On a sunny September morning I was sitting outside at Caffee Reggio on Bleecker Street with Jack Killcoyne of the Bleecker Area Merchants and Residents Association (BAMRA). I was delighted to have a reason to hang out in what I think of as Manhattan’s Latin Quarter, the area just below Washington Square that I will
The Bleecker Area Merchants and Residents Association tries some new/old ideas Read More »
My husband and I have long lived in a converted early 20th-century cold-storage warehouse in the Far West Village. When we arrived in 1989, less than a decade after the residential conversion, our super told us the building once stored spices. It’s a charming idea, seeing as how Nabisco used to have multiple factories in
Mysteries of my building Read More »
We Villagers have been watching our bohemian neighborhood character leach away for a very long time, but we remain blessed with movie theaters. It’s true that many are just a memory (the Art Greenwich Twin, Bleecker Street Cinema, two theaters on Eighth Street, Theater 80 St. Marks, the Landmark Sunshine), but we are still richer
The old Village lives on in our Movie Houses Read More »
Political meet-and-greets are a funny hybrid, with two separate goals folded into one gathering. You go to get to know a candidate who may be only vaguely on your radar, and an hour or two later the campaign manager is passing out palm cards and pointing to the QR code that leads you straight to
Meet-and-Greet and Assess and Vote Read More »
For fifteen years we had a dog, which meant that for fifteen years my days were meted out in companionable, purpose-driven walks. Then, in early 2020, the dog—bless his wiry coat and big dachshund heart—began an excruciating decline. He grew so thin he became almost luminous. We had to put him down that August. I
Where Do We Go When We Go for a Walk? Read More »
Walking down Greenwich Street recently, I came upon a sight that chilled my West Villager’s heart: a giant For Rent sign in the main window of Garber’s hardware at 710 Greenwich and Charles Streets. It’s a store I have relied on ever since I moved to the neighborhood in the 80s, with particularly heavy patronage
Garber’s Isn’t Going Away Read More »
The first book I ever bought that was written by someone I knew was a French memoir called Frany, one of those nifty European paperbacks whose cover folds inward to serve as a bookmark. The author was my theater professor when I was lucky enough to do a junior semester in Paris, a gentle, roly-poly
Memoirs: Who Knew? Read More »
My husband and I went to Boston for the weekend for a friend’s surprise birthday party. I used to go to Boston for the weekend all the time when I was in my teens and 20s. What a strong pull it exerted then: all those smart students swarming the umpteen colleges, including my sister at
Small Pleasures of a Long Marriage I asked my husband: Cumulus and cirrus, but what’s the third one? Thromboid, he replied. Immaculate Conception On a wall in our bedroom in a wooden frame hangs a photograph of Gus the neurotic polar bear, who spent his life swimming from one side of his tank in
Valentine’s Day poems Read More »
The well-made theater at Hudson Guild hides unassumingly inside the Community Center in the NYCHA Elliott-Chelsea Houses on West 26th Street. It has professional lights and sound booth, a deep and well-proportioned stage, men’s and women’s dressing rooms, 100 comfortable orange upholstered seats, and not a bad sight line in the house. I didn’t know
My Season with Hudson Guild, by Michele Herman Read More »
