As we tell you often here on NYC on the Cheap, cheap is good, free is better.
Here are the best FREE things to see and do in New York City this week, including NY Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, the Museum Mile festival, outdoor movies, events celebrating NYC Pride Week, and more.
Our motto is get more NYC for less money with NYC on the Cheap.
Let’s hope the weather cooperates with all the outdoor events scheduled.
Monday
FREE Outdoor movies in Bryant Park
Byant Park Movie Nights returns for the umpteenth season with another series of FREE outdoor screenings of films with connections to New York City.
Once again, the screenings are on Monday evenings, on a new 40-foot high-definition LED screen.
The series begins on June 10th with Big, starring Tom Hanks and the late, great, Penny Marshall, and ends on August 12th with a Fan Choice TBD.
Entry points for the Lawn Area open at 4pm. The Lawn opens at 5pm, for blankets and picnicking.
No chairs, no dogs allowed on the Lawn.
Monday through Next Tuesday
FREE Metropolitan Opera Concert Series
Metropolitan Opera’s FREE annual concert series in New York City parks is one of the city’s most beloved summer traditions.
It’s back starting tonight with six concerts, starting next week, one in each of NYC’s five boroughs, plus the opening night at SummerStage in Central Park. Performers vary, as does the program of arias and duets from a variety of operas.
Met Opera Summer Recital Series concerts are June 10th to June 19th, weekdays at 7pm, plus one weekend event at 4pm that’s a great opportunity to introduce kids to the wonders of classical music.
Bring a blanket and a picnic and enjoy beautiful music from the Metropolitan Opera, FREE.
Tuesday
FREE Museum Mile Festival
The 41st Annual Museum Mile Festival is Tuesday, June 11th, turning Fifth Avenue from 82nd St. to 105th Streets into New York City’s biggest block party, with music, food, activities for the kids, and more.
The street fair is FREE, and so is FREE museum admission to the world-class museums that give Museum Mile its name, including
- El Museo del Barrio: 1230 5th Avenue at 104th Street
- Museum of City of New York: 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: 2 East 91st St between Fifth and Madison Aves.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
- Neue Galerie New York: 1048 Fifth Avenue at 86th Street
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1000 5th Avenue at 82nd Street
Get FREE museum admission year-round with the IDNYC card.
Free lecture on NYC architecture
In The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (University of Minnesota Press 2019), historian Zachary Violette counters the standard narrative of crowded tenements and crusading urban reformers to reconstruct the role of tenement architects and builders in improving housing for the working poor.
Drawing on research and fieldwork that surveyed more than 3,000 extant tenement buildings in New York and Boston, Violette uses ornament as an entry point of his study, employing both new contemporary photography and many never-before-published historical images. His work complicates the monolithic notions of architectural taste and housing standards, while broadening our understanding of the diversity of cultural and economic positions of those responsible for shaping American architecture and urban landscapes.
Zachary J. Violette is a preservation consultant and lecturer at Parsons/The New School of Design. His book is based on his dissertation in American and New England Studies at Boston University.
- 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) at the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park
- FREE, but reservations are required for admission. RSVP to programs@skyscraper.org
Tuesday through Sunday
FREE New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks
The world-renowned New York Philharmonic returns Tuesday for its popular annual FREE Concerts in the Parks series, offering music lovers the chance to hear the word’s best classical music under the stars in parks all five boroughs, with fireworks following the performances.
Bring a blanket and a picnic and enjoy these iconic concerts, which have been an annual treat for New Yorkers and visitors since 1965, which makes 2019 the 54th year for this iconic NYC event, transforming parks throughout NYC into a patchwork of picnickers, and providing music lovers with an opportunity to hear classical music under the stars.
- The concerts are June 11-16, a different park in a different borough each day.
- See the schedule and directions here.
Friday
FREE Celebration of Manhattan’s LGBTQ Culture and History
Manhattan has long been an epicenter of LGBTQ history, community, and activismfrom the Stonewall Rebellion 50 years ago to Harlem’s iconic ball scene. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer hosts this special FREE Pride Month Pride Ball at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem, with vogue-ing, music, refreshments, and more. Featuring: MC Leggoh La Bella and the House of LaBeija
- FREE at Alhambra Ballroom, 2116 Adam Cayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 6:00 9:00 pm.
- Please RSVP here.
Four Freedoms Park Conservancy photo
Ascend With Pride
New York City’s largest-ever LGBTQ flag is being installed on the steps of FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island on June 14th, one day before the park’s World Pride celebration.
Ascend With Pride measures 12 feet by 100 feet and covers the steps that are the entrance to park, which celebrates President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Speech: freedom of speech & expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.” According to cording to Four Freedoms Park, the flag is designed to celebrate the progress that’s been made over the past 50 years, and to shine a light on the LGBTQ community’s continued fight for the universal human rights articulated in that famous speech.
What do you think about this? We welcome your comments.