Williamsburg

Williamsburg got famous, got expensive, and then got written off by people who stopped coming. It is still one of the best places in the city to spend an evening, as long as you know what it is now: condo towers and waterfront parks on one side, and low brick blocks with old bars and Puerto Rican and Polish New York still in them on the other.

Walk east instead of west and it changes fast. Bedford Avenue by the L is the busy stretch and the least interesting one. Grand Street, Metropolitan Avenue and the blocks up toward the Graham stop are where people who live here actually eat. The waterfront is the other half: Domino Park under the old sugar refinery, the ferry dock, and one of the best free skyline views in the city with the sun going down behind Manhattan.

The old and the new sit a few blocks apart. Peter Luger has been grilling steak under the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, cash or their own card only, and it is still the argument-settler. McCarren Park on a Sunday is the whole neighborhood at once: softball, dogs, sunbathers, a running track and a pool in summer. On Saturdays from spring through fall, Smorgasburg fills Marsha P. Johnson State Park on the waterfront with something like a hundred food stalls, and it is worth arriving hungry and early.

Come in the late afternoon, eat early, and let the evening happen. In winter it is quieter, and the bars are better for it.