The East Village is Manhattan's bohemian neighbourhood — punk rock, countercultural, and cheap-by-New-York-standards, with a concentration of bars, restaurants, and dive bars that has survived successive waves of gentrification more or less intact. St. Marks Place (8th Street) is the cultural artery; the streets around it are dense with Japanese restaurants, Ukrainian diners, record shops, and the kind of bars that don't have websites.
The neighbourhood's associations run from Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets to the Velvet Underground, CBGB, and early hip-hop. Tompkins Square Park at its centre was the site of the 1988 police riot that defined New York's last great gentrification battle. For eating: the East Village has the best ramen, Japanese curry, and Ukrainian pierogi in the city, at prices that feel anachronistic given the neighbourhood's Manhattan location.