ABSTRACT
The truth, of course, is that Greenwich Village is no longer as it was and never has been. A living organism, not a fossil, its restless change is the constant proof of its vitality. Today the Village remains an essential element not merely of the New York scene but of America's long love affair with the twin mistresses Freedom and Rebellion. The surveyors who laid out the map of Greenwich Village had irrigated their wits with birchbark wine. The 1960 "End of Greenwich Village" tramples down that Greenwich Village which subverts the Greenwich Village which preceded it; and again change destroys its "essential character". In the meantime, the Village still provides the American "capital of hope and paradise of misery". The more the Village changes, settles down, rebuilds, the more it remains the same thing.
