Westmoreland native's new guidebook explores the 'weird, wonderful and obscure' in New York City

Having grown up in Western Pennsylvania, Rossilynne Skena Culgan had a leg up when she started her first guidebook, “101 Things to Do in Pittsburgh Before You Die.”

A few years ago, the Murrysville native moved to New York City, where she quickly began cataloguing five boroughs’ worth of oddities for her newest guidebook, “Secret New York City: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure.”

“With Pittsburgh, my family’s been there for many, many years,” said Culgan, 36, an editor at Time Out Magazine in New York City as well as an adjunct professor at Pace University. “Working at Time Out has been super-helpful because I’m constantly writing about things to do in the city. Every time I met someone through work or when I was out, I’d try and make sure to ask about ‘secret’ places in New York they might be willing to share.”

In addition, Culgan said with a laugh that she read about the Big Apple “all the way to the end of the internet” as part of the research for “Secret New York City.”

One of her favorites among the city’s secrets is an art installation in world-famous Times Square that thousands of people walk right by every day.

“I was talking to a local artist for a (Time Out) story, and she asked if I knew about Times Square’s secret. I did not,” Culgan said.

The woman walked Culgan over to an area near the also-famous red steps of the Broadway TKTS ticket kiosk, to an unassuming grate in the sidewalk.

“You bend over and listen to it, and at first the sound kind of blends in with the regular city noise, but if you listen closely you can hear this sort of ambient echo of bells ringing,” she said.

Created by artist Max Neuhaus, the piece is called “Times Square.” It is deliberately unmarked, sneakily adding rich harmonic sound texture to its little corner of the city.

“Now whenever I’m in Times Square, I try to stop for a couple minutes to see if people passing by recognize it,” Culgan said. “A lot of people walk right over it, and a few stop for a second because they can hear something, but they don’t know what it is.”

Other oddities in the City That Never Sleeps are a little easier to spot, if you know where to look — Club Richman, a former speakeasy that used be located in the basement of Carnegie Hall; a witch riding a broomstick carved into a bridge pillar in Central Park; or a Bronx carousel where the horses have been replaced with giant insects.

“I think a lot of this book is about slowing down and noticing what’s all around,” Culgan said, a habit she attributed to her years working as a journalist.

“I wish everyone took a journalism class, because it does teach you to interact with the world differently,” she said. “I hope folks who read the book can get a sense of that and apply it to Pittsburgh or Murrysville or wherever they live.”

Culgan will be back in her hometown on Sunday, for a meet-and-greet and pop-up shop for the new book. She will be at Brushes & Beans Cafe, 4556 William Penn Highway in Murrysville, from 1-3 p.m.

For more on the new book, see SecretNewYorkCityBook.com.