The hottest scene in NYC right now is a Chinatown parking lot – with booze

NYC’s biggest night spot isn’t a club or restaurant—it’s a parking lot next to a bar in Chinatown.

After the popular venue, located at the corner of Canal and Eldridge, opened as Time Again in late May, it quickly became one of Manhattan’s buzziest hangouts—thanks in part to its open-air real estate, which allows crowds of regular people. Joes and celebrities to gather around the small-sized boîte.

“It’s a lot of fun. I love going there,” Laine Habony, a 28-year-old dancer told The Post. “It’s such a cool atmosphere. It reminds me of a bar you would find in Paris.”

casually in fresco The hotspot is located across from the Manhattan Bridge exit platform in Chinatown, right on the doorstep of two trendy areas known as Two Bridges and Dimes Square – micro-neighborhoods that are currently enjoying an incredible reputation, thanks to a stream of TikTokers paying tribute .

From here, you can see everything – or at least a thick slice of NYC’s diverse life.

There is an adjacent cemetery, a park often filled with old men gambling and women doing Tai Chi, a high school, a day care for adults, a long-distance bus stop, a noodle shop, a convenience store 99 cents, a Greek Orthodox church and a classic Chinatown makeshift open-air market.

Habony, a member of the New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, regularly comes down from the Upper West Side to drink some natural wine—she even hosted her own birthday party at the joint last week.

“It’s in this area that you wouldn’t think is a prime location for a bar or a popular place. But I think that makes it more fun and special,” said Habony, who is not the only one enjoying the surprising spectacle.

“There’s no table service or anything like that. It’s just good parking lot food,” Bronx artist Arthur Peña, 42, told The Post of the “unassuming” hangout. “I like that kind of confrontation of having caviar salad, but in a parking lot on a little bench.”

It’s another hot-spot-like, away from the legendary NYC nightclubs of yesteryear with extremely exclusive door policies, but that’s part of the vibe.

“As an Aussie in NYC for the first time, it’s the kind of bar you only hear about and see in movies,” singer-songwriter Oliver Cronin, 20, told The Post during a visit. “It was buzzing and had a really good vibe.”

For much of the summer, Time Again’s eclectic crowd — packed with creatives and even a few celebs like Joe Jonas and Lil Yachty — usually starts gathering right before the sun goes down, hanging out late into the night or into the wee hours. before the day. morning, spilling onto the sidewalk and public parking lot.

For those who prefer it indoors, the place has several red-light-drenched seating options — and sometimes a smoke machine, which has received mixed reviews.

But most patrons come for the scene outside, grabbing a plate of whatever food pops up for the night, ordering drinks at the cocktail window and asking for one of the colorful, kid-sized plastic stools.

And if they’re all busy, there’s always a Citi Bike docked nearby—where artist Peña sat a few nights ago, eating a ham sandwich.

He had taken his impromptu picnic from Uncle Paulie’s Deli — a popular LA sandwich shop recently featured in “The Bear” — serving bar patrons that night.

“It’s a fun experience like this,” he told The Post, noting that “there’s kind of dirt around the corner.”

The artist often stops by the bar, riding the 6 train to the Bronx — especially if the food pop-up promoted on the Time Again Instagram account makes his mouth water.

“It’s really perfectly located for what I do most evenings, and I just ended up loving it,” said Peña, part of the art gallery scene in the surrounding streets.

The bar has made an effort to wrangle the crowds a bit more on busy evenings after complaints from some neighbors – but the crowds only seem to have made the place more popular.

“It’s just one of those things that sticks out. Like, you really can’t miss it,” Relly Phelps, 31, told The Post.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ I was on the phone with somebody and I said, ‘Excuse me, give me a second,'” he recalls of the first time he was drawn to the crowd and the music.

“It’s very vague in the way that the actual bar space is small and intimate. But the outside parking area is very different.”

The crowd drew it the first time and continues to do so – along with the country’s natural selection of wines.

“I think the biggest thing for me about going there is that I never felt like there was a specific crowd or scene going on there. It’s one of the most diverse places I’ve been, where I feel like every pocket of the city was represented,” noted the Williamsburg photographer.

The bar is the spot’s third iteration — it was previously an Omakase restaurant and a coffee shop — and is run by Alec “Despot” Reinstein, a rapper and music executive, and Nick Poe, an architectural designer.

The third time can be the charm – ensuring local complaints and a sudden drop in temperature fail to ruin the atmosphere.

“I hope they will be able to hold on [the large outdoor crowds],” said Peña, noting a recent trend toward more organized entertainment.

“I’ve literally been worried about what’s going to happen to them in the winter, you know, and because that’s a very big part of it,” he lamented.

“It just feels very welcoming — in the way that New York can sometimes be.”