You are currently browsing the stories about the West Village neighborhood
Gratuity
by Robin Kilmer 12/30/2011Neighborhood: West Village
Everyone thinks the French are so cute. But I’m a waitress, so I know better. I deal with plenty of tourists. I don’t mind them while they’re at the restaurant and I do my best to decipher their accents and answer their questions—though I do draw a blank when they ask me where all the [...]
Staying
by Randi Skaggs 09/13/2011Neighborhood: West Village, World Trade Center
I’d just spent a month back in Kentucky, trying it on like an old outfit to see if it still fit. I was unemployed, unattached, poor, frustrated, and I wanted to make sure living in the most complicated, and challenging, city in the world was still worth it. I contemplated this as the plane bisected [...]
Manhattan Eyeline
by Jackob G. Hofmann 09/11/2011Neighborhood: Uncategorized, West Village
September 10th, 2001. 6:30 PM. The corner of 11th Street and Fifth Avenue. The weather is glorious. The air is crisp. The sky, tranquil. I am walking downtown en route to a trendy West Village bistro. As I approach the corner of East 10th Street I come to an abrupt stop ... “I never realized [...]
A Requiem for Secondhand Books
by Peter Wortsman 07/01/2011Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, West Village
She: I want to buy you a good book for your birthday. He: What would I do with a book? Buy me a new body! --Conversation overheard between a man and a woman. When I think of second-hand books, I think quite literally of anonymous fingers reaching out to me from beyond the grave. I [...]
1981
by peter nolan smith 02/14/2011Neighborhood: East Village, West Village
Everyone on the scene thought operating an after-hours club on top of a 14th Street theater was a good idea and Arthur Weinstein opened the Jefferson on New Year's Eve 1980. During the week the loft was home to Arthur, his wife, daughter, and best friend, Scottie. On the weekend hundreds of revelers unwilling to [...]
Sympathies of the Mad and Lonely
by Sophia Efthimiatou 01/30/2011Neighborhood: All Over, West Village
An overweight middle-aged woman got on the F train somewhere in Midtown, and took the seat facing mine. She was wearing dirty clothes and was carrying two battered plastic bags, a combination that—two weeks in New York had already taught me—was not a good one. She immediately took a pack of Twinkies out of one [...]
Where East Village Meets West
by Christie Grotheim 01/18/2011Neighborhood: East Harlem, East Village, West Village
Where East Village Meets West Village I’ve spent the last ten years of my life in the East Village of Manhattan, movin’ on up Avenue B. Quite literally: I first lived at 4th and B, then briefly moved to 6th between B and C, ending up on 13th and B. I lived in a shoebox [...]
The Critical Moment
by Christine Nieland 12/31/2010Neighborhood: West Village
It was one of those perfect early spring evenings. The kind when the breeze just brushes your face so softly, when boyfriends drape their arms around their girlfriends’ shoulders as they stroll along, and the young moms and dads let the little ones run a bit ahead, giggling, happy to be liberated from coats and [...]
The Slow Death of a Magazine
by Raanan Geberer 12/15/2010Neighborhood: West Village
For seven years, I worked at Energy Saver’s News, a trade magazine that reported on commercial and industrial energy conservation. Six of those years were at the old Fairchild Publications building on East 12th Street near Fifth Avenue. It was a great neighborhood to work in: We were near both Stromboli Pizza and Ray’s Pizza, [...]
St. Vincent’s
by Josh Gilbert 09/11/2010Neighborhood: West Village
The other day I was walking down 11th Street in the West Village past the recently shut down St. Vincent's Hospital building when something in the alcove on the corner of 7th Avenue caught my eye: a pile of stuffed animals laying in a heap: a teddy bear massacre. St. Vincent's used to [...]
Three Basketball Vignettes, 2001
by Thomas Beller 06/03/2010Neighborhood: Chelsea, Featured, West Village
1. March 25th, 2001 Basketball City Chelsea Piers There Were Horses A pick up game at Basketball city. Cold Sunday afternoon. The academy awards that night. Dreading them. Miserable but psyched about the game. We ended up playing four on four full court. On the other team were the guys I play with in my [...]
At Least You Have Pride
by Jennifer Paddock 04/15/2010Neighborhood: West Village
My first apartment in New York was on the second floor of a seven-story walk-up on MacDougal Street, between West Third and Bleecker. It was a three-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom with a view of a chain-linked pen where the building kept the trash, always bags and bags of it. I was twenty-five and feeling very lucky. I [...]
