How to Tour the Unseen New York

In a few days, my wife is going off to New York, and though she lived in the city as a student and knows it reasonably well, she'll be taking with her a gem of a new travel book called New York Curiosities. It's chock-full of the type of gold nugget-little hidden details that you otherwise would have no idea about.

The author, Cindy Perman, actually trolls the entire state of New York. Still, this visit is just to the city. So, as usual, the first thing I did was thumb through to the Russian saunas. Perman earns her legitimacy by visiting the Russian Room, where a fellow named Frank, toting an all-important wrapped bundle of oak leaves, says the baths are "the closest you can get to God -- spiritually, mentally and physically." And then there are the extravaganza gypsy dancing dinners at the Odessa, Rasputin and Primorski supper clubs.

Enough with the former Soviet Union. On to Americana. Perman visits Woodlawn Cemetery, where she skips the monuments to Miles Davis, J.C. Penney and Robert Moses, and heads like a beeline to that of George Spencer Millet, who died at 15 from "falling on ink eraser, evading six young women trying to give him birthday kisses in office of Metropolitan Life Building." Perman glosses over the Brooklyn Bridge and Park Slope and rushes to Brooklyn College, where in the athletic field she finds four or five dozen green monk parrots, which legend has it got there from their native Argentina when a crate at JFK Airport broke apart, and they made an escape.

In the bowels of Grand Central Station, Perman finds the Whispering Gallery, right next to the famous Oyster Bar, where I usually go but totally missed out on the basement's true charms. You can actually stand on one side of the corridor, Perman reports, and your friend on the far other side can hear your whispers.

Looking for some culture -- plus evidence that New York is still the factory of something to the world -- Perman heads to Steinway & Sons, a small shop in Queens where 300 craftsman assemble the approximately 12,000 parts that go into a Steinway grand piano. There is also a sauna here, but it's not for visitors. Unless, that is, you fancy relaxing with a bunch of pianos on their way to being finished.