Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) used by Manhattanites to describe those who live in the outer boroughs (Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island) or New Jersey and travel to Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel (New Jersey) or over the East Side bridges, and who are thus considered inferior; ext. to other cities, e.g. San Francisco; also attrib (see cit. 2004).

1977		N.Y. Times 13 Dec. 🌐 ‘On the weekends, we get all the bridge and tunnel people who try to get in,’ he said. Elizabeth Fondaras, a pillar of the city’s conservative social scene, [...] asked who the bridge and tunnel people were. ‘Those people from Queens and Staten Island and those places,’ he said.
1985		‘Jennifer Blowdryer’ Modern English 7: bridge and tunnel people (n): Are people who have to take a bridge or a tunnel to get to Manhattan.
1999		Indep. Rev. 10 Aug. 7: The so-called bridge and tunnel crowd pours in (the pejorative term for people from New Jersey and Long Island, otherwise B&T).
2000		B. Younger Boiler Room [film script] What’s up with those clothes? Did you just come from a city council meeting or are you just trying to get lucky with the bridge and tunnel crowd?
2004		Silke Tudor in S.F. Weekly at www.slangcity.com 25 Mar. 🌐 Already four years have passed since Bondage A Go-Go first opened its leather-clad doors. Purists said that it would never last – that the bridge-and-tunnel crowd would overwhelm all the true fetish fans, leaving an acid-washed regurgitation of tequila-shot-chugging voyeurs.
2012		T. Robinson ‘Last Call’ in Dirty Words [ebook] Every Bridge and Tunnel half-wit with a lick of Italian in his blood pulled that card at some point or another.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] He and his team busted more bridge-and-tunnel junkies [...] than they could count.