West Village Flappers, Beats, Freaks and Punks: A Walking Tour

From the apartment where John Lennon and Yoko Ono established the country of Nutopia, to the townhouse where mother of The Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious lovingly administered his fatal overdose, this West Village walking tour sheds light on the artists, authors and activists who transformed the area into “America’s Left Bank.” Starting outside the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village, you’ll wind your way through the West Village to the Jane Hotel where, in 1912, survivors of the Titanic gathered for a memorial. Along the way, you’ll pass several bars, pubs and speakeasies and learn how Greenwich Village had more places serving alcohol during prohibition than before or afterwards.

I’ll show you often overlooked sites including Twin Peaks, one of the quirkiest houses in the Village, the Magnolia Bakery that was featured in Sex and the City and the Devil Wears Prada, and Julian Schnabel’s outrageous pink Palazzo Chupi. You’ll see the church where Timothy Leary infamously handed out LSD instead of communion wafers, and Whitehorse Tavern where poet Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. I’ll also point out the apartment building where the cast of Friends lived. Or, rather, the building where they would have lived if the show wasn’t filmed in California.

On this 90-minute tour from Greenwich Village to West Village, you can expect to:

• Go through Chumley’s backdoor to the speakeasy where Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all had a regular table
• Stand in front of the former home of Serpico, the first cop to speak out against police corruption and brutality
• Hear about Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of the first woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize, whose poetry captured the hearts of New Yorkers
• Have your mind blown by Operation Midnight Climax, which involved the CIA secretly drugging people
• Take a bow at the oldest Off-Broadway venue that’s still kicking, the legendary Cherry Lane Theater, where Samuel Beckett, T. S Eliot, and Tennessee Williams got their start
• Meet Marion Tanner, the real-life inspiration for Auntie Mame
• Learn why Westbeth, the lab turned artists’ housing, is often called Deathbeth
• Discover Grove Court, where a painted leaf saved a woman’s life and inspired O. Henry to write a story about it

Join me on an eye-opening walk through hidden alleys and courtyards that many Village residents don’t know about, and hear stories that you won’t easily forget.

CREDITS: A special debt of gratitude to the authors whose excellent books provided inspiration: John Strausbaugh, The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village; Judith Stonehill, Greenwich Village: a Guide to America's Legendary Left Bank. Thanks also to the excellent work of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation at VillagePreservation.org

The additional voices recite actual quotes, performed by actors. And by actors we mean our dear friends and neighbors who work for beer and wine: Peter Collery, Tom Eich, Mattie Goldberg, Matt Jones, Clara Marshall, Hugh Osborn, Paul Safsel, Beth and Jeremy Saks, Terry Taylor, Bob Tracy, Lisa Wagner, Claudia Wallis, Josh Wallach, John Williams, Sofia Williams.