having lived on Horatio Street from 1977 to 1983 and then in Chelsea to 2000, I have an affinity to life in the Village. Sadly, I have also seen the Village change from a diverse community to probably the most racially stratified as well as expensive neighborhood in NYC. The people on the streets of the Village dont live there anymore, or are part of those who live here for a few years while in school or having 4 roommates. Until recently, I would apartment sit/dog sit on Horatio St but the gentrification of the meat market has created another world in the far west Village. I write my observations on my blog. Of course Michael Cunningham is still on Macdougal Street, as well as others who agree to pay. Arthur Levine could buy buildings but even he has moved to Montclair. The Village as having the second largest chapter of the NAACP, the Puerto Rican bodegas are history. Sadly, all of my neighbors who were CPUSA ex-members have all died. Even into the 2000 years, the Cafe ShaSha existed, but is now another private club. There is great history to the Village and I am happy to always read about those critical years to our social history.

It is always a pleasure to follow NYPL activities! What a resource! I rarely go though as I teach part time and often use(d) the Columbia University library where I can keep books for a semester if needed. I now usually use the Newark Public Library which is a national treasure! In the early 1980s, I was a community organizer for the NYC City Council and helped create the commercial rent movement. One of our highlights were the organizing meetings in a long time gin mill facing huge rent hikes on Hudson Street. The bar was evicted but then replaced with a number of venues including a high brow bar with a book milieu. The notion of high/low is a NYC staple. In 1978, I was part of an off-off Broadway production "This Room, This Gin, and these Sandwiches". The play, by Edmund Wilson, had its American premiere (it had opened in Czechoslovakia). The setting was in the 1930s Greenwich Village, a walkup tenement. Even Gore Vidal did a play on the title in a NYRB article shortly thereafter. Even into the 1990s many Greenwich Village tenements still had electricity problems and could not handle air conditioning. Until the Dinkins administration imposition of a curfew in NYC parks, I spent many a night with hundreds of others by the old West Street piers where there was a breeze. The most literary description I have of summer outside still remains James Baldwin's "Another Country". Peter Gay, of the NYPL scholars program, is a favorite. I share a letter from him with my students, a number of whom are also immigrants and refugees. Certainly NYC is still a place for refugees (or at least the Bronx). In the past few years, I have had many students who are West African refugees from the child soldier wars. One of my buddies, Sindiwe Magona was one of the RSA ANC students recruited to study outside apartheid South Africa. She writes of her experiences in NYC in "To My Children's Children" (Women's Press). LOL, one of the people featured in her autobiography is now a senior advisor at the Open Society Institute which has re-created academic life in much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in recent years. I helped a friend who worked at Thunder's Mouth Press in the mid 1990s. One of the projects was a book by a mistress of Fidel Castro. The author and her daughter then living in NYC. With my friends our rendezvous was the Cafe ShaSha on Hudson Street... sitting outside for hours! I am thankful to the Columbia library in particular as I had time to read Edith Anderson's "Love in Exile". Her book includes life on Horatio Street during WWII. After the war, socialists and leftists were deported and thus her life in the DDR. Tons of memories and thoughts about Village authors.. good luck with the blog!

I would be interested to know the name of the bookstore Faulkner worked in while in Greenwich Village in the twenties. Washington Square Bookshop on Eighth Street?