Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a local cinema, usu. in pl.

1933		Variety 14 Feb. n.p.: Program fodder, except that there’s more simplicity than purity. It should go to fair results and ought to hold up well in the nabes.
1958		in F. Pohl Star of Stars 42: We...re-release them to the nabes [HDAS].
1964		New Yorker 26 Sept. 195: A Hollywood ending fit only for the nabes [HDAS].
1973		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 121: Our parents [...] probably saw the things at the nabes when they first came out.
1983		J. Flaherty Tin Wife 51: The ‘nabes’. That said it all. Entertainment for the proles.
1997		T. Cripps Hollywood’s High Noon 45: From its first run at a picture palace, and after a clearance of a couple weeks, a movie headed for its second run to the nabes.
2001		J. Severt [bk title] The Nabes: Toronto's Wonderful Neighborhood Movie Houses.

2. a neighbourhood.

1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1983		US News and World Report 12 Dec. 71: Brooklyn [...] what its residents call ‘da nabes,’ the two dozen or so ethnic neighborhoods that distinguish it from Manhattan’s concrete canyons [OED].
1994		N.Y. Times 29 Sept. XIII 1: The floppy hat I never wear in the nabe [HDAS].
2012		J. Díaz This Is How You Lose Her 98: The hardest dude in the nabe chasing price checks like a herb.

3. a local bar.

1979

N.Y. Times 8 Mar. B 7: Every neighborhood has its ‘nabes’—humble, darkly reliable taverns that dress up a man’s spirit like old clothes and let him stare Byronically into a glass [HDAS].