Art Bar has been at 52 8th Avenue in the West Village since the early 1990s, which puts it in the category of places that outlasted both the bohemian moment that created them and the gentrification wave that erased most of what surrounded them. The interior is all dark velvet, mismatched couches, and a back room with a fireplace, creating an atmosphere that feels accidentally preserved rather than intentionally curated.

The kitchen is open late and the menu is broad, covering vegetarian options alongside the standard bar food territory. Cocktails are priced reasonably rather than ambitiously, which suits the place. There's a digital jukebox and enough regulars that the room always has some background texture of people who've been coming for years alongside newer faces.

Open from four in the afternoon until four in the morning, daily. Art Bar celebrates, as its website puts it, both New York's art scene and the arty weirdos without whom it wouldn't exist. That framing is either obnoxious or accurate, and in context it lands closer to the latter.