This month, the Javits Center celebrated its 40th anniversary as the premiere (and only) large-scale convention center on Manhattan's west side. Also this month, the prestige drama "The Westies" concluded its first season of a show about how the Javits Center was, in its telling, erected in a spray of bullets and blood.
It might be hard to believe that the place where they hold the New York International Auto Show and New York Comic Con is the driving plot point of a show about a criminal organization, but here we are: "The Westies" is about the real-life, New York-based, Irish-American gang of the same name, and their infamous exploitation of the center during its construction in the 1980s.