An analytical guide to people-watching in NYC
Places for you to sit in the sun and observe
Last week I sat outside of Greenwich Street Tavern in Tribeca with some friends. The bar is unremarkable in almost every way, but it’s a wonderful place to watch the flow of life stream by on the sidewalk. People leaving work or getting ready to go out to dinner make for a good backdrop to a pitcher of beer.
After 45 minutes or so, we saw Ali Wong and Bill Hader strolling together, which set off a cascade of events. First, my friend Brett mouthed “ali wong and bill hader!” and we turned to glance as they passed us. Then, we got to listen to the table next to us, a group of 24 year-olds fresh off a kickball game, whisper “ali wong and bill hader!!!” to each other, and then argue about when it is appropriate to say hi to a celebrity on the street1. It was the perfect level of entertainment: enough stimulus to be engaging, but entirely low-stakes, like watching a barge drift down a river.
As we’ve emerged from a rather dark and dreary winter in New York I’ve been in the mood to people-watch in the sunshine. In January I wrote this post analyzing the coziest bars in the city (Black Mountain Wine House came away the clear favorite). Having built out the infrastructure to analyze the text of bar’s Google reviews to write that post, I was able to find some operating leverage in the Residual Thoughts model and use the same technique to search for places in New York where reviews mention “people-watching.”
This led me to this list:
My thoughts on these people-watching spots
Good Bar is right by McCarren Park (whose running track also makes the list). I haven’t been to the bar itself but there is always lots going on there and Williamsburg/ Greenpoint fashion is always fun to observe.
I find Bryant Park is generally underrated (even though I am never up there); the architecture of the buildings around it is beautiful and it’s a fun place to sit and watch tourists mix with Salesforce employees adjusting their airpods and picking up their lunch bowls.
Le Dive is a very good place to sit and people-watch (although in dimes square it feels like everyone is watching each other, so I don’t find it to be a particularly relaxing place). But you can always count on seeing people like this who make smoking cigarettes look really cool:
Cipriani Dolci is in Grand Central Station. I have not been there but it really appeals to me to sit up above the bustle and have a digestif and some tiramisu and watch the hive of activity below (and Grand Central retains old New York romance, so I imagine all of the travelers there as versions of Holden Caulfield returning to the Upper East Side after being kicked out of boarding school).
This is particularly appealing since I recently learned from my favorite coffee table book that there is a beautiful tennis court behind the windows at Grand Central, and playing there is prohibitively expensive except2 for past 10pm on weekends. A light desert at Cipriani Dolci followed by a quick late-evening tennis match as the rest of the world runs to catch their train sounds lovely.
Is it vibey, though?
Of course, you can optimize for more than just people-watching. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you are also concerned with “vibes,” in which case you may want to skip coffee at Prêt à Manger and go to Le Dive or Good Bar or The Hunterian on the UES, which I hadn’t heard of but seems like, well, a vibe.
By my count, a full 23% of reviews of Le Dive mention its “vibe.” This speaks to a burgeoning crisis in restaurant review vocabulary, but it is hard to argue with Erica here (the playing cards are a nice touch):
If you want to approximate my Ali Wong & Bill Hader sighting, you can also optimize for celebrity sightings, in which case all roads lead to Balthazar in Soho, where I have famously never been but in which 15 reviews mention seeing a celebrity (White Horse Tavern is distant second). I just found out that the owner Keith McNally published a book and I’m gonna listen to it today as I stroll.
As a bonus to all of this, I also learned of Ellie’s Rock in Ridgewood, where this really cute dog liked to sit and dogwatch. This may be the most wholesome google review I’ve ever read, and it seems like a great place to go pay tribute and interact with some of Ellie’s friends (who are presumably named Juniper, Rhubarb, or Franny). Forever your rock, Ellie babe!
Thanks for reading. I am sure I missed many of your favorite places to people-watch, to which I say…start your own whimsical data newsletter! But also let me know of them in the comments.
In less whimsical news, I recently listened to Dwarkesh Patel interview Mark Zuckerberg about Meta’s AGI plans and how he sees society adapting to this technological wave.
Patel asks how we can avoid a dystopian future (in the context of AI friends, romantic partners, therapists etc).
Zuckerberg responds, “one of my core guiding principles in designing products is that people are smart. They know what is valuable in their lives.”
I don’t think Zuck is particularly evil, but I do think he is extremely misguided. Looking at the history of how Meta’s products have impacted the world, his principle seems so fundamentally flawed as to be ridiculous. Certainly FB and Instagram have created lots of value for lots of people. But even putting aside the question of Meta’s impact on political or social discourse — how many people that you know would characterize the time they spend on Instagram as “valuable?” Maybe 10%?
I think Meta exists somewhere between Coca-Cola and Purdue Pharma on the spectrum of “companies that have developed widely used products that give lots of people pleasure but whose impact on society has been negative on balance.”
The interview is worth watching, because Zuckerberg will be one of the chief architects of a future that will be, in his words, “a lot funnier, weirder, and quirkier,” and you should understand how he thinks.
I think it is cool and fun to politely say hi to celebrities if less than 3% of people in that city know who they are. For instance, I had a nice chat with the comedian Alexis Gay about her podcast last year when I saw her at a cafe on my street. But I saw Jerry Seinfeld walking on the UWS once and that was a bridge too far — I just pretended to be an extra on the show. That said, if I ever bump into Alex Turner I will have to break this rule and gush to him about my 10 year-long (and counting) arctic monkeys era
“Except” here means that the tennis court is $90 an hour if you play past 10pm. Which isn’t crazy when you price in the romanticism
as a fellow data analyst, love this so much 🩵
joe, you are a certified genius for this one.