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Tina Fey turned her years running the Saturday Night Live writers' room into a live-action cartoon about a sketch show nobody at the network cared about. Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy, Tracy Jordan and Kenneth the page won three straight Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys while the ratings never caught up — and NBC kept it on anyway.
The Big Can: a tallboy of iced tea wrapped in pastel southwestern art that looked like nothing else in the cooler. It came out of a Brooklyn warehouse in 1992 to fight Snapple, priced at 99 cents — a number the company later started printing on the aluminum itself, and has refused to let go of ever since, through thirty-plus years of inflation.
Three New York punks who made the first rap album to top the Billboard chart, then spent the 90s outrunning the frat-party joke. The Beastie Boys played their own instruments on Check Your Head, starred as fake 70s cops in the Spike Jonze video for "Sabotage," headlined Lollapalooza, and closed the decade with Hello Nasty and two Grammys.
You hail a New York taxi, the ceiling erupts in lights, and Ben Bailey booms that you're in the Cash Cab. Answer trivia to your destination and you leave with cash; three strikes and you're out on the sidewalk, wherever that happens to be.
Donna Karan's younger, cheaper, city-cool little sister — the four letters everyone could actually afford. DKNY's logo tees and sweatshirts made a designer name attainable for the '90s mall, half the price of the runway line and twice as casual.
A color-blocked leather jacket with a giant black-and-white eight ball on the back, designed by Michael Hoban in 1990 and priced around $800. For two winters it was the status symbol of New York, worn by ballplayers and rappers, robbed off kids' backs, and then dropped so hard that Seinfeld put one on Puddy as a joke.
The toy store as a destination — the marble-and-magic Fifth Avenue palace with the giant walk-on piano from Big, toy-soldier doormen, and stuffed animals taller than you were. For a '90s kid, FAO Schwarz was the place a trip to New York was really about.
An anonymous blogger narrates the scheming and social apocalypses of Manhattan's prep-school royalty, and every scandal ends the same way: "xoxo, Gossip Girl." The guilty pleasure that had parents clutching pearls and teens clutching their DVRs.
Kevin boards the wrong plane and lands in New York with his dad's bag and credit card — cue the Plaza Hotel, the pigeon lady, and traps somehow crueler than the first movie's. The rare sequel kids argued was better than the original.
The love fern, the scrapbook of future children, the Knicks game she ruins and the yellow dress. Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey each ran a bet on the other for ten days in the 2003 rom-com that critics shrugged at and audiences graded A-minus.
The WB's fall-1999 New York romance with a name gimmick: she was Jack, Jacqueline Barrett, played by Amanda Peet, and he was Jill, David Jillefsky, played by Ivan Sergei. Two seasons, a pregnancy cliffhanger nobody ever resolved, and a supporting cast (Sarah Paulson, Jaime Pressly, Justin Kirk, Simon Rex) that went on to much bigger things.
Paul and Jamie Buchman, a documentary filmmaker and a PR specialist in a Greenwich Village apartment, bickered about nothing for seven seasons while NBC moved them around the week. Helen Hunt won four straight Emmys for it, and the dog, Murray, was twice voted TV's most popular.
Mattel's big-headed, pouty-lipped answer to Bratz: Barbie and her city friends Madison and Chelsea, named after New York City places and later packaged with DVDs. The New York Times said their "bulging, makeup-caked eyes" evoked their rival, and MGA sued.
The kid from Queensbridge who, at 20, made the album every rap argument still starts with. Nas's Illmatic (1994) sold slowly and never left the conversation; It Was Written made him a star, two rushed albums made the doubters loud, and "Ether" settled a feud with Jay-Z that defined New York hip-hop at the turn of the millennium.
A New York City all-news radio station staffed by characters too smart for their own good: a boyish news director, a pompous anchorman, an eccentric billionaire owner, and the kind of ensemble whose timeslot NBC moved eleven times because the network never quite knew what it had.
Steven Bochco and David Milch's 15th Precinct brought handheld cameras, raw language and bare backsides to network television in 1993 — and dozens of ABC affiliates refused to air it. The ratings won the argument, Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz became the squad room's battered conscience, and the show ran twelve seasons.
"Make it work." Heidi Klum's double air kiss and "Auf Wiedersehen," Tim Gunn pacing the Parsons workroom, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia on the judging panel, and a dozen designers sewing cocktail dresses out of grocery-store finds against the clock. Bravo's 2004 sleeper hit turned fashion design into a sport and won a Peabody for it.
Four single women navigate New York nightlife, relationships, and Manolo Blahnik shoes. HBO's June 1998 breakout became the defining show of female friendship and the cosmopolitan—literally.
The iced-tea and juice-drink brand that defined 1990s refreshment, served in a distinctive glass bottle with a metal cap (the famous "Real Facts" printed under the lid didn't arrive until 2002). That satisfying pop when you opened it, the quirky trivia, and flavors like peach and raspberry made Snapple a generational memory.
Michael J. Fox ran a fictional New York City Hall as Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty, covering for a clueless mayor and a staff of lovable disasters. His 2000 farewell, after going public with Parkinson's, drew nearly 33 million viewers; Charlie Sheen took the desk for two more seasons.
HBO wired a real taxi with hidden cameras, put a real cab driver behind the wheel, and let strangers talk at three in the morning. Passengers found out they'd been filmed only when the ride ended. It won an Emmy in its first year, ran on and off for fifteen years, and remains one of the strangest things a premium network ever put on the air.
Amel Larrieux's honeyed 1995 plea over Bryce Wilson's spare beat, the R&B single that went to number five on the Hot 100 and outlived the duo that made it. Still the sound of a summer night in 1995.
"Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking." Meryl Streep's whisper-quiet Miranda Priestly, the cerulean sweater speech, the red stiletto with the pitchfork heel. The 2006 film out-earned every previous movie of its three leading women, ran as counter-programming to Superman Returns, and defined what a personal assistant looks like in the public imagination.
The flashy girl from Flushing with the unmistakable nasal laugh, hired off the doorstep to raise a stuffy Broadway producer's three kids. Fran Drescher in head-turning leopard print, Niles the butler landing zingers on C.C., and years of will-they-won't-they with Mr. Sheffield.
Five New Yorkers who met through prep schools and made guitar rock sound urgent again. Is This It, cut in an East Village basement in 2001 to sound like "a band from the past that took a time trip into the future," set off the garage-rock revival, had its cover and tracklist changed for America after 9/11, and topped NME's list of the decade.
The wheat-colored, waterproof six-inch work boot from New Hampshire that New York hip-hop turned into a uniform. Unscuffed Timbs with baggy jeans and a Carhartt were the mid-90s look from Wu-Tang to Biggie, and the founder's grandson spent 1993 explaining that the company's customers were "honest working people."
A nine-man crew out of Staten Island that came out swinging in 1993 with kung-fu samples, a logo you could draw on a desk, and a business plan other labels had turned down. Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) rebuilt New York rap, the solo albums kept coming, and Wu Wear stores and Macy's racks proved the "W" was a brand.