Queens Councilman Hiram Monserrate is pushing the New York City council to adopt "Gotham" as the city's first official nickname -- just in time for this summer's release of Warner Brothers' new Batman film, "The Dark Knight."
"I see that as a marketing tool," Monserrate told the Village Voice. "'Come visit the real Gotham City,' taking advantage of this movie which will be one of those gate-breaking, record-selling movies like it always is."
As the Voice notes, NYC has been linked with "Gotham" for quite some time:
The dark and gritty streets of Batman fame were modeled after the landscape of Lower Manhattan. But long before the D.C. Comics depiction connected New York City and Gotham City, Washington Irving made the reference in 1807 , drawing a comparison between the residents of the City and those of the town of Gotham in Nottinghamshire , England who evaded taxes by faking dementia, a condition thought to be contagious at the time.
But in this case, the idea of New York as the "real" Gotham City might come as a surprise to Richard Daley, since both "The Dark Knight" and 2005's "Batman Begins" were filmed in Chicago.
