TIMES SQUARE is the epicenter of the city! Once a seedy sex area, Giuliani and DISNEY came in and "spruced" everything up and made it "clean".

MIDTOWN  spans from  30th Street to 50th Street from river to river, it’s home to corporate headquarters, fine hotels and restaurants, and landmarks as varied as the United Nations, the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, Rockafeller Center,  the New York Public Library and Madison Square Garden. Visitors flock to the Broadway shows of Theater District and nearby Times Square, as well as to Bryant Park.

The northern reaches of Manhattan include thriving Latino communities in Washington Heights and Spanish Harlem. Harlem is one of the City’s biggest neighborhoods and a historic center for African American music, art and culture. Often  dismissed by tourists as too dangerous, Harlem is a huge chunk of the city, from 90th Street up to 178th, and from the Harlem River clear across to the Hudson River. It does have some dangerous sections, as do most of New York's neighborhoods, but it also has some happening nightlife and restaurants, notable churches, and the city's greatest concentration of museums and landmarks of black culture.

The Upper West Side is home to Lincoln Center, a seat for performing arts. The area also has some of the city's most famous apartment buildings, chief among them, the Gothic Dakota (W. 72nd St, at Central Park West), setting for Rosemary's Baby and home of John Lennon and Yoko Ono;

The Upper East Side offers fine arts at the Metropolitan and Whitney museums, along with high-end shopping in Madison Avenue boutiques. And Central Park, between the two, is an 843-acre oasis for residents and visitors alike. Stately, dignified, and Waspy, the Upper East Side has always been Manhattan's most elite neighborhood.

South of Midtown, Chelsea is home to art galleries and nightclubs. 18th Street and Eighth Avenue is the epicenter. Probably New York's gayest neighborhood. 15 years ago this area was nothing. Now, thanks to the gays, it boasts some of the highest property values in the city!

The relatively low buildings of Greenwich Village —historic townhouses, shops and restaurants—make it one of the sunniest neighborhoods, and one of the nicest for a stroll.  The Village, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Houston Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the east and the Hudson River to the west, comprises many different communities, faces and lives. - Mostly an alternative culture.

Funkier than its western counterpart, the East Village is typified by tiny apartments, inexpensive ethnic restaurants, the best unusual shopping in the city, and dozens of bars. "The East Village is absolutely unique. Here everyone is living out their favorite fantasies and their worst nightmares at once. It's a weird, wired, wacky place!"

The Village has become a very high rent part of town! No bargains in real estate  here. Uma Turman, Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein, and Nicole Kidman all keep a place here!

To the southeast, NoLIta is ideal for boutique shoppers, while the bordering East Village is known for its funky offerings, with experimental music clubs, theaters and cutting-edge fashion; New York University is in the area.

Farther south still, the Lower East Side retains some of the shops and cultural institutions from its days as an epicenter for many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, but it’s also a stylish address, with new buildings drawing residents and visitors. As chic as ever, SoHo’s distinctive cast-iron buildings look down on throngs of shoppers and fashionable boutiques; the warehouses of TriBeCa, too, today serve as homes, shops and restaurants.

It wasn't until the mid-';70s that this warehouse district, once devoted to making things like Christmas ornaments and shoe bows, was renamed SoHo, standing for South of Houston (bounded by Sixth Avenue to the west, Broadway to the east, Grand Street to the south and Houston Street to the north). Its re-christening was at the hands of its homesteading artists, who moved into the gigantic, cast-iron buildings for their cheap and enormous lofts.

Famed for its restaurants and bustling markets, Chinatown is a thriving residential community that continues to draw new immigrants. And the Financial District is Manhattan’s original neighborhood—historic sites and high finance sit side by side on the narrow streets that hark back to Peter Stuyvesant and New Amsterdam’s first settlers.



Map and some information provided by NYC VISIT!
Additional information from Gay.com's article on NYC.
Also visit AROUND TOWN for in depth neighborhood information.

The Best of Gay New York!