Hell's Kitchen
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Hell's Kitchen (also known as Clinton) is a neighborhood of New York City. It is the area between 34th and 59th Streets, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.
Originally the expression "Hell's Kitchen" referred to a rough neighborhood in South London. The term in reference to New York first appeared in print on September 22, 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to a police guide to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to a particular tenement at 39th Street and 10th Avenue as "Hell's Kitchen", and said that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the city". According to this version, 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues became known as Hell's Kitchen and the name was later expanded to the surrounding streets.
One version ascribes the name's origins to a German restaurant in the area known as Heil's Kitchen, after its proprietors. But the most common version traces it to the story of Dutch Fred The Cop, a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself", to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen."
The name "Hell's Kitchen" might also be from an old saying from Ireland: "This place is hotter than Hell's Kitchen."
In recent years, the neighborhood has undergone gentrification. Partly as a result, the alternative name "Clinton" (the neighborhood is legally known as the Clinton Special Use District) has gained in popularity. The name has long had some currency, however; the Chelsea Clinton News, covering this area and the adjoining Chelsea, has been published for decades.
Hell's Kitchen in popular entertainment
Hell's Kitchen is a popular slum setting within fiction:
- Newspaper mogul Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead worked his way from poverty in Hell's Kitchen to great wealth.
- The Marvel comics fictional character Nick Fury was born and raised in Hell's Kitchen.
- The Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil battles crime in Hell's Kitchen.
- "Hell's Kitchen" is the title of an instrumental song from Dream Theater's album Falling Into Infinity.
- Features in the work of Eugene O'Neill, such as the bar setting in The Iceman Cometh. O'Neill was known to have frequented bars in the area.
- The boys from Sleepers also come from Hell's Kitchen.
- The 1990 film State of Grace starring Sean Penn, Ed Harris and Gary Oldman is set in Hell's Kitchen.
- Hell's Kitchen is the title of a 1939 film, featuring Ronald Reagan and members of the Dead End Kids.
- The neighborhood was the setting for West Side Story.
- Latin hip-hop singer Lisa Lisa (aka Lisa Velez) hails from the neigborhood, and her 1991 release is named Straight Outta Hell's Kitchen.
- Sergeant Max Greevey from the TV series Law & Order hailed from Hell's Kitchen.
- In the PC game Deus Ex, the protagonist JC Denton meets important characters and fights terrorists and UNATCO troops in 2052's Hell's Kitchen. This area is a dark slum, and all action there takes place at night; the game presents a dystopian future, with many such dark areas.
Other meanings
- Hell's Kitchen is the name of an album by Maxim, a member of The Prodigy.
- Hell's Kitchen was also the name of a cookery-based reality show first broadcast in the UK on ITV in 2004, and in the US on FOX in 2005.
- Hell's Kitchen is also a show on the German channel VIVA, which features mainly heavy metal music video clips.
External links
- Hell's Kitchen Online (http://www.hellskitchen.net)es: Hell's Kitchen