Explore Manhattan’s East Village, from neighborhood favorites to unique curated events. Start with the best-known things to do, then check out "What's happening" for upcoming limited events in the East Village.
These special events are sourced from the web and social media, then carefully curated based on cool and unique events you might enjoy doing in the East Village.
We update this page on a daily basis, so be sure to bookmark us and return for fresh events.
A console you remember from childhood shares the inventory at Videogamesnewyork with Japanese imports and limited-run independent releases. The East 6th Street shop carries classic systems alongside modern physical games, with imported editions and collectible packaging to examine as you browse. Following a familiar system into its less familiar releases is a good way to explore the selection.
East Village Books buys private and estate libraries, so what you find reflects the interests of previous readers as well as the shop’s own specialties. Farther east on St. Marks Place, its used selection reaches into philosophy, critical theory, literary fiction and esoterica. Art and photography books sit within that scholarly, artistic and countercultural range, along with underground comics and writing about music.
Local farmers have brought their produce to Tompkins Square Greenmarket since 1997. On Sundays year-round, you can shop beside the park at Avenue A and East 7th Street, a natural continuation from the bookstore. The producer list spans orchard fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, cheeses, breads and pastries, with farmstead kimchi adding a fermented option to the grocery shopping.
Volunteers tend 6BC Botanical Garden, where you can follow pathways through dense planting, look into ponds and notice a treehouse among the greenery. Farther east, between Avenues B and C, the small garden brings native and introduced plants together. Close views of leaves and water, rather than a broad lawn, define the visit.
Filmmakers working outside commercial cinema are central to Anthology Film Archives. You can see independent, experimental and avant-garde work here, with screenings drawing on film history as well as newer filmmaking. Back toward the neighborhood’s western side on Second Avenue, the archive and cinema offers a separate evening destination after browsing the shops or visiting the garden.
Immigrant entrepreneurs founded DROM around music and performance across cultures. On its intimate Avenue A stage, you might encounter progressive jazz, funk, electronic music, soul or hip-hop, alongside performers rooted in global musical traditions. Near Tompkins Square, it offers a live-performance alternative to heading west for a film at Anthology.
Find upcoming street fairs, performances and other unique events in the East Village.
12 things worth doing in the next 7 days · Friday, October 16th – Thursday, October 22nd
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Live DJ | Fri, Oct 16 | Jackdaw, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Not posted yetPrice not listed |
| Live DJ Sets | Fri, Oct 16 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Friday and Saturday nightsPrice not listed |
 Multi-Choreographer Autumn Dance Concert | Fri, Oct 16 | 111 2nd Ave, 5th Floor, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, 10003East Village · Manhattan | 7:30pm |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live DJ | Sat, Oct 17 | Jackdaw, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Not posted yetPrice not listed |
| Live DJ Sets | Sat, Oct 17 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Friday and Saturday nightsPrice not listed |
| Multi-Choreographer Autumn Dance Concert | Sat, Oct 17 | 111 2nd Ave, 5th Floor, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, 10003East Village · Manhattan | 7:30pm |
 Saturday Night Fever | Sat, Oct 17 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Saturdays from 9pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Comedy Mob Open Mic | Sun, Oct 18 | New York Comedy Club - East Village, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Sundays 5:30pm |
| Sunday Night Vibes | Sun, Oct 18 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Sundays from 7pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Monday Trivia Night | Mon, Oct 19 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Mondays 7pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Antonioni's Blowup (1966): Classic Psychological Mystery Starring Vanessa Redgrave | Tue, Oct 20 | 135 Second Ave, between E. 9th St & St. Marks Place, East Village, Manhattan, 10003East Village · Manhattan | 5pm |
 Comedy Night | Tue, Oct 20 | Juke Bar, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Not posted yetPrice not listed |
 Panel Exploring Architecture's Roles in the Dynamics of Fascism and Antifascism (In Person AND Online!) | Tue, Oct 20 | 41 Cooper Sq., at E7th St., East Village, Manhattan, 10008East Village · Manhattan | 6:30pm |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Good Eggs | Wed, Oct 21 | New York Comedy Club - East Village, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Wednesdays 8pmPrice not listed |
| Live Music Wednesdays | Wed, Oct 21 | Motel No Tell, East VillageEast Village · Manhattan | Wednesdays 7pmPrice not listed |
No events listed for Thursday, October 22 yet.
A price sits under the hours when an event is not free. Tap an event for its details, the time and place, and the organizer's link.
You can listen to a live DJ over cocktails, craft beer and shared plates at Jackdaw.
🚇 3 Av (L) · 2 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
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You can see Second Avenue Dance Company perform a program featuring all of the concert's choreographers each night.
🚇 Astor Pl (6) · 4 min walk
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You can hear live DJ sets at Motel No Tell.
🚇 1 Av (L) · 2 min walk
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Hear live DJ sets at Motel No Tell’s recurring Saturday Night Fever.
🚇 1 Av (L) · 2 min walk
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Comedy Mob keeps its open mic moving with rapid-fire stand-up sets.
🚇 2 Av (F) · 4 min walk
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You can hear live music at Motel No Tell’s recurring Sunday evening program.
🚇 1 Av (L) · 2 min walk
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You can test your trivia knowledge at Motel No Tell’s weekly Monday night session.
🚇 1 Av (L) · 2 min walk
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You can catch weekly comedy at Juke Bar in the East Village.
🚇 3 Av (L) · 2 min walk
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Ottendorfer’s Swinging Sixties series screens Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave.
🚇 Astor Pl (6) · 4 min walk
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Three architecture scholars and writers trace how buildings have served fascist movements and how designers have organized against them.
🚇 Astor Pl (6) · 2 min walk
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Mark Normand, Gary Vider and Matt Ruby present an independently produced weekly comedy show.
🚇 2 Av (F) · 4 min walk
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You can hear live music at Motel No Tell's weekly Wednesday night program.
🚇 1 Av (L) · 2 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
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A standing-room concert hall running touring rock, R&B and hip-hop shows most nights — the calendar names The Wallflowers, Towa Bird, The Dear Hunter, YG and Pi'erre Bourne.
4.3★ from 3,248 Google reviews
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A cinema playing current blockbuster releases, with padded seats that recline.
4.4★ from 3,152 Google reviews
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A concert hall putting on live music shows and late-night events; you buy tickets for a specific show.
4.2★ from 3,148 Google reviews
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A seven-screen cinema in a Moorish-style building, showing a mix of arthouse and mainstream releases.
4.3★ from 1,796 Google reviews
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Stand-up showcases run nightly, several a night, with a rotating lineup of city comics and drop-in guests — the club also runs rooms in the East Village and on the Upper West Side, and the calendar lists each location separately.
4.3★ from 1,785 Google reviews
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A comedy club with a northern Italian restaurant attached, so you can book a table for dinner or brunch and stay for a show.
4.4★ from 1,757 Google reviews
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A shop stocking modern, older and imported video games.
4.6★ from 1,613 Google reviews
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A perfume shop where you build a scent of your own.
4.8★ from 1,601 Google reviews
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A pool hall near Union Square with 25 tables, plus ping pong, darts and foosball.
4.3★ from 1,539 Google reviews
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A family-run thrift chain with shops across the city stocked from monthly shipments of vintage clothing bought by travelling buyers, with new merchandise arriving at each location around three times a week.
4.3★ from 1,032 Google reviews
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A comedy club in the East Village with a bar out front and a darkened, candlelit room for the shows.
4.3★ from 1,008 Google reviews
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A small brick-walled basement comedy room on St.
4.3★ from 840 Google reviews
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A dance school in the East Village running classes for children and teens alongside its adult drop-in program, with a teen intensive and pre-professional training for those who want to go further.
4.8★ from 751 Google reviews
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A bathhouse in Manhattan's East Village.
4.2★ from 735 Google reviews
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A small room that programs live shows across stand-up, improv and science talks, often blending the formats in one night.
4.8★ from 514 Google reviews
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Karaoke spot in a downtown brick building where groups book private rooms to sing.
4.1★ from 425 Google reviews
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A used bookshop on Saint Marks Place where you browse shelves of art and photography books, philosophy, mathematics, religion, literary fiction, underground comics and graphic novels, and Greek and Latin.
4.3★ from 365 Google reviews
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A cinema and film archive on Second Avenue showing programmes built around a theme or a filmmaker rather than new releases — recent runs have included a John Berger series and a set of Duchamp programmes.
4.6★ from 332 Google reviews
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A used record shop where you flip through bins of rock, jazz, soul and funk, punk, metal, reggae, hip hop, disco, house and techno, avant garde and Latin records.
4.6★ from 317 Google reviews
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A small garden planted with several hundred varieties of flowers and other plants, arranged around a pond.
4.6★ from 292 Google reviews
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A long-established shop for vinyl, with records spanning the 1950s through to current releases.
4.3★ from 269 Google reviews
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Run by FRIGID NY, which programmes roughly two dozen monthly and recurring shows across its stages — open mics, improv, comedy, plays and storytelling.
4.5★ from 247 Google reviews
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A drawing school running in-person courses in Manhattan as well as online ones.
5★ from 234 Google reviews
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A small vinyl shop with a focus on punk, indie and hip-hop records.
4.8★ from 233 Google reviews
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You blend your own scent here.
4.7★ from 222 Google reviews
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4.8★ from 157 Google reviews
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A vinyl and cassette shop stocking records across every genre, including a bargain section where some titles go for around a dollar.
4.6★ from 141 Google reviews
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You move as a group between interactive light-up game rooms, each a different physical and mental challenge — climbing walls, solving puzzles, dodging lasers.
5★ from 135 Google reviews
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4.6★ from 126 Google reviews
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A vintage clothing store and showroom on East 9th Street, stocked from thrifting and estate-sale hunting by stylist Amanda Dolan and her team.
4.6★ from 112 Google reviews
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This is a Sunday farmers market at Avenue A and 7th Street where you walk the stalls and buy from the farms directly — vegetables from Amoon Farm and Norwich Meadows, orchard fruit and strawberries from Samascott, cheese and sheep's-milk yogurt from Valley Shepherd, mushrooms grown in Queens, breads from Bread Alone and She Wolf, and fish from Seatuck.
4.5★ from 105 Google reviews
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4.2★ from 100 Google reviews
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Hands-on workshops in a Manhattan kitchen run by pastry chef Simon Herfray, where you bake classic French pastries and American favourites.
4.6★ from 97 Google reviews
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A flea market with a mix of goods on sale and no charge to walk in.
4★ from 96 Google reviews
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A close-up magic show for 20 people in an East Village basement, performed by Hayden Childress using sleight of hand alongside VHS tapes, polaroids and haze in a black-walled room he built and painted himself.
5★ from 93 Google reviews
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A shop dealing in new electronic records — house, techno and disco among them.
4.7★ from 63 Google reviews
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Teatro Círculo is a Latino theater company in the East Village staging classical and contemporary plays in Spanish.
4.8★ from 53 Google reviews
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5★ from 48 Google reviews
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An indoor golf facility on E 5th Street with Trackman simulator bays booked by the hour.
5★ from 41 Google reviews
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A vintage store focused on women's clothing made before 1960, alongside unusual collectibles and jewelry.
4.3★ from 41 Google reviews
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4.8★ from 39 Google reviews
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This is a small gallery running rotating exhibitions across two Lower East Side spaces, 119 Hester St and 77 East 3rd St, plus an online exhibition strand.
5★ from 26 Google reviews
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You can choose Moroccan-inspired cooking at Cafe Mogador or traditional red-sauce Italian food at John's of 12th Street.
You can dig through used vinyl at Academy or look for rare releases at Limited to One.
You can see experimental stage work at La MaMa or hear storytelling and other recurring shows at FRIGID.
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