Alphabet City, Manhattan - Cultural References

Cultural References

• In Marvel Comics, Alphabet City is home to District X, also known as Mutant Town, a ghetto primarily populated by mutants. The ghetto was identified as being inside Alphabet City in New X-Men #127. It was described in District X as having the 'highest unemployment rate in the USA, the highest rate of illiteracy and the highest severe overcrowding outside of Los Angeles'. (These figures would suggest a large population.) It was destroyed in X-Factor #34.
• The photo and text book "Alphabet City" by Geoffrey Biddle chronicles life in Alphabet City over the years 1977 to 1989.
• The photo book "Street Play" by Martha Cooper .
• A fictional version of NYC's Alphabet City is explored in the Fallen Angels supplement to Kult.
• Henry Roth's novel Call It Sleep took place in Alphabet City, with the novel's main character, David and his family, living there.
• The fictional 15th Precinct in the police drama NYPD Blue appears to cover Alphabet City, at least in part.
• The series Law and Order: SVU frequently makes reference to the dangers of living in that area of the city.
• The 1996 TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus is primarily set on Avenue A in Alphabet City in 1910.
• The 2005 motion picture Rent, starring Rosario Dawson, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs, and Tracie Thoms, is an adaptation of the 1996 Broadway rock opera of the same name by Jonathan Larson (which itself is heavily based on Puccini's opera La Boheme) and set in Alphabet City on 11th Street and Avenue B, although many scenes were filmed in San Francisco. Unlike the stage musical, which was not set in a specific period of time, the film is clear that the story takes place between 1989 and 1990. Although this leads to occasional anachronisms in the story, the time period is explicitly mentioned to establish that the story takes place before the gentrification of Alphabet City.
• Character actor Josh Pais, who grew up in Alphabet City, conceived and directed a very personal documentary film, 7th Street, released in 2003. Shot over a period of ten years, it is both a "love letter" to the characters he saw everyday and a chronicle of the changes that took place in the neighborhood.
• The 1999 film Flawless, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia, takes place in Alphabet City with all filming taking place there.
• A 1985 movie by Paul Morrissey, Mixed Blood was set and filmed in the pre-gentrification Alphabet city of the early 1980s
• A 1984 movie called Alphabet City, about a drug dealer's attempts to flee his life of crime, took place in the district. It starred Vincent Spano, Zohra Lampert and Jami Gertz.
• The Broadway musical Rent takes place in Alphabet City. The characters live on East 11th Street and Avenue B. They hang out at such East Village locales as Life Cafe.
• The Broadway musical Avenue Q takes place on the fictitious Avenue Q, which is, for the sake of the plot, located in Alphabet City. One of the main characters mentions he is looking for cheap accommodation in Alphabet City.
• Avenue A is mentioned in the Kern / Hammerstein Musical play Show Boat when the Dahomey natives on display at the Chicago World's Fair admit "Our home ain't in Dahomey at all!/Oh, take me back today to Avenue A!" in old New York
• Avenue B is an album by Iggy Pop, who wrote the album while living at the Christodora House on Avenue B.
• Avenue D is referenced in the Steely Dan song, "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More" off the 1975 album Katy Lied
• Alphabet City is an album by ABC.
• The punk house and independent gig venue C-Squat is called so because it sits on Avenue C, between 9th and 10th St. Bands and artists to emerge from the former squat include Leftöver Crack, Choking Victim, INDK, Morning Glory and Stza. Leftöver Crack makes several references to "9th and C", the approximate location of C-Squat in the song "Homeo Apathy" from the album Mediocre Generica.
• Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams references Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "New York, New York".
• U2 references the neighborhood as "Alphaville" in their song "New York".