*Source: New York Times

Let’s begin with a venue. A favorite has to be Tonic. This club in the Lower East Side became legendary during its lifetime, known for housing some of the world, certainly New York’s, most creative music personalities. Tonic was a humble looking place, I can’t really say anything about the décor other than it’s pretty bare, but I have seen plenty of great, creative musicians there and that’s really all I can ask for in a venue. Everybody from John Zorn, Acid Mother Temple, Cibo Matto to Yoko Ono have performed there, and I was very lucky to watch what perhaps is my favorite group, Yura Yura Teikoku, perform their first US show there. It has sadly closed its doors in 2007. My gratitude, Tonic, you have curated some of my favorite shows there.

*Source: South East Review

The Nuyorican Poets Café is a historical place in alphabet city, where a number of great poets (duh!) made it their stomping grounds. I first visited the place to watch Braggin’ Rites, a regular freestyle battle program that became a staple of the independent hip-hop circuit in New York. This was also the place where I first saw Saul Williams perform his uber-charismatic slam poetry at a random night. After a couple of visits there, I found out The Nuyorican Poets Café’s rich history, how it started in the 70s and continues to support the local art scene until today.

*Source: Disco Salt

For the more current wave of independent bands there is no better place than Cake Shop. This two floor Lower East Side bakery/record shop/bar/venue has a string of really good bands playing there regularly. It’s the place where I got to see groups such as Crystal Stilts, Gang Gang Dance, Zs, and the Long Blondes. You can really find an excellent performances here on any given night, and now they have opened a sister venue out in Brooklyn, Bruar Falls, so be sure to check that place out as well.

*Source: Light in the attic

My week is not complete without visiting at least one record shop. Now there are plenty of great music shops all around the city, but there is one particular store I visited regularly for a decade, and that store would be Other Music. A record shop with a selection of the popular and the obscure is not uncommon, but this shop between Broadway and Lafayette seem to select their records pretty carefully in comparison to others, and luckily for me what they carry in their store 90 percent of the time I would enjoy so when I enter I never really have to dig (I sometimes would just walk in and pick up a random record and would be happy with the purchase). The staff is very friendly and very knowledgeable about music so you can trust their recommendation and get schooled about music all at in the same conversation. Don’t skip this store when you visit New York.

*Source: Marie Claire

Moving on to my favorite eateries! One that really doesn’t need mentioning is Taisho! a St. Marks, mainly yakitori-serving joint which sometimes seems like a mecca for many Indonesians (the last couple of years, every time enter there would be a group of Indonesian kids there haha). The menu there definitely revolves around comfort food, with portions relatively large at an affordable price. I forgot when exactly, but in the 2000s they opened a second Taisho! on the same street, which is great because the restaurant seems to attract larger and larger crowds as the years went on; I sometimes had to wait an hour on weekends for one seat before the second place opened. Be sure to order the chicken skin (Kawa) yakitori when you dine here, and don’t forget to ask it to be made extra crispy!

*Source: NY Mag

Do Hwa, oh Do Hwa, how I love you. This Korean restaurant in the West Village is probably the one place besides home I frequented the most in recent years. They serve up some of the best Korean food in the city (certainly the best in the west village) and the presentations of the dishes are quite nice. The amount of Dak Teegim I’ve eaten there is sort of ridiculous. The décor is quite stylish but not in that cold-detached sort of way, a very comfortable place with a very warm wooden black colorway accentuated by splashes of red and off white. The staff is a super-friendly and knowledgeable bunch that I miss dearly, and my favorite activity when dining or drinking there is to just sit at the bar and stare at the films they always project on a wall.

*Source: Me so hungry

Great New York Noodletown is not the best noodle place in Chinatown, but is my favorite place to get roast pork or barbeque pig. Open late, my fellow Whiteboard Journalist and lover, Mar Galo, used to take me there after watching shows at Knitting Factory when it was still located on Leonard Street. I loved their fine pork treats so much that I sometimes would buy a pound of those succulent dishes to take home then fill my belly with piggies for about a day.

*Source: NY Go

Now shopping, a place I often entered mainly due to our editor-in-chief is consignment store – Tokio 7. This shop selects their apparel very carefully so you will definitely find something you will like when you enter. The prices are relatively cheap compared to their original retail prices, and if you are patient enough the prices slowly becomes more affordable, if another shopper hasn’t snatched the item up, that is.

For books, head to Strand, this book store off Union Square is as gigantic as your favorite Barnes and Nobles with twice, perhaps thrice the amount of books. It can be a little hectic in there with the foot traffic, and the often-disheveled bookcases can be a little over-whelming. If you’re lucky enough you will be able to pick up some pretty rare books in there, perhaps even 1st prints!

*Source: The Scout

The Whitney Museum is an excellent place to look at fine art. Their permanent collection is quite small; the main attraction here is their exhibits, which often revolves around modern and contemporary works. I always try to attend their Biennial, which has the Whitney select works from the finest artists currently producing work.

*Source: NY Architecture

Now, one of the greatest museums on the planet is the Metropolitan Museum. This humongoid museum has permanent collections from all around the world that will leave you in awe. With works that date back to something-thousand BC, this is the place for you to see art history in person.

There are plenty more places I love to visit in New York City (I haven’t even mentioned places in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) but we’ll have to save those places for another day. As I was writing this article, every time I wrote of a place I thought of another place in close proximity I’d like to write about, so if I kept on going this will never end hahaha. Point is, there are plenty of places which caters to different groups of people in New York worthy of mention, so be sure to head there and experience it for yourself.