Singles in NYC
With spring approaching and soon-to-be recent college grads start planning their next move – we decided to compile a list of the best New York neighborhoods for singles. There are many good neighborhoods to choose from – filled with parks, restaurants, shops, outdoor cafes and cultural institutions as good as any in the world.
To narrow down our exhaustive research – the factors that played an important role in ranking these neighborhoods are the numbers of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, health clubs, culture, the population of young people in the area, median age and crime figures.
Education and family-oriented factors were not heavy considerations (they’ll make their appearance in our “families looking to relocate in New York list.”) The financial factors leaned on affordability.
So, without further delay, here are 10 of the top city neighborhoods where singles will feel most at home, surrounded by the things that make New York City great for them.
1. Gramercy/Flatiron: With a median age in the mid 30s, you know there’s fun to be had here. Any night of the week, and we mean any night of the week, walk down Park Avenue in the teens or Irving Place around Gramercy Park, and you’ll smile to your heart’s delight at the hustle and bustle of people in their 20s and 30s–the women dressed in short skirts, the men with ties loose at their neck–flirting and laughing, and in short, trying to become unsingle, for the night or longer.
2. East Village: Somehow this neighborhood once known for sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll keeps getting better. If this place were a rock band, in the 1990s it would have been a raucous merging of the Sex Pistols meets the Rolling Stones. Today, it’s more mellow indie rock meets John Mayer.
But the mellowing of the East Village has managed to draw more singles looking for value in exchange for pristine streets. A whopping 86% rent here, and it’s not small with a population of 77,000.
3. Long Island City / Hunters Point: No surprise, Long Island City has arrived. With over 8 buildings attracting recent college graduates with lower prices, better views and a six minute train ride to Grand Central Station, this enclave on the East River staring at the United Nations Building will finally get the credit it deserves. It’s heaven for singles who don’t mind living a few minutes away from the center of it all and sharing apartments.
4. Wall Street: Imagine an entire New York City street dedicated to the pick-up scene. Now imagine one of the oldest streets in Manhattan, one block off the Southern tip of the island, filled with cobble stones and historic buildings with colonial cornices and a roof line filled roof lines. Welcome to Stone St., a little stretch of New York City with five bars, five restaurants, a wine bar, and a steak house housed in one of the most historic buildings in the city with a wine cave and tiny nooks and crannies filled with bottles of liquor and tables for two.
Yes, Wall Street’s loss is a single person with some money in his pocket’s gain. Filled with rental buildings coming to life in old office skyscrapers, this neighborhood has become a young person’s dream with studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms every thirty feet. Once considered a dead zone at night, newcomers enjoy the peaceful feel of the place once the work crowd has gone home.
5. BAM: Move over Williamsburg. There’s a new hot singles neighborhood in Brooklyn with less crime, more culture, and less pretension. It’s the area around the Brooklyn Academy Music, which straddles downtown and Fort Greene. Anchored by the Brooklyn Academy Music, arguably the borough’s top cultural resource, this neighborhood has the constant buzz of entertainment and intellectual curiosity. There are also great places to go and get drunk. Mo’s is a bar just blocks away which attracts every ethnicity under the sun. Chez Oscar’s in nearby Ft. Greene is a French restaurant with a bohemian feel. The Alibi, full of Pratt students old and young, is one of New York’s last great dive bars.
6. Williamsburg: With a median age of 26 and male/female population split down the middle at 50%/50%, Williamsburg is known throughout New York as one of the best places to live affordably in the city. Rents hover around $1,600 in some areas for a one bedroom and bars, chic boutiques, coffee shops, and funky restaurants are almost around every corner.
7. Hell’s Kitchen: You have to have a few more dollars to live here with the median sales price hovering around $740,000, but Hell’s Kitchen and environs farther west still draw young people year after year.
Why? Simple. It’s always been gritty and cool. Just a stone’s throw from the lights of Broadway, hundreds of actors and theatre musicians live here, meaning the late night bar scene is as strong as any other neighborhood in the city.
8. Yorkville: It’s easy to be single in Yorkville, this neighborhood on the upper East Side with one of the most popular stretches of bars and restaurants going up and down Second and Third Avenue from 79th St. to 86th St. Great supermarkets, small food shops, wine stores, movies theatres, and the 86th St. shopping corridor bring services right to people’s doorsteps.
Proximity to Central Park means sports and exercise junkies love this neighborhood, which has a diverse population and very low crime index. Rents in the area can be low, as in $1450 for a studio near First or York Avenue. Closer to Third Avenue and the 86th Street subway stop, the same size apartment will cost you closer to $2,000.
9. Fort Greene: With over 83% of the neighborhood single, Fort Greene is becoming a hotspot for singles. Busy Dekalb Avenue is all restaurants, bars, and food shops with a few wine stores and boutiques thrown in. Closer to Lafayette and Fulton Avenues are salons, more bars, and more clothing boutiques that range in style from traditional African garb to new emerging fashion designers.
10. Astoria: Not many neighborhoods in the city or the world, maybe, are more fun than Astoria after 7pm on a weekend night. The streets are packed with singles and couples of all ages speaking several languages, eating Greek foods, packing the Irish bars, and enjoying the outdoor Middle Eastern cafes along Steinway St.
This area is for singles on a budget looking to share apartments, be in the middle of international New York, and have close proximity to Manhattan. The transformation of this neighborhood from quiet family enclave with traditional values rooted in the Old Country (pick one–Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy) to hipster hood found by value conscious New Yorker’s not wanting to pay an arm and a leg for a place to live is almost complete. Best of all, the two groups, the old and the new, live together in harmony.
