kickassNYC

Kenny Shopsin first set up shop in the Village, operating an eclectic neighborhood deli and grocery on Bedford & Morton Streets. Nowadays, Shopsin’s is a tiny diner counter / restaurant in the corner of the Essex Street Market. His family helps run it and everyone in the place swears like a sailor. And they have some firm rules. No parties larger than four. No additions, no substitutions, and no special requests. But you shouldn’t need any, since the menu is over 900 items long.

120 Essex St, Stall No. 16, New York, NY 10002

If you sit down, order food. Don’t expect to be mollycoddled.

The largest tax-funded cemetary in the world. More than one million are buried on the island, some by mass burial. Though the majority of the island’s “inhabitants” are anonymous, the Hart Island Project has worked to identify the dead, and some famous residents include Leo Birinski, Dawn Powell, and Bobby Driscoll. It has had a long history as a site for a workhouse, a hospital, prisons, a Civil War internment camp, a reformat, and a Nike missile base.

Small history museum dedicated to telling the story of grassroots activism in the Lower East Side and efforts to reclaim community spaces that have been taken over by city bureaucracies and corporations.

A collection of bank and vault locks given to the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen by John M. Mossman, who wrote a book called “The Lure of the Lock.” Features 370 locks (many of them 19th century vintage), keys, tools, antebellum curios, rare books, prints, flags, clocks and medals.

Manhattan’s oldest home that has – surprise! – a long and sometimes sordid history that goes something like this – home of British officer, confiscated during Revolutionary War, headquarters for George Washington, tavern, home of wealthy French merchant and his mistress, marriage site of said mistress and Aaron Burr after merchant’s untimely death, death place of mistress, presently museum haunted by mistress and four other ghosts.

A Harlem schoolyard established in 1980 as a gallery for internationally renowned street artists.

In May 1989, Keith Haring created a mural called “Once Upon a Time” in the bathroom of the The Center as part of its “Center Show” that celebrated the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. It was his last major work before his death at 31 years old, from AIDS-related complications, and explores the heyday of gay cruising and bathroom sex before the AIDS crisis. As Keith Haring’s work have sold for millions of dollars, it is very possibly the most valuable bathroom in America.

Located on the third floor of Fantasma Magic Shop, this one-room museum houses the second largest collection of Houdini artifacts in the country.

A tiny rainforest hidden away from the bustling streets of Manhattan inside an office building.

In a city of skyscrapers, Walter De Maria has created an “interior sculpture” in the second floor of a SoHo storefront that consists of 280,000 pounds of Manhattan soil lying in a 3,600-square-foot room. It is exactly what the name suggests.