The I Hate New York Guidebook

Red heart on white background with black text and small black square with white text. When the button is moved, a silver knife appears stabbed in the heart.

The I Hate NY Guidebook, also known as the I Hate NY GDBK, was written by Warren D. Leight and first published in 1983 by Dell. Leight is a native New Yorker and had written comedic pieces for various magazines before this. He grew up with the “I Love New York” tourist ad campaigns which romanticized Time Square and gave tourists a false sense of what New York City is. This book explores areas and ideas of New York City in a comical matter, and the author refers to NYC as Gotham throughout the book and right on the original cover. While it does explore some of the issues with New York, it is more of a reminder that the shining ads depicting the city in a certain way were not all that New York is. The idea was to obliterate any misconceptions tourists, and even those who live in New York, may have about life in the city. Leight also felt there a gap in the media hype about New York; all the coverage was intended to interest tourists, there was little that described the way real New Yorkers lived.