Rivington Street (Manhattan) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Rivington Street was used for the cover to the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique.

The Rivington School art movement was named after an abandoned public school building located on Rivington Street.

Rivington Street is a hang-out spot for pop musician Lady Gaga, as quoted on Saturday Night Live in her acoustic medley of "Bad Romance," her own composition on New York, and "Poker Face." She said, "I still prefer a beer and whiskey with my friends on Rivington Street." The street is again referenced on her track "Heavy Metal Lover," where she sings "Dirty pearls and a patch for all the Rivington rebels."

In 1979, Genya Ravan wrote and recorded her autobiographical song 202 Rivington Street, the address being where her family settled after their escape from the holocaust in 1947. Like much of her work, including Jerry's Pigeons from her 1978 album Urban Desire, the haunting ballad contains numerous references to neighborhood landmarks, including Pitt Street Park. "Laundry on strings hanging from iron bars with nowhere to escape" - From 202 Rivington Street / Genya Ravan (1979)

In the novel What Makes Sammy Run?, the protagonist Sammy Glick turns out to have lived on Rivington Street at the beginning of his career, then named "Samuel Glickstein", when he is hired as a copy boy by The New York Record. The street is described by the narrator as one of a conglomerate of "jumbled ghetto streets" into which millions of Jews are crowded.