New York Magazine

From the owners of trendy neighborhood spots like Welcome to the Johnsons, Loisaida, and Belly comes this below-the-radar late-night haunt.

Chinatown dive bar becomes Chinatown dive "nightclub."

Serge Becker of La Esquina nudges former twenties-styled rock hangout 6's and 8's a few decades forward.

They supply the room. You supply the party.

Effortless cool cultivated via black leather couches, local artwork you need a flashlight to see, and dim, narrow hallways perfect for random makeouts and tequila overconsumption.

A members-only bar with a retractable roof, upholstery from Stephen Sprouse, and drinks and small plates care of Shang.

The music venue that helped forge the thriving music scene on the Lower East Side, and the home of punk/metal karaoke.

With drinks in teacups and a hidden entrance, this hideaway boasts all the glamour of a 20s-era speakeasy.

The garden is gone from the latest LES location, but the tree-trunk tables and mounted deer's head are still intact.

A perfect fit for a particular part of the Lower East Side where the Chinese and Latino communities intersect.

A narrow, high-beamed rectangle designed by Marcel Wanders and intended for displaced Meatpackers looking to talk about the latest film fest.

A lounge tucked underneath Broadway East from Ron Castellano (Santos' Party House.)

Recruit a friend with a few hundred to spare, have him (or her) buy a bottle to secure a table, and then waltz into BLVD with the ease of a B-list celebrity.

With brick walls, low lights and soft, red couches, bOb is one of the coziest drinking destinations on the Lower East Side.

If you’re in the Lower East Side and looking for a non-scene, you’ve found it. But this isn’t the kind of hangout that the Boss would have been proud of.

Great bands and the best post-show hang in town have made Bowery Ballroom an instant live-music institution.

An intimate take on Hammerstein ballroom for circus stars, human oddities, and avant-garde thespians from France, Russia, and even Brighton Beach.

Hybrid pastry cafe/record store/bar/music venue has everything a Lower East Sider needs to make it through another day of unemployment.

The place for enjoying stiff drinks and sightings of size 0 sirens—if you make it past the door.

Finally, BelDel gets a smart, alluring neighborhood bar.

Basement music venue for catching rockers on the verge or getting taken back to high school Battle of the Bands.

Bartender Kurt Zager pounds his patrons’ eardrums with underground house, assaults their eyes with aggressive artwork, then gets his tattooed crowd seriously drunk.

Twenty-first-century trendoids chase scaled-down Studio 54 dreams at this glitzy LES hotel bar, if they can get past the velvet rope.

New York's best bar to pick up a musician.

A shockingly nice downtown rock club without the velvet-rope hassle.