Bay Area defines NYC culture

Even 3,000 miles away, San Francisco helps define New York.This according to New York magazine, whose 40th anniversary issue pays homage to the so-called 196 (why 196? why not 212 or a more conventional 25?) "most essential New York works of art from the past 40 years" that best defined the city since the magazine's birth 40 years ago.The only producer to have two shows included on the list is San Francisco's own Carole Shorenstein Hays, the force behind SHN/Best of Broadway, whose two entries on the list were August Wilson's Fences and Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out (labeled on the list as "the argument starter").Also on the list, shows such as Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Jennifer Holliday singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," AIDS plays The Normal Heart and As Is, The Heidi Chronicles, Angels in America (also a show that started in San Francisco), Rent, The Lion King, The Producers, the 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, Tom Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia and the current Broadway musical In the Heights.Congratulations to Ms. Shorenstein Hays, and let's keep showing those New Yorkers what for.Here's the article.Photo from the New York Times.