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Credit: Far Out / HBO / Wikimedia / Flickr / Unsplash
Travelling in the giant footsteps of Tony Soprano’s New Jersey
After the fuzz of the classic HBO intro screen departed, a fractured view of the New Jersey turnpike rolled into the lounge and television would never be the same again. Even the mere opening credits sequence hinted at the cinematic twist The Sopranos was about to give TV that has proved wildly seminal ever since. Iconic skyline sights melded with the gritty inner workings of the locale, all through the occasional plume of puffed cigar smoke, giving the show a deep sense of contextualisation from the off. Sadly, a lot of modern shows have mimicked this cinematic sense without ever delivering the same substance.
Thereafter, The Sopranos unfurled as one man’s battle against the age-old truth that all ducklings eventually fly the nest. The 86 culture-changing episodes that followed, simply dealt with the repercussions as the pains of their parting came home to roost. As Tony’s high-flying ways were beset by panic attacks, it became clear that no matter how high a duck flies, it must come down for water. The birds left and the tribulations that followed were mere ripples in the pool.
Thus, you can imagine the excitable screeching that occurs when a raft of ducks just happened to rattle by on the famed Sopranos Sites Tour. All in all, there are roughly 50 million ducks in the US and 21 different species in the New York-New Jersey area alone; on any given day they could wabble by barely noticed, but in an odd paradigm of the beauty of The Sopranos itself, even the everyday is given a pinch of added drama—the tour is no different at all.
Thankfully, the frolics of the whistle-stop sightseeing are not merely limited to chance avian encounters. As a guide who proudly starred in the show as a stand-in actor proclaims – breaking up his spiel of behind-the-scenes anecdotes – we are approaching Satin Dolls the infamous strip club where Tony Soprano conducts a fair chunk of important business. Much like the show itself, the surface world of glitzy New York, from which you departed, has long faded into the rear-view mirror and something akin to the underbelly of America reveals itself.
Other pivotal locations impart the same nitty-gritty sense of a show that actively seemed to avoid glamour. The New Skyway Diner perched beneath the Pulaski overpass offers up industrial views on a cinematic scale as smokestacks and rust sit one side of the freeway and giant Manhattan skylines occupy the other.
The Sopranos is a show that has successfully avoided being dated, and in the 22 years since it first aired on this day, it has only transcended society even further. In Little Italy and beyond, at Sopranos hotspots like Holsten’s ice cream parlour, a sense of the show is palpable. As such, given the soft spot that the iconic series occupies in so many of us, the neighbourhoods you can happily breeze through have a sense of familiarity. Places like the humble brick shack of Pizzaland conjure the same oddly comforting feeling that the show managed to craft on its eight-year run.
What’s more, with age-old food institutions holding their own in the area as opposed to the commercial battleground of neighbouring New York, you can dine on the finest Gabagool around without having your eyes ripped out. Other familiar eateries whizz by as you jaunt around landmarks like the terrifically tacky fibreglass Muffler Man and the rather more homely St. Cecilia’s Parish.
The show might have famously faded to black, but in truth, the tour imparts, above all, a sense that its legacy has never really ended. The spots that Tony Soprano rattled through in his wavering warpath are endeared to millions of fans who choose to follow in his giant footsteps every year, but beyond that, there is also a sense of television history. The scope of the show was unlike any other and as such the locations were humanised. There are hundreds of ‘Locations’ tours all over the US, but because of the voyeuristic miasma of The Sopranos itself, none feel quite as natural and fun as this New York to New Jersey round trip.
