A Beastie Boys guide to New York City
First off, shout out to Brooklyn. No tour of the Beastie Boys’ New York City is complete without starting off in Brooklyn. Adam Yauch may have been the only true Brooklynite of the three (Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond were Manhattan kids), but for the better part of 30 years, Brooklyn was the beating heart at the centre of the Beastie Boys experience.
Just take a trip through their catalogue to find out for yourself. MCA has a castle there in ‘Brass Monkey’. It’s the titular destination in ‘No Sleep ’til Brooklyn’. It’s where you could get your pocket picked in ‘Shadrach’. Take the D-train to get there on your way to Coney Island in ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’. But even with those stops in mind, Brooklyn is just the start of the Beastie Boys’ guide to New York City.
If you want a somewhat complete list of destinations, you can check out the back page of the Beastie Boys Book, which conveniently lists over 100 different spots in Manhattan and Brooklyn. You’ll get everything from the approximate places where all three band members lived at different times to bizarre inside-joke spots like ‘Butthole Surfers corner’ just off of E 5th Street and ‘Dick in a Box storage’, which exists somewhere off the map in New Jersey.
In a lot of ways, Beastie Boys were the most New York of all bands. Just by the sheer number of shout-outs and lyrical name-drops given to the five boroughs, the Beasties rank up near the upper echelon. But also in terms of stylistic diversity, Beastie Boys represented the best of what New York had to offer, from the early days of hardcore punk to the golden age of hip hop and everything in between.
Here are some quick hits for those of you who are curious: Yauch’s castle was in Brooklyn Heights, the same neighbourhood he was raised in. While you’re there, check out Adam Yauch Park on State Street. Paul’s Boutique is at the corner of Ludlow and Rivington on the Lower East Side, now replaced with a mural of the trio.
For some more in-depth analysis, let’s turn to the band’s lyrics. If you want to hang out with Lucy from ‘She’s Crafty, 8th and 42nd is just off of Times Square, overlooked by the Port Authority Bus Terminal. ‘The Sound of Science’ mentions Shea Stadium (Flushing Meadows in Queens) and the Palladium (East 14th Street in Manhattan), although both are now demolished, with the Palladium being replaced by dorm rooms for New York University.
Speaking of NYU dorm rooms, the dorm room where Rick Rubin started Def Jam Records was at the Weinstein Hall just off 8th Street, about a five-minute walk from Washington Square Park. Just north, at the corner of 11th Street and 5th Avenue, is where Ad-Rock lived when Paul’s Boutique was released. If you want to see the apartment that Mike D and MCA shared in the year leading up to Licensed to Ill, that would be downtown near the Bowrey on Chrystie Street. That same block now has a Buddhist Temple, the same religion that Yauch had converted to as an adult.
If we’re talking about the Bowrey, that’s where you might get your window washed in ‘Johnny Ryall’. It’s also the street where you would have found CBGBs, the club that the Beastie Boys played at in their earliest days. If you find the right train, you can hop on the subway and make it over to Penn Station by 8th Street, as heard in ‘B-boys Makin’ With the Freak Freak’.
There are a bunch of other lyrical references from deeper in the band’s catalogue. LeFrak City from ‘Shazam!’ is in Queens, ‘Murray’s Cheese Shop’ from ‘Oh Word?’ is still in Greenwich Village, and the Albee Square Mall from ‘Hey Fuck You’ is still in Downtown Brooklyn. The “Brooklyn House of D(etention)” from ‘High Plains Drifter’ is Atlantic Avenue, and if you have to do your homework on the train before you reach High Street Station like in ‘Root Down’, just know that you have to jump off before you reach Manhattan.
Although there are plenty of other references and locations to name, we’re going to end our brief tour with the Beastie’s loving shout-out to their home city, ‘An Open Letter to NYC’. Pretty much the entire song is one long list of destinations, landmarks, and people who make the city what it is. Just a tip: the one and nine runs from Manhattan to the Bronx, there are no more Blimpies on Montague Street, and the Fulton Street Mall still has some nice sneaker shops.
