The street where I grew up

Growing up in a well to do pocket of rural England spanning the late 1970s, 80s and 90s I was surrounded by a culture that felt a little too polite, a little too restrained. But on the television screen, a whole other world existed—one that was messier, louder, brighter, and, to me, infinitely more exciting. That world was New York City, and my first real introduction to it wasn’t through film or music, but through Sesame Street.

In my childhood, American imports had an otherworldly magic. My father worked across America in the 80s, particularly in New York State, and the things he would bring back, were, I now see, quintessential American icons. Whether it was drawing pad with orange and brown swirling trim, rainbow styled roller-skates or a family pack of Crayola Crayons, something told me America was different and America was cool.

I knew Sesame Street wasn’t just a show—it was a street, a real place, filled with people and characters who felt alive. Unlike the sanitized worlds of British kids’ TV, Sesame Street felt gloriously unpolished, as if you could almost hear the distant honk of a taxi or smell the hot dogs just out of frame.

The origins of Sesame Street are as fascinating as the show itself. Conceived in the late 1960s by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, it aimed to use television as an educational tool, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. With funding from public and private grants, it blended entertainment with learning, teaching literacy, numeracy, and social skills in an engaging, relatable way. It was a groundbreaking approach—using media not just to entertain, but to uplift and educate millions of children worldwide.

I was, and still am, obsessed with all type of music, but black American music from the 50s onwards accounts for the vast majority. From learning to play the 12 bar blues aged 7yrs, loving Motown from the ‘best of’ double-cassette I bought from Woolworths (for 3.99) aged 11yrs, or my teen deep dive into Funkadelic, Sly and The Family Stone and, of course, Prince. Hip-Hop fused all of these together and I loved trying and find where and what had been sampled and trying to find the original, somehow in the musical desert of Buckinghamshire.

The magic of Sesame Street drew me to all things 70s, seduced to its aesthetic, its grit, and its warmth. The version of Sesame Street I absorbed in the 80s still carried the unmistakable imprint of the decade before. The brownstones, the fire escapes, the murals painted on walls—this was not the neatly-manicured suburbia of other American shows. It was a real city, or at least it felt real to me, watching from my quiet English hamlet.

The Muppets were, of course, the heart of the show. They were anarchic, affectionate, and often surprisingly sarcastic—far from the overly sweet, moralistic characters on other children’s programming. Oscar the Grouch reveled in his garbage, Cookie Monster’s hunger was a force of nature, and Grover, my personal favorite, was the patron saint of well-intentioned disasters. And then, of course, there was Big Bird—a childlike, slightly melancholic dreamer who embodied the very spirit of Sesame Street itself.

But the humans were just as fascinating. Gordon, Susan, Maria, Luis, Mr. Hooper—these weren’t just actors playing exaggerated roles; they were people. They had jobs, routines, relationships. Their interactions weren’t just educational—they were real. They laughed and argued and celebrated. Seeing adults behave not as caricatures, but as warm, fallible individuals made childhood feel less lonely, the outside world more in grasp.

New York itself was a silent but omnipresent character. In my mind, Sesame Street and the real New York blurred together into one magical entity. I didn’t yet know about crime waves, fiscal crises, or urban struggles. I just saw the stoops where people gathered, the bodegas where life bustled, the way the city seemed to belong to everyone. It was a city where children played freely in the streets, where neighbors knew each other, where every background and language blended into one endless, colorful conversation.

As I got older, my interests shifted—towards music, film, and the mythology of 1970s New York—but Sesame Street never quite left me. When I finally visited New York for the first time as an adult (on an Art School trip in 1996) , I found myself instinctively looking for traces of that childhood vision. And in many ways, I found it. On a fiercely cold spring morning, the corners of Brooklyn still held echoes of those brownstone steps where Gordon would sit and chat. The rhythm of the streets, the energy of the people, still carried that Sesame Street spirit of warmth and camaraderie.

The show’s legacy is undeniable. Over the decades, it has reached more than 150 countries, adapting to different cultures while maintaining its core mission. It pioneered educational television, proving that children’s programming could be both entertaining and profoundly impactful. It introduced diverse representation before it was widely prioritized in media, showing children of all backgrounds that they belonged. Even today, Sesame Street remains relevant, tackling issues like autism awareness, refugee experiences, and social justice in ways children can understand.

Looking back, I realize that Sesame Street was more than just a TV show for me. It was a portal into a world that felt bigger, broader, and more alive than anything I had known. It taught me that learning could be joyful, that kindness could be cool, and that the world was wider than my own small patch of England.

So many years later, I still carry that love for Sesame Street and the New York it represented. Though the city has changed, and the show has evolved, I still hold onto that feeling it gave me—that somewhere out there, beyond my quiet childhood home, was a place where people from all walks of life lived, laughed, and learned together. And that, somehow, it belonged to me too.