Cheap Jazz: Hot Five at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola

I mostly go to the Time Warner Center because it’s fancy. Not fancy in a “Oh gawd I wish I knew how to match my clothes” but more fancy than most public spaces in NYC in that it’s extremely clean, there are often free hors d’oeuvres thanks to samples at Williams Sonoma, and I’m not afraid to fill up my water bottle at the drinking fountain.

However there is a population for which this spot is fancy for real. Some of the city’s best restaurants live upstairs, as does one of the country’s premier jazz spots: Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. For a while, I watched amazing artists come and go; always turned off by the high ticket price and the presumed drink and food minimums inside. But then I realized in very small print one day the words “The Hot Five Special: $5 cover, $5 menu and $5 drink special every Thursday.” Could it be!? I learned more and yes, it be, and is part of the more laid-back, late night Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola After Hours offering.

The Club offers up the kind of view of Central Park that makes you realize why people spend fortunes to live across from it, and the low price gets you the same access to shows that cost up to $20 on regular nights. The shows start later, obviously since it’s called “After Hours”, duh, but that’s still only 11PM – pretty modest compared to downtown’s definition of the term. The menu offers the expected dressed-up wings, calamari, bacon caramel corn (wait, what?!), and drinks include wine, beer and cocktails. Sit back and take it all in… because you’ll be back to filling up your water bottle at the lowly water fountain in no time.

Hot Five at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola – Jazz at Lincoln Center
Time Warner Building – 5th Floor
33 West 66th Street between Columbus and Broadway
[Upper West Side]

Photo Credit: Yelp