Misguided Marketing Monikers

Apparently, even though New York is the Big Apple, that isn’t an official nickname of the city. In fact, New York City doesn’t have any official nicknames.

While this may seem rather shocking that no nickname was ever attached to the city, Queens City Councilman Hiram Monserrate is looking to fix this by officially linking up New York as Gotham City. Monserrate feels that with this summer’s release of Batman : The Dark Knight, the city would be able to launch into an all-out campaign with “Come visit the real Gotham City.”

Of course the Gotham City depicted in Batman’s world is dark, gritty and filled with crime and supervillians, which, to some extent is actually kind of fitting for New York (sans the Supervillians). Not exactly the right message to be sending about New York, is it? Especially when you ate trying to lure in tourists.

Armed with this tagline and capitalizing on the flick’s buzz, Monserrate envisions theater-goers spending dollars on the streets of the living, breathing Gotham. “Come visit the real Gotham City and come visit our shops,” he said. “When we talk about Gotham we talk about tremendous, tremendous nightlife, restaurants, lounges, clubs and cafes, frappuccinos and everything else that we have in this City, the Village, Queens.”

Okay, so I get Monserrate’s misguided vision, but first of all who ever thought “Gee I need a really excellent frappuccino, if only I lived in New York.” And secondly besides some die-hard Mets and Spiderman fans, who has ever thought “I want to go on a vacation to Queens.”

When the Superman sequel comes out will Monserrate be pushing that we change it up to Metropolis?