BOOK: Quirky travel guide details America’s pop culture landmarks

It’s not the history taught in school.

The invention of the hamburger, the first supposed sighting of Bigfoot, and where Simon met Garfunkel may not have made it into textbooks. But they’re part of our cultural history. And in many cases, the sites are still standing, just waiting for rediscovery.

That’s the idea behind Chris Epting’s “It Happened Right Here: America’s Pop Culture Landmarks.” An often off-the-beaten-track travel guide, it provides plenty of stories and addresses.

Need to see exactly where the internet’s famed Pizza Rat lugged home his prize? (L train station steps, First Ave. and W. 14th., Manhattan.) Eager to visit the corner where Hugh Grant foolishly picked up a sex worker in 1995? (Sunset Blvd. and Courtney Ave., Hollywood.)

They’re here with hundreds of other even more famous and sometimes infamous sites.

Epting, whose previous books offered sightseeing guides for fans of everything from Marilyn Monroe to Led Zeppelin, insists there’s something special about seeing where pop-culture history was made.

“I have often been asked: Why is it so important to you to go stand at the exact location where something happened?” Epting writes. “I always struggled with the answer… until my friend, writer Warren Beath (‘The Book of James Dean’), wrote this: ‘I like to read and build an architectural structure of the imagination.’”

The book offers a whirlwind tour organized by subject. Separate chapters delve into music, crime, and the catchall “Americana: The Weird and the Wonderful.”

That section, unsurprisingly, includes the famous Bigfoot sighting. The author places that at “about one mile upstream from the confluence of Notice Creek and Bluff Creek, Bluff Creek, Calif.” On Oct. 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin were there “searching for the creature. And as the world would soon learn, they claimed to have found it.”

They also filmed it. OK, they filmed something. Although critics call it a home movie of a man in a gorilla suit. It’s on YouTube and continues to captivate the curious more than 50 years later.

Also endlessly debatable are whether aliens ever visited Earth — specifically Roswell, N.M. Something crashed there on July 2, 1947, and just what remains debatable.

“Soon after, the military closed off the area,” Epting writes. “The first announcement made by the military was that a flying saucer had crashed. Quickly after this first announcement, the story was changed — what was thought to have been a flying saucer was in reality a weather balloon.”

The truth isn’t still out there, though. The debris was cleared up long ago. Instead, Epting suggests visiting Roswell’s International UFO Museum and Research Center at 114 North Main St. in Roswell.

You could also take a side trip to Groom Lake, Nev., home to a U.S. military base and its top-secret “Area 51,” where strange lights are often spotted in the sky. Closed to civilians, of course, but in the neighboring town of Rachel, billed as the “UFO Capitol of the World,” you can shop for souvenirs and grab a drink at the A’Le’Inn.

For people who prefer flesh-and-blood scares, there are plenty of real horrors — and blood — in the book’s extensive true crime entries.

For example, there’s 3925 South Norton Ave. in South Central Los Angeles. A pleasant-looking house now, back on Jan. 15, 1947, it was an empty lot. Well, nearly empty. A passerby saw what she thought was a broken mannequin in the weeds. It turned out to be the corpse of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, precisely cut in half.

This became known as the Black Dahlia murder and has inspired books, movies, and many theories. Officially, though, the case was never solved.

Sadly, Southern California is full of stories about beautiful women who met grisly ends. On Aug. 9, 1969, actress Sharon Tate was entertaining friends at her Beverly Hills home when members of the Manson Family cult walked in. Before they left, Tate — who was eight months pregnant — and her guests had all been butchered.

“The owners of the house tore the original down and built another in its place,” Epting writes. “The address was changed to discourage trespassers.” You can’t see the home from the street. But drive by the security gate at 10048 — formerly 10050 Cielo Drive — and you pass by one of Hollywood’s most infamous murders.

Epting includes suggestions for less morbid tourists, too. Have a hunger for firsts? His book tracks down the (albeit sometimes disputed) birthplaces of America’s favorite foods.

The nation’s first hamburger? Served at Louis’ Lunch at 261-263 Crown St. in New Haven, Conn., since 1900, when “a man dashed into a small New Haven luncheonette and asked for a quick meal that he could eat on the run,” Epting writes. “Louis Lassen, the establishment’s owner, hurriedly sandwiched a broiled beef patty between two slices of bread and send the customer on his way.” More than a century later, Lassen’s family continues the tradition.

While a restaurant in Naples, Italy, which opened in 1830, created the first pizza, Lombardi’s, then a few storefronts away from where it now is at 32 Spring St., first served it in 1905.

One of those young immigrants tossing dough, Totonno Pero, later opened his own place in Brooklyn. About to celebrate its centennial, Totonno’s on Coney Island’s W. 16th St. “holds the record for the oldest continuous pizzeria in business in the U.S. run by the same family,” Epting notes.

The book locates additional historic, albeit not quite famous, sites, including the first car crash 1891 in Ohio City, Ohio. On a happier note, Paul Simon met Art Garfunkel at P.S. 164 in Forest Hills, Queens.

Even more fun are the places where famous things didn’t happen — except on TV and movie screens.

New Yorkers have a rich collection of memories to relive. The disco where Tony Manero strutted in “Saturday Night Fever” is here, and still open, at 802 64th St., Brooklyn. Now it mainly caters to a gay clientele. The deli where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally”? Katz’s, of course, at 205 E. Houston St., and the table is helpfully marked.

Fans of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” have plenty to check, including Albanese Meats and Poultry at 238 Elizabeth St. (although in the show, it was uptown and called Lutzi’s) and La Bonbonniere diner at 28 Eighth Ave. And “Sex and the City” devotees have other Manhattan memories to explore, from the Meisel Art Gallery at 141 Price St., where Charlotte worked, to the Jimmy Choo store at 645 Fifth Ave., where Carrie regularly fell head-over-heels in love.

Yearning for a truly multimedia experience? Cue up the theme music for “The Sopranos” on your car’s sound system, and star in your own opening credits — as Epting lays out, turn by turn during Tony’s drive home after he exits the Lincoln Tunnel.

Don’t expect to buy capicola at Satriale’s Pork Store in Kearny (the show shot at a former auto place). It’s also probably best not to linger at the Bada Bing, either, the real-life Satin Dolls club in Lodi, N.J.

And if you do stop at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, where Tony and the family had dinner in the show’s final episode — well, just watch your back.