Dimes Square (Canal and Division Streets, Chinatown)
Dimes Square (Dimes + Times Square) is an area in the Chinatown/Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, at Canal and Division Streets. The restaurant Dimes opened at 49 Canal Street in 2015.
“Unlike ‘Dimes Square,’ a burgeoning area anchored by the Dimes cafe on Canal Street, Mulberry Street’s southern tip remains quiet” was printed in the New York (NY) Times on April 18, 2018. “On the outskirts of Chinatown, in the area of the Lower East Side known as Dimes Square—named for the Canal Street café that slings nouveau health food for scraggle-chic locals—another business was recently preparing to open shop” was printed in The New Yorker on July 1, 2019. “The triangle known as ‘Dimes Square,’ which gets its name from the restaurant Dimes. (The name refers to how hot its customers are—they’re all 10s)” was printed in the New York (NY) Times on March 8, 2019.
Dimes
49 CANAL STREET
NEW YORK NY 10002
212-925-1300
Wikipedia: Dimes (restaurant)
Dimes is a restaurant located in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. Alissa Wagner and Sabrina DeSousa founded the restaurant in 2013. There is also an associated deli, called Dimes Deli, and a store, Dimes Market, both in the same neighborhood as the restaurant.
History
The restaurant’s founders, Alissa Wagner and Sabrina DeSousa, met while both employed at the restaurant Lovely Day, located in the Nolita neighborhood. Both lived near Dimes’ original location, and sensed “a hole” in the neighborhood that they sought to fill with their restaurant. DeSousa has also said that their original ambition was to “[...] have a place where we could hang out with our friends.” The pair was also inspired by frequent trips to Whole Foods, the only location near their apartments with food prepared to be appetizing and healthy.
The restaurant first opened a 20-seat location on Division Street, but moved and reopened in 2015 to a larger location 299 feet away on Canal Street.
18 April 2018, New York (NY) Times, “Straylight, an Art Bar in Chinatown, Opens in the Shadow of Le Baron” by Ben Detrick, pg. D2, col. 3:
Unlike “Dimes Square,” a burgeoning area anchored by the Dimes cafe on Canal Street, Mulberry Street’s southern tip remains quiet.
Twitter
emily sundberg
@Emily_Sundberg
still laughing about the new york times “dimes square” reference
5:59 PM · May 2, 2018·Twitter Web Client
Twitter
emily sundberg
@Emily_Sundberg
I still can’t believe we all have to say Dimes Square now
Quote Tweet
Anna Khachiyan
@annakhachiyan
· May 18, 2018
What’s a good/cheap place to get a massage in Dimes Square Chinatown area?
2:57 PM · May 18, 2018·Twitter Web Client
Twitter
Jocelyn Silver
@silverjocelyn
“dimes square” seems to be canon but some friends call it “the barmuda triangle” which is much dorkier and thus preferred
9:34 PM · May 18, 2018·Twitter Web Client
11 March 2019, WWD (Los Angeles, CA), “Aging Millennials Soothe Themselves With Childlike Fashions” by Misty White Sidell, pg. 4:
This winter, the gentrified portion of New York’s Chinatown - often referred to as “Dimes Square” for its proximity to the health restaurant Dimes - has seen Nineties butterfly clips become as ubiquitous as oat milk.
1 July 2019, The New Yorker (New York, NY), “Spiny and Grumpy” by Naomi Fry, pg. ?:
On the outskirts of Chinatown, in the area of the Lower East Side known as Dimes Square—named for the Canal Street café that slings nouveau health food for scraggle-chic locals—another business was recently preparing to open shop.
19 October 2020, The New Yorker (New York, NY), “Public Village” by Hannah Goldfield, pg. ?:
Like Kopitiam, Public Village fits seamlessly into the micro-neighborhood, a pocket of the Lower East Side just east of Chinatown that’s sometimes called Dimes Square, after the endlessly mimicked California-style café Dimes.
7 December 2020, New York magazine, “The Unhinged Observers of” by Emelia Petrarca, pg. ?:
Why wasn’t there a hyperlocal publication servicing the downtown area of “Dimes Square,” or the triangle where Canal and Division meet, as it is called by the community of stylish 20-something skaters and art types like themselves who frequent it?
8 March 2021, New York (NY) Times, “A Media Insurgency Downtown, in Print” by Ben Smith, pg. B1, col. 2:
The newspaper’s (The Drunken Canal—ed.) 28 uneven and sometimes inspired pages are a blend of inside jokes, vaccine quizzes, occasionally turgid prose and advice for having sex on the club drug ketamine. The newspaper started as a kind of a joke for Ms. Guterman’s and Ms. Banse’s friends around the triangle known as “Dimes Square,” which gets its name from the restaurant Dimes. (The name refers to how hot its customers are—they’re all 10s.)
Greenpointers
NEW PLAY ‘DIMES SQUARE’ BRINGS “FRIENDLY ANARCHISM” TO GREENPOINT LOFT
by Billy McEntee February 2, 2022
(...)
Such is a setting for Matthew Gasda’s new work, Dimes Square, a comedy of contemporary downtown manners set across three nights and one morning in a Chinatown loft. Offering a pageant of seduction and betrayal, Matthew’s play runs February 13–20 at a loft in Greenpoint. Here, we catch up with Matthew — a writer, director, and teacher in New York City — to learn more about the process of bringing the unique theatrical piece Dimes Square to life.
Curbed
NEIGHBORHOODS
MAY 17, 2022
The Nolitafication of Dimes Square
By Emily Sundberg
(...)
What it’s really surrounded by is Dimes Square. So on the occasion of the hotel’s opening, we asked self-appointed historians and long(ish)-term residents — the ones who moved in before beaded-bag company Susan Alexandra opened up shop but after the place had gone through a very thorough first wave of gentrification — for a State of the Neighborhood.
According to them, there’s a very clearly defined Old Dimes Square and New Dimes Square. Meetka Otto, a 25-year-old waitress at Dimes who has lived in the neighborhood for seven years and is known as the “Mayor of Dimes Square,” thinks the Switch officially happened in June 2020, after the first months of lockdown gave way to a cautious summer of COVID socializing.
The Baffler
Escape from Dimes Square
Can this place really be all that the internet wants it to be?
Will Harrison
May 24, 2022
FOR FOUR MONTHS—four banal yet torrid months—I was a near-invisible custodian of the New York City micro-neighborhood known as Dimes Square. Chances are you either know exactly what I’m talking about, or you have literally no idea (in the case of the latter, enjoy your sanity). In material terms, Dimes Square is a relatively small triangle of asphalt sandwiched between the intersection of Canal and Division Streets in the eastern part of Chinatown. Initially named for the nearby health-food restaurant Dimes, it could have just as easily been named for the throngs of “dimes” who hang out there. It is both an in-between and an epicenter, having become, for a variety of reasons, one of contemporary New York’s liver spots or jungle gyms, depending on your view.
Hell Gate
What Do Chinatown Residents Think of ‘Dimes Square’?
There’s one essential component missing from the recent coverage of NYC’s hottest neighborhood.
Esther Wang
May 26, 2022
Do you know where Dimes Square is? Do you even care? For a long time, I didn’t, until I belatedly realized that Dimes Square, which—physically, at least, is a modest, somewhat shabby concrete triangle at Canal and Division—is in Chinatown.
You might not know that though if you read some of the breathless writing about the characters that populate this new micro-neighborhood. Former New York Times columnist Ben Smith and Interview magazine referred to the area as “Lower Manhattan.” GQ called it the “Lower East Side.” A recent story in Curbed nods to some of the Chinese-owned stores in the neighborhood, but neglects to mention the word “Chinatown” even once.