The 19 best dive bars in NYC

In the know New York drinkers and your savvier travelers know that the late boxer Jimmy Glenn’s Jimmy’s Corner is one of the few truly best bars around Times Square. Dating back to 1971, what it lacks in cocktails and fine wine it more than makes up for with charisma and neat pours. 

As a writer whose own time too many bars are now vaguely fashioned after once wrote: “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Sunny’s is a peak-form dive bar and one of the best overall bars in NYC. Its creaky but comfortable interior, little back patio, and friendly but never overly effusive proprietors have been abetting its dual states for generations.

Montero's Bar and Grill is like Ikea, the famous Sweedish furniture store down the road, in the following ways: 1. While it is technically more affordable than many other options, it’s still always a little pricier than you expected. 2. Its design has been unchanged for many years. 3. It would not be the best place to throw a wedding . . .  unless . . . ? It also has a devoted following of folks who flock in for G&Ts in plastic cups, kinda kooky vibes and karaoke by the inimitable Amethyst. 

Colloquially known as Shark Bar, Spring Lounge is another unvarnished holdhout in chichi Nolita. It opens at 8am six days a week (10 on Sundays), outside food is allowed, sidewalk seating now extends the wood-lined space and, in addition to the dive bar touchstones (beer, shots), rosé, sparkling white wine and seasonal specials are on the menu. 

The mullet of bars, if you will, it’s dive business in the front and outdoor party in the back at this nearly quarter century year-old Red Hook mainstay. Enter into the gleefully gritty barroom, order from the chalkboard menus to your left, and slide into the well-worn and oft-repaired banquettes to your right before you order a cheeseburger and meander to the sunny backyard to while away the day and night over rounds and rounds of pints.

Low ceilings and a stone finish behind the bar give Blarney Stone a bunker quality, and there’d surely be worse places to be at the end of the world. Unlike most dives, it also has a full kitchen turning out items like Irish nachos: French fries topped with cheese, onion and bacon. Whether you wish to kiss its exterior is your call, and there are plenty of glasses to bring your lips to inside. 

As we’ve established, having a beloved neighborhood fixture at the helm alone does not a dive bar make, but it certainly goes a long way toward achieving that categorization. Lucy’s own Ludwika Mickevicius is an East Village institution, presiding over her Avenue A bar’s pool tables, juke box and taps for decades and counting. 

“No last names here,” we were firmly, but fondly instructed when settling our tab on one of many visits to Milano’s, a narrow slip in Nolita where similar venues are fewer and farther between with each new development. Toast to its endurance with the couple of wines on offer (“red” or “white”!) or, more likely, beers and shots. 

The colorful tent-tops hovering over the tables outside Charles Hanson’s 169 Soul Jazz Oyster Bar are relatively new compared location’s hundred years as a public house, but the inside remains as dimly lit as ever–an ideal destination for when you need a little hair of the dog that bit you to keep the weekend going for days and days. 169 is also the rare dive with some equally hangover-repelling (or preventing, if you believe) snacks.

Purportedly the neighborhood's oldest bar, this Third Avenue gallery of throwback neon advertising pours as fine a beer as any, and it's nice little back patio is a surprising respite from the cloistered space inside. If you get here late enough you wont even need a shady umbrella.

A dive bar with sanctioned dancing? Now I’ve seen everything. See, standard dive bars do the least without even trying. They aren’t creating “photo moments” or Instagram Things or hosting dance parties like some kinda roller rink. With the exception of Home Sweet Home, a subterranean space that could stunt double for your childhood friend’s semi-finished basement. DJs play on school nights and the party intensifies throughout the weekend. 

Now a decade old on Metropolitan Avenue, Skinny Dennis still opened too late to be considered part of the much mused about ‘Old Williamsburg,’ but it looks at least twice its age, for what it's worth. Reminisce about whichever golden years you wish over house specialties like the World Famous Willie’s Frozen Coffee. 

Gowanus’ premier best metal bar for twenty years, Lucky 13’s sonorous scene has spilled out from its perpetually packed space out onto sidewalk seating in recent months, to even more festive effect. The place still fills up quick, so prepare to get in early and stay late for live music, dancing, and Sackett Street’s liveliest environs. 

Rudy’s Bar and Grill is a porcine sight for sore eyes. Although its interior had a bit of a facelift during a 16 month closure that ended in 2021, its facade is as classically as divey as ever, as though it emerged in style, and apparent sturdiness, from a community theater. Even after its pause, Rudy’s pints still start at $3, the hot dogs are still free, and it’s still one of the most tolerable watering holes in the greater Times Square area. 

Harking back to 1901, this neighborhood staple in the Bronx endured the Prohibition era, generations of iterations of the New York Yankees and events of more recent origin to maintain its storied address. Don a bomber cap and let the TV screens serenade your journey through a bucket of beer.

A darling devil theme miles above the depths of hell but still a few steps below the surface of the earth is awash in red light here, conveniently eliminating the need for Instagram filters as you post your best effort to freak out your parents or whomever. Duff’s music is rather rocking, too, and its prices are so decent you’ll feel like you’ve made a deal with you-know-who. 

One of Rockaway’s best summertime bars best going way back, Connolly’s is close to the beach with frozen cocktails and grandmom’s house vibes, provided your family matriarch was cool to hang. Grab an icy piña colada, now in paper cups (the new owners appear to have eschewed the old Styrofoam), and saunter back to the surf like you’re sneaking out after curfew. 

With a blue facade that pops from blocks away and a name that implies the existence of a theoretical photo negative BillyMarks East, the corner of 29th and Ninth calls to mind the vestiges of a erstwhile Chelsea. The inside isn’t any prettier, but the drinks are cheaper than you’ll find for several blocks in any direction, and it feels pleasantly devoid the corporate oversight you’ll also find elsewhere. 

A dive? On the Upper East Side? In this economy? Reif’s has been operating on 92nd Street since 1942, and today it has games for the spectator on its TV screens, and for the player at its billiards table. A cozy back patio replete with barbecue grills betrays its scruffy exterior.