East Broadway, Lower East Side

East Broadway is a Chinatown Street all the way. Chinatown has a lot of cool factor to it nowadays due to the hipsters starting to trickle in when rents started climbing in neighboring LES. But, I've just never really been a fan of this area. It's very commercial, crowded, dirty and it never smells anything but bad in this area. The smell is a cross between fish and urine. It always seems a little bit colder here too, which could just be my imagination, but nevertheless.
There are a lot of Chinese American commemorative buildings on East Broadway at Chatham. One of them even looks like an actual pagoda. There is also a really good ramen house on this block. It's called Food Corp, I believe. And, if you're too far from Ippudo, then this is the spot.
The next block down is a bunch of Chinese restaurants, Chinese Bakeries, Chinese laundry, Chinese flowers . . . you name it.
The next block is the Manhattan Bridge. It was the last of the suspension bridges built that connects lower Manhattan with Brooklyn. If you're going to walk a bridge, I'd say walk the Brooklyn Bridge but it's still quite pretty.
Once you get really far downtown on east Broadway there are some pretty incredible looking buildings. The Seward Park Branch of the NY library is stunning. It's very old and brick and beautiful (built in 1909). There are also a number of lovely wall murals, artist co-ops and very old Jewish centers (about 100 years old) downtown. A couple of parks too. It's just that all of the pretty and really old stuff is waaaaay downtown. And, it's kind of a pain to get to. And, East Broadway is ugly and stinky all the way down until you get there. I wouldn't live here; but, I'd go just once to see at least the monuments and library.

Rutgers Street gets its three stars on the merits of Straus Square, a lively crossroads where both Canal Street and East Broadway converge. The square is triangular and offers some feel-good neighborhood vibes, such as a large children's playground at one end, complete with old folks on benches, doing what old folks on benches do in the afternoons. It's also a convergence of cultures, with Chinatown in one direction, the Lower East Side in another, plus signs in Hebrew, Chinese, and Spanish. Bar 169, across the square on East Broadway, is a sign of the burgeoning hip around these parts. Look south down Rutgers at a postcard view of the Manhattan Bridge's beautiful signature arches, one of those unexpected pieces of lovely that opens up in this city wherever you least expect it. You can follow that view down Rutgers Street until it leads you to the East River, where you can take all the tourist photos you'll need, if that is your aim. But otherwise you don't need to have high expectations of the street. It's a functional neighborhood place, outfitted with the necessities of shopping and take-out joints, but there's no big drama here, and not all that much to catch a visitor's eye.