Ask 10 New Yorkers about what New York City means to them, and you’ll get 10 different responses. Our beloved, multi-hyphenate city is no monolith, and while its endless possibilities are its greatest gift, it also makes it difficult to balance bucket-list experiences every visitor should try at least once with the city’s more charmingly authentic edges. So, to show off the ever-changing, never-sleeping behemoth that is America’s most populous city, we asked our editors to share their guides to the corners of the city they know best. These are the best places to eat, things to do, and places to stay that will help you love the Big Apple like a local.
NYC’s most iconic neighborhoods, according to the editors that call them home
New York City is divided into five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island—with an endless variety of neighborhoods crammed block-to-block within each of them. To truly get inside this layered city, you’ll need to get familiar with the broad strokes. For hustle, bustle, and the suffer-no-fools pace New Yorkers often get pegged with, you’re thinking of the band around Midtown Manhattan, the effortlessly cool, optimistically Millennial world of Girls? None other than Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But beyond the city’s most famous cross streets, there are so many smaller pockets that can be harder to uncover—so who better than our editors to help guide you through them?
An expert guide to NYC
New York City is a city of superlatives. Want to go shopping? Whether it’s glitzy Fifth Ave or the boutique thrift stores and flea markets that catch your eye, you can bet we have it. Of course, we’re also in one of the greatest food cities in the world, with world-class dining, street food worth schlepping for, and iconic dishes in a league of their own. While New York is also known as the most expensive city to live in, there’s plenty of fun to have on a shoestring. Whatever it is you’re seeking out in the city that never sleeps, our editors have found the best version of it.