By Rachel Aydt 10/21/12 11:02pm

check republic

Jamie playing chess

Everything My Kid Needed to Know About Chess He Learned in Washington Square

My 9-year-old son Jamie is obsessed with chess. I taught him a few basic moves at 5, and then he went on to chess club, summer camp and now, tournaments. All that formal training made him a competent player, but didn’t teach him the strategy and anticipation so vital to winning. Those things he learned from a bunch of chess hustlers in Washington Square.

Jamie’s residency in the West Village’s scrappy chess scene began about a year ago, when he asked if he could play a game with the guys one day on our way home from school. He sat down gamely in front of Dwight, a soft-spoken man in a Seventh Day Adventist windbreaker. Dwight waited half way through the game before he started coaching Jamie. His two pieces of advice: don’t move the queen out too early and keep control of the center. Jamie pocketed the advice, gave Dwight “a donation” and was immediately hooked.  Read More

By Kim Velsey 4/03/12 7:06pm

The Dead

Be Careful! (timmredpath, flickr)

Grave Errors In Queens: Contractor Disturbs Quaker Cemetary

It can be hard to know where all the bodies are buried in New York (Washington Square Park, Bryant Park and Madison Square Park are just a few of the city’s re-purposed resting places).

Potter’s fields rarely fare well over time (regardless of the surrounding real estate’s desirability), but many of the city’s historic cemeteries have been well-loved—watched over by attentive congregations, descendants and preservationists (see: the Trinity Church graveyard in lower Manhattan).

Unfortunately, even the most attentive caretakers cannot always protect the dead from development, or an errant backhoe. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 4/12/10 9:41pm

Relief

In Loo of Behind a Bush: City Reveals Washington Square’s Eco-Friendly Bathrooms

They’re a far cry from today’s graffiti-covered, bathroom-stall-deprived johns.

Washington Square Park’s spiffy new bathrooms, pictured in the renderings to the right, will have solar thermal panels on the roof and a geothermal system, according to Parks spokeswoman Cristina DeLuca. The men’s room, apparently long the site of amorous hook-ups, will even have Read More

By Staff 6/01/06 3:05pm

Gerson Ticked Off at Parks

In this week’s Villager (article not posted online till tomorrow), Lincoln Anderson reports that that City Council member Alan Gerson is threatening to withhold $6 million from the Parks Department for the long-delayed and -debated renovation of Washington Square Park. It seems that Parks reneged on a promise it made to Mr. Read More

By Matthew Grace 11/07/05 12:00am

Arch Enemies Reverse Washington Square Plan

Washington Square Park has been due to get its three-year, $16 million face-lift for several months now, with only a consensus among community groups and the Parks Department standing in the way of the groundbreaking.

Last April, Community Board 2 finally weighed in on the Parks Department’s plan, passing a resolution that supported the Read More

By Matthew Grace 8/08/05 12:00am

A Catwalk Is Rejected As Locals Mark Turf

On Wednesday, July 27, Community Board 4 put the kibosh on fashion trade-show production company ENK’s plan to tent over the basketball and handball courts of DeWitt Clinton Park, at 53rd and 12th Avenue, in order to hold an invitation-only “Fashion Coterie” womenswear trade show for 600 guests. The event would have occupied the space, Read More