A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
•“Mosquitoes find me attractive” (6/20)
•“I don’t care what people think of me. Mosquitoes find me attractive” (6/20)
•“Alcohol tastes better when your life is fucked up” (6/20)
•“Alcohol tastes so much better when your life’s falling apart” (6/20)
•“Alcohol tastes a lil better when your life a lil fucked up” (6/20)
More new entries...

Entries in the category 1970s-present: False Etymologies
“Big Apple” and the Dutch phrase, “to buy for an apple and an egg” (2020)
“New York is a sucked orange” (not Big Apple; Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860)
“Why is New York City called ‘The Big Apple?’ Wrong answers only” (2021)
Alain Locke and Harlem Renaissance as the “Big Apple” (1920s; suggested in 1988)
An apple tree on every street (2013 movie explanation)
Apple Store (2000s)
Big A (Aqueduct Racetrack nickname, 1959)
Big Apple dance craze (1937)
Big Apple of Wathena, Kansas (1928-1940)
Big Apple on New Year’s Eve Ball at One Times Square (1981-1988)
Big Apple Whore Hoax (1800s)
Cab Calloway’s “Hepster’s Dictionary” (1938, 1944)
Chelsea Apple Orchard (1820s)
Damon Runyon (who never used “Big Apple”)
Depression Apple Sellers (1930s)
Edward Martin metaphor (1909)
Five Apple Seeds, Five Boroughs (1990s?)
Fletcher Henderson popularization of “the Big Apple” in the 1930s
Governor Stuyvesant’s Tree (pear, not apple)
Harlem’s jazz musicians (1930s)
La Grosse Pomme (Paris nightclub, 1937-1938)
Manzana Principal (suggested in 1966)
New Orange (not Big Orange; 1673-1674)
New York City is shaped like an apple (1970s)
New York State grows many apples (suggested in 1988)
Slave Codes (1850s)
There are many apples on the tree, but when you pick NYC, you pick the Big Apple (1975)
Tightening of Adam’s Apple (suggested in 1978)