Greenwich Village: Pride and Folk from Stonewall to MacDougal Street

Allow yourself to be transported back to key moments, from the birth of the folk music scene along MacDougal Street, to the gay rights uprising at the Stonewall Inn on a 90-minute walking tour.

Starting in front of Hess Triangle, we’ll weave through the Village to Sullivan Street where you’ll hear the tale of the OddFather, a mafia boss who avoided arrest for decades by faking insanity. En route, you’ll see Provincetown, the birthplace of off-Broadway threatre and, on the same street, the building where Bob Dylan crashed on one of many couches during a stay in NYC.

On this tour, I’ll guide you to sites that many New Yorkers whiz by without a second thought, unaware of the riveting stories behind them. One of these is Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios and Almanac house, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie’s “frat house for revolutionaries.” I’ll also show you Café Wha? where Bob Dylan performed on his first night in NYC and Cafe Society, America's first mixed race nightclub where Billie Holiday debuted Strange Fruit.

You can look forward to hearing about:

• Dave Van Ronk, known as the Mayor of MacDougal Street, and once described as “a walking museum of the blues”
• Suze Rotolo, the 17-year-old girl who broke Bob Dylan’s heart and inspired many of his best songs
• Stonewall Inn, where riot police faced off against a kickline of drag queens during the Stonewall Rebellion
• Julius Bar, where gay rights activists held a sip-in years before Stonewall
• The Cage, one of the most famous streetball courts in the world and home to the legendary basketball pick-up game
• IFC Movie Theater where the Rocky Horror madness began, and the punk rock look was first inspired
• Comedy Cellar, the most influential comedy club on earth
• Gaslight Cafe, where unknown musicians Hendrix and Clapton played here together for five straight nights
• Patchin Place, the hidden alley where Marlon Brando spent time while studying

Throughout the tour, stories of Greenwich Village’s artists, activists and rebels will be brought to life with music, sound effects and actors.

A special debt of gratitude to the authors whose books provided inspiration: John Strausbaugh, The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village; Luther S. Harris, Around Washington Square: an Illustrated History of Greenwich Village; Judith Stonehill, Greenwich Village: a Guide to America's Legendary Left Bank.

CREDITS: 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.