"And we've had people move to be closer to this fertile, artists' playground and then complain about the noise." He laughed. "We deal in art that is naturally endangered," he said. Remarkably, the flux has actually helped the longtime presence of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which the poet Allen Ginsberg, when he lived nearby, called "the most integrated place on the planet." Bought in 1981 for $8,000, the current space has flourished in recent years, said executive director Daniel Gallant. But also not just waiters and bartenders and that kind of thing.
New residents work in fashion, tech and media. "We're seeing a lot more young women come to the neighborhood, I'd say a 70/30 split," said Arik Lipshitz, president of DSA Realty, a local firm started by his father in 1986. Perhaps the most telltale sign of the brighter days for Alphabet City came last year, when Tompkins Square Park, which for decades was a seedy, drug-addled tent city for the homeless, installed permanent ping-pong tables, a nod to the changing demographics swinging toward both affluent hipsters and young families. And the Chelsea comparison isn't so far-fetched given the momentum and enthusiasm behind a counterpart to the city's High Line park, the conversion of an underground trolley terminal under Delancey Street in the adjacent Lower East Side into what's being called the LowLine. Yes, the neighborhood also has more than its fair share of public housing projects, but so does Chelsea. On a recent visit, the space offered a sweet, Cyrillic happy birthday wish to someone named Dasha. The city's first Jeremy Lin graffiti tribute popped up on Second Street, at a spot where a hipster proposed to his girlfriend using a graffiti pastiche of their relationship. The notable graffiti murals in the area are more artful than brutal along Houston, for example, a spot once used by people grieving for the singer Selena and Pope John Paul II is now home to spray-painted ads for local businesses.
The streets are peppered with more than 20 community gardens of varying sizes, as well as the occasional gallery space. Even Bedlam, one of the city's wildest gay bars, has come to roost on Avenue C between a bank and a discount supermarket. Meanwhile, the Ost Cafe has enjoyed a cool boom for being the spot where Foursquare was developed. Royale's burgers have gained legendary status, and Kafana, the Serbian restaurant, recently was listed by Newsweek as one of the 101 best places to eat in the world. When the Lakeside Lounge closed in April, it was reopened by some of the same principals little more than 100 days later under the name Blackbird. The Wayland is expanding to take over a neighboring business. Dov Charney, the American Apparel mogul, backs the Cardinal. The Beagle just reopened with a bolder, boozier menu. We wanted to bring a new destination to the neighborhood." In October, the theater will celebrate its first anniversary in the new space.īut Alphabet City has had its own homegrown venues develop as well. "But we wanted to put our money where our mouth is," he said, "and keep a stage space alive. When he told his Queens-native mother that he was putting the new UCB Theater on Avenue A, Alex Sidtis, the theater's managing director, said she recited the ABC mnemonic and told him to reconsider. Recently, it has become the go-to neighborhood for franchise extensions from fancier parts of town-the West Village's Westville, Park Slope's Fonda and Chelsea's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre-rendering it a kind of Epcot version of the city's coolness. "That was inconceivable even a few years ago."Īlphabet City has capitalized. "Now you have apartments for $70 a square foot along Avenue D," said Bob Perl, a local developer who owns Tower Brokerage. It was simply more easterly than the East Village and its lettered avenues served both as reminders to its defiance of Manhattan's prim grid, and a mnemonic device of warning: A was Alright, B was Bad, C was Crazy and D? D was Death. For decades, Alphabet City was written off as a no man's land, cordoned off by the East River, the river of traffic on Houston Street to its south, and the mountain range of Stuyvesant Town to its north.