Have a fun sightseeing experience with our Sex & the City Hotspots Tour in New York City’s Meat Packing District!
The Meatpacking District, once known as Gansevoort Market, is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan that runs roughly from West 16th Street South to Gansevoort Street, and from the Hudson River east to Hudson Street.
For decades, the Meatpacking District was a center for New York City’s slaughter and meatpacking industry. However, beginning in the early 1990s, the Meatpacking District went through a formidable transformation. Today, high-end clothing stores and restaurants together with trendy bars cater to young professionals and “hipsters.” This, coupled with still-active meatpacking companies in the area, contribute to the area’s “gritty glam” appeal.
Fun Activities and Famous Attractions
The Meatpacking District is home to a number of restaurants and bars including 5 ninth, Hector’s Café, Los Dados, Pastis, and the famous modern Asian cuisine restaurant, Buddakan, a Sex and the City staple. Whether you want relax in Buddakan’s lounge, with its stainless steel bar and giant tables, or the Red Vase Room, a sexy tucked-away space with giant red lacquered vases and mood lighting, its exotic atmosphere makes it the perfect place for Carrie and Big’s rehearsal dinner in the Sex and the City movie. The Meatpacking District actually becomes home to SATC’s Samantha Jones, after she moves into an expensive loft-style apartment in the district.
In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood.” The Meatpacking District was even used as the setting for a movie premiere inThe Sopranos, with Carmela Soprano mentioning how “trendy” the neighborhood has become. Meatpacking isn’t featured on our Sopranos Sites Tour, but if you can’t get enough of The Sopranos, it’s the tour for you!
Don’t miss the chance to shop at upscale and chic clothing stores like Stella McCartney, Diane Von Furstenberg, Annelore, Scoop NYC, Carlos Miele, Destination, The Puma Black Store, Rubin Chapelle and Jeffrey’s!
Catch a glimpse of the pre-Civil War Triangle Building, used as a location for mysterious clubs catering to very particular adult tastes in the 1960’s-1980’s. There was even a sign on the street over the entrance that read “Abandon Hope All Who Enter Here.” The Triangle Building in its grungier days was a favorite of filmmakers. The interior of one of the adult clubs, the Hellfire, with its dungeons, cages and torture apparatus was used to shoot a scene in the 1992 thriller Single White Female, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 movie, Cruising, featuring Al Pacino and Paul Sorvino, used The Triangle Building for many scenes. The stalker played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction had an apartment in the building, as did the poet, Richard (Ed Harris), who, dying from AIDS, commits suicide from his seedy apartment window in The Hours. The Meatpacking District was also featured in some scenes of Law & Order, Basic Instinct, Manhattan, and I Am Legend.
In recent years, the district has also become one of the most popular nightlife spots with the opening of clubs such as Tenjune, One, Cielo, APT, PM, and Aer. The Meatpacking District is proving to become stiff competition for Chelsea’s 27th Street.
So, don’t miss the chance to shop, eat and take pictures of some of the most famous movie scene hotspots on our tour!
* In an effort to stay current, we are constantly updating our tours with new locations and cannot guarantee the presence of locations mentioned on our site. If you have a particular interest in locations from a specific TV show or movie, please let your tour guide know and we will do our best to accommodate your request.