New York Guide
The East Village
Like the Lower East Side to its south, the East Village, which extends east from Broadway to Avenue D and north from Houston Street to 14th Street, was once a solidly working-class refuge for immigrants. In the early part of the twentieth century, rents began to rise in the city's traditional bohemia in Greenwich Village, sending New York's nonconformist intelligentsia scurrying here. By the 1990s, the rents here had begun their own upward climb, and the East Village is now no longer the hotbed of dissidence and creativity that it once was.
The last twenty years have seen the area become downright mainstream – you're likely to walk by a pretty standard cross-section of boutiques, thrift stores, and record shops patronized by more tourists, students, and uptowners than authentic bohemians. The area's high standard of living and panoply of restaurants and bars, never mind its proximity to NYU, ensure that rents here are almost – although not quite – as insane as those in the neighboring West Village. Nevertheless, despite the vaudevillian circuses of St Mark's Place and Cooper Square, and creeping invasion of Starbucks (note the two across from each other at Astor Place), thoughtful resistance to the status quo can still be found, and further east Alphabet City retains a strong Latino identity.
The East Village can best be reached by taking the #6 train to Astor Place, or the #N or #R trains to the 8th Street station.