Dimes Square
Dimes Square | |
|---|---|
| Etymology: Dimes restaurant | |
  Dimes Square  Dimes Square | |
| Coordinates: 40°42′53.9″N 73°59′29.6″W / 40.714972°N 73.991556°WCoordinates: 40°42′53.9″N 73°59′29.6″W / 40.714972°N 73.991556°W Fatal error: The format of the coordinate could not be determined. Parsing failed. | |
| Country |  United States |
| State |  New York |
| City | New York City |
| Borough | Manhattan |
| Community district | Manhattan Community Board 3 |
| Time zone | UTC−05:00 |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−04:00 |
| ZIP codes | 10002 10013 |
| Area codes | 212, 332 and 646 917 |
Dimes Square is a neighborhood of New York City consisting of five square blocks located in the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan.[1][2][3][4] The exact perimeter and nature of the neighborhood is debated, though survey data from The New York Times lists it as roughly the five blocks on either side of Canal Street between Allen Street and Essex Street.[5]
Etymology
The neighborhood's name, a play on "Times Square", refers to Dimes, a restaurant located at the intersection of Canal Street and Division Street on the Lower East Side. According to Marisa Meltzer of The New York Times, the nickname has transitioned from a term used "jokingly" to one used "semi-seriously".[6] The term Dimes Square became a metonym for a number of associated reactionary aesthetic movements centered in the area.[7] It was originally popularized by Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of the podcast Red Scare who stemmed from the dirtbag left movement.[8]
History
In 2020, two blocks of Canal Street were closed off for an Open Streets permit, resulting in what Hannah Goldfield of The New Yorker described as a "circus", "every night a music festival in the piazza."[9] Ben Smith cited the neighborhood's emergence as a lockdown-flouting cultural hub during the COVID-19 pandemic in a 2021 New York Times piece.[10] As COVID-19 restrictions receded, the associated transgressive art movement digitized and became increasingly prominent in online culture.[citation needed]
In 2024, Dazed magazine referred to Dimes Square as a meme-able micro-neighborhood.[11] The American pop rock band Bleachers referenced Dimes Square in their 2024 song "Jesus Is Dead".[12]
Following the June 2026 seizure of KiKi's, a Dimes Square restaurant, for failure to pay taxes,[13] neighborhood regulars began debating whether the Dimes Square scene was ending.[14]
Art scene
In 2022, Julia Yost argued in a The New York Times op-ed that the neighborhood and its associated podcasters such as Dasha Nekrasova of Red Scare were the center of a post-ironic revival of traditionalist Catholicism.[7][15][8][16] According to Nick Dove in Vice, scene participants "ranged from anti-identitarian leftism to outright fascism, a motley crew of outside dissenters to then-ascendant hyper-liberalism".[17]
Media associated with the area include the podcast Red Scare, pirate radio station Montez Press Radio, and defunct print newspaper The Drunken Canal.[18][10] An online Dimes zine named Byline was established in 2023 by Gutes Guterman and Megan O'Sullivan.[19] In 2023, the NME cited several musicians associated with Dimes Square as "reinvigorating NYC's music scene", including The Dare, The Hellp, Been Stellar, Frost Children, Hello Mary, Model/Actriz, and Strange Ranger.[16]
Operating between 2022 and 2025, Sovereign House was a cultural events venue associated with the scene, owned by fintech co-founder Nick Allen.[8][20][21][22] In 2024, Magdalene Taylor described it in GQ as the "last bastion" of Dimes Square,[21] and City Journal described it in 2025 as "New York's premier right-wing gathering spot".[23] According to The New Yorker, its speakers were "heterodox, and sometimes controversial".[22] It hosted events including an Elena Velez presentation,[8][24] a play by Matthew Gasda,[22] a DOGE appreciation party,[22] and events for publications such as The Point and Heavy Traffic.[25] Guest speakers included Benjamin R. Teitelbaum,[26] Norman Finkelstein,[22] and far-right figures such as Curtis Yarvin,[22] Raw Egg Nationalist,[20] and Steve Sailer, a proponent of scientific racism.[8] Sovereign House closed after its lease expired in Spring 2025.[22]
Matthew Gasda's 2026 play The Last Days of Downtown was described in Vice as a "post-mortem" for the Dimes Square scene.[17] According to Ross Barkan, Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York City in 2025 marked a change in political mood contributing to the decline of Dimes Square.[27]
Notable people
- Betsey Brown, actress and director[28]
- Blaketheman1000, pop/indie artist and producer[16][29]
- Madeline Cash, author and co-founder of Forever Magazine[30]
- Jordan Castro, writer and editor[8]
- The Dare, singer, DJ, and music producer[16]
- Anna Khachiyan, cultural critic, writer, and co-host of the Red Scare podcast[28]
- Honor Levy, author[31]
- Dasha Nekrasova, actress, filmmaker, and co-host of the Red Scare podcast[7]
- Peter Vack, actor, writer, and filmmaker[32]
- Sean Price Williams, cinematographer and film director[33]
- Elena Velez, fashion designer[34]
See also
- Frogtwitter
- Dirtbag left
- Post-Internet
References
- ↑ McDermott, John (July 6, 2025). "Inside the 'Anti-Woke' Literary Scene Growing in L.A." Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 9, 2026.
- ↑ Taylor, Erin (August 16, 2022). "The Next Dimes Square Is Just Around the Corner". Observer. Retrieved February 9, 2026.
- ↑ Piner, Natasha (April 20, 2023). "Dimes Square Offline: My Experience with www.RachelOrmont.com". Film Matters. Retrieved February 9, 2026.
- ↑ Dai, Serena (August 10, 2022). "Do You Need to Care About Dimes Square? Probably Not". Bon Appétit. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
- ↑ Buchanan, Larry; Katz, Josh; Taylor, Rumsey; Washington, Eve (October 29, 2023). "An Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods". The New York Times.
- ↑ Meltzer, Marisa (July 25, 2022). "Dimes Square Gets the Hotel It Deserves". The New York Times. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Yost, Julia (August 9, 2022). "New York's Hottest Club Is the Catholic Church". The New York Times.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 Bevilacqua, Leonardo (June 24, 2024). "Rebels with a religious cause: Meet New York's avant-garde conservatives". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved May 8, 2026.
- ↑ Goldfield, Hannah (September 9, 2022). "Dimes Square, Post-Shark-Jump". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 26, 2024.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Smith, Ben (March 7, 2021). "They Had a Fun Pandemic. You Can Read About It in Print". The New York Times.
- ↑ Yalcinkaya, Günseli (October 4, 2022). "Memes, minions and meta-irony: The rise of post-internet fashion". Dazed. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
- ↑ D'Souza, Shaad (September 29, 2023). "Jack Antonoff: 'I've never made anything hoping everyone would like...'". The Face.
- ↑ Sanli, Lara; Church, Samuel A. (June 17, 2026). "NYC Greek Eatery Kiki's Seized for Failure to Pay $1 Million Tax". Bloomberg News.
- ↑ "Kiki's Is Seized, Long Live Kiki's". Hell Gate. June 18, 2026. Retrieved June 19, 2026.
- ↑ Davenport, Emily (July 26, 2024). "NYC's 'One Man Army' Film Series Makes Waves". amNewYork.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 "Dimes Square: meet the new artists reinvigorating NYC's music scene". NME. May 15, 2023. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Dove, Nick (2026-05-08). "The Last Days of Dimes Square (For Real This Time)". VICE. Retrieved 2026-10-25.
- ↑ Harrison, Will (May 24, 2022). "Escape from Dimes Square". The Baffler. Retrieved February 8, 2025.
- ↑ Schacter, Cara (June 8, 2023). "They're Here to Save Indie Media". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 8, 2023.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Boguslaw, Daniel (January 24, 2025). "At NYC's MAGA Clubhouse, Libertarians Are Left in the Cold". The American Prospect.
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 Taylor, Magdalene (November 6, 2024). "Crushing White Claws With MAGA Hipsters on Election Night in Dimes Square". GQ. Archived from the original on November 6, 2024. Retrieved May 21, 2025.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5 22.6 Green, Emma (2025-12-16). "The Party Politics of Sovereign House". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2026-10-25.
- ↑ Soropoulos, Kerry (May 2, 2025). "Tech Founders Bet on New York". City Journal. Retrieved January 1, 2026.
- ↑ Kennedy, Joan; Ap, Tiffany (February 12, 2024). "Elena Velez Brings Dimes Square, and Its Controversial Politics, to Fashion Week". The Business of Fashion. Archived from the original on February 12, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2026. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Kailath, Ryan (January 17, 2025). "Some young NYC conservatives say Trump resurgence makes it easier to speak their minds". Gothamist.
- ↑ Pogue, James (October 9, 2024). "Steve Bannon Is Out of Jail, and He Has a Plan for Trump's Next Term". Vanity Fair.
- ↑ Barkan, Ross (2025-11-26). "Did Zohran Kill Dimes Square?". rosselliotbarkan.com. Retrieved 2026-10-25.
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 Helen Holmes (August 11, 2022). "How Dimes Square Became the New York City Neighborhood We Love to Hate". The Daily Beast. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
- ↑ Buford, Jayson (November 3, 2022). "Is 'Dimes Square Rapper' Blaketheman1000 Actually Sort of Good?". Rolling Stone. Retrieved March 22, 2026.
- ↑ Boyle, J. Arthur (July 24, 2023). "The Right-Wing Avant-Garde in American Fiction". Verso. Archived from the original on October 10, 2025. Retrieved May 7, 2026. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Colyar, Brock (May 3, 2024). "Her First Book; Six hours in Dimes Square with the 26-year-old author and niche icon Honor Levy". The Cut. Retrieved February 3, 2026.
Levy was one of the niche icons of Dimes Square, the scene that bloomed on the little patch of the Lower East Side where we are currently drinking Diet Cokes.
- ↑ Piner, Natasha (April 20, 2023). "Dimes Square Offline: My Experience with www.RachelOrmont.com". Film Matters Magazine. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
- ↑ Nayman, Adam (June 20, 2023). "The Girl and Her Trust: Sean Price Williams on "The Sweet East"". Cinema Scope. Retrieved February 23, 2026.
- ↑ Tashjian, Rachel (February 12, 2024). "Fashion's problematic fave is Elena Velez". The Washington Post.
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