Field Trip: Greenwich Village

photo: Eric Diesel

Note: at 11:55 p.m. EST on June 24, 2011, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made history by signing into law A08354, which legalizes marriage between persons of the same sex. Reflecting that, I made some minor adjustments in the column below, which references the debate that led to this historic law and that was occurring as I was writing this column. I am proud to announce that, after twenty years of partnership and perhaps way too late for a wedding registry, I am engaged to be married.

Isn’t it ironic that June, the month that historically hosts the highest volume of weddings, is also Pride Month, the month that celebrates relationships that remain without legal marriage rights in most states? As I write this, New York State is considering becoming the sixth state to recognize LGBTQ civil rights by granting marriage equality to these citizens. In dynamics that are unfortunately all too familiar from lawmakers, same sex marriage has been used as a gambit with which to feint and counterfeit over issues ranging from rent control laws (a topic appropriate to a site about urban homekeeping if ever there was one) to religious freedom. To read The New Civil Rights Movement’s analysis of these issues and mechanisms during the current debate, click here.

Pride Month celebrations shine brightly throughout this sunny month. Cities with large communities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis and Toronto stagger the timing of the celebrations, to maximize the number of celebrants who can attend. In New York City, one of the seats of what was called "gay liberation", Pride weekend is celebrated on the last weekend in June, to honor the riots that began during the early hours on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. In our urban home, it is also John’s birthday weekend – he is literally a Stonewall Baby!

I cannot pinpoint when I first became aware of Greenwich Village as a mecca for artists, free thinkers and revolutionaries of all types, but I think it happened on a Saturday Night. As I was growing up in the dust bowl, a local tv station showed the archetypical Saturday late show, and I believe that these broadcasts were the first impressions I formed about the mythical Village. The Village of Technicolor musicals like Greenwich Village and My Sister Eileen was populated by colorful immigrants (eye-opening indeed for a kid in an Indian household) and hopeful artists. The underground Zodiac club from Bell Book and Candle – to this day, one of my favorite films -- hinted at the beat Village, the style and substance of which live in our urban home, from the library of beat literature to the collection of beatniks doodlebopping along the library shelf that houses it. Appropriate to a site about urban homekeeping, the newlyweds of Barefoot in the Park set up house on Tenth Street, just north of Washington Square. As I’ve written before, John and I once sat in Washington Square as NYU kids; it's also where Mr. Buddwing wandered into a collection of counterculture types including artists, folk singers, hippies, beats and, yes, a pre-Stonewall fairy. Twiddling a daisy, no less.

Remnants of that era were still the rule rather than the exception when I first moved to the Village as a young man. The West Village, home of the Stonewall Inn, which itself is located on the gay promenade of Christopher Street and on the evening of the enactment of the new marriage law was the center of joyous celebration, was a neighborhood of cinematic brownstones on cobblestoned streets. Then as now, it was my favorite walking neighborhood, and if now I can say I know every brick in every façade and every iron spike in every fence, it is because then I walked these streets until I dropped. Of course not everyone in the West Village was or is gay, but it definitely was and is a gayborhood. Here is where I braved the intimidating doorway of my first gay bar (after re-folding the HX I had picked up in the vestibule of the Center and stashing it in my book bag), where I flubbed my first auditions as a model/actor/singer as well as where I nailed the first ones (getting cast as a surfer dude! And a ghost from the 1950's!), where I got my first espresso and had my first bite of Stilton and got my first grown-up haircut.

In the years ensuing, we Villagers watched the storefronts that sold everything from cards and candles to food and drink fall to the merciless swing of the real estate developers’ ax. Every Villager can supply, at a moment’s notice, a list of places to mourn from those days. In that spirit, from the West Village alone -- and not comprehensively -- RIP Details, Celebrations, Kitschen, Whiskey Dust, Morgana's Chamber, Alphaville, Alphabets, Kim’s Video, The Christopher Street Candle Shop, The Loft, A Different Light, Oscar Wilde Book Shop, The Christopher Street Book Shop, The Comeback, The Lure, Uncle Charlie's, Montana, The Beach, David's Pot-Belly Stove Café, The Pink Tea Cup, The Dew Drop Inn, Patisserie Lanciani, Bandito, Nadine's, Rafaella, Rumbul’s, Tiffany's, The Sazerac House, Universal Grill, Grange Hall, and, of course, Florent (which, yes, was in the now stratospherically expensive and absurdly chic Meatpacking District but which, until the very end, everyone thought of as a Village institution).

Meanwhile, beat era New York had never left the East Village, which unlike the buff and polish of the West Village was an epicenter for hard-core bohemians of all types, from Goths and punks to radicals and anarchists. In the East Village, being gay was accepted as part of a wider spectrum of expression; this was seen as a polemic in response to what was viewed as the “gay ghetto” of the West Village. When I first started going to the East Village – my first serious boyfriend lived on the northern edge of Tompkins Square, which at that time was a needle park – the aura of hardcore urban edge hung in the very air along with the reefer smoke and the exhaust from the low riders cruising Alphabet City. Everyone knew which buildings Allen Ginsburg had lived in on Seventh and Second Streets but it was not unusual to see him streetside. I once ran into him -- literally -- at mosaicbooks on Avenue B, and being audacious and, if I do say so myself, cute in a kilt and Doc Martens, I asked him if he had any advice for a young writer. By way of response, he quizzed me to see if I was well read. After reassuring and/or amusing himself that this boy could speak intelligently to books and music, he told me I would be fine if I stayed courageous. That advice sticks with me today, even as typing the words makes me misty-eyed at the memory of this magic encounter.

One of the books I had read was The Long Loneliness – Dorothy Day’s moving account of her bohemian days – and another day, still bekilted, I came across the Catholic Worker, still open on First Street. It was down the street from the New York City chapter of the Hell's Angels and just a few blocks from CBGB, home of punk; the Bank, gateway to Goth; and a firehouse so deeply pocketed that they raised chickens right under the city inspectors' noses. And that was the East Village of the late eighties and early nineties: a combination of streetwise toughness and defiant kitsch.

Great vintage stores abounded, but because the East Village was remote and not tourist-friendly, unlike their counterparts in SoHo but very much in the spirit of the Worker these businesses were run by citizens to help clothe citizens or outfit their tiny apartments. I once got a much-needed winter coat from a stall on Avenue B that was open at the proprietor's discretion and accessible solely by password (which was, no lie, scratched onto the telephone booth on the corner), where in exchange for the five-spot you gave them at the door they gave you a trash bag to fill with whatever you could carry from the overflowing bins. There was a small uproar when Reminiscence dropped its barter policy, and not long afterward this satellite of the flagship tourist stop in the Flatiron district closed. The clothes in these places were cast-offs -- I mean vintage -- and this patterned the streets with the distinctive East Village look. Kitsch was as important to East Village style as was goth or punk, and to understand the connection, as a young features writer I once engaged the owner of a legendary kitsch store -- Little Ricky -- about the topic. You had to see this place; the kitsch was so hardcore that Pee Wee Herman was rumored to shop there. Appropriate to this column, RIP Love Saves the Day, Mod, Reminiscence, Trailer Park and especially Little Ricky, for the owner of Little Ricky was the first person to illuminate for me that, whatever else it also is, kitsch is anger.

The Village is not just the center of American Bohemia but its symbol. Perhaps it follows that style is what the Village most tellingly is about, but if so, it is style as substance. Villagers tend to be united in their community even if divided in their expressions of it. The East and West Village function as twin cities, but they are lashed together by the center Village, and so the geographic literally becomes the political. The center Village is primarily consumed by the god-monster NYU, which centered so many of us as students. From there we branched out into other areas of the city and other dimensions of our lives. Though as a film reviewer in college I'd traveled to local art houses in search of films beyond the megaplex, I first encountered serious cinephilia at Angelika, fittingly situated where Village artiness abuts SoHo commerce. After the film, we used the credit card we'd been given "for emergencies" to treat ourselves to dinner at a favorite red-tablecloth joint on Bleecker Street that we still patronize today.

At that time, NYU's north border was more or less Eighth Street, a fitting traverse for the Village center, as it ran from the carny clamor of St. Mark's Place with its tattoo shops and $2 soy burgers at the east to the étoile of Greenwich, Christopher and Sixth that announced you'd arrived at the gateway to the west. In between, you would encounter style outlets from the dimestore glamour of Woolworths to the cheap chic of Joyce Leslie to the hardcore drag of Patricia Field. For drags of a different kind, there was also an army navy store, an Asian home store where was first awakened my love of sake sets, and a head shop that along with the black light posters and bongs sold plastic dog turds as a political statement. The north-south center line of the Village is Fifth Avenue, which terminates at the Washington Square Arch but begins far uptown. How fitting that the Pride March works its way down Fifth Avenue before diverting into the West Village.

Through twenty years and counting of gentrification, of witnessing the migration of NYC gay culture to Chelsea, of growing from a young man who was an actor and a designer and a writer and a rebel to a grown man who writes about lifestyle and has a home and -- soon legally! -- a husband, I still love Pride Month. I love the thumping music and the endless rainbows and the spirit of camaraderie as the party literally spills onto the Village Streets. I love the shirtless dudes and I love being one of them. I love the convertible that leads the March with the Stonewall Veterans sitting proudly to cheers so truly deserved, and I love the vrooming dykes on bikes right behind that. I love the banners that hang over Christopher Street and I love the tourists stopping to take pictures with the statues of same sex couples in Sheridan Square.

And, though I no longer live in Manhattan, I love being there, especially during Pride Week. As mentioned at the start of this column, community Pride organizations stagger the celebrations to maximize the number of celebrants who can attend. My best friend is visiting this year; past dignitaries have included John's sister and mother. Additionally we will see a great friend with whom we go back to those early Village days and with whom we have shared adventures from high heels to basketball sneakers, from dive bars to computer keyboards. I am still a Villager in every way but zip code and, as in the past, I will take special pride in playing neighborhood guide around the Village. For we who live here, to see the city through a visitor's eyes is to see it anew ourselves. I've bought myself a naughty outfit to wear on Pride Day. I expect to be sunburned and tipsy and sorely in need of fuel as we make our way far west for our ritual cheeseburger and fries as the March winds down. And if, at the end of Pride Day, we collapse in the downstairs bar at the Riv to guzzle well cocktails and gobble nachos and wings while the same damn tape of Priscilla Queen of the Desert plays on an unforgiving loop, then after a day of shirtless exuberance and, yes, marriage proposals, what better benediction is there?