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I'm just a few pages short of the end of bio of Rachmaninov. It's 1941 and he's in California. Because of prices mentioned, I was struck by this passage about a lunch Mr. and Mrs. Rachmaninov had at the hotel where they were staying.

"Both ate avocado stuffed with lobster salad, seafood chowder, and a health salad. The pianist signed the $1.10 check in an almost illegible scrawl and left a $.25 tip for the waitress."

$1 in 1941 is worth about $20 today, so even counting for inflation, the price was low.

I would have wondered the same, and been surprised that the multiple isn't more (and that the current equivalent isn't higher).

Now maybe we can do college tuitions....

The inflation rate is averaged across a large basket of goods and services and averaged across all regions of the country. Additionally, different states emerged from the Great Depression on different trajectories. California certainly would have experienced a steeper inflation rate from 1941 to present than the national average. At that time, a hot dog in a bun from a lunch counter was about 10 cents. The Rachmaninov's lunch today would probably be about 10x the cost of a hot dog from a stand today.

How much does a hot dog cost today? I have no idea.

Regards,

I had to look it up myself, but found a web page that said a hotdog at a deli in NYC was $3.95. That seems low, but I'll go with it. If it was 10 cents around 1941 then the Rach's lunch at $1.10 was 11x, so would $44 by that lunch today in a hotel in NYC? Perhaps not.

And I thought "Both ate avocado stuffed with lobster salad" was a quote from the movie "Airplane!".

If Rachmaninoff were alive today, he’d probably get hot dogs from Costco. The CEO refuses to raise the price of the hot dog/soda (pop?) combo (it’s only $1.50), no matter how bad inflation gets.

Sam’s Club also has low-priced concessions.

In the USA lobster was not considered a delicacy at first. The demand for it rose slowly at first, and then it became highly sought after from the 1950s onwards.

And in LA, it may have been Pacific rock lobster, cheaper than north Atlantic lobster.

They lose $15 million a year on the rotisserie chicken. it's the price to get you to the store, not exactly compassion or charity, like casinos comping your hotel room. i'm sure they make it back on those TVs and electronics though, they're usually pretty overpriced except during sale-season. they also stopped selling good peanut butter, the ones they have now is the kind dosed full of palm oil. the old ones were 100% peanut.

lobster is essentially a giant sea cockroach. they're bottom feeders as well, with pollution, not recommended.

Somehow I find it hilarious to imagine Rachmaninoff enjoying hot-dogs and rotisserie chicken at Costco.

the way things are going, every pianists will be eating at costco. the pizza's pretty good imho. you also get unlimited onions, some places have sauerkraut on tap, also good on the pizza.

What is more interesting to me than the price was that a list of menu items the Rachmaninov's had for a lunch in the 1940's was available to the biographer.

When reading Rubinstein's memoir, particularly the first volume, "My Young Years", one gets the impression that he remembered what he was served for every nice meal in his life. This suggests something I've considered to be one attribute of great virtuosi-- they usually had/have extraordinary memories. A teacher once advised me that we learn pieces faster if we memorize them early in the process. I think the possession of phenomenal memories is one of the physiological advantages possessed by great virtuosi.

Rubinstein apparently was not familiar with fine wine in his younger years, because after describing in detail a meal accorded to him by some aristocrat, he would write something like "The wines were selected with care."

It didn't indicate that in the book at all. You're almost for sure making a false assumption. And the menu wouldn't have indicated how much Rachmaninov tipped.

I didn't say the actual printed menu but just the items they ate. Do you have anything to share about the content of my post?

I wonder if at that time, the subject of what was ordered in the hotel restaurant was more of a thing in biographies than it has been in our own times.

I'll say this: When as a kid I read sports biographies, which I read a lot of, I was struck about how often it was mentioned what they ate or drank for breakfast or dinner in the hotels. I still remember the specifics of what was said in a Joe DiMaggio bio about what a teammate of his ordered for a particular breakfast.

Taking this total guesswork a step further:
If that was so, I'd guess that it was because other kinds of details of people's personal lives and travels were considered off limits -- not totally but more than in recent times -- but what they ordered in the hotel restaurant was fine, so....

Both ate avocado stuffed with lobster salad.

Every good boy deserves fruit.

what is baaswls ?

Rubinstein's descriptions far exceed that, and he also was willing to discuss very personal things, relating experiences that would have been off-limits to a biographer.

But I agree with your assessment. Biographies like Nieck's biography of Chopin are "sanitized."

Yes -- AUTO-biographies are different.

BTW, for you or anyone else who ever looked through Rubinstein's autobio(s) (i.e. 2 volumes), do you remember the story that includes "This is such fine work....You work so well...."