A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from December 05, 2012
“If you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library”

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library” is a popular quotation credited to the musician Frank Zappa (1940-1993). Zappa loved libraries, but he hated formal education; he left community college after one semester. In 2010, Zappa’s statue was added to the Southeast Anchor Library in Baltimore (his home city), based in part on this quotation.
 
“If you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library” has been cited in print since at least 2003. Zappa probably said the statement in the 1970s or 1980s, but the historical source of the quotation cannot be found easily online.
 
   
Wikipedia: Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, guitarist, recording engineer, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.
(...)
Zappa’s interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out! Due to his family’s frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.
     
Writing.com
Wild and Restless Rose
Fri, 02/14/2003 @6:32am
(...)
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” (Frank Zappa)
 
Tinotopia
Twonk, TUE MAR 18, 2003 at 14:26
“If you want to get laid, go to college; if you want an education, go to the library.” – Frank Zappa.
   
MetaFilter
Nobel Prize Winners Hate School.
January 14, 2004 6:29 AM
(...)
COMMENTS
As is often the case, Frank Zappa said it best: “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” I don’t understand how anyone can claim that school teaches kids to learn for themselves; learning for myself taught me to learn for myself.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 7:21 PM on January 14, 2004
 
Google Books
When They Were 22:
100 Famous People at the Turning Point in Their Lives

By Brad Dunn
Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing
2006
Pg. 172:
Though highly intelligent, he (Frank Zappa—ed.) disdained school, once saying, “lf you want to get laid, go to college. lf you want an education, go to the library.”
   
HubPages
Quotes from True Genius: Frank Zappa
by St.James
This Hub was last updated on October 4, 2008
(...)
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
   
Google Books
College Is for Suckers:
The First College Guide You Should Read

By April Norhanian
Bloomington, IN: iUniverse
2009
Pg. 13:
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”—Frank Zappa
     
Afka.net
Zappa Days
By Erik Maza
The Baltimore Sun, September 17, 2010
Symposium, free performances planned for dedication of statue to music pioneer Frank Zappa, a one-time Baltimorean.
 
At the corner of Conkling Street and Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, a head looks over the neighborhood like a bodiless sentinel. The olive-toned, mustachioed bust takes in a colorful panorama: a pizzeria to the north and a pawnbroker to the west. Starting this weekend, when you hock that gold watch or grab a quick slice of pizza, Frank Zappa will be watching.
 
Two years after Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, donated a $50,000 bust of the Baltimore-born rocker to Charm City, it will be installed Sunday at the Southeast Anchor Library in a daylong celebration.
(...)
When asked where the bust should be placed, Gail Zappa said she picked a library because her husband was a self taught man who loved libraries.
 
“He always said, ‘If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want to learn, go to a library” she said.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityEducation/Schools • Wednesday, December 05, 2012 • Permalink


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