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“I’ve wanted to live in New York ever since Gossip Girl aired,” I overheard a woman my age confide wistfully to her partner on the steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The steps were packed with people trying to find the exact spot where Blair and Serena had their daily ritual breakfast yoghurt. Yellow taxis whizzed by, the smell of overpriced, freshly baked bagels from a nearby cart filled the air, and I smoothed down my red jacket for a photo I’d mentally choreographed years ago. I wasn’t the only one trying to relive a scene from a show that defined our teenage years.
For millennials raised on a diet of Gossip Girl, Friends, Sex and the City, and The Devil Wears Prada, NYC was the dream — a stylish, fast-paced fantasy where careers were built in heels, friendships over brunch, and meet-cutes in bodegas. Now, over a decade since my favourite shows ended and well into adulthood, I finally made my NYC pop culture trip – not just to sightsee, but to find out what’s real, what’s changed, and whether the New York seen on screen still exists.
Spoiler: it does — just with an astronomical price tag, more queues, and only if you arrive with a healthy dose of self-awareness.
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I was an impressionable teenager when Gossip Girl dropped. Like many others, I was quickly swept up by the image of the Upper East Side. I was borderline obsessed with breakfast at Sarabeth’s and enamoured by Blair Waldorf’s sass and impeccable fashion sense. In some ways, our lives overlapped — minus the boatload of generational wealth. We both attended private all-girls schools and applied to NYU. In Blair’s case, daddy pulled strings. In mine, no scholarship came through (despite having the grades). We also shared a love of headbands — although these days, my scalp protests more than it used to.
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Even though I was devastated at not attending NYU’s journalism programme, the real heartbreak was not getting to live out my New York fantasy. A friend from the city had once rolled her eyes when I’d confessed this. “What kind of teenager can really afford to skip school to have drinks at Gramercy Tavern or visit the Empire State Building on a random Tuesday?” she asked.
Well, years later, as an established journalist with the ability to book my own flights, I was in New York with my husband to find out.
One of our first stops was indeed the Empire State Building — on a random Tuesday, just like Blair. We walked from our Midtown hotel to West 34th Street, stopping first at the Comfort Diner. Not quite Sarabeth’s, but we swapped $24 avocado toast for an all-American breakfast: eggs, buttered toast, fried potatoes and bottomless coffee for $11.
The streets outside Macy’s at Herald Square buzzed with “Macy’s in Bloom”. Midtown might lack Upper East Side sparkle, but it houses top attractions within walking or subway distance. Bryant Park has excellent indie coffee, Rockefeller Center hosts Fallon tapings, and the Museum of Modern Art packs a century of culture in one building.
After a TSA-style security check and a 72-minute queue, we made it to the top of the Empire State Building — first the 86th floor, then the 102nd. No wonder Blair missed Chuck when he asked to meet her there. It costs $80 plus a $5 transaction fee per adult, with an official photo at $25, a magnet for $12, and a drink for $18. My friend was right — even as a financially independent adult, this was an expensive Tuesday. And it wasn’t even midday.
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The skyline was, of course, breathtaking. But a half-hour stroll west on 34th Street reveals a much cheaper — and arguably more romantic — way to experience the city: the High Line. Built on a disused elevated railway, this two-mile-long public park on Manhattan’s west side offers street art, performances, and sublime views. It ends at Little Island and Pier 57, where we grabbed “sodas” at a Duane Reade and enjoyed the skyline from the rooftop park offering views all the way to the Statue of Liberty. It cost just $7 — far more reasonable than the $235 we’d shelled out a few hours earlier.
The Waldorfs and Van Der Woodsens would never approve, though.
It started to rain just as we finished our drinks, but the 20-minute walk to the West Village wasn’t too tough for seasoned Londoners. Contrary to what Friends has us believe, Greenwich Village is far from a haven for rent-controlled flats. Outside 90 Bedford Street, tourists posed in front of the sun-kissed building that stood in for Monica, Rachel, Chandler, and Joey’s apartments. Exasperated drivers politely honked and everyone scrambled out of the way.
Back in the early 2000s, a two-bedroom flat here likely cost between $3,500 and $4,000 a month — already a stretch for a struggling twentysomething chef and a runaway bride-slash-waitress. However, Monica inherited the lease from her grandmother, which was the necessary plot twist. As for Chandler and Joey living across the hall — with Chandler’s mystery job and Joey’s acting career — that remains well within the domain of sitcom logic. These days, a two-bed here costs between $9,000 and $14,000 per month.
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Perhaps, the more tangible Friends experience lies right beneath 90 Bedford: The Little Owl, the restaurant that stood in for Central Perk. In contrast to the six friends who always had space on the orange couch, there was a queue. I ordered a cappuccino just to say I’d had coffee at the “real Central Perk”, paired with their signature string beans with chillies, sesame, mint, and oyster sauce. I was tempted to order onion soup in honour of Monica’s many soups throughout the show, but settled for their skate sandwich – as did my husband, who added a lemonade. The total came to $105.30 for two.
Feeling the pinch, we decided to retire to our hotel for the evening.
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The next morning, we headed to the Upper East Side for breakfast at Lexington Candy Shop — the last surviving authentic NYC luncheonette, established and family-run since 1925. The place was lined with photos of famous diners, and a worker behind the counter casually made a giant root beer float. We ordered a stack of butter pancakes, some grilled cheese, and a glass of orange juice that cost a whopping $8.
It’s a far cry from the Soup Burg Carrie Bradshaw used to haunt for bottomless coffee and column-writing. The beloved diner’s last branch — just seven minutes from Lexington Candy Shop — shut in 2014 and was replaced by a TD Bank. Once serving full meals for under $10, the inaugural Madison Avenue location couldn’t survive rising rents even in 2006, when the landlord hiked it from $21,000 to $65,000 a month.
Today, working from a Soup Burg counterpart like Lexington would set Carrie back $50–60 for a cappuccino, pancakes and orange juice — a far cry from her bottomless coffee days. Unless she was earning $1 a word (which, let’s be honest, she wasn’t), she’d need to file multiple freelance pieces to cover a single breakfast shift, let alone her Chanel shoes or “rent-controlled” Upper East Side flat.
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For a more affordable Sex and the City moment, we headed to Magnolia Bakery; a shop made famous when Carrie and Miranda once sat outside analysing Aidan’s good looks. Instead of cupcakes, we got their “world famous” banana pudding: vanilla custard layered with banana slices and whipped cream. At $5, it was the cheapest thing we’d eaten all trip — but for those after the full SATC cupcake moment, a box of six frosted buttercream ones costs $24.99.
With our wallets fast depleting, we retired to our hotel overlooking the glorious Lower Manhattan skyline. Fittingly, it was just a short walk from the apartment Andy Sachs shared with her boyfriend, Nate, in The Devil Wears Prada. How she managed to live a stone’s throw from the Financial District, Chinatown, and Manhattan Bridge as an unemployed-slash-fresh-graduate aspiring journalist is beyond me.
That’s the thing about New York City. As a journalist, so much of the pop culture that shaped my teens revolved around writing and publishing, with characters who shared my love of storytelling. New York made dreaming big feel inevitable. And while real life may sometimes be closer to Peter Parker sprinting through pizza deliveries or Kevin McCallister getting yelled at for spending $450 a night at The Plaza, the city still offers cinematic moments, just ask the crowds recreating their favourite Blair and Serena scene on The Met steps (for free).
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