New York Pop Culture

New York City is the country’s capital of culture, finance, and media (and a lot of things), so the amount of books, movies, and TV shows that have been set here are countless. The films of Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, though, are a good place to start. Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Manhattan Murder Mystery as well as Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are well worth watching. On TV, the endless stream of reruns of Law & Order gives a fine—if a tad crime-ridden—impression of New York City. When the long-running show was cancelled in 2010, many local actors who worked as extras on the show were suddenly out of a job. And then of course, there’s Seinfeld, which was filmed in Los Angeles (Sssshhh!), but was set on the Upper West Side. If the page is more your fancy, there are a number of writers who have written extensively about New York, both in fiction and nonfiction. Check out the works of Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster, Mary Gaitskill, and Jonathan Ames. There are too many rock bands associated with New York to mention them all, but the latest crop seems to embody Brooklyn becoming the city’s new center of artistic development. Bands like MGMT, Sleigh Bells, Au Revoir Simone, Animal Collective, and Yeasayer have put the Brooklyn neighborhood Williamsburg on the music map for good.