Why "The Big Apple"?

Hey, long time no see you! Well, hope you´re doing fine. Last July I had the pleasure to be in New York for the second time. Oh, sweet New York. The first time, in 2009, I wasn´t so lucky as this time. I stayed only 3 rainy days in early May. This year I chose the month of July to enjoy such a wonderful city, and it was awesome. I have to thank my friends Adriana and Wellington for the hospitality. Besides, Juliana was a wonderful company. I couldn´t forget Luciano, who patiently stood me.

After I arrived someone asked me why NY was called “The Big Apple”. I couldn´t answer it, but I decided to go for it.

Searching for its origin I understood that there are many possible and debatable reasons, but one that seems more reasonable.

The history says it was the jazz musicians of the 1930s and ‘40s who put the phrase into more or less general circulation. If a jazzman told you he had a gig in the “Big Apple,” you knew he had an engagement to play in the most coveted venue of all, Manhattan, where the audience was the biggest, hippest, and most appreciative in the country.

The term had grown and was in fact generally forgotten by the 1970s. Then Charles Gillett, head of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, got the idea of reviving it. The agency was desperately trying to attract tourists to the town Mayor John Lindsay had dubbed “Fun City,” but which had become better-known for its blackouts, strikes, street crime and occasional riots. What could be a more wholesome symbol of renewal than a plump red apple?

The city's industrial-strength “I ♥ NY” campaign was launched toward the end of the Lindsay administration in 1971, complete with a cheerful Big Apple logo in innumerable forms (lapel pins, buttons, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets, shopping bags, ashtrays, ties, tie tacks, “Big Apple” T-shirts, etc.).

Want more? Click here and enjoy.