Things to do in NYC today

Broadway shows are practically synonymous with New York City, and the word Broadway is often used as shorthand for theater itself. Visiting the Great White Way means attending one of 41 large theaters concentrated in the vicinity of Times Square, most of which seat more than 1,000 people. 

The most popular Broadway shows tend to be musicals, from long-running favorites like The Lion King and Hamilton to more recent hits like Hadestown and Moulin Rouge!—but new plays and revivals also represent an important part of the Broadway experience. There’s a wide variety of Broadway shows out there, as our complete A–Z listing attests.

Our list of NYC’s 50 best restaurants offers a catalogue of all the places we wish we were at right now. They don’t have to be the newest or the most famous (though some are), just places that we want to return to again and again, and that we think that you will, too. 

No matter the season, these quirky classes make back-to-school very cool. For our Back to Class series, we scoured the city for the most unusual—and most fun—classe around town. Turns out, you can master some truly unique skills in these off-the-beaten-path classes in NYC.

There’s no shortage of painting classes, dance classes and cooking classes in NYC, but we've all been there and done that. Instead, opt for something more unique, like a bonsai-making class with booze, a bike-riding training for grown-ups, a purse-making party, or a neon art workshop at a glassblowing facility. School is in sesson! 

New York City is full of free outdoor art that you don't even have to go to a museum to see. Sculptures, murals and photographs can be found in its parks, sidewalks and on its buildings! Locations such as the High Line, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens and other NYC locales all have a wide variety of pieces awaiting you, from massive sculptures to eye-popping murals and graffiti.

We rounded up the best outdoor art you can go see right now.

For the Brooklyn Museum, it's nothing new to spotlight artists from the borough. But the museum's new Brooklyn Artists Exhibition is the largest showcase of Brooklyn artists in the museum's two centuries of history.

The newly opened exhibition, which coincides with the renowned museum's 200th birthday, features more than 200 artists reflecting the range of creativity in the borough. From a documentary photograph of the Brooklyn waterfront by Tracie Dawn Williams to a stunning sculpture by Richard Haining made of reclaimed wood from the city's water towers, the show is a celebration of the borough and the artists who make Brooklyn a place unlike any other.

It's on view through January 26, 2025. 

For several years, anybody who has walked, run, or biked along the Hudson River trail in Hell’s Kitchen has had to squeeze past barriers and a shrouded fence. At last, the barriers have come down and Pier 97 is open.

The park features a blue turf field, a shaded pergola area with benches, and loungers with skyline views. It's quickly become an oasis on the west side.

The world's most famous ice rink is back for the season. The Rink at Rockefeller Center, a fixture in countless movies and TV shows, is celebrating 88 years in New York City.

Tickets to the rink start at $21 per person and go up to $114 per person, depending on the date, time and skater's age. Skate rentals are not included and cost about $12.

Looking ahead to the winter season, if you want to go all-out, you can book a holiday ticket package, which include options like professional photos in front of the Christmas tree, reservations at an Après Skate holiday chalet, a meet-up with Santa and a tour of the entire Rockefeller Center campus including the rooftop garden.

When Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker was first published 50 years ago, the book's release was met with great anticipation. Excerpts in The New Yorker gained lots of attention—including from the biography's subject, NYC government official Robert Moses, who described the deeply researched book as "venomous." Even so, it was impossible to predict whether a 700,000-word biography would resonate with readers. 

The book quickly earned acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize and finding a home on bookshelves across America, especially among New Yorkers. Now, five decades later, the monumental work still resonates for its look at NYC’s past and the lessons it holds for our future. The book and its tenacious author are the subject of a new exhibit at New-York Historical Society Museum & Library titled “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50." See it at the Upper West Side museum through February 2, 2025. 

Ah, the ’90s—a simpler time when grainy camcorder videos ruled the cultural zeitgeist, rather than slickly produced TikToks. An upcoming exhibit at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will pay homage to that era through the lens of skater culture. 

"Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos" will honor DIY filmmaking with videos, vintage skate decks and other objects related to the formative years of the skate video in the 1980s and 1990s. See it in Astoria through January 26, 2025. 

With limited budgets and cheap video equipment, skaters recorded their limit-pushing tricks on stairs, benches, and other skate-able elements of public architecture. These grainy videos of bodies in flight were set to music-driven montages on VHS-format videos, often with a defining fish-eye lens. 

In the resonant words of A$AP Rocky, "The nails, the kilts, the pretty-boy swag, the pearls—I think it's just being comfortable. I just express myself with fashion, and what's fly is fly." What's fly is "Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry" at the American Museum of Natural History, a new show that features dozens of incredible necklaces, rings, watches, chains, and more worn by some of the biggest names in music.

A few highlights include T-Pain's Big Ass Chain necklace, Ghostface Killah's eagle arm band, Nicki Minaj's Barbie pendant, Beyoncé's nail rings, Cardi B's nipple covers, and Slick Rick's crown. While the pieces are a sight to behold up-close, the exhibit carries a much deeper meaning, especially as New York City wraps up its 50 years of hip-hop celebrations.

See the exhibit now at the American Museum of Natural History with general admission, which is pay-as-you-wish for New Yorkers. Find it in the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals on the first floor.

For more than 30 years, the Tenement Museum shared stories about the people who once lived in the building it now owns. But that meant that some groups—particularly Black New Yorkers—were excluded, as there's no record of a Black family living in the apartment building at 97 Orchard Street. 

Now, with an aim to explore the full breadth of immigrant and migrant experiences, the Lower East Side museum is highlighting the stories of a Black family for the first time with a new tour titled "A Union of Hope: 1869." The exhibition tells the story of the Moore family who lived in Soho during and after the Civil War. Reserve tickets here for $30/person.

It's been eight years since former President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall Inn and the surrounding area a national monument, making it the country's first national park to honor the LGBTQ community. 

After nearly a decade of having no official visitor center attached to it, Pride Live and the National Park Service announced that after several years of construction, Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center has finally opening its doors.

The visitor center will be located at 51 Christopher Street, which is attached to The Stonewall Inn bar and encompass 2,100 feet of space.

From amazing costumes to Broadway history to fun photo opps, this long-awaited new museum is a must-see for theater buffs.  

You can expect the new museum to highlight over 500 individual productions from the 1700s all the way to the present. 

Among the standout offerings will also be a special exhibit dubbed "The Making of a Broadway Show," which honors the on- and off-stage community that helps bring plays and musicals to life multiple times a week. 

Digital art and poetry combine for a dive into Afrocentricity and Afrofuturism at this new immersive exhibit in Chelsea. "Aṣẹ: Afro Frequencies" is now open at ARTECHOUSE and runs all summer.

The digital art exhibition promises a "vibrant reflection upon the past, present, and future of the Black experience." It's told through the perspective of London-based Afro-surrealist digital artist Vince Fraser alongside evocative poetry by ursula rucker.

Both artists worked to honor the legacy, struggles, and complexities of the Black experience in their work. Even the exhibition's title, "Aṣẹ" stems from a powerful mantra, affirmation, and philosophical belief held by the Yoruba people of West Africa, meaning "so will it be." (By the way, that's pronounced as AH-shay.)

For more than a century, the Statue of Liberty has offered inspiration as a beacon of freedom, equality, and democracy. And for just as long, she has also served as an inspiration for tattoo artists. 

A new exhibit at City Reliquary, a jewel box of a museum in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, features vintage State of Liberty tattoos. As the first show devoted to Lady Liberty ink, it also traces tattooing history in NYC since the 1800s. "Liberty the Tattooed Lady: The Great Bartholdi Statue as Depicted in Tattooing" is now open through January 12, 2025.

The exhibition spotlights antique flash, vintage photographs, drawings, and other ephemera that show how Lady Liberty has been a popular subject in tattooing for as long as she’s stood in New York Harbor. You'll even get to see vintage tattoo art that's never been on display before.

Sure, New York attractions are known across the globe, but what about the lesser-known, secret NYC spots? Thanks to us, you don’t have to do much digging. This is a classified list of buzzy speakeasies in NYC. Cheers!

A grove of citrus trees growing in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District would be unusual enough. But a grove of live citrus trees growing inside a Meatpacking District museum is even more surprising.  

Astonishingly, 18 citrus trees are now in bloom inside the Whitney Museum of American Art, and you can walk through the grove on the museum’s eighth floor through January 1, 2025. The exhibition, “Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard,” was conceived in 1972 by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. This groundbreaking eco-art project is on view at a museum for the first time since its debut more than 50 years ago.

Ocean noise, chemical pollution, climate change and sea level rise are words that often appear in the news. But these important concepts can be hard to make sense of—or to understand at all.

That's where artist Jenny Kendler comes in. Her new exhibit, Other of Pearl, confronts these pressing environmental issues in ways that feel more accessible with stirring whale songs, incredible pearl sculptures, a crystalline whale eye cast with human tears, and more. You can see these powerful works for free on Wednesdays-Sundays from 10am-5pm now through October on Governors Island. 

Seven intimate, delicate works are displayed in the cavernous, subterranean magazine of historic Fort Jay, a star-shaped fortification built on Governors Island between 1775 and 1776. 

The New York Philharmonic's home has been transformed into a state-of-the-art hub for classical music and a more welcoming space for New Yorkers. Go see at show at the newly redesigned David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. 

Here's the full schedule of performances, and here's a peek inside the new theater. 

After nearly a decade of planning, designing and building, the massive new wing at the American Museum of Natural History is now open. The architecturally stunning, 230,000-square-foot Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation is a sight to behold.

Scientific wonders—including a butterfly vivarium, an insectarium and a 360-degree immersive experience—fill every inch of the space.

Part visual splendor, part olfactory wonder and part ooey-gooey sensory fun, Sloomoo Institute’s slime museum is now open again after a renovation. This captivating playground welcomes all ages to its home in SoHo—or “SooHoo,” in Sloomoo parlance (see what they did there?).

Here are five things not to miss at Sloomoo, including a chance to get slimed and a DIY slime making activity.

Experience the tastes of Japan without ever leaving Brooklyn. The new 50 Norman in Greenpoint has brought a Japanese multi-retail and dining mini-complex to the neighborhood. Here's what's inside.

The luxurious Italian wellness spa QC NY (by QC Terme Spas and Resorts) brings the elegance and rejuvenation of a European spa to Governors Island, but with New York City flavor.

When you check in, you're given everything you'll need—a bag containing flip flops, a towel, a robe and a key for your locker—and a chance to sign up for a 25-, 50-, or 75-minute massage ($100-$250). Then, you are set free to roam the spa, which is full of relaxation rooms (each with its own meticulously curated personality, scent, and music), themed saunas, Vichy showers, infrared beds, foot baths, hydro jets, steam baths and other amazingly lush experiences.  

It's a treat no matter the season.

The Brooklyn Paramount is open once again following millions of dollars and years of renovations led by Live Nation. Before restoration began a couple of years ago, the iconic venue—which first opened in the 1920s as a movie theater before it became a concert hall for acts like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington—was a basketball arena and classrooms for Long Island University. 

Now, for the first time in 60 years, the theater is hosting concerts again in one of the most stunning live event settings anywhere in the city. Check out the list of upcoming shows here.

Visit Budgie Landing, an immersive experience that lets you commune with 1,000 boisterous birds known as budgerigars or “budgies” at the Bronx Zoo. The experience, which is part of zoo admission, surrounds you by these small, talkative parrots that get to fly freely through the exhibit. Inside, you can feed seeds to the birds from a handheld stick. The budgies that accept your offering will no doubt be an unforgettable up-close interaction, the zoo says.

Every day, thousands of people walk through Times Square, rushing to catch the subway, heading to work, meandering through shops—many of them unaware that they're stepping over a revolutionary art project that's been a part of the city for decades. 

Purposely unmarked, it's easy to miss this piece of auditory art because truly experiencing it requires tuning into a specific frequency in the most cacophonous place in America. The late artist Max Neuhaus's installation called "Times Square" sounds like the echo of a bell ringing. It's hard to place this droning tone among all the other noises there, especially because the sound emanates from a typical grate right beneath your feet. 

Here's the backstory — and the intel on how to find it.

Imagine waking up to the sound of gently swaying trees and chirping birds, sun peeking into your window which looks out across a canopy of golden leaves. It's an experience that is totally attainable, thanks to Airbnb.

There are plenty of gorgeous treehouse rentals near NYC just waiting for you to visit, and they range from low-fi elevated cabins to more luxurious options with hot tubs and extensive vinyl selections to play at your leisure.

The New York Public Library dug through its expansive and centuries-spanning archive to stage an impressive free exhibition filled with cultural artifacts. "The Polonsky Exhibition of New York Public Library’s Treasures" spans 4,000 years of history and includes a wide range of history-making pieces, including the only surviving letter from Christoper Columbus announcing his “discovery” of the Americas to King Ferdinand’s court and the first Gutenberg Bible brought over to the Americas.

New treasures rotate into the exhibit regulary, so it's worth visiting more than once.

Believe it or not mahjong—yes, the tile game that was developed in 19th century China—is making a comeback in New York. No one is more tapped into this trend than the Chop Suey Club, a Chinese-owned store in Downtown Manhattan that just opened its own mahjong room in the store’s lower level on Hester Street.

The vibey room, which includes two tables and an option to play with an instructor, seats two parties at a time, and every booking will include a copy of a mahjong for beginners pamphlet written and designed by the creative mind behind the Chop Suey Club, Ruoyi Jiang.

Whether you want to play with friends or simply want to learn how to play, there’s something for you. From room reservations to classes, you book your table here.

The Rubin Museum is offering a unique exhibit that delves into the power of difficult emotions and how to turn them into positive ones—something many of us would benefit from these days.

On the third floor of the museum, the Mandala Lab uses fun and interactive tools to explore jealousy/envy, attachment, pride, anger and ignorance and shows visitors how to turn them into wisdom of accomplishment, discernment, equanimity, mirror-like wisdom and all-accommodating wisdom, respectively.

The gong orchestra is a fun and beautiful way to get your frustrations out—by taking a mallet and hitting one of eight gongs, you can express anger and then watch it dissipate by submerging the gong into a pool of water. The gongs themselves were designed by musicians like Billy Cobham, Sheila E., Peter Gabriel, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Sarah Hennies, Huang Ruo, Shivamani and Bora Yoon.

New York's Roaring '20s 2.0 are back on with the first whiskey distillery to open (legally) in Manhattan since Prohibition. Designed with the decadence of the era in mind, Great Jones Distilling Co. is Manhattan's first and only legal whiskey distillery in over 100 years. 

The 28,000 square foot venue features a fully functioning distillery, a tasting room, fascinating tours and several drinking and dining venues, including an underground speakeasy and full restaurant.

Since its opening in Times Square back in 2000, Madame Tussauds has become part and parcel of the character of the city. Sure, the famous wax museum is a tourist magnet, but New Yorkers have also come to appreciate the art form, welcoming new celebrity clay figures joining the roster of 200-or-so sculptures always on display at the museum. 

A mere walk through the giant space at 234 West 42nd Street by Seventh Avenue is sure to catch you off guard: the wax figures are, to put it simply, life-like, almost identical to their human counterparts.

For the first time ever, Madame Tussauds is offering museum-goers the chance to take a peek at the process: the museum is now leading behind-the-scenes tours twice a day on Mondays through Fridays.

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