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When the Village Voice , NYC's most venerable listings/comment/investigative magazine, began life as a chronicler of Greenwich Village nightlife in the 1960s, "the Village" really had a dissident, artistic, vibrant voice. While the nonconformist image of Greenwich Village, more commonly known today as the West Village , survives to an extent, the tag is no longer truly accurate. Though still one of the more progressive neighborhoods in the city, the West Village has attained a moneyed status over the last four decades and is firmly for those who have Arrived. There's still a European quaintness here that is genuine and enjoyable and makes for a great day of walking through a grid of streets that doesn't even attempt to conform to the rest of the city's established numbered pattern. Washington Square is a hub of enjoyably aimless activity throughout the year, and a natural place to start explorations. Elsewhere the Village is quiet and residential, yet the neighborhood has a busy streetlife that lasts later than in many other parts of the city. There are more restaurants per head here than any other neighborhood, and bars, though never cheap, clutter every corner, especially around Bleecker Street , while Christopher Street is the main artery of the city's gay life. The West Village is easily reached by taking the #1 to Christopher Street or the #A, #C, #E, #F and #S to West Fourth Street Explore West Village Bedford and Grove Streets, Christopher Street, Patchin Place, Washington Square, West of Sixth Avenue (Greenwich Village)
Bedford and Grove Streets
Turn right off Bedford onto Grove Street , following it towards Seventh Avenue and looking out for Marie's Crisis Café at no. 59. Now a gay bar, it was once home to Thomas Paine, English by birth but perhaps the most important and radical thinker of the American Revolutionary era, and from whose Crisis Papers the café takes its name. Grove Street meets Seventh Avenue at one of the Village's busiest junctions, Sheridan Square - not in fact a square at all unless you count Christopher Park's slim strip of green, but simply a wide and hazardous confluence of several busy streets. The square was named after General Sheridan, cavalry commander in the Civil War, and holds a pompous-looking statue to his memory. It is better known, however, as the scene of one of the worst and bloodiest of New York's Draft Riots, when a marauding mob assembled here in 1863 and attacked members of the black community, several of whom were lynched. |
Explore Washington Square
Around Washington Square Some of the best street basketball you'll ever see is played on the court between W 4th and W 3rd streets on Sixth Avenue before an ever-present crowd of spectators and the occasional TV crew.
Washington Square
Nowadays, the square is rife with undercover police officers, part of a (mildly) successful effort to clear drug dealers. More effective than the cops, perhaps, is the fact that the park itself is closed after 11pm, a curfew that is strictly enforced, though you should not really be worried about your safety here. As soon as the weather gets warm, the square becomes a running track, performance venue, chess tournament and social club, boiling over with life as skateboards flip, dogs run, and acoustic guitar notes crash through the urgent cries of performers calling for the crowd's attention. At times like this, there's no better square in the city
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West
of Sixth Avenue (Greenwich Village)Sixth Avenue
itself is mainly tawdry stores and plastic eating houses, but on its
west side, across Father Demo Square and up Bleecker, are some of the
Village's prettiest residential streets. Turn left on
Leroy
Street
and cross over Varick Street, where, confusingly, Leroy Street becomes
St Luke's Place for a block. The houses here, dating from the 1850s, are
among the city's most graceful, one of them (recognizable by the two
lamps of honor at the bottom of the steps) is the ex-residence of
Jimmy Walker , mayor of New York in the 1920s. Walker was for a time
the most popular of mayors, a big-spending, wisecracking man who gave up
his work as a songwriter for the world of politics and lived an
extravagant lifestyle that rarely kept him out of the gossip columns.
In the NYU Student Center at Washington Square South and LaGuardia Place lies Madame Katherine Blanchard's House of Genius , a former boarding house that Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser and O'Henry all called home. From the southwest corner of the park, follow MacDougal Street south, pausing for a detour down Minetta Lane until you hit Bleecker Street ; a vibrant junction with mock-European sidewalk cafés that have been literary hangouts since Modernist times. The Café Figaro , made famous by the Beat writers in the 1950s, is always thronged throughout the day: it's still worth the price of a cappuccino to people-watch for an hour or so. Afterwards, you can follow Bleecker Street one of two ways - east toward the solid towers of Washington Square Village, or west right through the hubbub of West Village life. |
Christopher Street Nowadays, the gay community is much more a part of West Village life; indeed for most the Village would seem odd without it, and from Seventh Avenue down to the Hudson is a tight-knit enclave - focusing on Christopher Street - of bars, restaurants and bookstores used specifically, but not exclusively, by gay men. The scene along the Hudson River itself, along and around West Street and the river piers, is considerably raunchier at night: only the really committed or curious should venture. But on the far east stretch of Christopher Street, things crack off with the accent less on sex and more on excessive, fun camp. Among the more accessible gay bars here are The Monster on Sheridan Square itself and Marie's Crisis Café on Grove Street.
Patchin Place Across the street, the gourmet food store Balducci's offers pricey yet irresistable delicacies and a respite to your wanderings.
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