‘American Horror Story’ is right — New York City is a terrifying hellhole

‘American Horror Story’ is right — New York City is a terrifying hellhole

The most validating news of the year has arrived: The 11th season of FX’s “American Horror Story” will reportedly be called “New York City.” 

Perfect! Every New Yorker with a brain knows this is the ideal setting for a terrifying TV show today. That’s because we no longer reside in the glittering, enviable metropolis of “Sex and the City” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” 

Those salad days are over. Now we pay a flippin’ fortune to be stuck inside a dingy remake of “Death Wish” that’s actually far freakier than most of the camp antics “AHS” creator Ryan Murphy has ever dreamt up.

Crime-infested New York City is the perfect setting for Crime-infested New York City is the perfect setting for “American Horror Story.” Shutterstock

Jessica Lange as a mental patient singing “The Name Game”; Kathy Bates chewing scenery as the severed head of a New Orleans witch; Sarah Paulson shrieking on election night 2016 as she watches the news — cute, fun, silly.

Compared to previous seasons “Asylum” and “Coven,” New York is a hellhole — five boroughs in the nine circles where major crime has soared by 36% and one rotting onion costs $2 while an ever-present haze of pot smoke hovers like graveyard fog on “Scooby Doo.” Our city is awash in actual, palpable dread and tourists are afraid to come here. We should change the famous lyric to “Start spreading the mace!” 

Indeed, there’s enough material in our foul city for an entire “AHS” spinoff series. 

Sandra Bernhard was spotted filing the new season of Sandra Bernhard was spotted filming the new season of “American Horror Story” in New York. Steve Sands/NewYorkNewswire/Baue

Random subway shovings have become so common that the city is planning to install plastic dividers on some platforms, and the uptick in underground incidents has spurred Gov. Hochul to have the MTA add security cameras on every train car that will inevitably never work. Citizens and do-nothing pols shrug at unhinged wackos who shout offensive gobbledygook at women and kids and threaten passersby in every borough. 

The other day on First Avenue near Momofuku Noodle Bar, I watched as a crazed man stormed through five blocks, knocking over garbage cans while yelling obscenities. That loon can be played by Zachary Quinto on “AHS: NYC”!

So commonplace are shootings suddenly that we no longer talk about the guy who unloaded a handgun on an N train in the middle of the afternoon this spring and shot 10 people, wounding 29. That would make a fantastic episode. So would the disgusting creep who smeared feces on a woman’s face at a Bronx train station and then — da da dunnnn! — was released without bail. Yuck, right? See, 2022 New York is too graphic for basic cable.

French actress Rebecca Dayan filing an French actress Rebecca Dayan filming an “AHS” scene. Christopher Peterson / SplashNew

Sandra Bernhardt is said to have been cast in the new season. Will she play a maniacal Gov. Kathy Hochul, an unelected official who champions releasing dangerous criminals onto our streets while saying it’s good for us like we’re in “The Purge”?

Patti LuPone is also in the ensemble. She can play a Broadway actress who loudly insists that lack of mask use in theaters is the gravest threat that Times Square is facing today — rather than an Asian woman being randomly slashed blocks from the theater this summer.

I think Denis O’Hare would be terrific as an amalgam New York Times columnist who tells readers that the city’s obvious rise in crime is only our “perception” — with the sadistic calm of the doctor in “Rosemary’s Baby” — from his beautiful home in Greenwich, CT.

And I’d be honored if Evan Peters took on the role of me screaming when my rent was jacked up by $900. That grotesque scene will win him an Emmy.

The possibilities for “American Horror Story: New York City” are endless. So depressingly endless.