Best Bars & Restaurants in Alphabet City(Loisaida)

Alphabet City is the only neighborhood in Manhattan with lettered avenues — A, B, C, and D. The rest of the borough gave up on the alphabet after First Avenue.

The name "Loisaida" was coined by Nuyorican poet Bimbo Rivas in 1974 as a Spanglish pronunciation of "Lower East Side" — and it stuck so hard the city made it an official co-name.

In the 1980s, Alphabet City was so rough that locals joked the avenues stood for Adventurous, Brave, Courageous, and Dead. The bars on Avenue C now charge $18 for a cocktail.

Jazz legend Charlie Parker lived at 151 Avenue B. The building is now a NYC landmark and the block is officially co-named Charlie Parker Place.

Jonathan Larson's Rent is set right here in Alphabet City. The musical captured exactly what this neighborhood felt like in the early '90s — the chaos, the community, the $500 rent that now sounds like fiction.

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe on East 3rd Street opened in 1973 and helped bring slam poetry to New York City. It hosted its first poetry slam in 1989 and is still one of the best live performance spots in Manhattan.

Alphabet City has roughly 30 community gardens — nearly one per block — built on lots that burned down in the 1970s when landlords torched their own buildings for insurance money. The neighborhood turned the ashes into green space.

Tompkins Square Park is named after Daniel D. Tompkins, the 6th Vice President of the United States. The 1988 riot in the park over a midnight curfew became one of the most infamous protests in NYC history.

The neighborhood was one of the last parts of Manhattan to get gentrified. As recently as the early 2000s, you could rent a one-bedroom on Avenue B for under $800. Those days are extremely over.

Alphabet City's street art scene dates back to the 1970s and '80s, decades before Bushwick became the go-to mural destination. You can still spot original works on buildings along Avenues B and C.