A slice of very hot Apple

Alissa Quart finds out where to hang loose, dodge the tourists and stay cool when the dog days of August hit New York

In August, when New Yorkers leave Manhattan Island for Long Island, you will observe the remaining natives moving slowly, as if swimming in hot amber. Those who stay in the city for all of August are famous for their machismo. Here are a few suggestions for cut-price city amusements, all do-able for less than $10 - while bypassing the hot and bothered tourist spectacles.

You could start at Guru, the new Lafayette Street stand which serves sno-balls, or crushed ice, in 40 colours and flavours such as the lava- coloured dreamsicle or kryptonite mint. It's the latest example of Manhattan's cultural logic, where a time-worn fantastic and cruddy street commodity is adopted, sanitised and made fabulous. Guru sells its wares from an aluminum-sided shack with a neon blue-lettered sign and a menu in the shape of a bus stop. Its small ices are $2.25, and the queues of art chicks and their men are long.

Down the street, Latino ice sellers, with their bottles of bright flavours and tubs of ice to be shaved and transformed alchemically, create unnatural, perfect, egalitarian pineapple ices for a dollar. Try both. On Lafayette Street between Bond and Great Jones streets. Hours are from 1.30 until "when the ice runs out". Trains: 6, F to Broadway-Lafayette Station.

Rushing with sucrose, you can pedal along the Hudson River. Starting at the tip of Manhattan, at the Battery Park promenade, you will encounter a bike path that runs uptown, riverside, until 14th Street. This is one of the few places, besides city parks, to bike unimpeded by taxi cab doors and delivery trucks. Manhattan street biking is fast, furious and exquisitely complicated, so this panoramic jaunt is optimal. You can pick up on the pier cruise scene and note the miles of gargantuan turn-of-the-century factories that are now lofts, restaurants and Single Room Occupancy hotels. On this track, the urban rapture quotient is high indeed.

You can rent a bike at Metro Bicycles at 417 Canal Street (at Sixth Avenue) for $6 per hour.

If you want to climb the rungs of the Manhattan grid, the Metropolitan Museum bars are good places to regain your composure after too-much-culture shock, while the Met is also that endless, peerless place, holding the Temple of Dendur (always maintained at that same moist conservationist cool). On Fridays and Saturdays, you can sit at the bar in the museum's Great Hall. The outdoor Roof Garden bar on the Museum's fifth-floor terrace is even better.

The Metropolitan Museum is at 82nd Street and 5th Avenue. Take the 4,5,6 to 86th and Lexington. Until 27 October, the Roof Garden is open 9.30am- 8.45pm on Fridays and Saturdays, weather permitting (which it usually does).

Bryant Park, a well kempt square of public park (public space being a rare commodity in New York's Midtown) was cleaned up a few years back. With its druggies and miscreants evicted by the city, it became both a fine spot for hanging out and the home to a barful of execs swilling white wine.

On summer Mondays, classic films spool after sundown, to be viewed for free. Thousands pour in to gaze at the park's huge outdoor screen. Given the multitudes, you may not get the gist of the plot. But you are here to watch people watching movies, more than for an understanding of The Sound of Music. Strangers roar with laughter, Casablanca fans chant each bon mot back at Bogie, folks yell out in the dark to their friends. One wonders, is this was what the Manhattan neighbourhood movie houses (the "nabes") were like, with everyone yowling to long-lost friends over the flickering credits?

The films start at dusk (8pm-9pm) but get there early. Located at 6th Avenue and 42nd Street. Take the F or the 7 to 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, or the 4, 5, 6 to Grand Central.

It's trendy for bars to become lounges. My favourite is the understated M&R Bar, a quiet, modestly priced place in the modish slice of neighbourhood between Chinatown and SoHo. It resembles a decent but swank local bar in Fifties Brooklyn, with signs made of bubble glass, a red back room full of oil-painted nudes, and an outdoor garden. Cocktails are the art - regulars drink martinis and cosmopolitans and the house speciality is a Campartini, made of Stoli Orange and Campari.

M&R is at 264 Elizabeth Street, off Houston Street. Take the 6 or the F to Broadway-Lafayette and walk east across Houston.

Ray's on Avenue A is the famous East Village outpost for the egg cream - not just chocolate, but papaya, and 45 other possibilities. The egg cream, as we all may know by now, is a misnomer -- neither egg nor cream, but special syrup, seltzer and milk. Here a small cup of the good stuff is 50 cents and it will be mixed for you by Polish medical students under owner Ray Alvarez's watchful eye. Ray has a lot of general warmth and patience for Avenue A's few remaining drifters. His storefront is open all day every day, and has been since 1975, back in the days when the East Village was difficult to love.

Ray's is on Avenue A and Seventh Street. Take the 6 to Astor Place and walk east until you meet Avenue A. And enjoy.

HOW TO GET THERE IN AUGUST

The big problem about reaching New York City in August is finding a cheap flight. Bookings are heavy, so the availability of discount seats is poor. Call a number of discount specialists and ask about connecting flights (eg via Dublin on Aer Lingus, via Paris on Air France and via Reykjavik on Icelandair) as well as direct services.

Most flights arrive at John F Kennedy airport. The cheapest, and often fastest way to reach Manhattan is to take the Long-Term Parking bus to Howard Beach subway station and to use line A from there, for $1.25 (about 80p).

From Newark airport, the most scenic way to the city's heart is to take a cab to Hoboken, New Jersey, which will cost around $15 (pounds 10). From here there is a selection of ferries to Manhattan, costing around $3 (pounds 2).