You are currently browsing the stories about the West Village neighborhood
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH? NO, NO, NO!
by Candy Schulman 10/07/2008Neighborhood: West Village
I met John Lennon in Washington Square Park. My friend Susan and I were returning home to the Village from our jobs as drug abuse counselors in the roughest schools in Brooklyn…when we spotted him. It was 1973, and his hat gave him away: a black Beatles’ cap that had become their trademark, a newsboy [...]
Me and My Cane
by Candy Schulman 07/01/2008Neighborhood: West Village
“What happened to your knee?” Not since my pregnancy have so many people elevated a distended part of my body to public discourse. My neoprene knee stabilizer invited countless questions and unsolicited advice from friends and strangers in Greenwich Village, where I live, on the #6 train, and in the physical therapist’s office in Union [...]
Paul Newman on Sixth Avenue
by Madge McKeithen 01/27/2008Neighborhood: West Village
He kneels on the gray-black slate in front of the Jefferson Market, rendering blue eyes in pastels on the sidewalk, the magazine cover of Paul Newman under his left knee–only the eyes done after several hours. I had passed by at 10. He was just starting, no eyes yet, only the box of pastels dumped [...]
Washington Square Park Massacre
by Ellen Lindquist 01/19/2008Neighborhood: West Village
It was the first perfect day of spring; the air silky with warmth. People, like the daffodils, were blooming all over Washington Square Park: Bicyclists, street musicians, bag-lunchers, in-line skaters, mothers with strollers. Those who were just standing around, others who were walking—they flew into the air like handkerchiefs tossed by the breeze when the [...]
Rules of Genius
by Frank Ventrola 01/19/2008Neighborhood: West Village
In the hiatus between semesters during my years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, I often decamped to New York City, ostensibly to find a job during the break, but really an inducement to be somewhere—anywhere—else. One hot summer day while plodding along the sidewalk of MacDougal Street south of Bleecker, I [...]
A Subway Hope
by Ella Mei Yon Biggadike 01/13/2008Neighborhood: West Village
I am standing on the F train platform, my toes just over the yellow line. I lean toward the darkness of the train tunnel. In the distance I can see the faint, low-lit squares of train windows passing through the darkness. Then there is the hollow rumble of the F train approaching from in between [...]
Re: Abingdon Square Park
by Lee Zimmerman 01/04/2008Neighborhood: West Village
please amend your story about The Fool of Abingdon Square Park. If you would like to be accurate about the facts mentioned in your story, please consider changing that Abingdon Square Park was restored under the auspices of the Greenstreets Program. It was actually funded by the city council in reaction to a petition delivered [...]
Blue on 14th Street
by Claudette Covey 12/31/2006Neighborhood: West Village
Blue never counts the raccoon coat in her estimate. By this time in 1984, t’s too old, even though from a distance it makes her look like a rich person. The coat, which falls to her ankles, is from the 1920s and was her grandfather’s. The inside label even spells out his name in baroque [...]
You’re Supposed to Make Mistakes
by Shawn Vandor 12/31/2006Neighborhood: West Village
“Just like a boxer in a title fight you’ve got to walk in that ring all alone You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes but they’re the only things that you can truly call your own” –Billy Joel I was looking at some apartments with my realtor, Harriet Loshin, just west of Union square, [...]
The Stuff of Life
by Thomas Beller 12/31/2006Neighborhood: West Village
I only wanted it to be over, even as I dreaded its arrival. For weeks I walked around in a clenched state of anticipation, unaware of how tense I had become. “An adventure or an exile?” I asked myself. I couldn’t decide. A few days before the big move, I was sitting in front of [...]
Snot-Suction Thing
by Elisha Cooper 10/24/2006Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad, West Village
It’s snowing when our plane touches down in Washington, D.C. Christmas morning, cold and dark. The terminal doors slide open and we are hit with a blast of bitter air. We bundle the girl in blankets and she stares through the car windows at the falling flakes of snow. The wipers beat back and forth [...]
Live Free or Die
by Pam Widener 09/24/2006Neighborhood: West Village
On a recent Tuesday morning, at exactly 9:32 AM, Suzanne Seggerman pulled her white, full-sized van, a Chevrolet Gladiator she affectionately refers to as The Gladiator, into a choice parking spot on Bleecker Street near the NYU gym. She was fresh on the heels of the street-cleaning vehicle assigned to this block every Tuesday and [...]
