WEST VILLAGE ORIGINALS

A compilation of interviews with accomplished residents of New York City’s West Village.

Minichiello, a reporter for Westview News (the West Village’s local paper), has compiled his first book from two decades’ worth of interviews with neighborhood residents who are prominent in a variety of fields, including business, community activism, and the arts. The youngest interviewees are from Generation X, although the majority are older. They include some well-known names, such as authors Barbara Garson, Calvin Trillin, and Susan Brownmiller, but even those who are less celebrated have achieved things worth knowing. The interviews, with minor variations, follow a clear format, beginning with a short autobiography that includes a survey of the interviewee’s career and how they came to the Village. Almost all end with the person’s assessment of the Village today compared to times past. A very few of them, such as painter Marjorie Colt, have left the Village and speak about that. When comparing the Village of the past with that of the present, most agree that the neighborhood residents are wealthier than they used to be and that the Village is no longer a haven for the struggling and creative—the very environment that brought many of the interviewees there. Overall, they see this gentrification as a mixed blessing, but they differ as to whether the arrival of high-end retail has stripped the Village of its character. More controversially, some talk about how the Village’s gay identity was clearer in the past in a variety of ways—a subject addressed by several LGBTQ+ interviewees, including Richard Eric Weigle, longtime president of the Grove Street Block Association, who says, “When I moved here [in 1973] it was 80% gay and now [in 2017] it’s 80% straight.” The interviews also raise the question of whether the Village can ever return to being the affordable place for the creative that it once was—and a couple believe so. In any case, the stories of these “West Village Originals” may make many others wish they could live and create in the Village, as well.

A delightful group portrait of the West Village as it has been and can be.