Bushwick

Bushwick is a working Latino and Caribbean neighborhood that also became the center of underground nightlife in New York, and both of those things are true on the same block. Knickerbocker Avenue has been a Puerto Rican and Dominican main street for decades. Two streets over, a warehouse is running techno until 6am.

The street art is the daytime version. The Bushwick Collective started as one man asking building owners to let artists paint, and it grew into blocks of enormous murals around Troutman Street and Jefferson. It changes constantly, it is free, and it is best on a weekend morning when the trucks are not parked in front of everything.

The nightlife is why people travel here. Bossa Nova Civic Club is the small tropical room that built Brooklyn techno. House of Yes runs aerialists and themed nights with a consent policy it takes seriously, and it will turn you away if you ignored the dress code. Elsewhere has several rooms and a rooftop, often with three different things happening at once.

Green space is the thing the neighborhood is short on, and locals know it. Maria Hernandez Park is the one that matters: a full block of courts, playgrounds and shade that acts as the neighborhood’s living room in summer. Otherwise the closest real green is Bushwick Inlet Park up on the Williamsburg waterfront, or Highland Park at the Queens line.