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Every year a little more of Little Italy disappears to the advances of cultural gentrification of the surrounding neighborhoods. The bomb was not kind to this tiny neighborhood, consisting of just two main streets; Mullberry Street and Mott Street, and several smaller intersecting streets of Hester, Broom, Grand, Kenmare, and Spring Streets.
Viually, Little Italy looks like much of Manhattan does these days, and that is to say it looks tarnished. Many once famous businesses are boarded up and closed, some buildings have minor structural damage from flung debris and the shockwave of the bomb that ravaged the city, and the public works condition of the neighborhood leaves much to be desired, with large pot-holes in the roads and cracks in the pavement and sidewalks where weeds grow up through.
Much of the neighborhood has been absorbed by Chinatown in the last few years, as immigrants from China and other East Asian countries moved to the area. The northern reaches of Little Italy, near Houston Street, ceased to be recognizably Italian, and eventually became the neighborhood known today as NoLIta, an abbreviation for North of Little Italy. Today, the section of Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Street in Chinatown, is all that is left of the old Italian neighborhood. The street is lined with some two-dozen Italian restaurants popular with tourists, and seemingly very few locals. Unlike Chinatown, which continues to expand in all directions with new immigrants, little remains of the original Little Italy.
Notably, Mott Street has become a large area of influx for Chinese immigrants, and most residents of New York City know that Mott Street belongs to the last and most powerful of the Chinese Mafia in New York City, the Ghost Shadows.