...or
Where NOT To Have Your Teeth Pulled in New York City


Edited to add:
I've been fascinated by this neighborhood ever since reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand wherein one of the characters grew up in Hell's Kitchen. Pursuant to Lucy's question, here's the reason for the name of the neighborhood which I found fascinating as paraphrased from Wikipedia.

Several different explanations exist for the original name. In 1835, Davy Crockett said, "In my part of the country, when you meet an Irishman, you find a first-rate gentleman; but these are worse than savages; they are too mean to swab hell's kitchen" But he was referring to another Irish slum area, Five Points, and not Clinton (which is the preferred name for the area these days).

According the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association: No one can pin down the exact origin of the label, but some refer to a tenement on 54th Street as the first "Hell's Kitchen." Another explanation points to an infamous building at 39th as the true original. A gang and a local dive took the name as well.... a similar slum also existed in London and was known as Hell's Kitchen. Whatever the origin of the name, it fit.

Another historian, Mary Clark, cites that the name first appeared in print on September 22, 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to the West 30s with a police guide to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to a particularly infamous tenement at 39th Street and 10th Avenue as "Hell's Kitchen," and said that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the city." According to this version, 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues became known as Hell's Kitchen and the name was later expanded to the surrounding streets.

Another version ascribes the name's origins to a German restaurant in the area known as Heil's Kitchen, after its proprietors.

But the most common version traces it to the story of Dutch Fred The Cop, a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself," to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen."

Personally, I like the latter definition the best - but that's just me. John Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's shows are taped in Hell's Kitchen, but I did not know that the real life inspiration for the apartment in Seinfeld... the room across from Kramer's... was actually in Hell's Kitchen. What I found the most interesting was that all these years I've read about what a slum it is and how dirty and crime ridden it is. And yet, until I saw this sign, I didn't even realize we were in Hell's Kitchen. So... gentrification works, I guess.