -- Remembered and Revisited, Updated and Revised by Joyce Mendelsohn, Columbia UP '09 paperback, 9" x 4 1/2" format, $18.95, 312 pages, ISBN #0231147619. Index, bibliography, dozens of of b&w illustrations.
Lots of New York City guidebooks are languishing on bookstands, now that visitors have accompanied their aching relatives and their New York Marathon gear back home to Baltimore, Hartford and Providence. So one could be jaded about the widely-varying quality of these products.
But when we snagged a recently-issued paperback, nicely configured to fit a capacious pocket or pocketbook, we sought out its attention to detail, recognizing that it proclaimed knowledge of not only today's Lower East Side, but its history and evolution as well. What sold us on the volume was its inclusion of Izzy Iskowitz in its index.
Don't you dare ride on our tourbus if you don't know Izzy Iskowitz! It's Eddie Cantor, for heaven's sake! Who's Eddie Cantor? Driver, my party and I are getting off at the next stop.
OK, so now we're left with the Lower East Side cognoscenti, people who recognize the following index entries: Bernard Baruch, Abe Beame, Billy the Kid, Sammy Cahn, Carol Channing, Stephen Crane, Five Points, Martha Graham, Jasper Johns, Spike Lee, Seth Low, Robert Moses, Henry Rutgers, Tony Pastor, Felix Warburg, and Thomas Wolfe, among hundreds of entries.
But if you know all these folks, you don't need me as a guide. You should know, however, that Joyce Mendelsohn has created five separate walking tours for your convenience. Their labels: Jewish Roots, Immigrant Life, Commerce and Culture, Traditions and Trends and The Bowery.
The author is the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side. She lectures on New York City topics at the New School for Social Research and conducts walking tours.
