York's immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was popularized by youths in the 1930s. A street in Clason Point in the Bronx has been renamed Stickball Boulevard, as tribute to New York's most known street sport. In popular culture Because of its sheer size and cultural influence, New York has been the subject of many different, and often contradictory, portrayals in mass media. From the sophisticated and worldly metropolis seen in many Woody Allen films, to the hellish and chaotic urban jungle depicted in such movies as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, New York has served as the backdrop for virtually every conceivable viewpoint on big city life. In the early years of film, New York was characterized as urbane and sophisticated. By the city's crisis period in the 1970s and early 1980s, however, films like Midnight Cowboy, The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Marathon Man, Cruising, Dressed to Kill, and Death Wish showed New York as full of chaos and violence. With the city's renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s came new portrayals on television; Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City showed life in the city to be glamorous and interesting. Nonetheless, a disproportionate number of crime dramas, such as Law & Order, continue to make criminality in the city as their subject even as New York has become the safest large city in the United States in the 2000s and 2010s. See also Culture of The Bronx Culture of Brooklyn Culture of Manhattan Culture of Queens Culture of Staten Island Alliance for the Arts LGBT culture in New York City List of nightclubs in New York City List of people from New York City Media in New York City New York City arts organizations Public Art Fund References Further reading External links NYC Arts and Tumblr City Lore New York City On YellowPosts Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) New York in the 70s Yoko Ono's Flickr album of Tannenbaum's images Partial list of major international cultural centers in New York City: Austrian Cultural Forum New York Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Instituto Cervantes-Nueva York New York Chinese Cultural Center French Institute Alliance Francaise Goethe-Institut New York Hungarian Cultural Institute Italian Cultural Institute Polish Cultural Institute Romanian Cultural Institute New York Scandinavia House Swiss Institute Tenri Cultural Institute The Ukrainian Museum Cultural history of New York City