Ganesh Temple
45-57 Bowne Street
(at Holly Avenue)
The Ganesh Temple is a great place to get a taste (literally and figuratively) of Hindu culture. You are welcome to enter the colorful interior (after taking off your shoes), where you’ll find shrines to the elephant-faced deity, along with local believers in prayer. Around the corner, the temple canteen offers superb vegetarian fare. — Dan Saltzstein
Gantry Plaza State Park
474 48th Avenue
(at Center Boulevard)
Since opening in 1998, this Long Island City park has offered spectacular views of the Midtown skyline, and thanks to a recent expansion it’s now a favorite spot for Queens residents on sunny days. Stroll amid reminders of the site’s industrial past, like the hulking gantry cranes that once transferred cargo off East River boats onto trains headed to Long Island, or lounge in a green area, complete with deck chairs and hammocks, that sits between the piers and the iconic Pepsi sign — the perfect place to catch a glorious sunset over Manhattan. — Dan Saltzstein
Port’s Coffee and Tea
251 West 23rd Street
(between Seventh and Eighth Avenues)
A small, solid coffee bar across the street from the Chelsea Hotel. Halfhearted nautical theme, Stumptown done well. — Oliver Strand
Various gyms around New York
Join raucous fans to cheer on the hard-hitting women of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league as they race around the flat track. Skaters with noms de guerre like Carmen Monoxide, Roxy Gibrawlter and Dainty Inferno have sharp elbows and lots of heart. Bouts often take place at the Hunter College Sportsplex, but check the league’s Web site for other venues. — Alice DuBois
Rockaway Beach
Beach 90th Street
(across Shore Front Parkway)
The longboards being lugged on the subway in the wee hours of the morning are a telltale sign: surf’s up in Rockaway. The only official spot to hang 10 in the city, rock rock Rockaway Beach still has the urban grit — and the summertime jams — of the Ramones era. The break across Beach 90th Street is a haven for crews of hard-core year-round surfers, some of whom occupy the bungalows nearby, for just-getting-their-toes-wet newbies and for locals alike. Join them or just ogle them; either way, it’s the East Coast answer to Malibu — especially if you hit the Rockaway Taco stand after. And the picturesque — really! — ride on the A train out there, hanging low over the waters of Jamaica Bay, is enough to mellow anyone out. — Melena Ryzik
Cricket in Flushing Meadows Corona Park
11101 Corona Avenue
(In the park, near Meadow Lake)
Not far from the Unisphere, the giant globe that stands in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, is a global sporting ground. There, cricket pitches beside Meadow Lake feature local players, mostly of South Asian descent, and the intense games occasionally attract world-class talent. Watch from the lakeside pavilion area nearby. — Sarah Maslin Nir
Bronx Culture Trolley
Departs from 450 Grand Concourse
(in front of the Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos)
For nearly 10 years, the Bronx Council on the Arts has run the Bronx Culture Trolley, a free tour in a San Francisco-style car that loops around the Grand Concourse and stops at local galleries and arts institutions, including the Bronx Museum (all offer free admission to trolley riders). It departs Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos on the campus of Hostos Community College, starting at 5:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month, and occasionally on Saturdays during the day. — Sarah Maslin Nir
Habana Outpost
757 Fulton Street
(at South Portland Avenue)
On April 16, Habana Outpost flung open the doors to its food-truck kitchen, rooted permanently in an outdoor courtyard, transforming the corner of Fulton Street at South Portland Avenue into a fiesta featuring “famous corn”: fiery corn on the cob on a stick, often cooled with gulps of $8 frozen moritas: the lovechild of a mojito and a margarita. The restaurant there is environmentally friendly, too; the bathroom alone is worth a trip just to check out the water recycling system. — Sarah Maslin Nir
The Waterfall in Morningside Park
West 114th Street, midpark
(between Morningside Drive and Morningside Avenue)
Swarms (or is it schools?) of liberated pet turtles paddle about the pond under Morningside Park’s several-stories-high waterfall, north of 110th Street in Morningside Heights. Years ago, the turtles almost lost their lake when Columbia University proposed building a gym over the park, helping to incite the 1968 student riots. The craggy, stepped park is a serene place now, unless you’re a terrapin — then it’s really a happening place. — Sarah Maslin Nir
Village Vanguard
178 Seventh Avenue South
Open since 1935, the Village Vanguard isn’t expanding and diversifying and developing its brand.
It fills its function and nothing more: roughly, the world’s best jazz groups playing in the world’s best jazz club. It’s from a time when Manhattan was dirtier, more generous, and more fun. It offers no food, limited bar options, a friendly if cryptlike feel, and exceptional sound in the front half of the wedge-shaped subterranean space.
Musicians feel lucky to be here. So will you. — Ben Ratliff
Wave Hill
Independence Avenue
(at West 249th Street)
The New York aristocracy once flocked from the city to the cliffs of the Hudson, where expansive vistas cured urban claustrophobia.
You need go only as far as the Bronx, where you’ll find this 28-acre estate, once enjoyed by Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain (not at the same time) and now open to the public. Its grounds and buildings are linked by walkways that command breathtaking panoramas of the Palisades and suggest why there was an art movement known as the Hudson River School. — David W. Dunlap
Brooklyn Brewery 
79 North 11th Street
(at Wythe Avenue)
This is old and new Brooklyn in one block.
At the turn of the last century, the borough of Kings was ale-central, with a dozen breweries in Williamsburg alone. Now they have been replaced with innumerable bars and restaurants selling dozens of microbrews, only a few of which can truly be called local.
Take a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery on North 11th Street any weekend to get a sense of its history and how beer is made, and score some discounted lagers and seasonal offerings while you’re at it.
Then head next door to Brooklyn Bowl, a one-stop palace of fun. It’s an eco-minded combination of rock club, bowling alley and gourmet comfort food restaurant, that may best symbolize the area’s transformation, from warehouses full of beer to … warehouses full of beer and hipsters. Rock out, dance, drink, eat, avoid gutter balls, repeat. — Melena Ryzik
The subway tunnel zoetrop
The right side of the Manhattan-bound Q train, leaving DeKalb Station
At first glance, it appears to be the most diabolically brilliant work of subway graffiti ever created.
But the strange sight you see out the right-hand side of a Manhattan-bound Q train leaving the DeKalb Avenue station in Brooklyn is legit and permanent, created by the artist Bill Brand in the late 1970s: a mass-transit zoetrope. Think of it as a cartoon flip-book that flips because you’re zooming past it. It’s over in 20 seconds, so don’t blink. — Randy Kennedy
Musical Mondays at Splash Bar
50 West 17th Street
(between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)
Every Monday night at Splash, a gay bar in Chelsea, Broadway’s chorus boys and girls — and their admirers — spend their night off watching videos and singing along to their favorite show tunes.
Jennifer Holliday’s original version of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from “Dreamgirls” is a must-see. — Erik Piepenburg
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
(at East 82nd Street)
Crowds do not enhance the experience of looking at art. Every Friday and Saturday, however, when the Met installs a bar and classical musicians on the mezzanine (or when the bar in the rooftop sculpture garden opens in summer), the crowd is drawn away from the galleries and toward the martinis. Bonus: a glass of Champagne is sure to make pottery shards beautiful. — Christine Muhlke
The Morgan Library and Museum
225 Madison Avenue
(between East 36th and 37th Streets)
We revere the Met, we adore the Frick, but the Morgan is in a class of its own. No place looks like it, feels like it or has as many of the most sensationally compact art treasures in this treasure-loving town. — Holland Cotter
Spa Castle
131-10 11th Avenue
(between 131st and 132nd Streets)
Located past La Guardia in College Point, Queens, Spa Castle is an impressive five-story Korean mega-spa.
Sure, the building looks more like a mall than a castle, but the amenities inside are fit for a king. Buy a day pass and spend hours hopping from outdoor hot tubs to massage pools to saunas lined in gold, jade and salt. With a food court, a Korean restaurant and designated napping areas, you’ll have little motivation to leave. — Amy Virshup
El Nuevo Bohío
791 East Tremont Avenue
(between Prospect and Mapes Avenues)
The home-style cuisine of El Nuevo Bohío, a Puerto Rican restaurant in the East Tremont section of the Bronx, has clouded minds — if not arteries — for some 30 years.
It is a temple of pork — lechón — where garlic wafts like incense and a figurine of a pig presides on a small altar alongside assorted statues of the Virgin Mary. Diners barely notice the salsa tunes blasting inside; the real music comes from the slap and thud of machetes hacking golden slabs of freshly roasted pork. Once you’ve had your fill of carne mechada (Puerto Rican pot roast); bacalaitos (codfish fritters) and empanadillas, take the 20-minute walk to the Bronx Zoo, one of the largest in the nation with more than 4,000 animals on 265 acres. — David Gonzalez
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The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street
(between Fifth and Madison Avenues)
For a sense of Belle Époque luxe combined with an extraordinary sampling of European painting, nothing is better than the house that Henry Clay Frick built. In. The. World.
For one thing, the place is still furnished; for another, Frick’s taste was exemplary, tending toward masterpieces by Bellini, Holbein, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Fragonard, Hogarth and Manet. Thanks to a recent round of meticulous refurbishing, relighting and rehangings, there has never been a better time to visit. — Roberta Smith
Queens Museum of Art
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Want to see all of New York City in a day? Head to the Queens Museum of Art, home to an immense scale model of the five boroughs.
Commissioned by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, the 9,335-square-foot panorama was recently updated to reflect the city’s changes, like the substitution of Citi Field for Shea Stadium. (The Twin Towers remain, however, awaiting replacement with a memorial.) — Dan Saltzstein
HiChristina!
70 North Sixth Street
(between Kent and Wythe Avenues)
Get kooky with the delightfully oddball event gurus Fritz Donnelly and Christina Ewald, who host parties in their Williamsburg headquarters as well as at other venues around town.
On any given night, they’ll invite guests to participate in a faux wedding, throw a bikini dance party and serve grilled cheese, or host a lecture on the merits of different colored pens. — Sarah Maslin Nir
Russ & Daughters
179 East Houston Street
(between Allen and Orchard Streets)
Head down on a weekend morning, take a number, join one of the great New York throngs.
You want belly lox, sable, some Nova for mother? There’s whitefish, too, and fat tomatoes on the counter, fresh bagels and cans and cans of caviar. Some candied nuts? Some herring in cream? The best salmon in town? Except for that gourmand — the Yiddish term is fresser — on an iPhone screaming at his wife double-parked out front, it’s like being in a time machine. — Sam Sifton
Ido Sushi
29 Seventh Avenue South
(between Morton and Bedford Streets)
The owner of Ido Sushi tore out the bar to make room for a piano and a stage, and now the restaurant, which seats about 30, offers free live performances, including rock and jazz, every night. But it gets truly packed on Wednesday and Saturday, when the city’s opera cognoscenti throng here for opera night. Singers get paid in sushi. — Sarah Maslin Nir
Various Chelsea Art Galleries 
From West 19th to 27th Street
(between 10th and 11th Avenues)
You may not be able to afford anything, but you can still gawk: at the art — paintings, video, installations, sculpture, you name it — and better yet, at the crowds that converge on Chelsea’s galleries for the Thursday night openings.
There’s some unknown (soon-to-be-known?) performance artist, and a black-clad guy with aggressively European glasses checking him out; a woman in architectural heels teetering in front of a Rothko; grungy art students out for the free wine as much as the creative inspiration. Stroll between spaces, glass in hand, on the lookout for the next big thing, or just the snacks. — Melena Ryzik
3rd Ward
195 Morgan Avenue
(between Stagg and Meadow Streets)
Every Wednesday at 8 p.m., 3rd Ward, a Brooklyn arts collective that offers workspaces, classes and events, holds Drink-n-Draw. $15 buys you a few hours to ogle a nude model and frosty cans of beers like Pabst Blue Ribbon. Bring your own sketchbook and drawing implements. — Sarah Maslin Nir
The High Line
The park runs from Gansevoort Street (at Washington Street) to West 20th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues, multiple entrances)
Could the High Line survive the tackiness of the meatpacking district? The answer, it turns out, is yes.
The elevated park, whose scruffy gardens were built on a strip of abandoned rail tracks, is a welcome refuge from the area’s manically hip boutiques and cafes. But the park’s charm stems from the way it reconnects you to a different city: a dreamy landscape of billboards, warehouses and tenement rooftops blocks from the Hudson River. — Nicolai Ouroussoff
Seaside Courts 
Surf Avenue
(at West Fifth Street)
There is nothing quite like watching hard-core New York playground handball the way it’s still played at the Coney Island Seaside Courts, the handball mecca of New York City.
The courts resound with the thwock of rubber balls, sneaker-squeals and serious trash-talking — a handball staple — from the players. You’ll find New York’s best palm-paddlers, including former and current champions like Joe Durso and Cesar Sala, offering up colorful competition every nice summer day and on weekends throughout the year. — Corey Kilgannon
Brooklyn Flea
176 Lafayette Avenue
(between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues)
The flea-market scene has traveled over the bridge to Brooklyn, where shopping for vintage furniture and clothing, cool arts and crafts, and artisanal food has already become a weekend tradition.
Check the Web site for location and hours, as locations shift seasonally: brooklynflea.com. — Christine Muhlke
Gem Spa
131 Second Avenue
(at St. Marks Place)
This 24-hour newsstand is heaven for night owls.
You can peruse any newspaper or magazine ever published, order a classic New York egg cream or watch the East Village circus go by. It’s the best time you can have for less than $5, drink and newspaper included. — Jill Abramson
Upright Citizens Brigade Theater
307 West 26th Street
(between Eighth and Ninth Avenues)
This is where TV stars come to unwind. It’s also where they’re made.
Catch comedians from “30 Rock,” “SNL” and “The Daily Show” doing monologues and free-form riffing in this basement club, the locus of the city’s alt-comedy scene. Tickets are cheap, and the nightly shows offer improv, sketch, stand-up and video from people who whose one-liners you will one day quote endlessly. Might as well start now. — Melena Ryzik
Gantry Plaza State Park
474 48th Avenue
(at Center Boulevard)
Since opening in 1998, this Long Island City park has offered spectacular views of the Midtown skyline, and thanks to a recent expansion it’s now a favorite spot for Queens residents on sunny days.
Stroll amid reminders of the site’s industrial past, like the hulking gantry cranes that once transferred cargo off East River boats onto trains headed to Long Island, or lounge in a green area, complete with deck chairs and hammocks, that sits between the piers and the iconic Pepsi sign — the perfect place to catch a glorious sunset over Manhattan. — Dan Saltzstein
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
108 Orchard Street
(between Delancey and Broome Streets)
The intimate tours of Lower East Side tenements restored to reflect individual families’ experiences are unusual and revelatory, but what’s really exceptional is the museum shop, an impressive selection of New Yorkana selected with care — and a sense of humor. Do call ahead, though: the museum can be seen only on guided tours, and they fill up. — Jodi Rudoren
Union Square Greenmarket
East 17th Street
(between Broadway and Park Avenue South)
The best urban-rural mash-up in America blooms four days a week at the Union Square Greenmarket. It’s open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and regulars know to visit on Fridays for Flying Pig pork, early in the day in the spring for the precious few local strawberries, and on Wednesdays for Lynnhaven’s ricotta from Nubian goats. The owner, Lynn Fleming, sells her cheese there on Saturdays, too, but that’s when the market is too crammed with people who don’t know a gypsy pepper from a pasilla. — Kim Severson
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