I think the first time I ever set foot on Cornelia Street (above, as stylishly captured by one Jean-Phillipe Rebuffet) was probably in about 1983, when my geeky grade-school chum and fellow Upper East Sider Spike (not his real name, but immortalized on this post) decided he could no longer tolerate living with his well-intentioned-but-somewhat-smothering mother on East 96th & Park Avenue (an apartment we used to refer to as “Checkpoint Charlie” given its placement on the then-seemingly-perilous border of East Harlem) and moved in to his newly-divorced dad’s swinging neo-bachelor pad at 2 Cornelia Street, a stately tower that loomed over the surrounding byways like a comparatively diminutive Flatiron building.
I can’t exactly say how chuffed Spike’s dad was to suddenly have his petulant 16-year-old son suddenly running amok in his swanky Greenwich Village apartment, but Spike made the most of it, fully availing himself to all the new experiences of the surrounding environs. While I’d dipped my toes in the water, so to speak, it was really Spike who coaxed me downtown to explore all the benefits of the then-still-seemingly bohemian Village. Had it not been for Spike, I’d have probably never discovered record-shopping at Bleecker Bob’s or live music at Folk City or cult movies at the 8th Street Playhouse. And we did all this with 2 Cornelia Street as our base of operations.
I don’t think that arrangement lasted more than two or three years, but that Cornelia Street address still comes with a lot of memories. It was there, for example, during some early Spring afternoon, we were lazing around his dad’s well-appointed living room watching some cable access channel and I first saw the video for Killing Joke’s “Eighties,” which shocked me right out of my lethargy to the point wherein I sprinted out of Spike’s place and sped across Cornelia Street to Subterranean Records (long gone and pictured below, but discussed at some length here, here, here, here, here, here and here) to frantically purchase the 12” single of same. It sounds silly, but this was a HUGE moment for me. It effectively changed my life, actually.
I remember an evening hanging out in Spike’s room (his bedroom window was on the second floor, over what, for the last several years, has been a sexual paraphernalia/"party" store called Crazy Fantasy). We were enjoying a late-night pie from nearby Joe's Pizza -- and listening, as I recall, to a radio broadcast of a live Twisted Sister concert, as one would -- while gazing out the window across Sixth Avenue, directly opposite the little park that abuts the Washington Square Diner (which, I believe, is officially called The Golden Swan Garden) and the basketball court to its south, formally known, ominously, as "The Cage." It's no longer there, but there used to be one of those free-standing newsstands on the sidewalk in front of both those landmarks. Despite the late hour, the newsstand in question was still open, but was getting ready to close up shop for the night. As we sat there working on our slices, we watched as a group of three or four dubious-looking dudes approached the newsstand with obviously less-than-convivial intentions. Without missing a beat (I'm guessing he'd gone through this before), the newsagent sprang out of his little stand swinging a fucking baseball bat, clipping at least one of the would-be thieves across the gums with an impact we could hear across the avenue and over the shrill din of Dee Snider's voice. It was like watching an elaborately choreographed (and very violent) stage play. In short order the flashing red and blue lights of a police car were splashed across the windows and walls of Spike's place and the street-side show, as such, was over. We finished our pizza.
But Cornelia Street is still so much more to me than simply Spike's place and punk rock records from Subterranean Records. There was also Le Gigot, a tiny French bistro (that I think is actually still there) wherein I watched my beloved step-father John nearly give himself a cerebral hemorrhage trying to order "just an AMERICAN cup of coffee, goddammit!!" It's also the home to Palma, a great little Italian restaurant and, across the way, the former site of the Cornelia Street Cafe, a very-sorely-missed neighborhood landmark that featured great food and live music in its basement.
At its southern end, Cornelia Street (which my high-school classmate and native Greenwich Villager Jason C. would continually insist was pronounced like "KORN-ELLA" and not like the female form of Cornelius) t-bones into Bleecker Street at its busiest juncture, where concerns like Golden Disc Records (... later re-christened Bleecker Street Records...gone), Route 66 Records (gone), Murray's Cheese Shop (still there, but different location) and John's Pizza (amazingly still there) could be found.
So, yeah, much like songwriter Louie Fleck in the last post, I have my own private associations with this particular strip of Greenwich Village. But here in 2023, it seems Cornelia Street has taken on an almost global significance -- one that finds hordes of zealous, crestfallen Taylor Swift fans flocking to an address in the middle of Cornelia Street (23, if you care) that the pop star fleetingly rented in 2016 and evidently immortalized in song. The reasons for this, as detailed in this piece in Vulture, involve Swift's recent breakup with some gent named Joe Alwyn, with whom the over-rhapsodized songwriter previously canoodled, presumably, at the Cornelia Street address. As a result, Cornelia now endures regular pilgrimages from distraught "Swifties" leaving flowers and sometimes loudly imploring their idol to "come out," entirely oblivious to the fact that Swift now lives several blocks downtown in TriBeCa. If her current address is a secret, it's the worst-kept secret imaginable.
People are stupid.
In any case, on my walk to work today, I took a momentary detour off Sixth Avenue to stroll down Cornelia Street. Spike's father left 2 Cornelia Street at some sad point in 1986, I believe, and decamped to Shelter Island. Spike joined him for a little while before going to Duke University and then moving into a grim apartment in midtown. He and I had a stupid falling-out in the early `90s, but ran into each other again on the street about ten years ago, but neither of us have called each other since. Subterranean Records, as mentioned above, closed for good in 2008 or so. Le Gigot is amazingly still there, although the Pearl Oyster Bar to its south has closed. Palma also remains, but the space that had been the Cornelia Street Cafe is dormant, gutted and tragic.
Speaking of tragic, upon walking past the infamous 23 Cornelia, I did spot a sad, solitary flower, presumably left in tribute to Taylor Swift's star-crossed personal life. Ho hum.... One imagines this, too, shall pass.
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