When I traveled New York in 2001, I picked one of these guides up on a lark and I'm glad I did. The writing style is fun,informative and easy to read. To me, these are the best city guidebooks I've ever used.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:39 PM on September 20, 2005

Service Unavailable

Mefied already.
posted by octothorpe at 2:41 PM on September 20, 2005

Woah.. Delaunching already? That's weird. Maybe I caught them in mid-launch? Crap... Honest y'all, it was there a second ago.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:44 PM on September 20, 2005

Try refreshing a few times, and it'll load.
posted by cillit bang at 2:48 PM on September 20, 2005

Not Ready For Prime Time.
posted by R. Mutt at 3:07 PM on September 20, 2005

R. Mutt writes "Not Ready For Prime Time."

Not even for even or odd time, I'd say - it looks like their server get uncomfortable with more than a couple of simultaneous users.
posted by nkyad at 3:10 PM on September 20, 2005

Coral cache link to the same, which doesn't work either.
posted by grouse at 3:29 PM on September 20, 2005

Its back and it knows I'm coming from MetaFilter, it said hello to me in the corner.

I bet this would be a really excellent way of finding new places in your chosen city, I might get the San Francisco book just to have.
posted by fenriq at 4:04 PM on September 20, 2005

Plus, you've gotta love a company that lets you download the entire book in PDF! Here's the San Francisco PDF.
posted by fenriq at 4:06 PM on September 20, 2005

Thanks for the coral grouse. The NY hardcover version was incredible so I'm juiced to get the rest of them.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 4:14 PM on September 20, 2005

The NYC book version is wonderful .
posted by R. Mutt at 5:20 PM on September 20, 2005

This seems pretty cool, except that the whole "membership" thing is harshing my mellow.

I'm fine with "registering" or whatever, but sites that don't tell me what (if anything) it's gonna cost me, and instead INSIST on having me fill out a million bits of information (address? yearly income??? what's it to ya?) and click "continue" really stink.

If it's free, then shame on them for turning me off with the whole stupid registration thing (wouldn't an email address be enough for them? Even NYT doesn't ask for more than that, and they're all evil and stuff). If it's not free, then shame on them for making it look like it might be.
posted by drmarcj at 5:59 PM on September 20, 2005

harshing my mellow ?
posted by R. Mutt at 6:29 PM on September 20, 2005

oh, I see ... nm. (from Urban Dictionary)

1. Harshing my mellow:

When someone takes away from your high, or tries to be cool by fucking with you when you are buzzed. What happens when a nancy (see Nancy) brings down your elated feelings while high.
(Dude, you're really harshin' my mellow.)

2. harshing my mellow:

Bringing down my good mood.
(I didn't like her.. she was really harshing my mellow, man.)
posted by R. Mutt at 6:43 PM on September 20, 2005

Heh. And when I read it, I glossed over it as "marshing my mallow," and decided I needed to use that one in conversation more often...
posted by whatzit at 7:18 PM on September 20, 2005

I got in just fine using bugmenot, dr. marc. Mellow completely unharshed.
posted by jaysus chris at 7:45 PM on September 20, 2005

The PDFs don't seem to open in Mozilla. The map isn't clickable, and if I select something from one of the many many dropdown, I just get routed back to the same page. I wonder if they've looked at their site in Mozilla or Firefox.
posted by intermod at 8:26 PM on September 20, 2005

intermod, try allowing popups for the site. When you tried to click, something probably appeared near the top of your browser window saying that Firefox just prevented the site from opening a popup. When you click on it it will give you the option of allowing popups from this site.
posted by louigi at 8:33 PM on September 20, 2005

Yup, that did it -- thanks louigi. I'm using Mozilla which is more subtle than FF about letting you know that it blocked a popup.

Seems like they could have easily done this with target="_new" instead of popups. Oh well.
posted by intermod at 8:57 PM on September 20, 2005

Oh, it's for America. Oh well.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:37 PM on September 20, 2005

MetaFilter: This seems pretty cool, except that the whole "membership" thing is harshing my mellow.
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:57 AM on September 21, 2005

Oh, it's for America. Oh well.

My reaction too. Now Asia or eastern Europe or West Aftrica would be cool.
posted by bonehead at 5:51 AM on September 21, 2005

And being able to download the entire book as one would be even more cool. But they look good. Very good.
posted by paperpete at 8:02 AM on September 21, 2005

Gotta say, though, that the Chicago version SUCKS. It misses the majority of good stuff in lieu of the locations of parking garages (some of which are defunct or open to residents of buildings only) and fast food restaurants. Perhaps they did a great job on New York, which is not for me to judge, but the Chicago guide is just awful. I've lived in Chicago my entire life and there wasn't a single thing in there where I said "hmm, that's a good one" or "hmm, I didn't know about that".
posted by MeetMegan at 9:24 AM on September 21, 2005

Right, bugmenot. I stand corrected. Now, who's this Nancy person again?
posted by drmarcj at 4:42 PM on September 21, 2005