Nuyorican Poets Cafe

On our lists of the best live music venues and activities in New York.

Miguel Algarín started this as a living-room salon in his East Village apartment in 1973, gathering poets, playwrights and musicians whose work the mainstream publishing and entertainment industries wouldn't touch. The crowd outgrew the apartment, and by 1981 the group had bought a former tenement at 236 East 3rd Street. Bob Holman brought slam poetry here on Halloween night in 1989, a night widely credited with putting the poetry slam format on the map, and the Friday night slam that grew out of it became the Cafe's signature weekly draw. A 1996 documentary, SlamNation, followed that year's Nuyorican team to the National Poetry Slam in Portland.