Battle Of The Villages: Greenwich Trounced By East

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — Hundreds of people agree: The East Village is better than Greenwich Village.

This assertion is part of a days-long bracket poll — dubbed Big Apple Madness — that Autumn Florek posted on Twitter last week as a means of definitively determining the best neighborhood in New York City.

Florek exhaustively seeded 68 New York City neighborhoods on the basis of many factors including transit access, parks, cultural institutions, and geographic diversity. Twitter did the rest.

Thousands of users jumped to answer the play-in neighborhood question, informing the first bracket, which went live for 24 hours on the evening of Jan. 3.

Greenwich Village made it through the first three rounds of play. It was deemed more popular than the Rockaways and outpaced Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene. Then, it went head-to-head with the East Village, which is where the neighborhood's winning streak ended.

After 695 people cast their votes, 55.1 percent — or about 382 of them — preferred the East Village over Greenwich Village, knocking the western Manhattan neighborhood out of the running. (The nearby West Village didn't fare much better, it lost to Harlem in the second round of play.)

Greenwich Village neighbors who are bruised by this news can take solace in knowing that the East Village didn't make it much further — the neighborhood lost to Astoria in the subsequent final-four round, but is now in the running for third place.

Manhattan aside, the real winner of Big Apple Madness appears to be Queens. The bracket's final round is down to Astoria and Jackson Heights, meaning that the best neighborhood (and second-best neighborhood) in the city are both in the World's Borough.

Cast your vote in the final here, and the third-place game here; results will go live at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12.

Anyone who participated or enjoyed the Big Apple Madness can tip Florek for her work on Venmo, at @Autumn-Florek.