Random House, $14

Review by Bruce Kennedy

April 21, 1999
Web posted at: 2:06 p.m. EDT (1806 GMT)

(CNN) -- "This place looks like the Collyer Brothers live here!" That was my mother's standard complaint when my siblings and I messed up our apartment.

I found out later that the Collyers were a pair of eccentric brothers who filled their New York residence with floor-to-ceiling piles of newspapers and other stuff. Police and firemen struggled their way into the house in 1947, following an anonymous tip that the brothers had died. An estimated 120 tons of junk was later removed from the Collyers' house.

Similar tidbits of information -- trivial, informative, amazing and amusing, can be found in "The Curious New Yorker: 329 Fascinating Questions and Surprising Answers About New York City." The book takes highlights from the New York Times' "F.Y.I." column -- a regular feature in which readers pose questions about New York -- and editors try to find the answers.

The book considers some myths that still live on with some New Yorkers. Here's one I heard in my childhood: the Third Avenue elevated train tracks, sold for scrap in the late 1930s, were later "thrown back at us" by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Well sorry granddad, but it's not true. It is true, however, that a British warship sank in Hell Gate, in the East River, during the Revolutionary War. The frigate and its cargo of payroll gold apparently still lie there, just 80 feet under the swirling waters.

"The Curious New Yorker" considers some unique New York laws. Feeding pigeons is indeed legal, so long as it's only to small numbers of birds. Leave your vehicle idling for more than three minutes on a New York street and you risk up to $875 in fines.

There is some great "did you know" information available for both native and non-native collectors of interesting trivia. Did you know New York City has the world's largest garbage dump? One of the largest breed populations of peregrine falcons in the nation? A relatively bug-free environment?

It also answers questions that have puzzled many New Yorkers for years. Why are there so many Chinese-Cuban restaurants in the city? Why do so many comic-book super heroes live in the city? Why is New York also known as Gotham? Just who was Major Deegan and why did they name an expressway after him?

Interested? Don't look at me, buy the book. It's a great deal of fun to read out loud to others. You'll have enough information to successfully impersonate any one of a legion of know-it-all, world-weary New Yorkers -- even if you haven't been there.