Bridge and tunnel

This article is about the descriptive geographic term. For the Off-Broadway show, see Bridge and Tunnel (play).

Bridge and tunnel (often abbreviated B&T or BNT) is a pejorative term for people who travel to Manhattan Island from surrounding communities, a commute that requires passing over a bridge and/or through a tunnel.

Etymology

Though the name originates from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which services the five boroughs that make up New York City, the term has come to encompass all people who originate from outside of Manhattan, including the four other boroughs as well as Westchester County, Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Origin

The earliest known instance of this phrase in print is the December 13, 1977, edition of the New York Times:

"On the weekends, we get all the bridge and tunnel people who try to get in," he said.

Elizabeth Fondaras, a pillar of the city’s conservative social scene, who has just told Steve Rubell she had never tried to get into Studio 54 for fear of being rejected, asked who the bridge and tunnel people were.

"Those people from Queens and Staten Island and those places," he said.

Comparisons

"Bridge and tunnel" was later adopted in San Francisco in reference to party-goers who live outside San Francisco, as an ironic reference to this original usage, although the term is not always derogatory. Residents of the Peninsula and South Bay take commuter trains (Caltrain or BART, each of which has several tunnels) and freeways (I-280 and US 101, which do not) to visit city hot-spots but do not actually live in San Francisco (cf. a resident of Yonkers out in Manhattan). Residents from the East Bay typically drive or take a bus across the Bay Bridge (and Yerba Buena Tunnel) to reach San Francisco, or take BART through the Transbay Tube. The commute into San Francisco from Marin County also involves a bridge (the Golden Gate) and tunnel (Waldo).

In Southern California, the term "909er" (a reference to Area Code 909) has come to have a similar, derogatory meaning for people coming from areas inland of Los Angeles and Orange County, including Riverside County, which has the 909 area code.

The term has been adopted in Boston to refer to young people who reside outside of Boston's core neighborhoods of Back Bay, Bay Village, Beacon Hill, Leather District, South End, North End, and the West End. Given Boston's natural and manmade geography, individuals from other neighborhoods in Boston must access the city's social center via one of the various bridges or tunnels that lead into central Boston.

In Southern Ontario, the term "905er" (a reference to Area Code 905) has come to have a similar, derogatory meaning for the suburb area surrounding Toronto-proper, including areas such as Pickering and Oshawa.

In popular culture

• Bridge and Tunnel are a New York punk/post-hardcore band, with a number of releases on the No Idea Records label.
• The Honorary Title, a New York rock band, released a song called "Bridge and Tunnel" as a single from their 2004 album Anything Else but the Truth.
• The movie Losers makes a reference to bridge and tunnel girls when one of the Jason Bigg's ex-roommates calls his girlfriend by that term.
• Bridge & Tunnel is the title of a 2006 critically acclaimed, Tony Award-winning Broadway play
• In Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist Norah makes a reference to Nick being 'Bridge and Tunnel' to which Caroline replies "If he's Bridge and Tunnel what does that make us?"
• In the 2010 movie Greenberg, Roger Greenberg, who resides in New York, doesn't want to go to a bar in L.A. because it's "probably full of bridge and tunnel people. Or whatever the L.A. version of bridge and tunnel is."
• In 2008's The Dark Knight, the Joker tricks Gotham into escaping via ferry by having his hostage declare on the news that "... the bridge and tunnel crowd are sure in for a surprise."
• Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge) story collection by Joshua Cohen.