Photo: Michael Kirby

Despite incessant complaints about overdevelopment (usually from people who’ve hung at Max Fish since “back in the day”), the Lower East Side remains one of the most soulful neighborhoods in Manhattan. From its glut of members-only speakeasies to crepêries, inotecas and anarchist bookstores, the modern LES is a shadow of its former crack-dealing, crime-ridden self. But we’ll take it.

Residents still hang out in front of the DeWitt Reformed Church and pick through flea market tables on summer weekends. Children scream and play in Seward Park, and the Essex Street Market bustles with vendors hawking rainbows of fresh produce. Bluestockings hosts a feminist book club, Katz’s Delicatessen continues to serve pastrami by the truckload, and musos flock weekly to art-activism hub ABC No Rio for its experimental jam sessions.

Of course, the LES has also seen wholesale fish shops turned into condos and brothels converted into swanky bars. It’s a neighborhood where hip, young professionals come to work out their postcollege identity kinks. And while the LES can stave off rampant commercialization for only so long, it still boasts just two Starbuckses.

Residents lament the evaporating cheap rents, but certain folks embrace the change. “Some of my Latin brothers don’t understand living amongst blancos, the white people,” says Enrique Zayas, the self-proclaimed “mayor” of the LES. “But it used to be like Vietnam down here. Now it’s paradise.” Meanwhile, Morty Diamond, a longtime employee at Babeland on Rivington, misses the way things used to be. “Remember Iggy’s, Welcome to the Johnsons and Motor City? It’s less punk rock these days,” he says. “The old-timers might be happy there are less drugs, but stick around till midnight and you can see drunk rich people instead.”

OVERALL SCORE: 20

6	7	8	-2	-7	8

By the river, streets are long and ugly. Around Clinton, they’re short and lively. Delancey’s hideous. Buildings are both old and new (Rivington Hotel, why aren’t you in Meatpacking where you belong?). In all, it’s a ’hood clinging to a former self: sex-toy shops, tailors, joints that do hot shaves while a DJ spins…it’s not dead. Yet.

Next: #9: East Harlem