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Bridge and tunnel

Slang term, usually pejorative

Summary

Slang term, usually pejorative

a term referring to a type of person who commutes for work or recreation

Bridge and Tunnel (often abbreviated B&T or BNT) is a term – often used pejoratively – to describe people who live in communities surrounding the island of Manhattan in New York City, and commute to it for work or entertainment. It refers to the fact that vehicular travel to the island of Manhattan requires passing over a bridge or through a tunnel. Some use it to describe residents of the other four boroughs of New York City – Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island – but it typically refers to those who travel into the city from outside the area served by the New York City Subway (thus by car), including the Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island.

Etymology

Though the term originates from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, it has come to encompass all people who commute from outside of New York City proper, including Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, and the Hudson Valley. The Oxford Dictionaries explains that a bridge-and-tunnel person is one who lives in the suburbs and is perceived as unsophisticated. However, this is sometimes also used as allusion to New York City's vast transportation system.

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.

“The 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 a reference to this original usage. 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. 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 the Robin Williams Tunnel**.**

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, Orange County, and Riverside County, which historically had 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. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-tunnels-and-bridges

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

References

References

  1. "bridge-and-tunnel". Oxford Dictionaries.
  2. Grynbaum, Michael M.. (2010-12-08). "Are You a Bridge or a Tunnel?".
  3. Nemy, Enid. (1977-12-14). "To Be Thin, Beautiful and Cheek-to-Jowl".
  4. Sonny Smith. (2008-09-30). "About his narcissistic helpless universe". San Francisco Examiner.
  5. ''She Said,'' page 108 (2019), Penguin Press, New York
  6. [http://www.focusfeatures.com/mediaroom/video/greenberg_berlin_press_conference focusfeatures.com] {{webarchive. link. (2011-07-22)
  7. Minsker, Evan. (October 7, 2014). "Here It Is: Sun Kil Moon's Song "War on Drugs: Suck My Cock"". [[Pitchfork Media]].
  8. "Mr. Bridge and Tunnel on the Starlight Express".
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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