Sesame Street is 50.
The Washington Post celebrates its Kennedy honours here.
While us Boomers weren’t the target market (by 20, I knew my alphabet), our kids were – and every generation thereafter. But Sesame Street did teach me a lot about a particular version of New York – a working class street of brownstones, stoops, a mix of shops and homes, a mix of people. This was not the suburbia of my neighbourhood or the rest of sit-com TV.
And while this version of New York was, well, nice, it was also edgier than even today’s version of the show, and it prepared me for a New York in the late 1970s and 80s that was anything but nice. As the Post writer recollects:
On a recent afternoon’s binge, I watched one “Sesame” musical number from 1975 called “The Subway!” several times in a row. It’s funny and impressively clever — edgy, even, when compared with the show’s present-day tone. “You could lose your purse; or you might lose something worse, on the subway,” sang an old-lady Muppet, squeezed into a subway car with a trenchcoated Kermit the Frog, a testy Bert and too many others.
Sesame Street taught me the ABCs of an urbanity of which I had no experience. And so, when I had the chance to experience it, I saw the city not just as some dangerous, undesirable, perverse world but as a place to which I had been given an introduction by a green frog and his friends – even the underground world of The Subway.
*Here are the lyrics to The Subway:
[Intro: Old Lady (Beatnik)] Excuse me!
(Watch it, lady!)
Pardon me, sonny! [Beatnik (Chorus)] Down below the street
Can you dig the steady beat?
It’s the subway!
(Subway!) [Bert (Chorus)] Moving right along
Hear the rhythm loud and strong
It’s the subway!
(Subway!) [Middle-Age Man] ‘Cause there isn’t any room in this town [Betty Lou] They put all the trains down under the ground! [Policeman (Chorus)] Buy a token now
For a ride that’s super-wow
On the subway!
(Subway!)
(Subway!) [Beatnik] Hang onto the strap [Young-ish Woman] Wonder where they hid the map?
On the subway!
(Subway!)
It’s the only way to go
On the subway!
(Subway!) [Kermit the Frog (Chorus)] (Ohhhhhh)
My stop just went by! [Betty Lou (Chorus)] (Ohhhhhh)
Say, your thumb is in my eye! [Beatnik (Chorus)] (Ohhhhhh)
It’s so hot I could die!
Any way, every way, everywhere!
[Bert (Chorus)] Packed inside a trainIt’s too crowded to complain
On the subway!
(Subway!) [Old Lady (Chorus)] You could lose your purse
Or you might lose something worse
On the subway!
(Subway!) [Beatnik] It’s the biggest travel bargain in town [Young-ish Woman] The longest-running show underground! [Middle-Age Man] Come on, step inside
You’ll get taken for a ride
On the subway! [Kermit the Frog] Where’s that? [Chorus] On the subway! [Bridge: For some reason, some of them start dancing in pairs] [Betty Lou] If you’re in a hurry, take the express [Kermit the Frog] It will go right by your local address [Chorus] Buy a token now
For a ride that’s super-wow
On the subway!
On the subway! (On the subway!)
On the subway! (On the subway!)
Whooooaaa! [The subway stops and everyone exits, except for Bert and the Policeman]