East 1 St, East Village

East 1st starts at The Bowery so it is a true East Village street. I stayed on 1st and Bowery while I was looking for an apartment before I moved here. This part of town will always be kind of special to me for that reason. The lower part of the East Village is exactly how you would expect New York to look. And, 1st falls right into line with that.
The Avalon Bowery is right on the corner of 1st and Bowery and that is actually the building I stayed in for a few weeks. It's a really nice apartment building and it's pretty massive and crazy expensive. A one bedroom runs around $4000 / month. But the building has all modern amenities, door man, etc so, in a way, the price is justified. The Avalon went up in 2007 and two very old buildings were demolished for its construction. The preservationists fought the demolition and were really upset; and, I normally would have been too. I hate to see historical buildings bite the dust. But, in this particular case, I'm glad it happened. Before the Avalon went in, The Bowery was basically a crack den. It was really dangerous and absolutely filthy. This building is what completely turned the neighborhood around. So, good for the Avalon for making a totally uninhabitable neighborhood livable.
One of the last remaining relics of the old Bowery is right next to the Avalon, ironically. Mars Bar on the corner of 2nd and 1st is, by far and away, the scariest bar in New York City. I dare you to walk in there even in the middle of the day. I have trouble even walking past it.
Across 2nd Avenue, 1st street is a collection of apartment homes that used to be tenement homes for the most part. They've all been cleaned up but they definitely still look like tenements from the outside. About halfway down the block, there are a bunch of restaurants that are all great. The East Village, in general, is great because there are so many tiny, fantastic restaurants on every street. Prune, in particular, is one of my favorite brunch spots in the city. A few doors down is the Tasting Room which is a great little wine bar. Across the street from the Tasting Room is the Veselka kiosk. Veselka has fantastic Polish food but if you can't make it for a sit down, this kiosk isn't a shabby number 2.
The next block (at First Ave) is mostly just apartments, but there's a great dive bar called Nice Guy Eddie's right on the corner. The apartments, outside of the Avalon) on 1st kind of look like the run down numbers in the movie Rent. They're pretty slummy looking. But, they're old, have a lot of character, and some of them are enormous on the inside. Plus, it's a great, lively street that has a lot to do, so it's not an unfortunate place to live by any means.