Bluestockings Cooperative is a community-supported bookstore and activist space.

It's the smallest espresso bar making the best espresso drinks in Manhattan.

Cute little French Café with beautiful croissants. Thanks for the reco, Kim!

In 1963, the Italian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola filled a playground that covers an entire city block with avant-garde abstractions. In the middle of an Upper Manhattan housing project, there are cuboid cutouts sculpted in cement, a fountain made with two diamond-shaped boulders, concrete play horses, and a sand-casted relief carved high into a wall. In the northeast corner, a matriarchal figure known as “The Nanny” rises from the ground. The artist’s sculptures were built in an era when urban development incorporated art in its effort to uplift communities and express democratic ideals. “A work designed for a public space is less a work of art than a civic act,” Nivola once said. “It concerns the ways in which we live together, and in which we influence each other.”

This quaint shop boasts an artfully arranged and tastefully curated selection of jewelry, pottery, books and art. I have to keep myself from going there too often, because I have trouble leaving without making a purchase.