​I’ve been going through our collection of photos from over the years, in what feels like a never-ending fruitless task of trying to organize all our files into a cohesive and logical format. I can be a sucker for punishment I guess. 
​
As no surprise our photo collection increased each year as photo technology changed from film roll cameras, to disoposable cameras, digital cameras and eventually cramming everything into your phone. 

​I’m sure we’ve all experienced the myriad emotional pangs of looking at older pictures of oneself compared to the reflection staring back at us in the mirror. 22 years of tours, varying guides, varying t-shirt styles, still almost always either wearing blue jeans in the winter or grey shorts in the summer. Somethings never changes. And yes most of my grey shorts have been and still are cargo shorts, I’m comfortable with owning cargo shorts at my age, and I do actually put things in the pockets.

I’ve been blessed to meet thousands of people over the years, work with lots of amazing guides with varying back grounds (actors, writers, lawyers, archival librarians, singers, massage therapists, technicians, directors, musicians, historians)- so many people of varying backgrounds but all with a common shared interest of a love a literature, history, a good story, and a well crafted drink.

It’s been a blessing and an enriching part of my life.

I keep reflecting on why I keep doing this. As the years go by my needs have changed, financial needs have changed, I’m a parent of 2 kids, my survival job keeps me on the road (or did until recently) my wife’s career has taken off and requires more time.

We also struggled as the walking tour industry exploded, large companies with more backing and better advertising and outreach, vastly increased competition, more online companies complicating and dispersing the market, becoming middle-men, middle-women, middle-people, basically getting in between us and the customer, taking a portion of our income and making it harder to find us. Overhead costs go up, income goes down. Over 22 years of crawling and feeling like a start up in the online world- these have been daunting, frustrating, depressing, challenging- sometimes intriguing to learn new sides, but we face the same realities that many businesses have faced, that we work harder to make the same or less money.

Hey, that’s business. Not passion, but it’s the reality of business.

But last night I was doing some research for our next Virtual Literary Pub Crawl. Finding some more info on Walt Whitman and Pfaff’s. Through that I found new hand drawn sketches of Whitman I’d never seen before. I found an interview with Whitman from 1886 mentioning a book he was very impressed by, The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountians. “An exceptionally strong and interesting book” by Miss Murfree. Well then I went and found the book (as it is in the public domain, published in 1885. So I downloaded it and have added it to my reading list (which is already too long).

Here’s the interesting thing though. Mary Noailles Murfree published under a male pseudonym, as was common for far too long in the publishing industry. So technically in 1885 the book was published by “Charles Egbert Craddock” Which led me to 2 curious facts.
    1) What the hell was Murfree drinking when she chose Egbert and Craddock as potentially successful names for a writer? I mean Charles, sure why not. But to think, “hmmm what will sell books…Craddock maybe but it’s not strong enough, it needs a stronger lead, it needs a hook, it needs….an Egbert.”
    2) Whitman is even more amazing to me, because aone year after the book is published under a male pseudonym Whitman quite deliberately calls attention to the book and uses the actual author’s name and gender when describing it. He was ahead of his time.

This of course quickly led into some of the other writers of the antebellum bohemian movement in NYC, pretty much centered at Pfaff’s, and of course you can’t talk female, writer, bohemian and antebellum in the same sentence without focusing immediately on the Queen of Bohemians, Ada Clare. (I guess technically almost no one talks female, writer, bohemian, and antebellum in the same sentence any more except us at the pub crawl and the amazing website The Vault at Pfaff’s and historian Stephanie M. Blalock)

From there I discovered that not only was Ada Clare one of 2 people to really bring the bohemian scene to NY, as well as contributing to the American literary canon, but she became passionate about fostering this literary scene through a friendship and participation in the literary Salons of Anne Charlotte Lynch. Lynch, (later married into Botta) was known for her literary salons in Greenwich Village, and was fairly instrumental to helping Edgar Allan Poe in his rise to literary fame. It’s believed that the first full reading of the Raven in front of an audience was done in her living room on Waverly Place.

From there I learned that Pfaff’s, like any good bar of the time, was closed on Sundays. Probably not necessarily out of the kindness of heart but by the strict law requiring Sunday closures. So Ada Clare decided to host her own literary salons for the Pfaff’s artistic crowd at her home, a brownstone on 42nd street. And suddenly I’m up out of my chair as I find yet another amazing literary connection for our Times Square tour. Through the Vault at Pfaff’s I find a reference from Walt Whitman’s diary that mentions the address. Now I know the rough location (building is long gone by now).

​From there I’m excitedly looking at our route on the Times Square Literary Pub Crawl, and trying to see how to alter the route to go by here. That would allow us to call out another building (gone now) but was a famous prohibition hangout for F. Scott Fitzgerald. This would also go by the location of the theater where Theodor Dreiser’s main character from Sister Carrie made her fame on broadway in his debut novel, a novel that was quite possible the first novel that had Longacre Square as one of the settings (Longacre now Times Square of course). And suddenly I’m not re-connecting some spots and sections of Jennifer Egan’s recent novel Manhattan Beach and I’m even more excited when I can bring current, living authors into our tours.

Now I’m suddenly up later than I should be, I’m putting together a list of new bars, I’m now making it even more difficult to organize our digital files by frantically tossing new articles, pictures, documents to the mix and THAT is why I still do this.

I can’t stop being passionate about it. I want to take you there. I want to share this with the guides and see their excitement and passion get reignited. If I can’t take you there yet, I want to get another virtual tour going on this area, I want to memorize some new poems and sections of prose to share with you. I want to inspire you to read new authors, past and present. I want to meet you and share a drink with you. Until that time, I want to share stories and connect with you.

In the end it’s about connections.

We will return. We will walk togehther, we will drink together, we will share together. But we’re not going away. We’ve got virtual tours lining up.

And I’m too damn passionate to stop researching, and I’m too damn passionate about sharing it with you to stop no matter what. So I look forward to seeing you soon!

#wewillreturn
#inthistogether
​#getlitwithus

​ 
“There must be some place along the route, a halfway house in time where the runners may pause and ask themselves why they run, what is the prize and is it the prize they really want. What became of Beauty? Where went Love? There must be havens where they may at least be remembered.” –Dawn Powell, The Wicked Pavilion.
 
One of the blessings of being involved with multiple literary organizations is the constant exposure to a multitude of new or hitherto unheard of authors (read: unheard of by me). The curse is of course an ever expanding reading list that would require another lifetime to get through. But my participation with The Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl brought the author Dawn Powell within my literary radar and her book The Wicked Pavilion was an absolute treat.
 
The Wicked Pavilion should be taught in schools, it should be read in American literary classes and especially those focused on New York City literature. Foreign Universities with American Studies classes should add this to the curriculum.
 
You should go read this book.
 
Dawn Powell lived and wrote most of her life in Greenwich Village, which doesn’t necessarily separate her from many of her other contemporaries. Ernest Hemingway considered her one of his favorite living writers. Yet after her death her books and her memory faded away for several decades. Recently her diaries became published which has sparked a reawakening of her literary achievements and The Wicked Pavilion ranks in my mind with some of the great literary works in post war era.
 
In fact the setting of the book is in post war New York City, the several plotlines revolving around the closing of a popular artists’ hangout, the fictional Café Julien in Greenwich Village. Within this setting a host of characters cross paths and we get a fantastic glimpse of the “changing of the guard” as a new, younger generation of artists begin to develop their style while the closing of The Café Julian seems to herald the end of an era for those who came before.
 
We are swept up in the hopeful yet failing love affair of Rick and Ellenora as they seem to find and miss each other throughout the book. We build a love hate relationship for Elsie and Jerry as they strive to raise their stations and reach the ever dreamt of pinnacle of glamour of the New York’s socialite, we both laugh and frown upon the misguided attempts of Dalzell Sloan and Ben Forrester mischievously trying to further their artistic careers and capitalize on the success of dead friends. Throughout all of this we are painted such a beautifully heartfelt description of life and attitudes in the New York art scene, witnessing the seeds of the bohemian mentality slowly evolving into “Beat” sensibilities.
 
I cannot recommend this book to you enough, and I can say I will enjoy putting off my reading list every so often to re-read this wonderful novel.
 
By Eric Chase

Constantly Check yourself

Part of being a guide is the art story telling. Beyond just relaying the facts and history, but putting a creative spin on it to entertain, engage and excite your audience. Some stories are easier to do this with than others, but in the end the successful guides find their voice in the history.

A professional guide is also constantly researching- looking for new stories, corroborating facts, digging up old newspaper articles and the like. And honestly with so much misinformation and legend out there, especially in New York City, ongoing research can help you either find the back up you need.

But more importantly the ongoing research is a great way to check yourself. As you put your creative spin and work your story telling with the history, it gets easier and easier for the facts to slip behind the story. Add a twist, another joke, a fun anecdote, and the history becomes a bit cloudy. As time goes on, as you trust your knowledge and memory you may inadvertently start mixing up your stories, ever so slightly and imperceptibly, but a few months later and you may have contributed more to the misinformation of the city.

In the end, a good story is entertaining, and in the end that’s really what your patrons want- to be entertained and informed. And in most cases, most tours and most guides this is the end goal. Entertainment over accuracy. Whether it’s inadvertent or through apathy, the entertaining story trumps the truth.

I certainly don’t stand here on a soap box throwing rocks from my glass house (lovely mix of metaphors there). Years ago I found that I had started to accidentally veer from the facts as the joy of the story and the strong audience responses took control. I wasn’t aware it was happening.

I check myself now. I keep researching. I change the stories as I find more sources. I keep it entertaining, but I hold onto what I feel is the true integrity of the industry: to share the truth, to bust the myths of the legends, and to inspire those who come along with the history of our city that helped shape who we are as a city and a nation.

Doesn’t hurt having a beer on the way. #getlitwithus

Writers and theater and Gangsters, Oh My!

​Times Square is probably up there with one of the most famous of squares in the world, perhaps challenged by Red, Tianamen and Hollywood Squares. (Anyone remember that show?)

Times Square is known for New Year Eve, for the New York Times, it used to be known for prostitutes, heroin and strip clubs. It’s known now for Disney. David Letterman, lots of hotels. Hundreds of thousands of tourists.

And Bars.

We’ve been both fascinated and horrified by Times Square, but we found it irresistible as we constantly kept discover more literary treasures in that area that were getting lost- literary artists who it turns out created and personified that indelible, mythic quality of New York City.
​
So we put together a tour. I think it’s root comes from a combination of a passion for Literary History, a desire to take back some of Times Square for New York and New Yorkers, and also a need for some new bars to drink at. And thus our tour was born.

It’s changed a lot over the last couple years we’ve worked on, and where it stands now is a route, collection of stories and a series of performances that put it on par with anything we’ve put together. We’re very proud and excited to share with you all.
​
We’ve really highlighted what was probably the most influential time in the area, the 1910’s-40’s when the really magic of Times Square and the Great White Way were born and thrived. From the creators of the iconic Broadway shows, the actresses and hostess of the Glamorous Prohibition Scene, the protests, the gangsters the rubbed noses with them all, and of course some Baseball.

We’ve succeeded in doing what we do best, capturing the spirit of the neighborhood, through the eyes of it’s writers and artists, and we can no instill that spirit back into ether, and keep that magic of New York City alive.
We look forward to having you come get lit with us in Times Square Very soon.

​We here at the Literary Pubcrawl are not only tour guides and literary aficionados, we are also huge nerds. And what are nerds good for, if not overanalyzing the subject matter we hold near and dear? With that in mind, we have concocted the ultimate character test for our literary heroes— The Literature Death Match.
The rules are thus: each round, we will posit a scenario in which two literary characters must battle it out in a fight to the death, and based on their separate character merits, we determine who would win. Each character is assumed to be in their peak physical shape from their respective novels, all fights take place in a standard 25-foot by 25-foot boxing ring. Fighters may start unarmed, though if they manage to procure weaponry over the course of the battle, all the better.
It must be stated that these battles are of course hypothetical… no characters were harmed in our staging of these fights. After all, what kind of monsters would we be if we actively tried to kill Atticus Finch?
 
Today’s Battle:
Sherlock Holmes
(Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
VS.
Dean Moriarty
(On the Road, by Jack Kerouac)
 
                  First off, I know what you’re thinking: we are remarkably clever, and possibly over-fond of puns. But it is impossible to resist pitting Sherlock Holmes against another “Moriarty,” so here is our inaugural battle.
                  Now, at the outset, it seems obvious that this would be a fight that Sherlock Holmes could win. He has appeared in four novels  and fifty-six short stories, matched wits with some of the most formidable foes of his day, including the KKK, the Amateur Mendicant Society, the Red-Headed League, and, of course, James Moriarty (no relation to his current opponent). The man has a superior intellect, enough to out-think almost any opponent, though he is ignorant on some practical matters, most notably not realizing that the earth revolves around the sun. These tiny blips of practical ignorance wouldn’t do him any damage on the battlefield, however. On top of that, he is well-versed in the fighting styles of singlestick, boxing, and swordplay.
                  Dean Moriarty, on the other hand, has a less-catalogued list of skills. Though he’s only appeared in the one novel , he is given a thorough description. We know him to be quite the con-man, so he is at least smart enough to survive by his wits, and given his intense personality he has probably gotten into more than a few bar fights, and probably talked his way out of half of them. He can park cars with blinding speed and great diligence. Like his opponent, Mr. Holmes, he is quite fond of substance abuse. Unlike his opponent Mr. Holmes, he is also quite fond of the ladies (and if the need suits him, the gentlemen), and by his own admission he is said to be an excellent lover. No ladies could be found to comment on his sexual prowess—his girlfriend Mary-Lou and his wife Camille both seem pretty well-shot of him, though Carlo Marx seems to enjoy him quite a bit.
                  Since Sherlock Holmes seems to have the advantage, Dean would have to employ some more subversive tactics in order to gain an upper hand over the legendary detective. Luckily, as evidenced by his exploits in On the Road, Dean can be incredibly manipulative and displays more than his share of sociopathic tendencies. Translation: he is willing to fight dirty.
 
                  With all this in mind, let the battle begin!
 
                  Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Literature Death Match!
In the one corner, clocking in at 160 pounds and currently high on a mixture of alcohol, Benzedrine and cocaine, hailing from Salt Lake City, Utah, we have the ultimate road-tripper himself, Mr. Dean Moriarty!
                  Annndd, in the opposing corner, at 180 pounds, wearing a dashing deerstalker hat coupled with red boxing shorts, from Victorian England, it is the great consulting detective himself, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!
                  The bell has rung, and fighters are now circling each other, seemingly trying to pick out strengths and weaknesses… this should work out reasonably well for Holmes, whose skill in deduction is second to none.
                  … Now this is an interesting tactic. Moriarty seems to have noticed the tracks on Holmes’ arm, and he’s pulling out of his pocket what looks to be a gram of coke, a spoon, and a needle! We sure hope that needle’s clean… He seems to be trying to convince Holmes to shrug off the fight in favor of getting high together, and I think I hear the words “seven percent solution” being bandied about. Could this fight be over before it even gets started?
                  But no, it seems that Holmes has shaken off this suggestion. The detective often employs singular focus when investigating a criminal case, it seems that he will be utilizing that same focus here tonight. Holmes will not be denied his victory… and Moriarty is falling back yet again, hoping to find another weakness to exploit.
                  Holmes has settled into a traditional English boxing stance, and seems to be waiting for Moriarty to make the first move. Moriarty throws out a right hook, expertly ducked by Holmes, and POW! Holmes has dealt the first blow, a direct punch to the face! Blood is flowing out of Moriarty’s nose. He seems to know that in terms of skill, Holmes outmatches him ten to one.
                  Moriarty has doubled over, giving Holmes the confidence to move in closer for a traditional blow to the kidneys. But what is this? It seems Moriarty was feigning, and used this momentary vulnerability to sucker punch Holmes in the crotch. Moriarty has brought some truly dirty fighting tactics into the ring with him! It’s an undignified move to be sure, but what else would one expect from a con-man out of the American West?
                  Moriarty follows up his dick punch with another punch to the face, and another! Ouch! That has to hurt. Holmes has pushed off Moriarty, bleeding profusely from a cut above his eye, and has now adopted a more defensive stance. He seems to be giving Moriarty another once-over, possibly falling back again on his legendary deductive skills.
                  Holmes is speaking to Moriarty, taunting him in some way or another. Can we get the mics turned up on this one?
 
                  “Your father left when you were very young, did he not? Judging by the lines on your face, the style in which you part your hair, and the prominent “I Miss Daddy” tattoo on your upper bicep, I would judge that you haven’t seen your father since you were approximately six or seven. That must have been a terrible blow.”
                 
                  Dr. John Watson has stood up from his front-row spot in the audience and cried out in amazement. Moriarty seems to be lowering his arms a little, and if we look closely… yes, those are tears welling up in his eyes.
                  Watson is continuing to egg on Holmes, crying out repeatedly, “Finish him!”  …You can see Holmes’ ego inflating from all the way back here in the press box.
                  It seems that Holmes has resumed his deductions yet again…
 
                  “…Furthermore, I can tell based on your stance and the extensive tension in your pelvis that you have a raging case of Chlamydia, most likely procured from a dalliance you had with a red-haired woman approximately three weeks ago. How are you holding up, Moriarty? Does it burn terribly?”
 
                  This is proving to be an excellent tactic. Moriarty is now weeping uncontrollably, and doesn’t even seem to have the energy to lift his fists in defense. As the crowd begins to boo him, he is actually starting to curl up in the fetal position.
                  Now strategically, this would be the perfect time for Holmes to finish off his opponent, but instead he seems to be taking this moment to revel in his own intellect. He’s stopped the match completely, walking over to Watson to explain in detail his deductions throughout the fight. Watson, as per usual, is looking on admiringly and taking extensive notes.
                  Frustratingly, the fight seems to sit at a standstill. While Holmes continues to wax poetic about his intellect, Moriarty is slowly trying to collect himself… he seems to have stopped crying, that’s a relief. And it seems he does have a plan to get back in fighting form—he’s taken out that gram of coke, that initial peace offering, and he’s cutting lines on the floor of the fighting ring. Holmes, his back still to him, doesn’t seem to notice a thing, though he has gone into a particularly long monologue about the polyester-rayon weave of Dean Moriarty’s boxing shorts, and how that is “bound to aggravate.”
                  … And Moriarty has bounced back to his feet in a cloud of white powder. It has doused his face in white splotches here and there, and he seems to be taken up by a madness.
Oh my! He has started screaming a high pitched war cry, and he’s running straight for Holmes! Holmes turns around, just in time to dodge what would have been a felling blow by Moriarty, and Moriarty bounces off the ropes and back into the ring.
                  Moriarty attacks with a left hook at Holmes, that one manages to connect…
                  Holmes dodges another hook, and deals a glancing blow to Moriarty’s shoulder…
                  Moriarty shakes it off, tries for a direct punch to the face…
                  Holmes blocks…
                  Holmes gives a shove to Moriarty, sending the sky-high madman reeling back a few paces--
                  Holmes gestures to Watson, shouting for his saber. With complete understanding and speed, Watson tosses Holmes not a sword, but what seems to be a long wooden dowel rod.
                  … Ah! We have just been informed that this is the weapon traditionally used in the British Martial Art of Singlestick, also known as Cudgels, of which Holmes happens to be a master. This might just turn the tide of the battle.
                  Moriarty, seemingly not even noticing the new weapon in play, makes another crazed run at Holmes.
                  …And Holmes bats him about the head one—two—three times, knocking him to the ground!! Watson is roaring in support!
                  Holmes snaps the wooden rod in half over his leg. Finally, he seems to be giving up the traditional fighting styles.
                  Moriarty makes a half-hearted attempt to rise from the floor, and Holmes takes the opportunity--
                  AND RUNS HIM THROUGH WITH THE SHARP END OF A STICK!
                  Dean Moriarty, the free-wheeling king of the road himself, sinks to his knees, and begs to see his friend Sal Paradise one last time. Sal, however, is too busy, typing in the back room on an old Underwood.
                  Dean’s second dying wish, however, is handsomely rewarded. Somebody finds him a fifth of whiskey, and he downs the entire bottle before he finally expires, a drunken smile on his face.
                  We looked for Holmes to do a post-fight analysis, but he could not be bothered… instead he stayed ensconced in his chair, explaining to Watson every deductive method he employed during the battle.
                 
                  

One of the running jokes we’ve had on our tour over the years is how any piece of literature that is dirty or offensive, gets banned, gets a lot of criticisms for obscenity or lewdness….well they tend to sell very well. This continues to be tried and true.
Howl by Allen Ginsberg,
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s a Few Figs from Thistles
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (still often on the top 10 most banned books in the last decade)
Kurt Vonnegutt
Anais Nin
Sylvia Plath
Charles Bukowski
It kind of goes on and on. In fact our running gag is saying if you want kids to read literature, forbid them from doing so. Put Shakespeare on the highest shelf, tell them there’s too much sex and violence, that they are not allowed to read it. They’ll have it memorized.

I’ve often wondered, had I been a high school English teacher, what if I assigned a Free Reading book- students choice, put a big list of books on the chalkboard and then clearly and succinctly inform them they were in no way whatsoever allowed to pick any book or author on that list….would they read them? Obviously wouldn’t put that in for the assignment, but could you actually influence kids to read more literature outside of the curriculum this way?
Several years back we did a tour for 120 high school kids. Obviously we did not go to bars (well, the guides did afterwards to commiserate, but not on the actual tour). We broke them up into 4 groups and walked them through the village.
They were hands in pocket-eye-rolling-heel-dragging bored about as much as a high school kid could be. (As a former high school kid, I can testify that we can get super bored). We reached an Edna St. Vincent Millay house, and on a whim I tried something. I said (approximately)
“Millay wrote a lot about feminism, she wrote a lot about female sexuality and lesbianism, about love affairs and…..oh geez actually I probably shouldn't be talking about this. Let’s keep moving, don’t tell you folks or your teachers, I probably shouldn’t have come here.”
And we continued the tour. At the end of the tour the chaperones came up and told me that almost every kid in my group asked them for the name of that poet, who it was that I was talking about.
So teachers, we already have a problem with kids and adults not reading. Why not? Give it a try? Forbid them from reading some great works, and lets see what happens. You might just reach a couple kids.

And then maybe they’ll come on our tour.

We get a little hashtag crazy on the tour sometimes. When we started 20 years ago, a hashtag was called a pound and it was of little use in the world. Sometimes it was useful after the transition from rotary phones to touch tone, but otherwise it was just 4 lines. We’re slowly getting savvier with ours. When we started posting the #weresearch, it was partially in response to the March 29th NY Post article entitled “Everything You Know About the Village is Wrong.” In it they discussed much of the standard fare of legends in the village that have been covered by tours over the years, that are incorrect. We were 100% accurate. Maybe 99.9%, I might need to go back and look.

We’d actually also debunked several other myths in the Village over the years that the Post did not mention. #weresearch

To be fair, there’s a lot of misinformation out there in legitimate sources. Mistakes can easily happen. We usually say right off at the beginning that there’s as much legend as fact on the tour. Stories change over time. It’s been scientifically proved that our memories are unreliable. A bartender tells a customer, who goes back a year later and tells her cousin, she mentions something to a young writer for a guide book….with each retelling the story changes.

 We started trying to find the root of the story. We started to dig, and thus the collection expanded. This isn’t even all of them. I’ve ordered several more since these pictures were taken.

You can see that 20 years of Greenwich Village history is 20 years of collecting books. What interests me is that many of these discuss the same stories in much the same way. Which has me wondering how many other legends still have mysterious roots? How many of these books reference each other that the actual story has been lost. Or never happened.

To quote one of the greatest TV shows ever made: The Truth is Out There.

​ (That was X-Files if you didn’t get the reference). We’ll still keep digging. We promise. If you come drinking, we’ll keep talking but we’ll also keep digging. One day you’ll have a drink with us and learn the truth. I relish that day. And I relish the process.

That’s the passion we bring. Please come #getlitiwithus. (That is a hashtag that says Get Lit With Us. [it’s a double entendre. It means both get literary, as well as to “get lit” as in to “tie one on,” “get buzzed,” “become inebriated” or “intoxicated.” You get it.])

​ I hope you enjoyed my use of brackets and parenthesis.

Greenwich Village is not the same Village from when we started. Certainly not a new dilemma, and change is not new to the city. But, perhaps because we are biased, we feel the changes much more deeply now.
When we began in 1998, the village was edgy. It was still possible to find affordable apartments. It was in transition, but it was still a vibrant community that was in touch with it’s roots: art, sub culture, music, creativity, writing, theatre.
​
There are still hints, but it’s tucked away as the Village rapidly evolved into a high end, homes of the Hollywood East Coast, corporate elite, reality stars….

Classic case in point, it went from being the neighborhood you moved to Because of Chumley’s, and now it’s the neighborhood that aggressively fought the re-opening of Chumley’s.

From 2000-2001 we watched as every week another mom and pop, local store on Bleecker Street was closed down, sat empty for awhile, and re-opened as a high end boutique. We watched as restaurants closed down and remained empty for years- all due to the tax benefit gained by staying empty and demanding higher rents, rather then renting at potential market value.

As one Village resident wrote: The Times They are A’Changing.
​
And yet through it all the Village maintains its magic. Much of this is due to the re-zoning as an historic neighborhood, and the constant vigil of groups like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.  It’s kept it’s magic via the few bars, restaurants and clubs that almost stubbornly persist- generally by being fortune enough to own the buildings they reside in rather than pay rent.
​
And we’d like to think it’s kept alive by the work we do. We’re not just churning out legends and story highlights that populate all too numerous neighborhood guide books. We’re constantly digging deeper. But more importantly; We want you to be inspired. Inspired to read, inspired by their innovation and spirit, we want you to feel that spirit and energy. We want you to hear the words alive. We want you to read the books, listen to the albums, support the artists. We want one of you to revolutionize literature as we know it.

We want to spend a little time together as we all share the spirit, energy and artistic magic that shaped so much of the neighborhood, city and nation.

And thus, we stubbornly persist as well. And we hope you’ll come see why, or come see why again. #getlitwithus

Journal Entry: March 3rd, 2018
I’m sitting in the White Horse Tavern right now waiting for our guests to arrive before Danielle and I lead yet another crawl around Greenwich Village. I’ve been coming here for about 14 years doing the tour and I always sit to the right of the door facing the bar. To the right of the bar as you walk in sit a group of regulars. I’ve actually been coming here so long I’ve seen a nearly total swap out of regulars! Although Bob the bartender has only missed a few days in the last decade and a half. He’s nearly as constant as the building itself. The beer here is never too fancy nor too basic. Definitely solid choices and the IPA has my name on it every time. That and a cheese burger and curly fries are how I fuel the next three hours walking around one of the most densely historic places in America.

Oh hey! I gotta go. People are starting to arrive for our tour and we gotta get situated in the back. Hope to see you here. ​

​Like any great athlete or artist, as a Literary Pub Crawl Guide there is a lot of prep, practice and training to get yourself into the ideal shape to lead a crowd of history buffs, literary lovers, and cultural explorers who like to enjoy a well-crafted beverage.
 
Every guide has their own routine, but here’s what I have perfected as the perfect Literary Pub Crawl Guide Experience

​Night Before:
 

• Find all the materials, scripts, poems, sign in sheets, etc, put them all in one place.
• Drink a couple bourbons with a lot of seltzer on the side.
• Stick with only a couple, promise to go to bed at a reasonable hour but instead drink a 3rd bourbon while staying up way to late surfing the web on literary facts and stories.

Morning of:
 

• Brew a large pot of coffee. Make it 1/3 decaf to avoid the shakes, but still with plenty of caffeine.
• Rush about finding some books that correlate with the late night research. Skim some new stories by the writers to find appropriate sections
• Review favorite poems and quotes I’ll be reciting.
• Check the reservations to see if there is anyone with a key author they are interested in and do last minute panicked research on that writer. Too late to memorize a new poem? Try anyway

First Bar:

• Arrive 30 – 45 minutes early for time to review script again
• Order a grilled cheese, or a cheese quesadilla.- Something with lots of bread and cheese because it’s both filling and soaks up alcohol. Avoid meats because they get to heavy, and too many vegetables will run through you and you’ll be hungry and more tipsy later.
• Order a Guinness: Filling, flavorful, not to high alcohol content

​Second Bar:

• A good Ale or IPA works here. Something somewhat light and colorful, with medium alcohol content.
• See if they have something local as well. It’s a great way to get in touch with the community and channel that local history. If the alcohol content is high enough you might actually believe that.

Third Bar:
 

• You’ve made it! Congrats. You’ve earned yourself a nice bourbon: again preferably neat with a large glass of seltzer on the side. – If it’s mixed you are likely to drink it too quickly, and there’s probably not enough water or mixer in it. Keep them separate and get the small sips, with large gulps of refreshing water right on its tale. I prefer the bubbly water because bubbles are fun.

Warning:
 

• If it’s a great fun group, it’s very easy to be tempted into a 4th drink. Be wary here, you may end up suddenly bar hopping with a bachelor party with a groom who’s getting angry/jealous drunk at you, or playing vigorous rounds of drunken UNO with Australians. Or even stranger things may happen. That 4th drink is at your own risk.

​Remember, your guides are trained professional drinkers and talkers. They’ve sculpted their own multi course experience, but as an attendee you need to trust your own judgement.
 
Guides have been known to get smarter, sexier and more charming the more you drink, this could be both amazing and dangerous. Use caution.