The latest excursion of Ms. Hamburger's En Garde Arts company is to the Chelsea Hotel, with a series of performance-art events featuring downtown artists and evoking the hotel's bohemian past.

Acquario (212) 260-4666 5 Bleecker Street, near the Bowery East Village $ Cash only With its candles and brick walls, Acquario is a small, warm place straight out of the Village's bohemian past.

With its brick walls and casual service, Acquario is a small, warm place out of the Village's bohemian past.

The increasingly upscale nature of the city - not just the northern part, which was always affluent, but the southern Ocean Park neighborhood as well which has become a favorite of those in the entertainment industry - has created some tensions between newcomers and longtime residents nostalgic for the more bohemian, countercultural past.

A small-town veterinarian, the wife of a minister, begins a flirtation with an old friend from her bohemian past.

This small, warm place straight out of the Village's bohemian past, has put together a menu that, with its focus on seafood and tapas dishes, seems modeled after Il Buco's (located around the block) but is less expensive.

That was not part of my bohemian past.

Just across the river in New Hope, Pa., a town known for its bohemian past and kitschy present; and with a Main Street that ordinarily would be jammed with tourists wandering in and out of the shops and restaurants this time of year, was ghostly.

At the time the Bottom Line opened, the Village was fast losing any lingering charms of its bohemian past and was sliding into a seediness that could seem downright sinister.

Acquario, a small, warm place straight out of the Village's bohemian past, with its candles and brick walls, offers simple wooden tables and chairs.