West Village Locations to See

It’s a warm Tuesday in early spring and the sidewalk outside Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, Perry Street masquerading as West 73rd, is packed. There are some older women and a few families among the group making this particular Sex and the City pilgrimage, and most seem to be European tourists. People take selfies and post videos to TikTok. A woman who lives across the street, noticing me noticing the scene, invites me to sit on her stoop. The address of Carrie’s on-again, off-again house is blurred on Google Maps and the stoop has long been roped off with a metal chain that reads “Private Property: No Trespassing,” but people come anyway. (Neighbors couldn’t help but wonder why the owner didn’t put in an actual gate.) Still, no one I talked to seemed to care that the show had just gone up on Netflix. The crowds were relentless anyway. “It’s the most popular place in New York City,” another neighbor tells me.

But had Gen Z discovered 66 Perry as they may (or may not have) discovered the show on its latest streaming home? (Max and Prime have long had the series — to say nothing of cable syndication.) After stopping a number of young-looking fans who turn out to be cuspy millennials, I finally find Olivia Manzanares, who is 25 and visiting the stoop from San Francisco. “I don’t think anyone new is watching,” she says. She first got into the show six years ago. “It’s my same college friends who have always watched.” But, she adds as a kind of caveat: “I don’t really talk to younger people.” (At this point, the owner of Carrie’s house leans out the window and says: “Please don’t hang out here. Real people live here.”)

A ten-minute walk away at Jefferson Market Library, where Miranda and Steve get married, I asked two older men volunteering at the garden whether they’d seen any kind of increase in crowds. They are confused by my question; the online discourse has understandably, and mercifully, not reached them. They say they wouldn’t be able to tell anyway. “We wouldn’t know why anyone is here,” one tells me.

Erin Miller, from On Location Tours, has been offering a three-hour Sex and the City jaunt since 2001, and it now runs from the Plaza (where Carrie asks why Mr. Big didn’t marry her) to Buddakan (the restaurant where Carrie and Mr. Big have their rehearsal dinner the night before Mr. Big doesn’t marry her). They see a steady stream of bachelorette parties, Miller says, but her clientele trends a little older — it’s usually women in their 30s to 50s paying $66 to board a charter bus making cupcake and cosmo stops. There are early signs of change. “We’ve been starting to see more people in their early to late 20s,” she says.

Whenever a show gets signs of a new life, On Location will give a heads up to stops on the tour that they might soon be facing an influx of people. The warmer weather and the Netflix release are something like a double whammy in the business: More viewers and peak season for tourism means more buses filling up. Miller says she’s already planning to talk to ONieal’s, which is Scout, the bar run by Miranda’s now-ex-husband, Steve, and invested in by Carrie’s three-time ex, Aidan, and Magnolia Bakery, which is Magnolia Bakery, to warn them.

But the people working at Magnolia don’t seem to need warning. The tourists milling around outside are nothing, they tell me — things get much worse on the weekends and holidays. It’s a lot of attention to hang on a 30-second appearance from 24 years ago, but it’s been continuous. When I ask if they are afraid that even more people will flock to the store, one Gen-Z employee seems skeptical that it would really attract that many young viewers. “I honestly don’t think Gen Z will be into Sex and the City,” she says. “Either the original or the reboot.” I try to ask her a follow-up, but more customers are streaming in. There is no time to talk.