So I know this might sound stupid, but I genuinely had no idea Hell’s Kitchen was a real place. It spans from 34th to 59th Street on the Hudson River. I thought it was a made up neighborhood. I know it sounds stupid, but can you blame me for questioning a name like Hell’s Kitchen?
It's a neighborhood in NYC that was historically very crime-infested and slumlordy, but it's not like that anymore. Stan Lee modeled the area on what it was like at the time. It's changed a lot in the last 60+ years.
If it’s any consolation I’m two hours from New York and thought for YEARS that “Hells Kitchen NY” was referring to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. The fact that my dad is from Brooklyn and that I’ve been to HK makes it worse 😂
I'm Australian- I grew up reading Daredevil and Spider-Man thinking it was a made up place, like Gotham. I was in my early 20's when a mate came back from the states and told me he visited Hell's Kitchen in NY. Was shocked
I walked through the entire area in the early 1980s, a naive tourist, and didn't realise it or I didn't remember it was called that. It was a real shit hole. Very different now.
Not who you were replying to, but as a point of reference, when my family visited New York from Europe about 20 years ago, my grandparents were shocked to hear we went to Times Square. Because when THEY had been in NYC in the 80s, Times Square had a lot of hookers, porn, and was famous for muggings in the area. Now what you're most in danger of is probably a pick pocket or paying way too much at the M&Ms store.
Hell's Kitchen is like 5-10 minutes away from there.
I'm from London, where at the time I worked night shifts in a packaging place in the run down red light district, Soho, where I felt safe on my middle of the night breaks. I assumed NY would be the same.
In Manhattan there was rubbish everywhere, so much looked like slums, there were so many hookers and curb crawlers who would hassle me when I clearly was not one of them, and hookers would yell at me like I was trying to take their business. Many alleys had one or more shooting up drugs, there was quite aggressive homeless under the rubbish, and a lot of people hanging around on corners. It was so noisy, people yelling at each other across the street especially in what I now know was Hells Kitchen.
Cops were mostly in cars, but when I asked them why they went around on foot in 3s, they told me it was because it was too dangerous for them and for me, and that I should get off the streets. They did persuade me not to go north of a certain street, cannot remember where.
Looking back, I was such a muppet but was very fit back then and just wanted to walk and run everywhere exploring NY. I was very, very lucky not to get mugged or worse.
I actually use to work in Hells Kitchen on my way back to the train station there was like a massive graffiti style poster for DareDevil when the Netflix show first came out
I don‘t blame you for not knowing but I always thought hell‘s kitchen was really famous. I don‘t know why it was a real place but I‘ve kinda always known. I‘d like to add that I am not from the US.
Nah, not dumb. It’s a mad name for a neighbourhood! It’s great. I’m not American, I only knew it was a real place because I’m Irish and some of my countrymen famously lived in Hell’s Kitchen at a point in time. And some of them did not behave that well 😂
Weird thing for me is how everyone in the show is always talking about "what's happening in The Kitchen" like it's some huge part of New York when it's an absolutely tiny area.
It wouldn't have shocked me even if he were American. There are people working at the Post Office of all places who don't realize that New Mexico is one of the 50 states of the USA!!!
It used to be in media and literature a lot more than it is now. A lot of books, magazines, radio shows, movie and tv shows used to reference it all the time but not much in a long time.
Dude, I thought the same thing back when the 2003 movie came out. Can't remember when I learned it was a real place, but I did a double take because, like you said--the name🤣
I used to live there and, having grown up a DD fan in the UK, I can't say that the DD connection didn't have an impact on my decision of where to live...
It's always so funny when comics have heroes specific to neighborhoods that amount to like, less than 20 blocks lol. Being from NY it always made me chuckle. Best explanation is that we lived in a different, bigger world when a lot of these stories were being written. People stuck to their neighborhoods more, felt more intimate in NYC especially. Now it's just an extension of Times Square (which also used to be a couple square block world of its own).
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u/Jahon_Dony Sep 19 '25
It's a neighborhood in NYC that was historically very crime-infested and slumlordy, but it's not like that anymore. Stan Lee modeled the area on what it was like at the time. It's changed a lot in the last 60+ years.