Matt's Second Derive
March 19, 2018, by Matt
My second dérive brought me to the West Village. I was excited when I saw that this was my dérive placement, because I, like most NYU students, love to stroll around those quiet, diagonal streets. I also felt like I knew the neighborhood pretty well; I lived in Hayden residence hall my freshman year, so I am very familiar with the area. I actually began my walk on the corner of Commerce and 7th Avenue, across the street from a restaurant that my friends and I used to eat at last summer.
I stood on the corner of Commerce and 7th looking uptown, standing still for a while attempting to feel some warmth from the sun on this cold Sunday afternoon. I looked back and forth between by view ahead of midtown via 7th Ave and the quiet West Village streets via Commerce. My favorite thing about the West Village is walking away from the avenues down a narrow street, and hearing less and less noise each step I take. It’s like entering a different world, one that isn’t even connected to New York. On this sunny afternoon on these cute, quaint streets in the West Village, I didn’t pass very many people – it was quiet and calm in the best way possible. To me, the West Village is somewhere to get some peace and quiet away from the busy streets of Manhattan. It’s an oasis.
Overall, I found the walk to be extremely lovely. It goes without saying that every home in this neighborhood is gorgeous – old, brick, and lined with ivory. One of my favorite spots in New York was along my route – the private court residence on Grove. The entire neighborhood is beautiful and chic, just like its residents. Everyone I passed by was dressed very fashionably. The walk was very enjoyable and relaxing. When I walk in Manhattan, I almost speed walk, trying to get to my destination as fast as possible. But in the West Village, I notice that I walk much slower and more care free, mirroring my environment. This time around, I decided to ditch the dérive cards and get lost in these streets.
Over the course of my walk, even though I had walked these streets many times before, I was continually struck by how much is crammed into the West Village – significant locations ranging from historical landmarks to TV locations to famed artistic clubs. Each turn I took led me to something familiar and significant. Walking down Commerce, I happened to walk past a photographer that I follow on Instagram, and next I turned two corners and ended up on Grove and Bedford, right in front of the Friends apartment. On the course of my next hour, I also stumbled across the Stonewall Inn, Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, and – funniest to me – the Village Vanguard! The last of which I just happened to stumble upon.
Over the course of this afternoon, I was really amazed by the places I saw in relation to their history and their place in time now. Through this course and many other courses that I’ve taken over my past few years at NYU, I’ve come to learn much about the West Village and its significance in art history and the gay rights movement.
What I loved most about this walk was that it was, to me, a physical testament to how far the LGTBQ+ movement has come over the last 50 years. The streets that I walked on today were the streets of the Stonewall Riots and the streets walked in Paris is Burning – streets where queer people fought discrimination for decades. But today, I could physically see how far the movement has come. These streets are the ones where I attended my first Pride parade last summer, and the neighborhood’s streets, homes, and even churched are adorned with pride flags.
My favorite part of the walk related to this history happened when I was walking down Christopher Street towards 7th and the Stonewall Inn. Above the subway stairs, I saw an ad for Love, Simon, a movie a saw this weekend. Love, Simon is the teen, romantic comedy backed by a major studio to feature a gay lead character, and I found it to be very moving and impactful. To see that ad juxtaposed against the Stonewall Inn was very powerful to me; it was a physical testament to how far we’ve come, located on the streets where the movement began. It moved me.
Moving along uptown, after passing Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment from Sex and the City, I noticed something that I found to be interesting. Turning onto Bleecker from Perry, I began to notice high-end stores, such as Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs, and even an Equinox gym. I had known that this area was obviously very expensive and high-end, but, because I was on an analytical walk, I began to think about these stores and their placement against the West Village’s bohemian past. When I got home, I did some research and discovered that Sex and the City’s popularity brought these high-end stores to Bleecker, thus pricing out the more local stores on the block.
This got me thinking about bohemian, artistic spaces and neighborhoods and their temporality. New York’s famed artistic downtown neighborhoods, such as SoHo, the West Village, and even the East Village, have experiences rent and real estate surges over the past 20 years. Obviously, when the artistic and bohemian culture here thrived in the late twentieth century, rent was very low. When neighborhoods like these thrive artistically, the attention drawn creates a myth, which inevitably inspires people with more money to move in and begin the process of gentrification. And this was very visible during my walk – everyone I passed exuded luxury, fashion, and wealth. Since the 1800s, Bleecker Street had been a center of New York bohemia (Sante 328). Marc Jacobs and the Magnolia Bakery suggest this is sadly no longer the case.
The funniest part of my walk occurred near its end, when I was about to cross 7th after walking down Waverly. Looking left, I noticed the Village Vanguard! I had to do a double take, but there it was. I knew that the Vanguard was located in the West Village, but I hadn’t thought of searching for it. Except for the large red awning, the club wasn’t that noticeable. It was sandwiched between a pizza place and a salon, both of which were non-distinct. It’s funny – if it weren’t for this class, I would’ve simply walked by and had no idea the history that occurred there. Actually, I had walked down this block many times before and not even looked at the awning. I paused here to see if anyone were interested in it, but no; much like me before, they probably didn’t know its significance. As I began to walk away, I even noticed that that street corner was named the “Max Gordon Corner.” Now I know why! That’s one thing I love about New York – you can find something significant at each turn if you just take time to look.
I continued to stroll towards 6th and eventually 5th Avenue, but I thought that seeing the Village Vanguard was a sign to take it easy for the rest of the walk. And it’s funny – the closer I got towards 5th Ave and “normal” New York, the faster I walked.
Works Cited Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991.