The neighborhood's name, a play on "Times Square", refers to Dimes, a restaurant located at the intersection of Canal Street and Division Street on the Lower East Side. According to Marisa Meltzer of The New York Times, the nickname has transitioned from a term used "jokingly" to one used "semi-seriously". The term Dimes Square became a metonym for a number of associated reactionary aesthetic movements centered in the area. It was originally popularized by Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of the podcast Red Scare who stemmed from the dirtbag left movement.
History
In 2020, two blocks of Canal Street were closed off for an Open Streets permit, resulting in what Hannah Goldfield of The New Yorker described as a "circus", "every night a music festival in the piazza." Ben Smith cited the neighborhood's emergence as a lockdown-flouting cultural hub during the COVID-19 pandemic in a 2021 New York Times piece. As COVID-19 restrictions receded, the associated transgressive art movement digitized and became increasingly prominent in online culture.[citation needed]
In 2024, Dazed magazine referred to Dimes Square as a meme-able micro-neighborhood. The American pop rock band Bleachers referenced Dimes Square in their 2024 song "Jesus Is Dead".
Following the June 2026 seizure of KiKi's, a Dimes Square restaurant, for failure to pay taxes, neighborhood regulars began debating whether the Dimes Square scene was ending.
Art scene
In 2022, Julia Yost argued in a The New York Times op-ed that the neighborhood and its associated podcasters such as Dasha Nekrasova of Red Scare were the center of a post-ironic revival of traditionalist Catholicism. According to Nick Dove in Vice, scene participants "ranged from anti-identitarian leftism to outright fascism, a motley crew of outside dissenters to then-ascendant hyper-liberalism".
Operating between 2022 and 2025, Sovereign House was a cultural events venue associated with the scene, owned by fintech co-founder Nick Allen. In 2024, Magdalene Taylor described it in GQ as the "last bastion" of Dimes Square, and City Journal described it in 2025 as "New York's premier right-wing gathering spot". According to The New Yorker, its speakers were "heterodox, and sometimes controversial". It hosted events including an Elena Velez presentation, a play by Matthew Gasda, a DOGE appreciation party, and events for publications such as The Point and Heavy Traffic. Guest speakers included Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, Norman Finkelstein, and far-right figures such as Curtis Yarvin, Raw Egg Nationalist, and Steve Sailer, a proponent of scientific racism. Sovereign House closed after its lease expired in Spring 2025.
United States
New York