Seinfeld Tour

Like Cosmo Kramer's hapless customers in "The Muffin Tops", you, too, can see with your own eyes the real-life locations in New York City, Southern California, and elsewhere that were featured on the television series Seinfeld.

Understand
"GEORGE: I'm serious, I think that's a good idea!

JERRY: Just talking? What's the show about?

GEORGE: It's about nothing!"

- The Pitch

Co-created by, named after, and starring stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld ran for nine seasons and 180 episodes on the American television network NBC, premiering in 1990 and ending in 1998. Though its first seasons earned only modest ratings, the show was critically acclaimed throughout its run and, after being moved in 1992 to a coveted Thursday night timeslot directly after the long-running megahit Cheers, commercial success soon followed on a massive level. (Which is not to say that Seinfeld ' s success was solely due to Cheers; as Jerry put it later, "...we started beating them [in the ratings] coming on after them, which is just not done... [usually with] the second show you just try and not fall off too much.") By its fourth season in 1993-94, Seinfeld was one of the top three highest-rated shows on American television, which it would continue to be for the remainder of its run.

Conception, premise and cast
Ask any American to describe the premise of Seinfeld and they'll always come back to the same four words: "a show about nothing". That phrase or variations on it popped up in reviews of the show almost from the beginning, but at the outset, that was not what Seinfeld was meant to be. Instead, it was intended as a show that demonstrated how a stand-up comedian comes up with the material that they use in their act: in Jerry's case, picking apart the little trivialities and petty annoyances of daily life and mining the comedy out of them. It was an art form that Jerry and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David were both experts in, after years spent honing their craft on the New York comedy-club circuit in the '70s and '80s, and in Larry's case, also during a brief stint as a writer for Saturday Night Live. At that time, Manhattan was still an affordable place for the less-than-rich to live, and the stand-up scene was tight-knit and insular, centered around just a scant handful of comedy clubs: The Improv, The Comic Strip, Catch a Rising Star, and so forth. Onstage lineups on a given night drew from pretty much the same small clique of performers, and in that environment comics got to know one another, became friends, watched each other onstage, bounced ideas off each other offstage. In short, it was fertile ground for the observational humorist. Over time, Jerry's affable nature and accessible act brought him increasing success, with bookings on the Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman becoming more and more frequent as the '80s wore on, and even a small recurring role on the TV series Benson. Meanwhile, Larry was considered a "comic's comic": his fellow comedians howled with laughter whenever he was onstage, but his act was by and large too outré for mass audiences, and thus he was never really able to break out of the small-time club circuit the way Jerry did. His twisted and cynical sensibilities, though, were instrumental in the creation of Seinfeld: fans who are familiar with both comedians' work agree that the tone of the show bears far more resemblance to Larry's worldview than Jerry's.

It was in late 1988 when Jerry was contacted by NBC for a meeting with several of their executives, who'd been in attendance at a recent performance of his, liked what they saw, and were interested in working with him on a project for television. He enlisted his old friend Larry to help, and together they hatched the idea of a 90-minute special to be broadcast in Saturday Night Live ' s timeslot during one of its off weeks, wherein the camera would follow Jerry around as he went about a typical day in his life, with a finale featuring Jerry at a club performing a stand-up set inspired by the events of that day. Though of course that plan was later scrapped in favor of a half-hour weekly sitcom, Seinfeld still retained many elements of its original conception: the plotlines center around the daily life of a comedian, and each episode is bookended by scenes of Jerry onstage at a comedy club.

Once it was decided that a sitcom was the way to go, a premise had to be devised and characters designed. Jerry played an exaggerated version of himself, a cereal-eating, Superman-obsessed neat freak who served as a sort of "straight man" anchoring the wackiness around him. Meanwhile, the character of George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander) — Jerry's childhood friend; a duplicitous, stingy, frequently unemployed neurotic with a chip on his shoulder rivaled in size only by his inferiority complex — took his name from an old classmate of Jerry's at Queens College, but the persona is acknowledged to have been a fictionalized version of Larry. Finally, Michael Richards rounded out the original cast as Cosmo Kramer, Jerry's wild-haired, mooching, "hipster doofus" neighbor across the hall (modeled after Kenny Kramer, a former across-the-hall neighbor of Larry's) whose eccentric nature and penchant for harebrained schemes brought a touch of the absurd to the proceedings. Later, after the duo submitted their pilot to NBC executives for consideration, it was suggested that a female character be added to the cast, whence Elaine Benes, Jerry's ambitious, intelligent yet superficial ex-girlfriend whose portrayal by Julia Louis-Dreyfus was heralded as a high water mark for feminism on television: she was "one of the boys", yet also a strong female voice asserting herself unabashedly in relationships with men and speaking her mind openly about hot-button issues like abortion and contraception. Of course, as the series progressed, additional characters were added to the mix: George's parents (Frank and Estelle Costanza, played by Jerry Stiller and Estelle Harris respectively) and Jerry's (Morty and Helen Seinfeld, played by Barney Martin and Liz Sheridan); Jerry's cantankerous Uncle Leo (Len Lesser); Kramer's sniveling, diabolical postman friend Newman (Wayne Knight); George's ill-fated fiancée Susan Ross (Heidi Swedberg), Elaine's on-again-off-again boyfriend David Puddy (Patrick Warburton), obnoxious hack comic Kenny Bania (Steve Hytner), and many others.

Legacy
Seinfeld was by leaps and bounds the most successful sitcom of the '90s, but that barely scratches the surface of the impact it had, and continues to have, on American pop culture. The show left its mark in numerous and diverse ways, from fashion (Kramer's vintage threads presaged the "thrift store chic" look that took the hipster world by storm a few years later), to event calendars (over two decades after the Season 9 episode "The Strike" was first broadcast, Festivus is on the cusp of becoming a bona fide holiday), to the very language spoken by Americans ("regifting", "shrinkage", and "yada yada yada" are but a few of the Seinfeld-derived words and phrases that retain their place in the popular lexicon). And that's not to mention its effect on consumer trends: Seinfeld is considered a pioneer in the practice of product placement on American television, with effects on such companies as Pez, which saw such a huge surge in sales after the episode "The Pez Dispenser" that it had to expand its candy factory in Connecticut to keep up with demand, and Fisher Pens, which still to this day sees an uptick in sales of its "AG7 Space Pen" — the model that Jack Klompus gifted to Jerry in Season 3 — every time the episode is rerun in syndication.

But leaving aside its impacts on the culture at large, Seinfeld was equally revolutionary within the realm of television. Up to the 1980s, most mainstream sitcoms were set in the suburban home of a nuclear family, building on tropes of marriage, childhood, and domestic life and with plotlines that all followed more or less the same pattern of setup, conflict and resolution. Seinfeld took a sledgehammer to these genre conventions, with main characters who lacked spouses, children, and in many cases steady employment, an unconventional structure of multiple plotlines intersecting with each other in unpredictable ways, an almost pathological aversion to anything resembling sentimentality or character growth, and a tone that parodied the nihilistic self-absorption of post-yuppie city life. In this, too, it proved influential: quite a few of the most popular sitcoms that came up in its wake revolved around casts of thirtysomething single people (Friends, Will & Grace, Sex and the City) or childless couples (Mad About You) living in New York City.

When to go
Now that we've covered the show itself, let's talk about logistics for this tour. New York City and Southern California together contain the bulk of the points of interest — and though their climates are quite different, the ideal times of year to visit are roughly the same in each case (luckily for any diehard Seinfeld fans hoping to hit up both cities on the same tour!) Midsummer is often uncomfortably hot and muggy in New York and is also prime time for Los Angeles' infamous "dirty smog", while winter brings, respectively, frigid temperatures and frequent rain. Spring and autumn are generally much better options. See New York City and Los Angeles for more in-depth information.

Get in
As mentioned above, the majority of the points of interest this tour covers are in the New York City area and Southern California, so the content of this and the following section will pertain to those places. For information about travelling to any of the outlying destinations listed, please see the "Get in" section of each respective city article.

New York and Los Angeles, it hardly needs to be said, are both world-class destinations, well-connected to the American Interstate highway and passenger rail networks, and with airports hosting direct flights from all corners of the world. For those hoping to find a flight into either one of those cities, there's very little to be said that wouldn't constitute advice from Captain Obvious. And for those Seinfeld superfans planning to visit both cities on this tour, it also hardly needs to be mentioned that there are dozens of nonstop flights a day between New York and Los Angeles, with airfare generally ranging between $300 and $500 round-trip. Getting to Manhattan from New York's three airports is a bit more complicated. If you're flying into JFK, the AirTrain is easy, quick, and cheap enough: $8 buys you a combination ticket that will take you from your terminal to Jamaica Station on the airport's own 24-hour people mover system, and then onward to Manhattan via the E, J, or Z subway service, a process that takes about an hour and a half total. If time is of the essence, a few additional dollars will buy you a ticket on the Long Island Rail Road from Jamaica direct to Penn Station, shaving about half an hour off your travel time. Newark Liberty also has an AirTrain, which dumps you off at Newark Liberty Rail Station with onward service to Manhattan via New Jersey Transit (50 minutes; $13 adult, $9 child/senior/disabled). If you're unlucky enough to be flying into LaGuardia Airport, there's no easy way to get to Manhattan on public transit; your easiest option is probably to take a taxi ($21-30 plus taxes and tips). Car rental is available from all three airports as well, not to say that New York is anywhere you want to be driving.

The practical realities of getting around L.A. (see below) mean you're probably going to need a car at your disposal. Rental facilities abound in and around the airport. If you absolutely insist otherwise, the Green Line of the Los Angeles Metro Rail can be accessed from LAX via a free shuttle bus from the terminal to Aviation/LAX Station. If you're headed to Downtown Los Angeles, a better idea is to skip the Metro Rail entirely and hop on the LAX FlyAway bus ($19.50 round trip for the 35-minute ride to Union Station; prices and travel times vary to other destinations).

Get around
One way in which New York and Los Angeles are extremely different are the preferred methods of getting around town. New York is one of the very few North American cities where having a car is more of an inconvenience than a convenience, but luckily the public transit system is extraordinarily extensive and well-developed. Even if you were to take this tour wholly using the New York City Subway system, the vast majority of the points of interest in the city would be easily accessible. You pay your fare using a MetroCard, sold at kiosks located in most stations; as of April 2019, a single ride costs $2.75, while weekly and monthly passes will set you back $33 and $127 respectively.

If human-powered transport is more your thing, NYC's network of protected on-street bike lanes grows more extensive each year, and there's no better way to take advantage of them than with the Citi Bike bike-sharing network. Kiosks are ubiquitous in Manhattan south of 130th Street, and are also present in Brooklyn (mostly points north of Prospect Park), in Long Island City and Astoria in Queens, and even across the river in Jersey City. A single 30-minute ride costs $3, but if you plan on doing the whole Seinfeld tour this way, by far a better option would be to spring for a $12 day pass.

Public transit is even doable for some of the further-flung points of interest outside New York, such as Amagansett Farmers Market or the Giants Stadium site, which are each an easy walking distance from, respectively, the Long Island Rail Road's Amagansett Station and New Jersey Transit's Meadowlands Rail Station. (Atlantic City is on New Jersey Transit's network too, but direct connections from Manhattan are by bus only, and the ride can take anywhere from two to four hours depending on traffic. Unless you're planning to make a day trip out of it — which, don't get us wrong, is a perfectly feasible and worthwhile thing to do if you're visiting New York — you'll probably need a rental car to see the place where Miss Rhode Island's trained doves met their untimely end.)

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Los Angeles' Metro Rail has come a long way in the past ten years or so, but it's still not (and probably never will be) anywhere near as easy to get by without a car there as in New York. Plus, most of the stops on the L.A. portion of the itinerary are a hassle to get to using transit. If you book ahead of time, renting a car from one of the onsite counters at LAX generally runs $80-100/day or $400-500/week plus taxes and fees, but if you can manage to get yourself to an offsite location (this is where the Metro Rail can come in handy), you can usually get a steep discount off those prices.

New York City
"JERRY: Oh, come on, there's a lot of people walking around the city that look like me.

KRAMER: Not as many as there used to be."

Manhattan




California
"Jerry. It's L.A. Nobody leaves. She's a seductress, she's a siren, she's a virgin, she's a whore."

- Cosmo Kramer

Filming locations
Hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of Seinfeld was not filmed in New York — aside from establishing shots of building exteriors, what's on your TV screen at any given time is usually a Hollywood soundstage.



Some scenes were shot on location in the Los Angeles area, too.



"The Keys" and "The Trip"
A trio of episodes that were both set and filmed mostly in L.A. In a story arc spanning the Season 3 finale and the two-part Season 4 premiere, Kramer catches the acting bug and moves to Hollywood to try his luck, only to become a suspect in the ongoing (fictional) "Smog Strangler" serial-killer scare. Meanwhile, Jerry is booked to perform on the Tonight Show, with George tagging along.



Activities for the Seinfeld fan




Go next

 * Of course, after you wrap up your tour in either New York City or Los Angeles, you'd be remiss not to explore the myriad other attractions on offer in those world-class cities.
 * While you're in the Big Apple, you could also check out the sites from that other group of '90s-era "Must See TV" twentysomethings on the Friends Tour.
 * Or perhaps head to Albuquerque to follow along on the further adventures of Bryan Cranston a/k/a Dr. Tim Whatley, who, as Walter White in ABC's hit crime drama Breaking Bad, trades in his career as a mild-mannered science teacher for the high-stakes life of a drug kingpin.