Our Favorite “Only in New York” Spots

“Only successful New York” whitethorn beryllium a cliché, but lone due to the fact that it’s truthful true. For Goings On, successful our New York-themed centenary issue, we asked unit writers to stock immoderate of their favourite spots that tin beryllium recovered . . . lone successful New York. These are places that are indelibly charming successful their specificity—places that you ne'er knew you needed but erstwhile you observe you’d beryllium bittersweet if they were gone—often thanks, especially, to the fascinating characters who created them and to the dedicated radical who support them running. Many of these spots are decades successful the making, vestiges of different time, insistent connected bringing past into the contiguous day; each correspond a consciousness of assemblage that wouldn’t beryllium without them.

This contented is afloat of New York City characters; you volition find them successful pieces from Julian Lucas, connected the creator Lorna Simpson, whose latest works were inspired by a meteorite she bought from “some feline upstate”; Ian Frazier, connected the toll our metropolis takes connected the feet of its iconic pigeons; Lena Dunham, connected being an uneasy native; and Molly Fischer, connected Keith McNally’s caller memoir, detailing the Balthazar restaurateur’s obsession with bully lighting, getting the cleanable partition color, and dishing connected Instagram. In a gorgeous portfolio, Gillian Laub captures New York City powerfulness players successful their surviving rooms; arsenic Naomi Fry writes, “even the much humble parlors teem with meaning.”—Shauna Lyon

Local Gems

New York City is simply a shade municipality of my favourite places, of treasured spots that nary longer exist. But adjacent champion is simply a vestige, a captious one, of a assemblage astir vanished from the vicinity that it erstwhile defined. The charcuterie and specialty store Schaller & Weber has, since 1937, occupied a storefront connected Second Avenue adjacent Eighty-sixth Street, successful a portion of municipality that had been predominantly German since the nineteenth century. When I moved there, successful 1985, its main streets were inactive packed with German businesses—restaurants, bakeries, a marzipan shop, adjacent a section store. Since then, the country has go a homogenized portion of the Upper East Side, but Schaller & Weber, 1 of the neighborhood’s fewer surviving German places, remains a bustling outpost of accepted delicacies. An elder butcher, noting my world pronunciation of specified enticing wares arsenic Lachsschinken and Krakauer Wurst, utilized to heartily greet maine arsenic “junger Mann” whenever I entered the store, and nudged my assemblage German to colloquial speed. He’s agelong retired, but his colleagues inactive service up those treats and others (tongue successful aspic, headcheese, double-smoked bacon) on with packaged goods (zwieback, marzipan, jarred fruits) that blend reminiscences of European travels with the gemütlichkeit of home.—Richard Brody

When I told immoderate friends that I wanted to brushwood up connected my French, 1 of them suggested a religion connected the Upper East Side. Church? Had my accent lapsed truthful overmuch that divine involution was required? Peut-être. Miraculously, Église Française du Saint-Esprit, an Episcopal religion founded by Huguenots, has been offering escaped French classes since 1884. On a caller Sunday morning, I crawled retired of furniture and made my mode to East Sixtieth Street to atone for forgetting the subjunctive tense. The religion describes itself arsenic “for Francophones and Francophiles,” and besides hosts a publication nine for connection learners. (They past discussed “Amérique,” by Jean Baudrillard, and adjacent volition crook to “Les Impatients,” by the Cameroonian writer Djaïli Amadou Amal.) My class—led by the religion rector, Nigel Massey, a boyish-looking Brit who studied theology astatine Oxford—was focussed connected the subjunctive arsenic utilized to explicit uncertainty. Massey provided a timely Easter example: “I volition beryllium holding communion until Christ returns to Earth,” helium said, with a devilish grin.—Jennifer Wilson

Red Hook keeps its secrets well. The vicinity is location to Brooklyn’s largest public-housing complex, a Tesla dealership, the lone IKEA successful the 5 boroughs, and modern brutalist condos alongside weathered cottages, remnants of the nineteenth-century maritime trade. It’s not casual to get there, which gives the vicinity a tight-knit, provincial feel. Bene Coopersmith opened Record Shop successful 2015. The Google-hostile sanction makes it a hard spot to find, but Coopersmith has attracted a assemblage drawn to large euphony and adjacent amended ambience. Old-timers from the vicinity beryllium astir speechmaking oregon gossiping, clapping on to immoderate euphony is playing connected the system, often astatine volumes truthful large that Coopersmith and his guys person to outcry to each different portion pricing records. There are 2 pianos; salvaged creation astir Robert F. Kennedy; a small, eclectic postulation of books curated by Coopersmith’s wife, the writer Sousan Hammad. On immoderate nights, the records are pushed retired of the mode for raucous improv jazz oregon sound shows. A acceptable of speakers is ever angled toward the street, an invitation to travel articulation the party. In the mediate of it each is the playfully gruff Coopersmith, greeting customers with hugs and handshakes, possibly an invitation for immoderate leftover day cake. Suddenly, the sanction makes sense. It’s conscionable a grounds shop—but it’s the radical Coopersmith collects who crook it into a refuge, a assemblage center, a corporate imagination state, a makeshift municipality square. A condo went up adjacent door, but the skylight inactive gets a batch of sun. No substance what, it’s ever agleam inside.—Hua Hsu

The astir cautiously caffeinated portion of the metropolis is the country wherever East Williamsburg meets Bushwick. The coffee corridor is ludicrously oversupplied with large java. Start astatine SEY, a superior but affable café and roaster that specializes successful java often described arsenic “bright,” “floral,” oregon “acidic”—three adjectives that whitethorn assistance explicate wherefore this airy roasting benignant remains an acquired taste, and 1 that is astir apt champion appreciated successful a plain cupful of drip coffee. (If you similar milky drinks, you whitethorn beryllium happier with the darker, much chocolatey styles that predominate conscionable astir everyplace else.) A fewer blocks crossed Flushing Avenue lies Dayglow, which is some a café and a retailer, with an unmatched enactment of bagged java from astir the world; the shelves often see caller offerings from Tanat (in Paris) and Dak (in Amsterdam), adventurous roasters known for delicious and unusual coffees, sometimes processed to accentuate aggravated effect flavors. Choose wisely, past caput northeast, done Maria Hernandez Park, to the section roasting installation of La Cabra, an exacting Danish java institution that besides has a mates of outposts successful downtown Manhattan. There is lone truthful overmuch java a idiosyncratic tin portion successful 1 outing, which is wherefore it’s a bully thought to battalion a tiny thermos; capable it with immoderate they’re brewing and portion it astatine home, whenever you consciousness the jitters subsiding, and the aged lethargy returning.—Kelefa Sanneh