Talk:Seinfeld Tour

Any Seinfeld fans around?

Swept in from the pub

If so, please help me expand the Seinfeld Tour outline article I created. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Seinfeld superfan here. I'll take a look at it over the next few days -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:10, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

After two and a half days of what might be best likened to Jack Kerouac typing the first draft of On the Road onto a 120-foot scroll of paper, I've got the article to within sight of Guide status. Anyone want to chip in with an "Understand" section and/or other background info? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:23, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

AndreCarrotflower - Amazing work! I doubt that any Seinfeld tour locations website exists with such a comprehensive list (which I am sure would be even further expanded and improved as more people would find it). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 23:00, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Kenny Kramer's Tour

Where does Kenny Kramer's Reality Tour fall under our tour policy? I'm not sure how much value it adds, since you can presumably learn all the information he tells and visit the sights yourself, but it certainly seems popular with tourists, while also having the kind of info it seems out of our scope to replicate here. ARR8 (talk) 23:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

ttcf and I'm sure his tour would include some knowledge that you won't glean just from looking at buildings yourself. Plus, he's supposedly a funny guy. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:19, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I've wondered about including a "Do" section. The Puerto Rican Day parade would fit nicely in there too. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:33, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

100%. If someone were going to New York City and wanted to have a Seinfeld experience, that would fit. We can always include things that some travelers won't do but a good many would be interested in those events. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:05, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Extant listings

@AndreCarrotflower: You've done a great job expanding this article! Reading over the listings, though, the number of them that are still standing is pretty small compared to the overall number. Is there a way we could mark the ones which are still standing, as opposed to the ones which are simply "this address was used on the show," as a way to give priority to listings where a visitor might see something Seinfeld-related? When the listings were all 'see' listings, I was going to suggest a color scheme. Now, maybe we could use a symbol, like the Disney articles use for safety restrictions (for context: Walt_Disney_World/Magic_Kingdom#Frontierland). ARR8 (talk) 16:07, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The reason why I started breaking down the listings by category was mostly because I was afraid we were going to end up with more than 99 of them total; as you may know, the listing counter can't handle three-digit numbers. So long as they're divided up in a way that skirts around that problem, I'm not married to it being by category; we can certainly distinguish between extant and closed businesses. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I know about that. Doing it in terms of standing/closed might still skew the colors one way, but I may try it. ARR8 (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: addendum - would you be opposed to switching the map to only display the green and gold markers by default? A reader could always enable the other layers to see the rest, and it would help reduce the mass of pinpoints over the Upper West Side. ARR8 (talk) 19:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Not wholeheartedly opposed, but leaning decidedly towards "no". I imagine it would be equally as easy to zoom in on the dynamic map as it would be to toggle different map layers on and off. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Further subdivision

Getting dangerously close to that 99 mark with the open listings. @AndreCarrotflower: I was thinking of doing something along the lines of splitting things like hospitals, Central Park, airports, etc., off from the smaller listings, or at least off from the listings where one could find something directly related to Seinfeld (e.g. Jerry's Famous with its plaque). Your thoughts? ARR8 (talk) 05:15, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not planning on adding any more listings. The article just needs a better lede and an "Understand" section with maybe some background information about the show's premise or whatnot, and then it will be pretty much complete. (Unless you know of something I missed.) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 05:21, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I doubt you missed anything :). But, in addition to evening out the counters, I think it would be good to highlight the more Seinfeld-related sights, because I doubt Central Park or JFK are closing anytime soon.

I was thinking of adding a map at the top or bottom just showing the layer with the key sites, in case someone were actually visiting NYC and wanted to plan a Seinfeld trip - basically just to help people sift through, so they don't have to. ARR8 (talk) 05:27, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: Incidentally - and as an excuse to put the forgotten ping template in - on the subject of missed listings, I seem to recall only one mention of Staten Island on the show, and that was as the home of Elaine's friend, the chain-smoking stenographer. It's a shame, because otherwise we could have had listings in all five boroughs. ARR8 (talk) 05:53, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Split Manhattan list

I was looking at making the numbers sequential in the lists but the problem is that Manhattan section has more than 100 POIs. Is there a logical place to split, say 57th Street? I see there was discussion of split by types but if someone is walking around to look at these locations they would not want to look at two maps. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:58, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Featured Travel Topic

I think this would make a good Featured Travel Topic for June 2019 (July 5 will be the 30th anniversary of the first airing of the pilot episode on NBC). This article is already most of the way to Guide status, so let's talk about what we still need to do yet in order to get it there. Adding a "Do" section was mentioned above, and I'll take care of that before too long (I'm suffering from a bit of burnout at the moment, as I'm sure you can understand). We also need a better lede and an "Understand" section of some kind, I suppose. One thing that sort of clouds my mind in terms of how to structure things is that, unlike the Breaking Bad Tour and The Wire Tour, this article isn't drawn up as an itinerary with a defined route (and by definition probably couldn't be; not even the most hardcore Seinfeld fan is realistically going to make all 150-something stops on both coasts), so those articles aren't necessarily useful as analogues, nor would standard sections for itinerary articles such as "Prepare" and "Get in and around" necessarily be a good fit for this article's structure. Any ideas? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:34, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Ikan? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 09:37, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I only very occasionally watched Seinfeld, but I've been impressed by the quick progress of the article. If it isn't already a Guide, what is it missing to make it one? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

That's what I'm trying to figure out. As I said, at a minimum we need a better lede and an "Understand" section with some background info, but I'm interested to hear what others may think. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

To be honest, I think the article needs some organizational work before it's useful as a guide. You (ACF) haven't responded to my suggestion above, and I don't know whether you're implicitly supporting or opposing it, so I'm going to make a case for it here...

Say you're a tourist coming to New York, and, as a fan of Seinfeld, you want to see some sights while you're there. You look it up, and you find this article. How would you begin to use this article to find actual sights to visit? There's so many of them in green, and they include things that aren't of much interest for Seinfeld purposes, like beaches, hospitals, airports, etc. So, this tourist would have two options:

• Read through all the listings, circling or noting anything that sounds interesting to them as a Seinfeld sight to visit. Then, they have to go to the map, and try to find the number of each one, to see which ones would be near the places they're going to be. Since the listings are in alphabetical, not geographical order, they have to scan through all of Manhattan each time.
• Or, they could go to the map and look near places they're going to be, writing down the numbers of any that are in visiting range. Then, they have to go to the text and read the descriptions for all of them, and eliminate any that don't sound interesting. If someone's visiting Times Square, they could do this for up to fifteen listings nearby. And if someone's visiting Greenwich Village or the UWS? Forget about it.

One could say that this is fine, that's just ordinary travel planning, and tourists are expected to do this kind of thing. But then this isn't a very useful travel guide, it's an encyclopedia article.

So, I'll propose again a layer either for "featured" listings or a layer to exclude more mundane sights from the green layer, and have the final result as a separate map so one could see, at a glance, where the PoIs are. ARR8 (talk) 14:26, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, my failure to comment on your proposal was unintentional. I agree that the "Manhattan" subsection is confusingly long, but the problem - and we did have a policy discussion about a similar proposal a couple years ago, though for the life of me I can't think of what projectspace talk page it might be on now - is that the act of highlighting "premiere destinations" is akin to touting. The consensus was that we should give readers information, but refrain from making value judgments on which POIs are better or worse, or more or less essential experiences, especially not to the point of segregating "lesser" destinations off the map. A better idea might be to put the listings in some sort of geographical order, rather than alphabetical. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:27, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Done on a trial basis from north to south. I can easily sort by any of the four cardinal directions. I think it's better this way - easier to find a geographical cluster, and, as a bonus, Tom's is now first, which I think is appropriate. ARR8 (talk) 17:06, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Looks good. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:16, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I think somewhere, the colors of the listings need to be explained, because they sure aren't clear. That should probably go at the beginning of "Filming locations and places featured on the show". Wait, I just noticed they're keyed on the map. Since I missed that until now, I still think at least something like "there is a key for the colors of the listings at the bottom of the map" should be in at the beginning of that section. I also think there should be a summary that mentions the fact that most of the TV series takes place on the Upper West Side (right?) and highlights the most important or frequently used locations in prose. That could be part of "Understand". I also think that a lot of the show, at least from the relatively small dose of it I got, is not only about Upper West Side culture, but specifically Jewish culture, and Seinfeld is really a kind of latter-day Borsht Belt comedian in English (not Yiddish, as might have been the case a few generations ago). So this should be mentioned in "Understand", possibly with a link to the Judaism article, which come to think of it, might go into non-religious cultural aspects somewhat more. Getting back to the listings, they're obviously not in alphabetical order, but neither is their order immediately obvious to a reader. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

All of this sounds reasonable. I'll add a couple of comments: I think that the dynamic maps are excluded when printing the articles, so, yes, it actually may be even more important to describe the key in the text. Regarding links to Judaism, Seinfeld is very much a "slice of life" of American Jewish culture, and so definitely could be hyperlinked -- but I'm not sure about writing secular aspects of Jewish culture in the Judaism article. As I'm sure you know, many Jews, especially in the West, are "part of" Jewish culture but not "part of" Judaism, the religion, and secular Jewish culture varies greatly across countries. Maybe Ashkenazi culture would be better part of "Understand" in the Yiddish phrasebook? ARR8 (talk | contribs) 17:45, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

It would be IMO very ill-placed there, as most Ashkenazi Jews no longer speak Yiddish and few readers would be looking for such information in a Yiddish phrasebook. I think that covering the various different Jewish cultures is appropriate in the Judaism article because of the unusual fact about Judaism as being based on the identity of the Jewish people, not mainly on some defining belief or other (e.g., if you stop believing in the divinity of Christ, you're by most definitions no longer Christian, but hardly anything makes a Jew no longer Jewish, with the partial exception of a formal conversion out of the religion, which makes you an Apostate Jew). So coverage of Sephardi, Mizrachi, Beta Israel and other Jewish cultures would IMO be well-placed there. Also, maybe you didn't know that I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, so yeah, I know these things. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I did. Maybe you didn't know that I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, so I know these things ;). I'm well aware of 'Jewish' as an ethnicity, but 'Judaism' as an ethnicity is not a concept. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 22:23, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I figured you were Jewish and probably Ashekenazi. Jewish cultures are a real thing and part of Jewish identity. If Judaism covers only religion (and history, which it does, along with at least a bit of commentary on what Jewish identity is, since that's actually central to the religion as well as the people) and not culture that isn't specifically religious, where would there be a better place to cover it? If your objection is to the idea of an article about Judaism not being focused like a laser beam on the religion, I'd sooner propose a change of name to "Jews and Judaism" than support the creation of an entirely new article - for now, anyway. If the section on Jewish culture(s) gets too long, it could be spun off as "Jewish culture(s)". Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:55, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was going to suggest. Just a renaming, to accompany the expanded scope. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 23:01, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd be fine with such a name change, but I suspect most non-Jewish users wouldn't understand it or think it's necessary, and I'm not sure it is, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:43, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I wanted to add to ARR8 suggestion above, which I fully support, and say that we already have such sections in articles which are about huge destinations... so why not have it in this article? (I'm thinking it should be implemented probably in a similar way in which the article New York City has a "Landmarks" section and in which the article Manhattan has a "Landmarks" section). In my opinion, it is definitly needed in this article as well as we want the article to be useful for the avarage person whom would probably be using it - Seinfeld fans trying to figure out where the most prominent Seinfeld sights are as they find this article on their mobile devices with the help of Google while they are on-the-go (and don't have a lot of time for reading and researching). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 08:30, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, in order to do that, we would have to first determine which of these sites are more important than the others, which is a fool's errand. Everyone has their favorite Seinfeld episode, and we could fill a page ten times longer than the current article with debate over where each one falls in the rankings. We've already made a good deal of concessions on that front - breaking up the list of POIs in a really fine-grained way, ordering them geographically rather than alphabetically in the case of some sections - but, frankly, the reader also has to meet us halfway. One wonders what use this or any other Wikivoyage article is to someone who's too lazy to actually read. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:07, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

It is probably much easier to create than you can think... if we'll go over the many lists that show up in google for "Seinfeld sights" we could probably figure out which are the top 10-15 sights that mostly interest the fans and name those in the "Understand" section in a similar way in which the article New York City named their most prominent sights in the "Landmarks" section. AndreCarrotflower, do you support/oppose doing so? ARR8, do you support/oppose doing so? Any other opinions about this option from other Wikivoyagers would be of great help. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 09:13, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

This is tough; I can see the points on both sides. However, I do think it would be possible to list some sights which are general to the show and not episode-specific (like Tom's) and simultaneously exclude places no one would ever possibly visit as part of a Seinfeld Tour, like JFK or Mt. Sinai. While I recognize we shouldn't prefer some sights over others, "Landmarks" might suffice to do this. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 15:58, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone, Seinfeld Tour is now in the FTT schedule in the slot for June 2019, but first the article needs to be promoted to guide status and nominated. The article has plenty of listings, though as I know next to nothing about the series, I have no idea if there are too few or too many of them. The article is of course mainly for Seinfeld fans who know the characters and plots, but I still think the article could benefit from an Understand section with a paragraph or two introducing Seinfeld.

Great that we have several contributors on board who know the series. ϒψιλον (talk) 16:16, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

After ruminating about this for a few weeks, I have a pretty clear idea of how I want this article to look at the end. I'm currently in the midst of drafting a formal nomination for this article at dotm, but I'll be back in a couple minutes to outline my thoughts UPDATE: Done, see below. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:20, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

To-do list for bringing this article to Guide status

Okay, so I've been thinking about a way forward for this article for a couple of weeks, and here's the place where I consolidate my ideas of what it needs before it's complete and at Guide status.

• A "Do" section. There were a number of events depicted on the show that definitely deserve a mention but can't be handled in the same way as the current listings, i.e. tied to a physical location that's plottable with a point on a map. Off the top of my head, these include:
  • Kenny Kramer's Reality Tour (basis for the one Cosmo Kramer launched in "The Muffin Tops")
  • Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (in which Mr. Pitt wins a radio call-in contest to hold the Woody Woodpecker balloon in "The Mom & Pop Store")
  • National Puerto Rican Day Parade (setting of the controversial Season 9 episode "The Puerto Rican Day")
  • Carriage rides in Central Park (Kramer led Susan's parents on one in "The Rye"; IIRC there's already information about these in the listing for Central Park)
  • TCS New York City Marathon (Elaine's Trinidadian houseguest Jean-Paul Jean-Paul competes in it in "The Houseguest")
  • Festivus (there aren't any actual public celebrations in NYC or anywhere else [that I know of? I may very well be wrong], but the December 23 holiday has taken on a life of its own among Seinfeld fans and non-fans alike since its appearance in "The Strike") Done

Needless to say, this is not an exhaustive list, and will almost certainly expand as I remember additional episodes.

In another discussion on this talk page, I mentioned that Breaking Bad Tour and The Wire Tour "aren't necessarily useful as analogues" for the structure of this article given that they have a defined route and their POIs are confined to one city. I don't necessarily think that's true anymore: at its core, the Seinfeld tour is a two-city itinerary, those cities being New York and Los Angeles, and I think it's okay to assume that readers will focus on one city or the other, or perhaps both, without worrying too much for these purposes about POIs in outlying places like Florida, Ohio, or Washington, D.C. This principle can guide how we handle the following sections:

• "Understand". A brief synopsis of the premise of the show and rundown of the main characters would be nice, but we can probably assume that most people who take an interest in this article are at least casual fans of the show. A "When to go" subsection would also be useful, cribbing from both New York City#Climate and Los Angeles#Climate. Done

• "Get in". Information about getting to NYC and LA (probably cribbed from the respective sections of those articles) as well as information about flights between those two cities. Done

• "Get around". Public transit is a viable option for NYC-area destinations (this includes outlying ones like the Amagansett Farmers Market, which is a five-minute walk from a LIRR station, and New Jersey POIs in the Meadowlands and Atlantic City, which are accessible from Manhattan via PATH and/or New Jersey Transit). In LA, by car is probably the way to go. Done

Speaking of public transit:

• It might be nice to have bus and/or subway directions for NYC-area POIs, as we do in the New York district articles. If any of the Southern California destinations are particularly convenient to a Metro line, we could include that information too, although I suppose it's less essential given that LA without a car is a daunting proposition even in the best-case scenario.

If anyone else has other ideas, let's hear them.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:49, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Not so sure about the 'Do' section, as it's pretty much just a list of well-known stuff to do in New York, with no particular link to Seinfeld except character x did it that one time.

Other than that, you're pretty much on the mark for the other sections. Nice job, btw.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:08, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I'll copy down Ikan's suggestions for the Understand section, that the UWS be highlighted as the setting for the show and that the map legend be described. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 17:15, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't think we can consider this article complete without mentioning at least the Kenny Kramer tour and Festivus, and I think a "Do" section with only two listings would look fairly ridiculous next to a "See"-equivalent section with over 150. Also, as for "no particular link to Seinfeld except character x did it that one time", there are plenty of POIs in the article already to which that description applies. For instance, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade certainly played a bigger role in "The Mom & Pop Store" than, let's say, Bleecker Bob's Records played in "The Old Man". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:17, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Since I'm not going to be editing this article, I'll leave it up to you and won't force the issue. However, may I suggest that there will be plenty of interested readers who lie somewhere on the Seinfeld spectrum between me (never seen a single episode with no intention to do the tour) and you (self-confessed superfan who wrote the manual to the tour!), who might be put off by an overly long article listing too much triviality with tenuous links to the show. I mean, can you really see someone deciding to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade because it was in "Seinfeld", rather than just because they happen to be in Manhattan during Thanksgiving?

I am sure on the whole that this article will delight fans, but would counsel against making it longer and longer just for the sake of it. Why stop at 150 listings, when you can make it a round 500? :-) --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:35, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it's hard to believe anyone would visit the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade for the sole reason that it was featured on an episode of Seinfeld, but I don't think it's so farfetched to think a Seinfeld fan might come to New York to do the tour and it just so happens to be Thanksgiving (or Puerto Rican Parade day, or marathon day). I think it's relatively harmless to add information about those events. As for the length of the article, maybe mentioning the size of the "'See'-equivalent section" served to mislead people a bit. There are currently six proposed listings in the proposed "Do" section, and alhough I said it would probably expand as I remember more, I highly doubt that in the end there will be as many as double the number we currently have, let alone will it rival the other section in size. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:00, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Guide status, finally

As the title of this section indicates, I've finally brought this article up to Guide status, but at this point I'm feeling pretty burned out. If anyone wants to pitch in and complete the last item on the to-do list above (namely, adding subway information to the directions= argument of NYC-area POI listings) that would be a big help; otherwise, I may or may not take care of it myself before June 21. Either way, I don't see it as being in any way a crucial factor for FTT-worthiness. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:44, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Wikidata links

• AndreCarrotflower - Concerning edit reverts, I ran into similar issues with Statues and Homes in listings that referenced Wikipedia bibliographic articles (in which I declined to add wikidata ids) as well as name fields with multiple place names that referenced only 1 Wikipedia article (also do not add wikidata links) or reference something slightly different (eg. a line entry in a Wikipedia article) and so on. Special Pages Listing with Wikipedia link but not Wikidata link‎ does not make any distinctions which in the end have to be determined by examining both the Wikipedia article and the Wikidata entry. I have added to my list to check for chains, governing bodies etc. more closely and if Wikipedia/Wikidata are definitely more specific in nature (which I try to do). Thanks! -- Matroc (talk) 04:20, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

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Purely a statue FoP issue, but not visible in the article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:57, 4 September 2021 (UTC)