PJ, born in 1899, came to the Village in 1919. He was my Village historian: “Once Minetta Creek flowed in Greenwich Village. From Washington Square, look south to where Bruno’s garret drew tourists, who took the Fifth Avenue bus down to bohemia.”

In the early 70's I spent two years living on the Upper West Side, then moved to West Tenth Street. I was back in the Village.

After more than two years in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean I returned to Greenwich Village, living at the Albert Hotel, attending classes at the New School for Social Research, and supporting myself by driving a taxi.

After graduating from Syracuse University in the summer of 1967, I lived in the East Village with Sarajon. We lived first on Fifth Street then on Avenue B around the corner from Tompkins Square Park where Tiny Tim played his ukeleke. The Real Great Society opened an art gallery on Avenue A, where Sarajon exhibited her paintings.

Later that season, I studied Camus at NYU and lived in a dormitory looking out on Fifth Avenue. My roommate, from Sao Paulo, spoke only Portuguese. He brought me to his aunt’s house in Brooklyn, where we drank Cuba Libres. I brought Beto, his sister, Fatima, and their chaperone, to dance the Bossa Nova at Barry Eilenberg’s party on Long Island.

In the summer of 1965, I first spent a week caretaking John Chapman’s Barrow Street apartment, which was below street level, and dreaming of becoming a Greenwich Village writer.

Village Body

On New Years Eve of ‘64, I brought Alice to the Café Bizarre off Madougal Street in Greenwich Village. That winter Cliff Smith, Richie Beirach and Lenny Shaw were playing jazz in a small storefront on MacDougal Street, when an old man succumbed to a fit during one of their sets.