Shot in May of 1987, the video below is basically just a home movie as captured by a gentleman named Ted Barnett. He writes:
A walk down Bleecker Street (after a short tour of my apartment)... from: 95 Carmine Street, apt 6R (where Matt Lindland and Ted lived) to: 7-9 Carmine Street (where John Gaines and Ted had lived together 1984-1986)
I had a VHS video camera we had rented for Rick's wedding. I used it to capture a last walk down one of my favorite Greenwich Village streets. I moved away from New York a few months later.
A telling glimpse of a portion of the city that has changed dramatically in the ensuing 38 years, this slow, meandering clip (it’s about an hour and a half) might not be an immediate revelation, but those who remember what downtown Manhattan – and specifically Greenwich Village – was like well before the `90s, before September 11th, before COVID might be compelled.
Topographically, the streets are essentially the same, but … things have changed. Keep your eyes out for myriad, long-lost concerns like Grampa Munster’s old Italian restaurant through B. Dalton Books on 8th Street & Sixth Avenue and many other since-vanished businesses.
But beyond the stores, bars and restaurants, the whole feel of the city is different. The Greenwich Village seen here is vibrant and populated. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no one is looking at their phones. The streets are lively.
When this was captured, I would have been a fresh-faced 19-year-old, recently sprung from my sophomore year of college and running around this very neighborhood, invariably buying records with money dubiously earned from working as a runner/assistant for a graphic designer.
Enjoy the trip back through time.
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