East Village

The East Village has been the city’s cheap, loud, argumentative corner for a century, and enough of it survives to be worth your evening. Ukrainian and Polish New York, then punk, then the artists, then the rents. St. Marks Place is a shadow of what it was and still busier than anywhere else at 1am.

The old places are the good places. McSorley’s Old Ale House has been open since 1854, serves light or dark and nothing else, and throws sawdust on the floor. Veselka has been feeding people pierogi and borscht on Second Avenue since 1954, and it does not close early. The Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th have been running since 1892: a hot room, a cold plunge, and a treatment where a man hits you with oak leaves.

The drinking is genuinely world class here now. Death and Co taught New York to take cocktails seriously, and Superbueno runs a red-lit room on Mexican-American flavors with a line out the door.

The quiet part surprises people. Tompkins Square Park anchors the neighborhood, and the community gardens tucked between buildings, open on weekend afternoons in the warm months, are the loveliest thing in this part of Manhattan. Our East Village gardens guide has every one and its hours.