Explore Manhattan’s Upper East Side, 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 Upper East Side.
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 Upper East Side.
We update this page on a daily basis, so be sure to bookmark us and return for fresh events.
Vermeer, Rembrandt and Fragonard share a former home at The Frick Collection, where you encounter paintings alongside sculpture, furniture, ceramics and textiles. That arrangement is the particular pleasure here: the art remains in the historic rooms of a Gilded Age mansion, with small identifying plaques rather than large interpretive panels. The collection also includes Bellini and Turner, giving you considerable range within that focused format.
Albertine’s booksellers bring together contemporary and classic writing from 30 Francophone countries, with books in both French and English. You can browse translations alongside French originals, so the selection reaches readers well beyond those who speak French. Farther north on Fifth Avenue from the Frick, the shop occupies the historic Payne Whitney mansion.
The ancient builders of the Temple of Dendur left carved stone architecture that you can see inside The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Egypt gave the temple to the United States, and it was dismantled and reconstructed block by block at the museum. In Gallery 131, you’re looking at the temple itself. It’s a concrete place to begin a visit to a collection whose scope can otherwise make deciding where to start feel like the main task.
Frank Lloyd Wright made the route through the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum part of the experience of seeing art. You follow a spiral gallery around an open rotunda, with views across the central space changing as the curve carries you onward. The loops broaden toward the skylight, and artwork meets angled walls. For someone interested in architecture, those relationships make the building a substantial part of the visit, with the art and the route through it closely connected.
Local cartoonist Peter Pereira puts Yorkville and the Upper Far East Side into his New York INTOON work, including Logos Bookstore itself. You can browse his work in the shop alongside paintings, prints and cards by Paul Morin and Sonia Grineva. It’s a particularly apt place to find a neighborhood keepsake: art depicting this part of New York, sold in one of the places it depicts. The independent York Avenue bookshop takes this guide east into Yorkville, away from the Fifth Avenue museums.
The waitstaff sing at Brandy’s Piano Bar, and customers join in with performers and a professional pianist. You can listen or add your voice to familiar show tunes and standards. The music is a shared part of the room, with staff, performers and patrons all contributing.
Find upcoming street fairs, performances and other unique events in the Upper East Side.
4 things worth doing in the next 7 days · Friday, October 16th – Thursday, October 22nd
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Gladys Open Mic | Fri, Oct 16 | The Comic Strip, Upper East SideUpper East Side · Manhattan | Wednesdays & Fridays 6pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 New Talent Show | Sat, Oct 17 | The Comic Strip, Upper East SideUpper East Side · Manhattan | Saturdays 5pmPrice not listed |
No events listed for Sunday, October 18 yet.
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
 Comedy Classes | Mon, Oct 19 | The Comic Strip, Upper East SideUpper East Side · Manhattan | Mondays 5:45pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| DF Open Mic/Workshop | Tue, Oct 20 | The Comic Strip, Upper East SideUpper East Side · Manhattan | Tuesdays 6pmPrice not listed |
| Event | Date | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gladys Open Mic | Wed, Oct 21 | The Comic Strip, Upper East SideUpper East Side · Manhattan | Wednesdays & Fridays 6pmPrice 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 hear comedy at Comic Strip Live’s recurring open mic.
🚇 86 St (Q) · 5 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
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The Comic Strip hosts a comedy showcase for new talent.
🚇 86 St (Q) · 5 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
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Develop your own stand-up act through joke writing, revision and practice with D.F. Sweedler.
🚇 86 St (Q) · 5 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
More info ▾
The Comic Strip hosts a recurring comedy open mic/workshop.
🚇 86 St (Q) · 5 min walk
🍴 Eat nearby · 4 places, closest 2 min walk
More info ▾
A modern art museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
4.3★ from 26,639 Google reviews
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This is the small Manhattan plaza at the foot of the Roosevelt Island Tramway, on the west side of Second Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets, and it is where you board the tram across the East River.
4.6★ from 11,017 Google reviews
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You board a red cabin at 59th Street and Second Avenue and ride it across the East River to Tramway Plaza on Roosevelt Island, a crossing of about three to four minutes each way.
4.7★ from 9,361 Google reviews
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You walk through a Gilded Age mansion at 1 East 70th Street that holds paintings from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century — Vermeer, Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, Turner, El Greco, Titian.
4.6★ from 4,912 Google reviews
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A day spa whose menu covers several massage styles — Swedish, hot stone and reflexology among them.
5★ from 2,134 Google reviews
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5★ from 1,608 Google reviews
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The Comic Strip is a stand-up club on Second Avenue that has been running since 1975.
4.3★ from 938 Google reviews
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A three-screen cinema with reserved seating.
4.4★ from 798 Google reviews
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Karaoke spot with a range of private rooms to book, an extensive catalogue of songs to choose from, and a full bar.
4.4★ from 676 Google reviews
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Staff and customers sing show tunes and other standards together, backed by a live pianist.
4.5★ from 617 Google reviews
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Albertine is a bookstore on Fifth Avenue selling books in French and English, run by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
4.6★ from 606 Google reviews
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Asia Society is a museum of pre-modern, modern and contemporary art from Asia and the Asian diaspora, with rotating exhibitions — Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon opens in March.
4.5★ from 597 Google reviews
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A comedy club that leans on its predecessor's history at the same address, with couch seating and a live stand-up lineup.
4.7★ from 530 Google reviews
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4.4★ from 411 Google reviews
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This Upper East Side location has ten Trackman-fitted golf simulator bays, each holding up to six people, where you can practise, play a full 18 at a course like Pebble Beach, or work through the games.
4.9★ from 376 Google reviews
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A neighborhood bookshop on York Ave with children's and young adult books alongside fiction, non-fiction, history, religious books, music, cards and gifts.
4.2★ from 338 Google reviews
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A family-run shop selling picture frames in both modern and traditional styles, with contemporary artwork on display as well.
4.9★ from 314 Google reviews
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4.3★ from 281 Google reviews
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A gay cocktail lounge spread across three bars, one of them a piano room with performances every night.
4.3★ from 243 Google reviews
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A 904-seat theater at the 92nd Street Y, finished inside in walnut, used for performances and other events.
4.7★ from 221 Google reviews
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This is a tour company rather than a place, so you pick a guided walk or museum tour and meet a guide.
5★ from 136 Google reviews
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You sit down in a small studio and an instructor talks the whole room through a painting step by step, so nobody needs to be able to draw beforehand.
4.7★ from 124 Google reviews
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This is a ballet school with enrolled classes rather than a drop-in outing.
4.7★ from 116 Google reviews
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4.4★ from 116 Google reviews
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4.9★ from 106 Google reviews
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A theater company whose programming centers on musicals, both newly written and revived.
4.7★ from 93 Google reviews
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This is a magician you book to come to a party, camp, school or holiday event, not a place you visit.
5★ from 93 Google reviews
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4.4★ from 85 Google reviews
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You sit down with perfumer Sue Phillips — who created scents for Tiffany & Co.
4.9★ from 75 Google reviews
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A family-run gallery showing 19th, 20th and 21st century painting — the sort of names children may already recognise from school, including Monet, Degas, Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Warhol and Basquiat.
4.8★ from 72 Google reviews
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String players perform tribute programmes by candlelight in churches and halls around the city — Vivaldi's Four Seasons at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, The Lord of the Rings and Hans Zimmer film scores, and pop sets built around Taylor Swift, Adele, Queen and ABBA, Coldplay, Bad Bunny and 90s hip-hop.
4.9★ from 70 Google reviews
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Readings from a psychic who also works as an astrologer.
4.8★ from 51 Google reviews
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5★ from 46 Google reviews
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Kids sew and design their own clothing here, working from sketches through to finished garments.
5★ from 42 Google reviews
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A design gallery on Fifth Avenue showing rotating exhibitions of collectible design and sculpture.
4.6★ from 41 Google reviews
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4.3★ from 41 Google reviews
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Children learn chess through storytelling: each piece is a character with its own tale, such as King Chomper, who takes one slow step at a time around the checkered lawn.
4.9★ from 39 Google reviews
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5★ from 38 Google reviews
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4.6★ from 30 Google reviews
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4.8★ from 10 Google reviews
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You can choose traditional German cooking in Yorkville or Viennese-style café meals at Neue Galerie.
You can take a park walk on East End Avenue or sit among plantings at Cooper Hewitt.
Choose a craft project you can take home immediately or a multi-week pottery course for adults.
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