The scene-iest nightspot in NYC isn’t a club or a restaurant — it’s a parking lot next to a bar in Chinatown.
After the go-to spot, located at the corner of Canal and Eldridge, opened as Time Again in late May, it quickly became one of Manhattan’s buzziest hangouts — in part thanks to the open outdoor real estate, which allows crowds of regular Joes and celebrities to collect around the bite-sized boîte.
“It’s so fun. I love going there,” Laine Habony, a 28-year-old ballet dancer, told The Post. “It’s such a cool vibe. It reminds me of a bar you would find in Paris.”
The accidentally al fresco hot spot sits across from the exit ramp of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown, right at the doorstep of twin trendy areas known as Two Bridges and Dimes Square — micro-neighborhoods that are currently enjoying an outsize reputation, thanks to a stream of TikTokers paying tribute.
From here, you can see everything — or at least a thick slice of diverse NYC life.
There’s an adjacent cemetery, a park often filled with elderly men gambling and women doing Tai Chi, a high school, an adult day care, a long-distance bus stop, a noodle shop, a 99-cent store, a Greek Orthodox church and a classic Chinatown makeshift open-air market.
Habony, a member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, regularly comes down from the Upper West Side to sip on some natural wine — she even hosted her birthday party at the joint last week.
“It’s in this area you wouldn’t necessarily think is a prime spot for a bar or a popular place. But I think it makes it more fun and special,” said Habony, who isn’t alone in soaking up the surprising spectacle.
“There’s no table service or anything like that. It’s just good food in the parking lot,” Bronx artist Arthur Peña, 42, told The Post of the “unpretentious” hangout. “I love that sort of juxtaposition of having caviar salad but in a parking lot on a small stool.”
It’s yet another come-as-you-are hotspot, far from NYC’s legendary nightclubs of yore with impossibly exclusive door policies, but that’s part of the vibe.
“As an Aussie in NYC for the first time, it’s the type of bar you only hear about and see in movies,” singer-songwriter Oliver Cronin, 20, told The Post during a visit. “It was buzzing and had a really good atmosphere.”
For most of the summer, Time Again’s eclectic crowd — dabbled with creatives and even some celebrities like Joe Jonas and Lil Yachty — typically begins to gather right before the sun sets, hanging around late into the night or early hours of the morning, spilling out onto the sidewalk and public parking lot.
For those who prefer it indoors, the venue has a few seating options drenched in red light — and sometimes a smoke machine, which has received mixed reviews.
But most visitors come for the scene outside, grabbing a plate from whatever food pop-up has taken over for the night, ordering drinks at the cocktail window and claiming one of the colorful, child-sized plastic stools.
And if those are all occupied, there’s always a docked Citi Bike nearby — that’s where artist Peña sat a few nights ago, chowing down on a prosciutto sandwich.
He’d picked up his impromptu picnic from Uncle Paulie’s Deli — a popular sandwich shop in LA recently featured on “The Bear,” serving bar customers that night.
“It’s a fun experience like that,” he told The Post, appreciating that “there’s a sort of grime to the corner.”
The artist often stops by the bar, riding the 6 train all the way down from The Bronx — particularly if the food pop-up promoted on the Time Again Instagram account gets his mouth watering.
“It’s really perfectly situated for what I’m doing most evenings and I just ended up loving it,” said Peña, a part of the art gallery scene in the surrounding streets.
The bar has made an effort to wrangle the masses a little more on busy evenings after some neighbors’ complaints — but the crowd has only seemed to make the place more popular.
“It’s just one of those things that pops out. Like, you really can’t miss it,” Relly Phelps, 31, told The Post.
“I was, like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ I was on the phone with someone and said, ‘Sorry, give me a second,’” he recalled of the first time he was drawn in by the crowd and music.
“It’s very inconspicuous in the way that the actual bar space is small and intimate. But that outside parking lot area is very different.”
The herd of people drew him in the first time and continues to do so — along with the venue’s natural wine selection.
“I think the biggest thing for me about going there is I never felt like there was a specific crowd or scene that was taking place there. It’s one of the most diverse places I’ve been to where I feel like every pocket of the city was represented,” the Williamsburg photographer noted.
The bar is the third iteration of the spot — it previously was an Omakase restaurant and a coffee shop — and is run by Alec “Despot” Reinstein, a rapper and music executive, and Nick Poe, an architectural designer.
The third time could be the charm — providing local complaints and a looming temperature drop don’t manage to kill the vibe.
“I hope that they’re able to keep [the large outdoor crowds],” Peña said, noting a recent trend toward more organized fun.
“I literally have been worried about what’s going to happen to them in the winter, you know, and because that’s such a big part of it,” he fretted.
“It just feels very welcoming — in the way New York City can be sometimes.”
