11 items
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.