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‘Broad City’: NYC filming locations for Comedy Central’s hilarious hit

Abbi and Ilana’s high jinks take them all over New York City

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Over its past four seasons, Broad City—the creation of comedians and real-life BFFs Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer—has explored the trials and tribulations of being young, broke, and kind of a goofball in New York City. The series, the fifth and final season of which premieres tonight on Comedy Central, is a funny, and sometimes poignant, look at friendship when you’re still in the process of figuring out who you actually are as a person.

But just as important to the show as Abbi and Ilana’s bestie dynamic is New York as a setting; so much of the comedy is derived from NYC-specific experiences (see: the eternal struggle of finding a table in crowded parks, or the horror that is the New York City apartment hunt), and the production team makes the most of the city in setting up these scenes. While there are plenty of recognizable locations (Central Park, Union Square), others—like remote North Brother Island—feel like a special call-out that only New Yorkers will get.

With that in mind, we’ve mapped out some of the best locations used in the series—as always, there be spoilers ahead.

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Madison Square Park

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The same locations tend to pop up on Broad City again and again—and Madison Square Park provided something of a bookend for the series’ first and third seasons. In the very first episode, Abbi and Ilana attempt to scrounge up cash (to see Lil Wayne, naturally) by bucket drumming on the steps of the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut statue—until they’re overshadowed by a breakdancer who piggy-backs off of their beats. In the season three episode “Burning Bridges,” meanwhile, the park is the setting for Ilana and Lincoln’s heartbreaking break up.

Chalk Gyms

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Throughout the series, Abbi has suffered all sorts of indignities—cleaning up pubic hair, cleaning up puke, you get the idea—at her job at Soulstice, an amalgam of the myriad gyms preaching the gospel of so-called “wellness.” The scenes there are filmed at Chalk Gyms on North 9th Street in Williamsburg.

North Brother Island

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No, New York’s main UPS hub isn’t actually on North Brother Island. But Abbi’s trip to the remote land mass off the coast of the Bronx does hilariously get at the frustration and irritation experienced by anyone who’s had to travel to Maspeth (where the actual UPS hub is located) to pick up a package, but only on a weekday, and only between noon and 2:15 p.m., and only with proper ID.

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Grounded Organic Coffee & Tea House

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There are some days in New York where it seems like literally everything is going wrong—and in the case of Abbi, in season one’s “The Lockout,” that means bug-bombing your apartment, dealing with a horribly creepy locksmith, macing yourself, and then finding out that what you’d envisioned as a professional achievement is, in fact, nothing big at all. That last thing translates to an art show in a sandwich shop, which was filmed at Grounded Coffee House in the West Village.

Times Square

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Most New Yorkers avoid Times Square at all costs, and Abbi and Ilana are no different. But when Abbi loses her phone, they’ll travel wherever necessary to find it. That ends up taking them to all manner of touristy spots, including Central Park, and, yes, Times Square—though Abbi does end up getting called “yuppie trash” by an angry older woman.

Magnolia Bakery

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Eventually, they track Abbi’s phone down with a drunk tourist at the Magnolia Bakery—otherwise known as “the last place tourists go before leaving NYC.” (Accurate.)

Via Comedy Central

Grand Central Terminal

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The gang—Abbi, Ilana, Lincoln, and a few of their college friends—has to get to another friend’s wedding, but first, they need to catch a train. Ilana directs them to Grand Central Terminal, in all its Beaux Arts glory, but gets its wrong; their train is actually leaving from Penn Station. (At which point Abbi’s date ditches her because “Penn Station is gross.” Fair.) As they run out, Lincoln pauses, looks up, and says “holy shit, this place really is majestic.”

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Bed Bath & Beyond

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“You don’t shit where you eat,” says Abbi as she and Ilana wander through the Bed, Bath & Beyond on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea—and indeed, there are certain places in New York that we hold sacred, whether it’s a bookstore, or your neighborhood bar, or a place to buy housewares and as-seen-on-TV products in one fell swoop. Abbi takes it a step further, though, when her secret handshake with a BB&B employee is revealed. (It’s also the episode where the secret of Lincoln’s blog, the Al Dente Dentist, is revealed.)

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Carroll Street Bridge

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In the season two episode “Wisdom Teeth,” Abbi gets hers removed, gets meds, and goes on a trippy adventure through Brooklyn with her imaginary friend, Bingo Bronson. After Ilana realizes her drugged-up BFF is on the lam, she bikes through Gowanus to try and find her—including over the landmarked Carroll Street Bridge.

Via Comedy Central

Whole Foods Market

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“Damn, this neighborhood is changing,” Ilana exclaims as she pulls up to the Gowanus Whole Foods on a mission to save Abbi from spending outlandish amounts of money on fair-trade granola and manuka honey. (Abbi, high on meds after a dental procedure, thinks her stuffed animal-turned-co-conspirator, Bingo Bronson, is egging her on. It’s complicated.)

Doyers Street

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Doyers Street has been use for many a film shoot, and Broad City is no different; when Ilana’s mom (played, delightfully, by Susie Essman) comes to town for the day, she takes the girls to get their nails done, and then on a journey to find the best counterfeit bags in Chinatown. They go down a manhole on Doyers as part of their quest.

Wikimedia Commons

Back Room

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When Abbi gets blackout drunk, her alter ego “Val”—an homage to Judy Garland, obviously, but also the brassy broads found in the Golden Age of Hollywood films—emerges, swilling martinis, dropping pearls of wisdom, and belting out showstoppers in a hidden speakeasy. (Ilana, somehow, knew none of this—hence the episode’s title, “Hashtag FOMO.”) The scenes were filmed at the Back Room, a dark, speakeasy-like club on the Lower East Side.

Prospect Park

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In the season two episode “The Matrix,” the Broad City ladies attempt to do their version of a digital detox by leaving their phones behind while they roller-blade to Ilana’s brother’s dog’s wedding. Things, predictably, don’t go as planned; the scenes were filmed in Prospect Park, with Abbi falling into a giant hole and Ilana finally finds her way to the dog wedding gazebo—actually the Music Pagoda at the park’s northern end.

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Beacon's Closet

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As our sister site Racked put it, this episode “touches on every joy (if you opt for store credit, you'll get like, a zillion dollars) and despair (daggers of judgment from a thrift store clerk who can pull off a fuchsia lip better than you pull off anything) of buying and trading at consignment stores.” Anyone who’s ever traded in clothes at Beacon’s Closet—this scene was filmed at the Greenpoint outpost—will get it.

Union Square

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Abbi unsuccessfully tries to sell her “art”—her interpretations of celebrities’ favorite foods—on the east side of Union Square, where passers-by are either confused or outright angered by her work. (Ilana gets into a screaming match with a guy who won’t buy a painting of Bruce Springsteen and a tomato—both from Jersey, obviously—that Abbi did “because that’s a marriage that works.”) And of course Union Square is where they’d try this; the park is always full of amateur artists selling their wares.

Via Comedy Central

St. Mark’s Place

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To celebrate Ilana’s 23rd birthday in season two, Abbi and Ilana go to St. Mark’s Place and run into New York character you’d expect to see on one of the city’s strangest throughways. There’s the jerky guy who tells the girls to smile (and gets middle fingers in response), drunk girls, the “friends” you hate interacting with, gutter punks, tourists, and some weird dude in a costume on stilts. High jinks inevitably ensue, the pair finds themselves chasing one of the punks into a glorious townhouse around the corner, and after getting yelled at by his mother, they close out the night with dollar slices. So, basically, just another night in NYC.

Via Comedy Central

Greene Hill Food Co-op

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Ah, the tyranny of the food co-op, where you’ll be kicked out for any number of small infractions—most notably, not showing up for your monthly shifts. Ilana tries to circumvent this by having Abbi pretend to be her, and things go hilariously wrong, as per usual. The episode was filmed at the Greene Hill Food Co-op in Clinton Hill.

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The 40/40 Club

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Against all odds, Abbi and Ilana sneak their way into a private party at this Gramercy club, best known for being co-owned by Jay Z. Improbably, while there Ilana meets—and eventually hooks up with—NBA star Blake Griffin.

Yoga to the People

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“What could be more zen than yoga that’s suggested donation?” For Ilana, the experience at Yoga to the People—the long-running, donation-based, often-crowded center on St. Mark’s Place—is blissful; for Abbi, it’s full of people invading her personal space and farting. (Accurate?)

Jay St - MetroTech Station

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For many New Yorkers, a trip to the airport starts at a subway station; and true to form, when Abbi and Ilana agree to meet at the Jay St–MetroTech station before a flight, Abbi is hella early, while Ilana is running late and has to turnstile jump to make their subway train on time. Not that it matters; in true MTA fashion, their A train to the airport ends up being massively delayed.

Bowery subway station

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In the season four premiere, “Sliding Doors,” the origin story of Abbi and Ilana’s friendship is told through a gimmick used in the Gwyneth Paltrow flick referenced in the episode title: We see versions of their friendship if they had or hadn’t caught a train. You can tell the scene was filmed at the Bowery subway stop by the “B” tilework visible on the station walls, and the general decrepitude of the place.

Stuyvesant Square Park

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Abbi and Ilana are complaining about Gramercy Park—Manhattan’s only private park, and a source of consternation for many New Yorkers—when one of the “douchebags” (Ilana’s words!) with access starts choking. The girls save him through the bars of the park’s fence, and yet—and yet!—he still won’t let them in. (“You have to have a key to come in,” he says with a shrug.) But it’ll likely come as no surprise that the scene wasn’t actually filmed in Gramercy Park; it’s at Stuyvesant Square Park, just a few blocks away.

Madison Square Park

The same locations tend to pop up on Broad City again and again—and Madison Square Park provided something of a bookend for the series’ first and third seasons. In the very first episode, Abbi and Ilana attempt to scrounge up cash (to see Lil Wayne, naturally) by bucket drumming on the steps of the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut statue—until they’re overshadowed by a breakdancer who piggy-backs off of their beats. In the season three episode “Burning Bridges,” meanwhile, the park is the setting for Ilana and Lincoln’s heartbreaking break up.

Chalk Gyms

Throughout the series, Abbi has suffered all sorts of indignities—cleaning up pubic hair, cleaning up puke, you get the idea—at her job at Soulstice, an amalgam of the myriad gyms preaching the gospel of so-called “wellness.” The scenes there are filmed at Chalk Gyms on North 9th Street in Williamsburg.

North Brother Island

No, New York’s main UPS hub isn’t actually on North Brother Island. But Abbi’s trip to the remote land mass off the coast of the Bronx does hilariously get at the frustration and irritation experienced by anyone who’s had to travel to Maspeth (where the actual UPS hub is located) to pick up a package, but only on a weekday, and only between noon and 2:15 p.m., and only with proper ID.

Comedy Central

Grounded Organic Coffee & Tea House

There are some days in New York where it seems like literally everything is going wrong—and in the case of Abbi, in season one’s “The Lockout,” that means bug-bombing your apartment, dealing with a horribly creepy locksmith, macing yourself, and then finding out that what you’d envisioned as a professional achievement is, in fact, nothing big at all. That last thing translates to an art show in a sandwich shop, which was filmed at Grounded Coffee House in the West Village.

Times Square

Most New Yorkers avoid Times Square at all costs, and Abbi and Ilana are no different. But when Abbi loses her phone, they’ll travel wherever necessary to find it. That ends up taking them to all manner of touristy spots, including Central Park, and, yes, Times Square—though Abbi does end up getting called “yuppie trash” by an angry older woman.

Magnolia Bakery

Eventually, they track Abbi’s phone down with a drunk tourist at the Magnolia Bakery—otherwise known as “the last place tourists go before leaving NYC.” (Accurate.)

Via Comedy Central

Grand Central Terminal

The gang—Abbi, Ilana, Lincoln, and a few of their college friends—has to get to another friend’s wedding, but first, they need to catch a train. Ilana directs them to Grand Central Terminal, in all its Beaux Arts glory, but gets its wrong; their train is actually leaving from Penn Station. (At which point Abbi’s date ditches her because “Penn Station is gross.” Fair.) As they run out, Lincoln pauses, looks up, and says “holy shit, this place really is majestic.”

Comedy Central

Bed Bath & Beyond

“You don’t shit where you eat,” says Abbi as she and Ilana wander through the Bed, Bath & Beyond on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea—and indeed, there are certain places in New York that we hold sacred, whether it’s a bookstore, or your neighborhood bar, or a place to buy housewares and as-seen-on-TV products in one fell swoop. Abbi takes it a step further, though, when her secret handshake with a BB&B employee is revealed. (It’s also the episode where the secret of Lincoln’s blog, the Al Dente Dentist, is revealed.)

Comedy Central

Carroll Street Bridge

In the season two episode “Wisdom Teeth,” Abbi gets hers removed, gets meds, and goes on a trippy adventure through Brooklyn with her imaginary friend, Bingo Bronson. After Ilana realizes her drugged-up BFF is on the lam, she bikes through Gowanus to try and find her—including over the landmarked Carroll Street Bridge.

Via Comedy Central

Whole Foods Market

“Damn, this neighborhood is changing,” Ilana exclaims as she pulls up to the Gowanus Whole Foods on a mission to save Abbi from spending outlandish amounts of money on fair-trade granola and manuka honey. (Abbi, high on meds after a dental procedure, thinks her stuffed animal-turned-co-conspirator, Bingo Bronson, is egging her on. It’s complicated.)

Doyers Street

Doyers Street has been use for many a film shoot, and Broad City is no different; when Ilana’s mom (played, delightfully, by Susie Essman) comes to town for the day, she takes the girls to get their nails done, and then on a journey to find the best counterfeit bags in Chinatown. They go down a manhole on Doyers as part of their quest.

Wikimedia Commons

Back Room

When Abbi gets blackout drunk, her alter ego “Val”—an homage to Judy Garland, obviously, but also the brassy broads found in the Golden Age of Hollywood films—emerges, swilling martinis, dropping pearls of wisdom, and belting out showstoppers in a hidden speakeasy. (Ilana, somehow, knew none of this—hence the episode’s title, “Hashtag FOMO.”) The scenes were filmed at the Back Room, a dark, speakeasy-like club on the Lower East Side.

Prospect Park

In the season two episode “The Matrix,” the Broad City ladies attempt to do their version of a digital detox by leaving their phones behind while they roller-blade to Ilana’s brother’s dog’s wedding. Things, predictably, don’t go as planned; the scenes were filmed in Prospect Park, with Abbi falling into a giant hole and Ilana finally finds her way to the dog wedding gazebo—actually the Music Pagoda at the park’s northern end.

Comedy Central

Beacon's Closet

As our sister site Racked put it, this episode “touches on every joy (if you opt for store credit, you'll get like, a zillion dollars) and despair (daggers of judgment from a thrift store clerk who can pull off a fuchsia lip better than you pull off anything) of buying and trading at consignment stores.” Anyone who’s ever traded in clothes at Beacon’s Closet—this scene was filmed at the Greenpoint outpost—will get it.

Union Square

Abbi unsuccessfully tries to sell her “art”—her interpretations of celebrities’ favorite foods—on the east side of Union Square, where passers-by are either confused or outright angered by her work. (Ilana gets into a screaming match with a guy who won’t buy a painting of Bruce Springsteen and a tomato—both from Jersey, obviously—that Abbi did “because that’s a marriage that works.”) And of course Union Square is where they’d try this; the park is always full of amateur artists selling their wares.

Via Comedy Central

St. Mark’s Place

To celebrate Ilana’s 23rd birthday in season two, Abbi and Ilana go to St. Mark’s Place and run into New York character you’d expect to see on one of the city’s strangest throughways. There’s the jerky guy who tells the girls to smile (and gets middle fingers in response), drunk girls, the “friends” you hate interacting with, gutter punks, tourists, and some weird dude in a costume on stilts. High jinks inevitably ensue, the pair finds themselves chasing one of the punks into a glorious townhouse around the corner, and after getting yelled at by his mother, they close out the night with dollar slices. So, basically, just another night in NYC.

Via Comedy Central

Greene Hill Food Co-op

Ah, the tyranny of the food co-op, where you’ll be kicked out for any number of small infractions—most notably, not showing up for your monthly shifts. Ilana tries to circumvent this by having Abbi pretend to be her, and things go hilariously wrong, as per usual. The episode was filmed at the Greene Hill Food Co-op in Clinton Hill.

Comedy Central

The 40/40 Club

Against all odds, Abbi and Ilana sneak their way into a private party at this Gramercy club, best known for being co-owned by Jay Z. Improbably, while there Ilana meets—and eventually hooks up with—NBA star Blake Griffin.

Yoga to the People

“What could be more zen than yoga that’s suggested donation?” For Ilana, the experience at Yoga to the People—the long-running, donation-based, often-crowded center on St. Mark’s Place—is blissful; for Abbi, it’s full of people invading her personal space and farting. (Accurate?)

Jay St - MetroTech Station

For many New Yorkers, a trip to the airport starts at a subway station; and true to form, when Abbi and Ilana agree to meet at the Jay St–MetroTech station before a flight, Abbi is hella early, while Ilana is running late and has to turnstile jump to make their subway train on time. Not that it matters; in true MTA fashion, their A train to the airport ends up being massively delayed.

Bowery subway station

In the season four premiere, “Sliding Doors,” the origin story of Abbi and Ilana’s friendship is told through a gimmick used in the Gwyneth Paltrow flick referenced in the episode title: We see versions of their friendship if they had or hadn’t caught a train. You can tell the scene was filmed at the Bowery subway stop by the “B” tilework visible on the station walls, and the general decrepitude of the place.

Stuyvesant Square Park

Abbi and Ilana are complaining about Gramercy Park—Manhattan’s only private park, and a source of consternation for many New Yorkers—when one of the “douchebags” (Ilana’s words!) with access starts choking. The girls save him through the bars of the park’s fence, and yet—and yet!—he still won’t let them in. (“You have to have a key to come in,” he says with a shrug.) But it’ll likely come as no surprise that the scene wasn’t actually filmed in Gramercy Park; it’s at Stuyvesant Square Park, just a few blocks away.