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- Rockwood Music Hall
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196 Allen St., nr. Houston St.; 212-477-4155
Despite its tininess—just 520 square feet, and that’s with a baby-grand piano onstage—Rockwood Music Hall attracts an outsize following, mostly owing to owner Ken Rockwood’s singular obsession with booking topflight music (there are no readings or comedy nights or small-plates menus to distract from that mission). The typical lineup includes a discriminating mix of singer-songwriters (Amos Lee, Noe Venable, Ryan Star) and folk, rock, and indie bands. A musician himself, Rockwood runs sound from a nook above the entrance, his feet dangling overhead. Unlike the many other modest-size venues crammed into the Lower East Side, the stage isn’t relegated to a back room or basement: It’s visible from the street, surrounded by café tables, dripping candles, and a tip jar passed during each set in lieu of a cover charge.
Best Small Music Venue
From the 2009 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine
Our mission this year: to hunt down not just the best but the best values in the eating, shopping, drinking, and general-consuming universe of New York. It’s quite the process, this, requiring eating and shopping and drinking (all in the name of research), followed by heated but civil discussion, and heated but less-civil discussion, until a winner emerges in each category.


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