As recounted in this ancient post, I believe the first time I ever visited Greenwich Village as a snot-nosed Upper East Side kid was at some point in the mid-to-late `70s, when I was taken on an antique-scouting trip with my mother and step-father. Sometime after that, my father (divorced from my mother since my birth) rented a one-bedroom apartment on West 10th Street, opposite a firehouse with a garishly painted (for the era) garage door (more about that here), so we periodically went down to visit him. It seemed like an entirely different city from the one we lived in uptown.
Years after that, my mom befriended an artist character named Irwin who lived on Mott Street, just across from Old St. Patrick’s Basilica. I remember going down there with her to visit, a few times and walking around the Village and SoHo and being completely captivated.
By the early `80s, I was finally let off my leash and started exploring downtown on my own, my principle destination being the original Forbidden Planet on the west side of Broadway at 12th Street (more about that here). My father, by this point, had split from East 10th street, logged a few years in England and repaired back to New York to another one-bedroom apartment on East 74th. But he was working, at the time, at Forbes, which was then located over on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street. I’d go down ostensibly to “visit” him and then run around the Village, hitting Forbidden Planet and a few other likely spots. It was around this same time that a classmate of mine, Walt, moved to Cornelia Street with his dad and discovered Bleecker Bob’s. From there, there was no going back. Greenwich Village and its surrounding environs had all the cool stuff. The shops were cooler. The vibe was more relaxed. The people were freakier. There was more history. There was more to do and see than the neighborhoods I’d already wrung dry uptown. This was the place for me.
That was then.
Today, I’ve lived in Greenwich Village for over 25 years… practically half my life. But the Greenwich Village of today only dimly looks like the neighborhood I was first taken to as a small boy, much less the storied bohemian enclave it was in decades prior to that. Most of the stuff that first captured my imagination is gone. The cool shops are mostly vanished. The vibe isn’t relaxed at all. The freaky people are largely gone. There’s still a lot of history, although many don’t seem to care about it, and the sights and topography keep getting remade and remodeled. For all intents and purposes, it’s not all that different from points uptown — only more expensive.
But despite all the neighborhood's changes and diminishment (and let’s not even get into what the pandemic has done to it), I have no plans to go anywhere else. My kids grew up on these streets. Greenwich Village is our home.
In any case, while this was initially just supposed to be a quick preamble, it’s turned into a dangerously sepia-toned paean to the lost Greenwich Village, weepily composed to tee up the curious film below, “Greenwich Village Story.” Here’s the backstory….
Greenwich Village Story by Jack O'Connell shows the Village in the early sixties, teeming crowds in Washington Square Park, impromptu hootenany sessions, beatnik poets reciting by candlelight in coffee houses. Scenes are picturesque and germane to Jack O'Connell's tale of young love and desire for a place in the arts in Gotham. The film was invited to the Berlin, Venice and Locarno Film Festivals.
Sit back and enjoy a slice of Greenwich Village of yesteryear….
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