Frommer’s for a Poop-Free NYC
I hate to “out” myself as a listener of Mancow’s Morning Madhouse Show, but I actually caught him praising Frommer’s Travel Guides this morning as his preferred companion while globe-trotting. Funny he should mention that, ’cause we love the folks at Frommer’s too!
In a very progressive move, Frommer’s Travel Guides is now advising readers not to support the horse-drawn carriage industry in New York City. In the New York Experiences to Avoid section of the 2008 Frommer’s Guide to New York City, tourists are instead urged to “[p]ity those poor beasts of burden,” who appear “so forlorn, as if [pulling carriages is] the last thing they want to do.” The guide recommends pedicab rides to people who “want a slow, leisurely ride through Central Park, minus the ripe and frequent smell of horse poop ….”
While it is of course excellent that Frommer’s is making this statement on behalf of horses in the city’s carriage industry, I can’t imagine that any reader of the guide—as a person with enough intellect to be literate—would find it too surprising that horses might not want to die in a car crash or, worse, spend a life in servitude to visiting yuppies. New York is famous for a host of other things—from window shopping to the good eats at Red Bamboo—so I don’t think visitors will be at a loss if they can’t spend a half-hour getting a buzz off the smell of feces.
—SeanPosted by Sean Conner, Laboratory Investigations Special Projects Coordinator
