12/18/2012
Culture and contemporary life
Further information: Culture of New York City and List of people from New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of Museum Mile in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper East Side, is one of the largest museums in the world.[195]
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated National Historic Landmark as the site of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.[196]
New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world by the diplomatic consulates of Iceland[197] and Latvia[198] and by New York's own Baruch College.[199] A book containing a series of essays titled New York, culture capital of the world, 1940–1965 has also been published as showcased by the National Library of Australia.[200]
Tom Wolfe has quoted regarding New York's culture that:
“ Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather. ”
—Tom Wolfe[201]
Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States.[202][203] The city was a center of jazz[204] in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s and the birthplace of hip hop in the 1970s.[205] The city's punk[206] and hardcore[207] scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s, and the city has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.
The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting; and hip hop,[190] punk, salsa, disco, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley and Jazz in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.[208][209][210] The city is also widely celebrated in popular lore, featured frequently as the setting for books, movies (see New York in film), television programs, etc.
Entertainment and performing arts
See also: Music of New York City
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
New York is a prominent location in the American entertainment industry, with films, television series, books, and other media being set there. As of 2008, New York City is the second largest center for the film industry in the United States with 63,000 workers who were paid as much as $5 billion in wages.[211] and by volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production.[212] The Association of Independent Commercial producers is also based in New York City.[213] The city has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries of all sizes.[214]
The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.[214] Wealthy industrialists in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as the famed Carnegie Hall and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, that would become internationally established. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions, and in the 1880s New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition.
The city's 39 largest theaters (with more than 500 seats each) are collectively known as "Broadway," after the major thoroughfare that crosses the Times Square theater district.[215] This area is sometimes referred to as The Main Stem, The Great White Way or The Rialto. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is home to 12 influential arts organizations, including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic. New York City Ballet, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School and Alice Tully Hall. Central Park SummerStage presents performances of free plays and music in Central Park.[216]
Tourism
Further information: Tourism in New York City and List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
Times Square has the highest annual attendance rate of any tourist attraction in the US,[217] and according to Travel + Leisure magazine's October 2011 survey, the world.[49]
Tourism is one of New York City's most vital industries, with more than 40 million combined domestic and international tourists visiting each year in the past five years.[218]
Major destinations include the Empire State Building; Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; Broadway theater productions; museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; greenspaces such as Central Park and Washington Square Park; Rockefeller Center; Times Square; the Manhattan Chinatown; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the St. Patrick's Day parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage. Special experiences outside the key tourist areas of the city include the Bronx Zoo; Coney Island; Flushing Meadows-Corona Park; and the New York Botanical Garden. Plans were unveiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on September 27, 2012 for the New York Wheel, the world's tallest ferris wheel, to be built at the northern shore of Staten Island, overlooking the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, and the Lower Manhattan skyline.[219][220]
In 2010, New York City received nearly 49 million tourists,[221][222] subsequently surpassed by a record 50 million tourists in 2011.[223][224]
Media
Main article: Media in New York City
Rockefeller Center, home to NBC Studios
New York City is a center for the television, film, advertising, music, newspaper, and book publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America (followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto).[225] Some of the city's media conglomerates include Time Warner, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, the News Corporation, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, and Viacom. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.[226] Two of the "Big three" record labels' headquarters, are in New York City; Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group also has offices in New York. One-third of all American independent films are produced in New York.[227]
More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city[227] and the book-publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[228] Two of the three national daily newspapers in the United States are New York papers: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. Major tabloid newspapers in the city include: The New York Daily News which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson[229] and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[230] The city also has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[231] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[232] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African American newspaper. The Village Voice is the largest alternative newspaper.
The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. Many cable channels are based in the city as well, including MTV, Fox News, HBO, and Comedy Central. In 2005, there were more than 100 television shows taped in New York City.[233] The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, NYCTV,[234] that has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government.
New York is also a major center for non-commercial educational media. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[235] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[236]
Cuisine
Main article: Cuisine of New York City
New York City's food culture includes a variety of world cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Eastern European and Italian immigrants have made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake and New York-style pizza, while Chinese and other Asian restaurants, burger joints, Italian restaurants, diners and coffee shops are ubiquitous. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of modern New York street food, although hot dogs and pretzels are still the main street fare.[237] The city is also home to many of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the United States.[238]
Accent
The New York area has a distinctive regional speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It is generally considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[239] The classic version of this dialect is centered on middle and working-class people of European descent, and the influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect.[240]
The traditional New York area accent is non-rhotic, so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; hence the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk."[240] There is no [ɹ] in words like park [pɑək] or [pɒək] (with vowel backed and diphthongized due to the low-back chain shift), butter [bʌɾə], or here [hiə]. In another feature called the low back chain shift, the [ɔ] vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, chocolate, and coffee and the often homophonous [ɔr] in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American.
In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like "girl" and of words like "oil" become a diphthong [ɜɪ]. This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a reversal of the er and oy sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street" (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet).[240] The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s sitcom All in the Family (played by Carroll O'Connor) was a good example of a speaker with this feature. This speech pattern is no longer prevalent.[240]
Sports
Main article: Sports in New York City
The New York Marathon is the largest marathon in the world.[241]
The US Open Tennis Championships are held every August and September in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
Citi Field has been home to the New York Mets since 2009.
New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,[242] Major League Baseball,[243] the National Basketball Association,[244] and the National Hockey League.[245] Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are located in the New York metropolitan area.[246] The New York metropolitan area has the most professional sports teams in these four leagues. It is one of 12 metropolitan areas in the US to have a team in each of the four leagues and the only one to have at least two teams in each league.
New York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball."[247] There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas (Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and the San Francisco Bay Area being the others) to have two baseball teams. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in 2000. No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in 1906, St. Louis in 1944, and the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989).
The city's two current Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets[248] and the New York Yankees,[249] who compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has also come to be called the Subway Series. The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,[250] while the Mets have won the World Series twice.[251] The city also was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,[252] and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.[253] There are also two minor league baseball teams in the city, the Brooklyn Cyclones[254] and Staten Island Yankees.[255]
The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,[256] which will host Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.[257]
The New York Rangers represent the city in the National Hockey League.[258] The New York Islanders, who currently play in Nassau County, Long Island,[259] will become the second team in the city after their move to Brooklyn in 2015.[260] Also within the metropolitan area are the New Jersey Devils, who play in nearby Newark, New Jersey.[261]
The city's National Basketball Association teams include the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Knicks, while the city's Women's National Basketball Association team is the New York Liberty. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[262]
In soccer, New York is represented by the Major League Soccer side, New York Red Bulls. The Red Bulls play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.[263]
Queens is host of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, one of the four annual Grand Slam tournaments.[264] The New York Marathon is one of the world's largest, and the 2004–2006 events hold the top three places in the marathons with the largest number of finishers, including 37,866 finishers in 2006.[241] The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.[265]
Many sports are associated with New York's immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was popularized by youths in the 1930s. A street in The Bronx has been renamed Stickball Blvd, as tribute to New York's most known street sport.[266]
