25 years as of last month. There are no official boundaries here. It’s whatever you and your friends think it is.
IMO: LES refers to the entire area south of 14th Street until somewhere in Chinatown. The East Village is a smaller neighborhood within that area. Not all portions of the LES are considered the village but the reverse is true.
BUT:
SOME people consider them entrely seperate neighborhoods as you see here:
East Village Map: http://www.citi-habitats.com/images/nyc/sm_evillage.gif
LES map: http://wikitravel.org/upload/shared//thumb/7/7f/Lowereastside_map.png/350px-Lowereastside_map.png
Don’t give me some real estate agent’s nonsense about the lower east side. It is the lower east side just as Clinton is Hell’s Kitchen. I don’t even like the Soho designation which is another real estate agent’s invention that makes no sense. Soho in London is called that because people coming up over the hill would cry “Soho!” to alert people. What happened in lower Manhattan? It’s called lower Manhattan because there are no hills.
My family has been in this city since the Civil War and I have no patience with this nonsense. Where are all those cheap rents, btw?
