-
189 Bleecker Street
The old San Remo’s cast of characters was transfigured by Jack Kerouac into the barflies of The Subterraneans. It was where Allen Ginsberg encountered a drunk Dylan Thomas, and Kerouac embarked on his tryst with Gore Vidal.
All photos JB Reed.
-
113 MacDougal Street/1 Minetta Lane
When Reader’s Digest was founded in the basement, a debut-issue article on “the stage” was mistakenly titled, “Is the State Too Vulgar?”
-
113 MacDougal Street
The Minetta Tavern was the haunt of Ernest Hemmingway, e.e. cummings, and Village eccentric Joe Gould, also known as “Professor Sea Gull,” the self-proclaimed “last bohemian” (the rest were dead, crazy, or “in the advertising business”). Claiming to have mastered the speech of seagulls, Gould sometimes interrupted poetry readings to demonstrate his skill.
-
115 MacDougal Street
Of all the Beat cafes that sprouted on and around MacDougal Street—the Caricature, the Dragon’s Den, the Hip Bagel, the Why Not?—the Café Wha is among the few that remain.
-
106 West Third Street
An NYU dorm was dropped on the site of Café Bizarre, where Andy Warhol unearthed the Velvet Underground and the menu included Voodoo-It-Yourself Sundaes ($2.50, doll and toothpick included). Aaron Burr’s ghost reportedly haunts the building.
-
130 MacDougal Street
The home of Louisa May Alcott’s uncle, where the author lived after the Civil War, ill from mercury poisoning, and where she is believed to have penned Little Women.
-
114 MacDougal Street
The former Kettle of Fish, a bar where the lives of Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, and Edie Sedgwick briefly intersected.
-
110 MacDougal Street
At the Folklore Center, Izzy Young, an amiable Bronx-born anarchist, loaned guitars to many a needy musician (far fewer guitars ever made their way back to the Center).
-
110 MacDougal Street
At the Folklore Center, Izzy Young, an amiable Bronx-born anarchist, loaned guitars to many a needy musician (far fewer guitars ever made their way back to the Center).
