Wednesday: West West Village (or, the west side of Greenwich Village)

Wednesday morning I worked a bit from home then "snuck out" (easy because I was home :) to explore Greenwich Village. The exploration started off with me walking south from my place in Chelsea to Greenwich Village: it's that close / Manhattan is that small! At the edge of Greenwich Village, I spotted a bakery and got a muffin. And it was good. Much better than the one on Monday, and definitely an omen (that this time exploring would be fun).

Greenwich Village probably has the largest homosexual community of any neighborhood in New York. At least that's what I would've said yesterday (Wednesday), but today I noticed all the ads in Chelsea about "Are you good enough to be Mr. Gay?" (for a television show or something). And Chelsea does have more shops with rainbow in the name. I think Chelsea is the younger / up and coming gay neighborhood and Greenwich is old used-to-be-up-and-coming neighborhood.

An interesting effect of this is that there are lot of statues and memorials to the homosexual (liberation? rights? anti-discrimination?) movement. Apparently even gay bars were illegal in the 60s (how do they make that illegal?) but police were routinely paid off to look the other way. A police raid at one point in 1969 turned into a riot and started the gay-rights movement, at least in New York. One pair of statues in a park near the center of Greenwich is something Stanford students would recognize. After all, there are only two sets of these statues in the world (according to a nearby plaque), the other statues being at Stanford. (Sorry about the pictures; these are the only two I could find.)

The whole village has a, well, villagish even slightly English-architecture feel. I especially liked the Jefferson Market Courthouse, though it had some construction around it when I was there. And there are lots of little grassy nooks with very english-looking townhouses.

There was an famous bar I heard of with an unlabeled entrance called Chumley's. I spotted the entrance, but decided not to look around inside given that it was 11:30am, an odd time for a visit to a bar.

Also, another neat sight: there is a 9 and 1/2 foot wide townhouse at 75 1/2 Bedford. Look at the third picture on the first row and compare it to the size of the car!

Incidentally, Gay Street in Greenwich Village has nothing to do with homosexuality. (You can find its real history on google, if you care.)

You may notice that I pretty much caught up on my blog. That's because last week and through this Monday were really busy, and I decided to take it easier this week. So I have less to write about and pretty much am caught up.