It's the sound of young america i'm jesse thorn my guest on the program steward shuffman is

better known by his nom de plume broke-ass steward uh... his new book is broke-ass steward's

guide to living cheaply in new york city it's a follow-up uh... to his first book broke-ass steward's

guide to living cheaply in san francisco which itself was born out of a series of self-published

he's the king of all things in inexpensive and fun steward welcome to the sound of young america

uh... thanks for having me let's talk a little bit about how you got into this business

like uh... like a lot of people you graduated from college and found that the real world was not

particularly friendly to general liberal arts majors who aspire to live in major cities

and et cetera et cetera et cetera um... how did you go from being broke to writing about being broke

well you were american studies major two right yeah we went to university together the university

of california in san francisco yeah i always tell people like you know people like oh would you

major and i was like you know american studies like what's that i was like oh it's how to be

a waiter when you get out of college yeah which is you know it's true i mean i got out of college and

i was working various jobs i was selling hats at one point i um... wound up in a candy store

and um... this this couple came in this one of the the guy was uh... a kid i grew up with in my

neighborhood three years earlier than me hadn't seen him for a while and i'm as they're leaving uh... his

wife or his wife now give me her card and it says uh... travel writer and i'm like

i want to be a travel writer so i decided to be one and i you know i just started uh...

with a little thirty page zine so i just took all the stuff that i knew in the city like all the

cool cheap stuff and uh... ran with it and it got really popular uh... let's talk about visiting

places what are the qualities that make up a great place to uh... to go when you don't have a lot

of money a place that has mass transit usually helps like in la right now i'm so out of sorts driving

...