Hunter College - Nightlife

A young crowd can be found at Rothko, drawn to the LES club to see good, live music and sip on cheap drinks. Young bands such as The Killers have honed their act on their stage. If not into the music, there’s a second bar downstairs, or you can take a seat on one of the padded church pews that line the main room. DJs are on hand to perform before and after the band. Every day, there is a late-night $3 Rheingold happy hour.

Crobar is often touted as one of club land’s best for its super-crisp sound systems and colossal size (it holds 2,750 plus people). It is also one of the more democratic clubs as far as the line goes, especially if you show up before 1 a.m. The club has a main dance floor and lots of small rooms to keep you busy, and it has an industrial vibe thanks to the airplane hangar-like main dance room, flanked by balconies. This megaclub attracts a diverse crowd each weekend, and the music changes nightly from room to room, ranging from progressive to hip-hop to house. The cover is usually $25.

Mehanata is a guaranteed blast. The Bulgarian Club is a little hard to find; there is no velvet rope or bright sign to announce itself, but the music can be heard from the street. Once you go inside the building that has sign “Bulgarian Club” and up a flight of stars, you can’t wait to join the party. Eastern European electronic punk, Hava Nagila remixes, and dancehall music makes everyone get up and dance like crazy late into the night, though on a small dance floor. The club is open Thursdays to Saturdays, and there’s a $10 cover.

The city’s longest running underground house party can be found at Club Shelter. Every Saturday night, the club features DJ Regisford, who fills the place by 5 a.m. and keeps the crowd dancing till noon. The crowd is not of the “look at me” variety, offering a non-pretentious place to let loose and have a good time. If you need to take a break from dancing on the warehouse-like dance floors, there’s a lounge as well as a roof deck open in the spring and summer. The cost is $20, or $15 if you’re a member.

To get a fix of Cuban salsa, samba, reggae, Afro-popp, and Indian Bhangra, SOB’s (“Sounds of Brazil”) is the place to be. The club also has concerts featuring old and new artists on the world music scene. The drinks are appropriately exotic and fruity, though they are on the pricey side. Admission is $10–$15, depending on the night and time you arrive, and there is a $10–$15 minimum at tables, where you can order Latin food.

With its 19-and-over age policy, Webster Hall is friendlier for the younger set. With four dance floors covering dance classics in the Marlin Room, salsa and merengue in the Latin Lounge, hip-hop and R&B in the Coffee Bar, and hip-hop and reggae in the basement, you can go in a large group, and everyone will find something they like. Like with most big-name clubs, the line outside can be pretty long. Webster Hall also tends to feature the “bridge and tunnel” crowd, a term to describe club goers not from New York City.

At first glance, Sahara East may seem empty on a Saturday night, but that’s because the outdoor garden behind the restaurant is packed with a young crowd attracted to the hookah pipes. For $15, one hookah pipe is good for two or three people, and you can choose from 40 tobacco flavors, including watermelon, mango, and vanilla. There is also a menu that includes such Middle Eastern staples as baba ghanoush and hummus. The place can get chaotic and crowded, especially on the weekends, but that’s just part of the experience. More a restaurant than a bar, your trip to Sahara East may involve a visit to a bar beforehand.

Formerly a piano shop, when the store converted into a bar/club in 2002, no one bothered to take the sign down. A Parisian-style bi-level bar, Pianos is a fashionable and hip place to hear live music from local and up-and-coming bands, and it is in an area where there are other bars and live music venues. There’s no cover at the door, though to hear the live music in the back room, you’ll need to pay $8–$10.

If you want to hear local jazz, and experimental and world musicians, Barbès is the place to go. Though it may be a trip to get to from outside Brooklyn, the bar and performance space, named after a neighborhood in Paris, is a laid-back place with a neighborhood feel to it where you can go to hear music you’ve most likely never heard before and meet interesting people. Cover is $4–$12, depending on the show.

Keeping true to the name of the bar, KGB was formerly the Ukrainian Working Men’s Club, and its walls are still decorated as if the club was still there. The bar offers more than a dozen types of vodka. The draw, though, is the free readings by up-and-coming and established writers.

This classic and swanky bar also serves as a performance space for an eclectic mix of jazz, rock, and world music. It attracts a hip, attractive crowd. To see shows, you need to buy tickets beforehand, whose prices range from $15 to $30, or buy one on the spot if the show isn’t sold out. For shows, there is a two drink minimum, which may hit your pocket hard.

Can’t get that new indie song out of your head that has been playing on the radio? You can probably see the band at Irving Plaza. The concert venue features the famous and the almost famous in the current music scene. The downstairs lounge offers a pre-concert hangout and some relief, if needed during. Past performers include the White Stripes, Alkaline Trio, the Arcade Fire, the Backstreet Boys, Marc Broussard, and Los Amigos Invisibles. A big plus: tickets are rarely more than $20, and you can pick them up at the box office to avoid service fees.

Every night of the week, you can get your fill of improv from some of the best artists in the city. Formed in 1996 (one of the founding members was SNL favorite Amy Poehler), and based on “Chicago-style,” long-form improve, the comics present cutting-edge, innovative comedy that makes you wonder how they think so quickly on their feet.