In his book published in 1890, "How The Other Half Lives", Jacob Riis called the Chinese of New York "a constant and terrible menace to society", "in no sense a desirable element of the population". Riis referred to the reputation of New York's Chinatown as a place full of illicit activity, including gambling, prostitution and opium smoking. To some extent, Riis' characterization was true, though the sensational press quite often exploited the great differences between Chinese and American language and culture to sell newspapers, exploit Chinese labor and promote Americans of European birth. The press in particular greatly exaggerated the prevalence of opium smoking and prostitution in New York's Chinatown, and many reports of indecency and immorality were simply fictitious. Casual observers of Chinatown believed that opium use was rampant since they constantly witnessed Chinese smoking with pipes. In fact, local Chinatown residents often were instead smoking tobacco through such pipes. In the late-19th century, many European-Americans visited Chinatown to experience it via "slumming", wherein guided groups of affluent New Yorkers explored vast immigrant districts of New York such as the Lower East Side. Slummers often frequented the brothels and opium dens of Chinatown in the late 1880s and early 1890s. However, by the mid-1890s, slummers rarely participated in Chinese brothels or opium smoking, but instead were shown fake opium joints where Chinese actors and their white wives staged illicit and exaggerated scenes for their audiences. Quite often such shows, which included gunfights that mimicked those of local tongs, were staged by professional guides or "lobbygows"—often Irish Americans—with paid actors. Especially in New York, the Chinese community was unique among immigrant communities in so far as its illicit activity was turned into a cultural commodity.