Best of New York 2013 • Fun

• The Stand

  239 Third Ave., nr. 20th St.; 212-677-2600

  For the price of admission only (and, notably, no two-drink minimum), you’ll catch local gut-busters Janeane Garofalo, Todd Barry, and Hannibal Buress, as well as rising acts like Michael Che and Damien Lemon, at this Gramercy club. The rustic, 80-seat space is intimate enough for the comics to pick on your Nehru jacket but spacious enough that your view won’t be blocked by every person over six feet. Decent grub—like pork-belly rice balls—is the domain of chef Seth Levine (Sons of Essex), who runs the restaurant upstairs. The cocktails, meanwhile, put other clubs’ bottom-shelf concoctions to shame; here, the Negroni is made with Dorothy Parker gin, and the rummy Bligh’s Revenge is fashioned with housemade date syrup. At $13 a pop, they’re not cheap, but it sure makes a two-drink minimum, should you decide to impose your own, more potable.

From the 2013 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine