Wallpaper City Guide: New York (Wallpaper City Guides) [Paperback]

Editors of Wallpaper Magazine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2006 | Series: Wallpaper City Guides

"Wallpaper City Guides" not only suggest where to stay, eat, and drink, but what the tourist passionate about design might want to see, whether he/she has a week or 24 hours in the city. Featured are up and coming areas, landmark buildings in an 'Architour', design centres, and the best shops to buy items unique to that city. "Wallpaper City Guides" present travellers with a fast-track ticket to the chosen location. The edited guides offer the best, most exciting, and the most beautiful of that particular city. As well as looking beautiful, the guides are expertly designed with function as a priority, and have tabbed sections so that the tourist can easily find what they are looking for. There are maps, rate and currency cards, colour-coded parts of the city, and an easy navigational tool. They are the ultimate combination of form and function.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The answer to every short-breaker's dream. Small, perfectly formed - they fit into pockets of jeans or jackets - they contain almost everything one needs to know...The jewel-coloured guides look beautiful and are exquisitely designed. Even a geographically challenged dolt like me stands a chance of finding my way around Shanghai with the simple map at the back of the book.'

About the Author

Wallpaper* City Guides are compiled by the magazine's travel experts, both by in-house editors, and correspondents who actually live in the highlighted cities, providing up-to-the-minute information

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714846929
• ISBN-13: 978-0714846927
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Travel > United States > States > New York

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars so hip it's one revelation after another, October 4, 2006

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wallpaper City Guide: New York (Wallpaper City Guides) (Paperback)

Wallpaper Magazine --- the bible of all that is cutting edge in international design/fashion/travel/interiors --- is celebrating its 10th birthday.

And how better to show off its grown-up status --- at ten, a magazine is old enough to drink and smoke and Lord knows what else --- than by rolling out a slew of travel guides that are exactly as hip as the magazine?

These make no effort to be complete. They're 100+ pages. Paperback. Smallish: 6" by 4". With photos that sometimes fill two pages.

In other words, these are not travel guides for first-time travelers. (You want a primer --- start with a guide like Fodor's.) These books are a whole other game. Indeed, they're so of the moment that they probably need to be junked and massively revised every year or two --- the cutting edge has a way of cutting the throats of hip restaurants and shops. And the thing about architecture is that there's always more of it, and the new stuff is (or so the media would have it) just a bit more exciting than last year's.

To judge these guides, I selected a city I know well (Paris) and the city that's been home for most of my life (New York). Talk about surprising! No, make that mind-blowing.

Wallpaper's Paris Guide doesn't fall for the lie that the city never changes. It sees "constant, if sometimes, gentle, upheaval." Yes --- if you are 25 years old and have spent quantity time haunting the chic arrondissements. If, like me, you have a family and plunk yourself down in the 6th or 7th, this guide is a revelation.

I loved the cheek of this praise of the Marais: "These streets...are as near as Paris gets to signs of life on a Sunday." I was happily surprised to learn that Sacre-Coeur was "built as a monument to failure" (in the Franco-Prussian War). But after that...everything was new. I was especially agog at the hotels --- the photos are so exquisite they're hotel-porn. Who could afford these rooms? Why did I know so few of them?

For that matter, I'd heard of half the restaurants, none of the clubs, few of the buildings. Shopping? Spas? Getaways? Zip. Zip. Zip. It got so that I frowned when I came across a recommendation for a known entity --- like Joel Robuchon's Atelier. Clearly, Joel's super-expensive, no-reservations eatery must be on the way out.

Wallpaper's New York Guide was equally full of surprises. I live uptown --- clearly, everything worth seeing or doing is way downtown. (Though it was bracing to see the Paris Theatre, at 5th Avenue and 58th Street, listed as the city's best art-movie cinema.) I've never heard of the beautiful Matsuri Restaurant (in the Maritime Hotel), or Thor, or Public, or Odea, or En, or Morimoto. And that's just the tip of my iceberg of ignorance.

But here's the thing: Nowhere in these guides do I get the feeling that the writer is sneering at me. Or, that if I go to these places, the proprietors will look at my preppy blazer and graying hair and frantically look for a velvet rope to bar me. The exclusionary factor here is money --- bargains are not a Wallpaper priority.

But, hey, you're on a vacation. A little splurge won't kill you. And if you cherry-pick the suggestions in these guides, you're sure to have an adventure you can share with the folks back home. But you'll have to excuse me now --- I'm off to visit New York

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ugh, October 3, 2007

By 

Tina (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wallpaper City Guide: New York (Wallpaper City Guides) (Paperback)

The publishers are kidding, right? I was so disappointed in this book. I recently moved to NYC and was hoping to find some places to visit that I might not have thought of.

If I had several hundred dollars to spend on dinner or a designer frock, or access to private health clubs, spas, and pricey hotels, I might have been in luck.

Also, a big chunk of the book is devoted to places well outside of NYC, so "city guide" is a bit of a misnomer.

I took one look through this book (page by meager page), and dumped it in the garbage.

2.0 out of 5 stars In danger of extinction, April 3, 2011

By 

Birdtunes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wallpaper City Guide: New York (Wallpaper City Guides) (Paperback)

I have to admit that I like the crisp and deduced design of the wallpaper City Guides. I bought my german issue, which was published in 2007, for some inspiration to a one week NYC vacation. Now 4 years later, that I moved to New York, I was skipping through the pages again to find some cool places to go out.
After looking up several places, that I have I found in the guide, on the internet, I had to find out that every Secound venue is already closed. I know that New York has a fast pace and only the strongest survive, but it seems that the Wallpaper City Guide has a good nose to recommend places that soon will go down...
e.b. Bette Restaurant, Bungalow 8, Odea, Bed, The Double Seven, Tasting Room, Quhnia...