New York City / Singles bars
Best Bars in NYC to
Actually Meet Someone
No cover, no list, and somewhere to stand. Eighteen rooms where it is structurally possible.
Four of these run a real happy hour — and the happy hour is the part where you can still hear each other.
- 18 verified bars
- 17 with no cover
- beers from $3
- 9 open to 4am
The best bars in NYC for actually meeting someone are Doris in Bed-Stuy (no cover, no guest list, $5 drafts until 8pm daily, ping pong in the yard and a DJ from 10), The Johnson’s in Bushwick ($3 beers and a pool table), Beauty Bar on 14th Street ($10 for a martini and a real manicure), Friends and Lovers in Crown Heights (a front bar to talk in and a back room to dance in) and The Gutter in Williamsburg, where you can skip the bowling and just drink. The honest version of this category: the “singles bar” barely exists in New York any more. What works is a room with no cover, no list, something to do with your hands, and a happy hour early enough that you can still hear each other. All eighteen below clear that bar.
The short version
- Best all-rounderDoris — no cover, no list, $5 drafts 5–8pm daily, ping pong out back, DJ from 10pm.
- CheapestThe Johnson’s in Bushwick: $3 beers and $5 cocktails, daily, 5–9pm.
- Best icebreakerBeauty Bar’s $10 Martini & Manicure, Wed–Sat. The manicure is real.
- Right layoutFriends and Lovers: front bar to talk in, separate back room to dance in.
- Only real door chargeBossa Nova, about $10 on Saturdays. Everywhere else here is free to walk into.
At a glance
The deal, the draw, and when the room actually turns over. Tap a number on the map to place it.
| Bar | Deal or draw | When | Neighborhood | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doris | $5 drafts; $2 off wells | Daily 5–8pm | Bed-Stuy | $$$ |
| The Johnson’s | $3 beers; $5 cocktails | Daily 5–9pm | Bushwick | $$$ |
| Pete’s Candy Store | $6 drafts, wells, wines | Mon–Fri to 7pm | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| Friends and Lovers | $6 beers and wine | Wed–Sat 5–8pm | Crown Heights | $$$ |
| Bossa Nova Civic Club | Free most nights; ~$10 Sat | Daily 7pm–4am | Bushwick | $$$ |
| Home Sweet Home | Basement DJ floor | To 4am Wed–Sun | Lower East Side | $$$ |
| Drexler’s | Cellar dance floor | Daily 4pm–4am | East Village | $$$ |
| Baby’s All Right | Free front bar | Back room ticketed | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| Beauty Bar | $10 Martini & Manicure | Wed–Sat | East Village | $$$ |
| The Gutter | $30–$35 per half hour | Daily to 4am | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| The Gutter Lower East Side | $42–$50 per half hour | Daily to 4am | Lower East Side | $$$ |
| C’mon Everybody | Live music, DJs, bingo | Daily 5pm–late | Bed-Stuy | $$$ |
| Skinny Dennis | Free live music; jukebox | Daily noon–4am | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| Lucky Dog | Jukebox; brick courtyard | Daily noon–4am | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| Sunny’s Bar | Live music; waterfront | Closes 12–1am | Red Hook | $$$ |
| No Fun | Open 3pm–4am | Daily, all week | Lower East Side | $$$ |
| Union Pool | Courtyard, photo booth, tacos | 2am; 4am Fri–Sat | Williamsburg | $$$ |
| Purgatory | Open daily 6pm–2am | Daily | Bushwick | $$$ |
Map: where these 18 spots are
North Brooklyn and the Lower East Side carry this. Bushwick and Bed-Stuy have the cheapest rooms.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the detail and directions.
The real happy hours
Four bars where the deal lands before the room gets too loud to talk. More in best bars in NYC.
Doris On now
The single best-shaped room on this page, and the reason is the timeline. Happy hour runs daily 5–8pm (and from 1pm at weekends): $5 draft beer, $2 off wells, wine and cocktails. Then from 10pm Thursday to Saturday a DJ plays under a disco ball and the same room becomes a dance floor. No cover and no guest list, stated by the bar. There is a backyard with a ping pong table, which does more for talking to a stranger than any dance floor ever has. Five minutes from the A/C at Franklin Ave. The honest caveat: nothing happens on the dance side before 10pm — at 5pm this is a quiet neighborhood bar with a good deal, which is fine if that is what you came for.
The Johnson’s On now
$3 a beer and $5 a cocktail, daily, for four hours — the cheapest sustained happy hour anywhere in this guide, in a big Bushwick dive with a jukebox, a pool table and no cover. The pool table is the point, and it is worth saying why: a room where there is something to do with your hands and a queue to join is structurally better for meeting people than a dance floor you cannot talk over. Feed the jukebox, put quarters up. The honest caveat, and we would rather flag it than pretend: the $3/$5 figures come from a directory listing, not the bar — its own site was unreachable during research. Confirm at the door before you build a night on it.
thejohnsonsbushwick.com · See our Bushwick happy hours
Pete’s Candy Store On now
Free live music every single night, no cover, ever — in a train-car-shaped back room the bar calls the biggest little venue in New York — with a happy hour Monday to Friday until 7pm: $6 drafts, well drinks and wines, plus $5 cans of Athletic Upside Dawn if you are not drinking, which almost no bar on this page bothers to price. The local move is the back garden: it is where you can actually hear someone, and it is fifteen feet from a free band. The honest caveat, twice: the back room is tiny, so “free show” and “you will get in” are different things on a busy night, and everything shuts at 2am. This is not a 4am plan.
petescandystore.com · See our Williamsburg happy hours
Friends and Lovers On now
The layout does the work here: a front bar you can hold a conversation in, and a separate back room used as the dance floor — so you are not choosing between hearing someone and dancing with them, which is the trade-off almost every other room on this page forces. Happy hour is $6 beers and wine, 5–8pm Wednesday to Saturday, published by the bar, and the doors run to 4am Friday and Saturday (2am Wed–Thu). The honest caveat: it is closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, so this is a Wednesday-to-Saturday plan only — and the happy hour ends at 8pm, well before the floor fills. Come at 6, stay through.
fnlbk.com · See our Crown Heights happy hours
Where people actually dance, no cover
Free floors, or close to it. Pair with best cocktail bars in NYC.
Bossa Nova Civic Club
The one genuine club on this page and the only venue with any door price at all — free on many nights, roughly $10 on Saturdays. It is 1,900 square feet of dance floor run on DJs rather than bottle service, open 7pm to 4am daily, and it has been the reference point for this kind of room in Brooklyn for a decade. Set your expectations correctly: this is a place to dance, not a place to talk. If conversation is the plan, start at The Johnson’s and come here after. The honest caveat: the venue’s old domain no longer resolves to the club — it redirects to an unrelated site — so check its Instagram for the night’s lineup rather than a website.
Home Sweet Home
There is no signage on Chrystie Street, which is the first thing to know. Upstairs is a taxidermy-heavy dive; the basement turns into a disco-ball dance floor with live DJs after midnight, and the room runs to 4am Wednesday through Saturday (and Sunday from 8pm). It is one of the few places below Houston where dancing does not come with a door charge or a list. The honest caveat: there is no working official site, so hours come from aggregators rather than the bar — including the peculiar 6:01pm opening time the listing publishes, which we are reporting as found rather than tidying up. Check before an early arrival. More of the block in our Lower East Side happy hours guide.
See our Lower East Side happy hours
Drexler’s
The split personality is the entire proposition and it is a useful one: street level is a normal, perfectly decent Avenue A bar you can hold a conversation in; the cellar is where the night happens — 90s hip-hop at weekends and vinyl DJs on Wednesdays. Open 4pm to 4am, every day, at the corner of Houston. So you can arrive early, talk to someone upstairs, and move down when the room fills, which is a better sequence than starting on a dance floor. The honest caveat: on a quiet weeknight the basement may not be running at all, and nothing is published to tell you in advance. Ask at the bar when you walk in.
See our East Village happy hours
Baby’s All Right
A retro neon-lit front bar plus a back performance room with a dance floor, and the thing that makes it work is the handover: the band finishes and the DJ takes the same floor, so the room does not empty out at 11pm the way most venues do. Food is served, which matters more than it sounds when you are three drinks in. The honest caveat, and read it before you travel: the official site publishes no opening hours and no happy hour, and almost everything in the back room is ticketed — the front bar is the free part. Check the calendar first, or you will arrive to a sold-out show and a bar you could have found closer to home.
babysallright.com · See our Williamsburg happy hours
Big rooms with something to do
Bowling, manicures, bingo — anything better than standing there. See best sports bars.
Beauty Bar
The best icebreaker in New York, and it costs ten dollars. The signature $10 Martini & Manicure runs Wednesday through Saturday in a converted beauty salon on 14th Street, and the manicure is genuine — a stylist does it while you drink. Sitting under a dryer hood next to a stranger with a drink in your hand does more work than any amount of standing at a bar. The back room runs live comedy, DJ nights and a small dance floor, and the door goes to 4am. The honest caveat: closed Mondays, and the Martini & Manicure is Wed–Sat only — turn up on a Tuesday and you get the bar but not the thing it is known for. Times are not published.
See our Union Square happy hours
The Gutter
A bowling alley is the most forgiving room in this whole guide, because nobody has to explain why they are standing near you. Wood-panelled, open to 4am every night — Mon–Thu from 4pm, Fri from 2pm, weekends from noon — with a hidden back showroom called The Spare Room. Lanes are $30 per half hour Sun–Thu and $35 Fri–Sat, shoes $6, socks $4. The move nobody tells you: you can skip bowling entirely and just drink; the bar does not require a lane. The honest caveat: lanes are billed per half hour, not per game, so a weekend hour is $70 before shoes. And it is 21+ at all times.
gutterbarbowl.com · See our Williamsburg happy hours
The Gutter Lower East Side
Same lanes, same 4am close seven nights, on Essex Street inside Market Line — and it is 21+ from 7pm, with family bowling allowed earlier when accompanied by an adult. The honest caveat, and it is a real one: this is meaningfully more expensive than the Williamsburg branch. Lanes are $42 per half hour Sun–Wed and $50 Thu–Sat, against $30–$35 in Brooklyn, and shoes are $8 rather than $6. A Friday half-hour here costs more than a Friday half-hour in Williamsburg plus the L fare. If bowling is actually the plan and not just the excuse, go to the Brooklyn room. If you are already downtown, this is fine.
gutterbarbowl.com · See our Lower East Side happy hours
C’mon Everybody
A roomy Bed-Stuy bar and venue with 70s decor and actual dance space, open seven nights from 5pm, and a calendar that swings from funk combos to synth-pop to bingo and burlesque — which is genuinely useful, because a bingo night is a far easier place to end up talking to someone than a gig is. G to Classon Ave. The honest caveat, and check it first: the site publishes no closing time, and most nights are ticketed events rather than an open-door bar — so look at the calendar before you go, or you may be paying for a show you did not choose. More of the neighborhood in our Bed-Stuy happy hours guide.
cmoneverybody.com · See our Bed-Stuy happy hours
Jukebox bars, if you want to talk
Small rooms where conversation is the default. More in best dive bars in NYC.
Skinny Dennis
Free live music, no cover listed anywhere, most nights of the week — local musicians play Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — in a honky-tonk on Metropolitan with a vintage jukebox and a door open noon to 4am, daily. Willie’s Frozen Coffee is the signature order and everyone gets one. Why it is on this list: country bars are conversational by design in a way club rooms are not, and a jukebox gives you something to argue about with a stranger, which is the oldest introduction there is. The honest caveat: it is small and it gets packed on live-music nights. If you want to hear anyone, come before the band starts.
Lucky Dog
A Bedford Avenue dive with a jukebox spinning Bob Dylan and George Jones, a brick-tiled courtyard, and a door open noon to 4am daily. The courtyard is the reason to come and the dogs are the reason it works: pooches frolic off-leash out there, and a dog is the single most effective conversation opener ever invented, which is not a joke — it is why this room is on the list. The honest caveat, stated so you can self-select: it is dog-heavy by design. If that is not your thing, the courtyard is not for you and the inside is a normal dive. No happy hour is published and no official site could be verified.
See our Williamsburg happy hours
Sunny’s Bar
A bar in the same Red Hook building since 1890, on the waterfront, with live music regularly and none of the pretence that word usually carries. Why it earns a place on a list like this: it is the opposite of a singles bar and better for the purpose — a small room where people talk to each other because that is what the room is for, and nobody is performing. The honest caveat, and there are two: it is the earliest close on this page — midnight on a Monday, 1am at best — and it is genuinely far from the subway. Plan the trip back before you have the third drink. More nearby in our Carroll Gardens happy hours guide.
See our Carroll Gardens happy hours
Open latest
Three rooms for when everything else has closed. See best late-night food for after.
No Fun
Thirteen hours a day, seven days a week, including Sunday and Monday — which sounds unremarkable until you notice how much of this page is closed at the start of the week. A standing bar on Ludlow between Houston and Stanton, 3pm to 4am daily, F to Lower East Side-Second Ave. Standing is the operative word: a room without enough seats is a room where people move around and end up next to each other, which is exactly the mechanism people mean when they say a bar is good for meeting people. The honest caveat: no happy hour and no cover are published anywhere, and there is no working official site. The 3pm open and 4am close are the reliable facts.
See our Lower East Side happy hours
Union Pool
A former pool-supply shop that has been the Williamsburg default for twenty years, and the components explain why: a spacious courtyard with wooden benches, a photo kiosk, El Diablo taco truck in the yard, and a stage for bands off the tin-walled main room. Half-moon booths, no reservations. It is a room built for a night that changes shape three times. The honest caveat, twice: the 4am close only applies Friday and Saturday — every other night the door shuts at 2am. And Union Pool publishes no happy hour; two different third-party listings claim different windows and prices, so we are not printing either. Ask at the bar.
Purgatory
Founded in 2019 and describing itself as a predominantly women- and queer-owned bar and venue space for creatives, artists and musicians, open every night 6pm to 2am out on Central Avenue. In a category that skews heavily toward rooms built around one kind of night, having a space with a different centre of gravity matters, and this is the one on this page. The honest caveat, and check it before the trip: it closes at 2am every night — earlier than most of this list — and the events calendar lives on Eventbrite rather than the site, so look there before you head out to that part of Bushwick.
purgatorybk.com · See our Bushwick happy hours
NYC singles bars: FAQ
What are the best bars in NYC to meet people?
Rooms with no cover, no guest list and something to do besides stand there. Doris in Bed-Stuy is the best all-rounder – it operates with no cover and no guest list, runs a daily 5-8pm happy hour at $5 a draft, has a ping pong table in the backyard and puts a DJ on from 10pm Thursday to Saturday. The Johnson’s in Bushwick has a pool table and $3 beers. Beauty Bar on 14th Street does a $10 martini and a real manicure Wednesday to Saturday. Friends and Lovers in Crown Heights has a front bar for talking and a separate back room for dancing.
Which NYC bars have no cover charge?
Almost all of them on this list – 17 of 18. Doris states it operates with no cover and no guest list, The Johnson’s lists no cover, Skinny Dennis charges nothing for its live music and Pete’s Candy Store has free live music every single night. The only venue here with a regular door price is Bossa Nova Civic Club in Bushwick, which is free on many nights and runs about $10 on Saturdays. Baby’s All Right is free at the front bar but its back room is mostly ticketed.
Where can you go dancing in NYC without paying a cover?
Bossa Nova Civic Club in Bushwick is free on most nights with a 1,900 square foot floor, open 7pm to 4am daily. Home Sweet Home on Chrystie Street has a basement floor with a disco ball and live DJs, running to 4am Wednesday to Saturday. Friends and Lovers in Crown Heights has a separate back dance room behind its front bar. Doris in Bed-Stuy puts a DJ on from 10pm Thursday to Saturday with a disco ball, and Drexler’s cellar in the East Village runs 90s hip-hop at weekends.
Which of these bars are open until 4am?
Nine. Skinny Dennis and Lucky Dog both run noon to 4am daily, No Fun does 3pm to 4am daily, Drexler’s 4pm to 4am daily, Beauty Bar to 4am Tuesday through Sunday, both Gutter locations to 4am seven nights, Bossa Nova 7pm to 4am daily, and Home Sweet Home to 4am Wednesday through Sunday. The ones that close earlier than people expect: Union Pool only reaches 4am on Friday and Saturday, Purgatory and Pete’s Candy Store both close at 2am every night, and Sunny’s in Red Hook shuts at midnight most nights.
Where in NYC can you go out and still hear a conversation?
Pete’s Candy Store has a back garden fifteen feet from a free band, which is the best of both. Sunny’s in Red Hook is a small waterfront room that has been a bar since 1890 and closes by 1am. Lucky Dog’s brick courtyard on Bedford has a jukebox rather than a DJ, and dogs off-leash. The Johnson’s in Bushwick has a pool table, and Doris has ping pong out back – a room where there is something to do with your hands beats a dance floor you cannot talk over.
Last updated: August 2026. Prices and hours change – confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
