Gardens and Nightlife: LaGuardia Place between Bleecker and West Houston Street

This is an interesting block in Greenwich Village because each side of the street has its own very separate personality. 

One side is almost fully gardens and vegetation with a local residential feel. The other side is at the starting edge of a section of downtown nightlife and so has many restaurants and fashionable shops and is more for the tourist and weekend crowds. 

There is an impressive variety among the restaurants on the block, starting near Bleecker Street with a British place called the GMT Tavern and a Moroccan restaurant called Le Souk which also has a hookah bar and lounge.

I don't think this is a restaurant but 'European' indicates diversity:

There is also a nail salon called Il Villagio Nail Spa which sounds somewhat exotic. Maybe they originally called it The Village Nail Spa because it's in Greenwich Village, but then decided to spice up the name to compete with everyone around them.

There are also some fashion and clothing stores on the block, along with Mocha Burger which is a kosher place that sells organic burgers.

As we approach West Houston Street there is Molcajete Taqueria and then Silver Spurs which is a diner open 24/7, as any good diner should be. 

The West Houston intersection is a big one. 

Crossing it will put you south of Houston and therefore in the SoHo neighborhood, with LaGuardia Place turning into West Broadway. There are many upscale galleries and fashion shops in that area. 

Houston Street has been known as a dangerous street for bike riders. There is a bike near the corner which I believe is a memorial for Derek Lake, a 23-year-old who was killed in 2006 at this corner when he fell off his bike and then was run over by a truck.

 Here is a look back at the block from the Houston Street area:

LaGuardia Place is only a few blocks long and it ends to the north when it runs into the southern edge of Washington Square Park.

Along with one side of this block having no buildings and just garden areas, the buildings on the other side are modestly sized and pleasant in an old-fashioned New York kind of way. This contributes to the nice feel of the street, except on the weekends when it's swarming with tourists and nightlife crowds. But during the week it's quite pleasant.

The garden side of the block at Houston Street features an area called Time Landscape. 

It is 25 by 40 feet and goes about halfway up the block. It's filled with native trees and plants to honor the forest that existed in Manhattan centuries ago. This project from 1978 was led by a landscape artist named Alan Sonfist.

The bus stop was not there in the early 17th century. I'm assuming. 

I probably should have been more cautious about getting so close to that bee, but he seemed very concerned with the flowers so I figured I was okay. 

There is a narrow pathway behind this plot that goes the full length of the block. It's between the gardens and the Silver Towers building complex next door. 

Sometimes I'm hesitant to walk down this path because of how secluded it is, but it's safe and a nice break from all the crowded sidewalks in the area. I don't think I would walk down it at 3am however. 

Closer to Bleecker Street is LaGuardia Corner Gardens, the residential garden area that is open to the public and features lots of beautiful flowers and such.  It was started in 1981 and contains 25 total plots.

There are signs indicating that there were several years when it won something called the 'Dress Up Your Neighborhood Contest':

Just because you're into gardening and the environment doesn't mean you can't brag a little. Good for them. 

Here's the entrance area:

You can see the Morton Williams supermarket just behind the gardens on Bleecker Street. I'm tempted to complain about how slow the lines move there at the register, but really it's not so bad. It's fine. 

Here's a look inside the garden facing Bleecker Street:

It's not an especially large garden but it's dense and they pack a lot in. I enjoyed the succulent plants that were scattered throughout:

I guess now I'll do a montage of some of the varied flowers and plants in the garden:

There were also some toy dinosaurs in there:

There were lots and lots of bees in one area. Perhaps it was a honey-making operation. I'm not sure, but I was definitely cautious about keeping my distance.

There were many butterflies in the garden, including this one on a flower that posed nicely with its wings spread:

I also saw a squirrel looking around and having a nice time, along with a fake squirrel that I saw out of the corner of my eye and thought was real at first and looking right at me. But it turned out to just be a smiling figurine.

And there was this bird on a post that wasn't a type I was used to seeing around very much:

Anyway I guess my point is that this little garden has great plants and flowers and attracts lots of animals too, making it a nice little break from the surrounding downtown madness. Here's a few more looks around:

There were some bunches of grapes growing that were covered with netting, seen in the next 2 photos:

  

Across from the LaGuardia Corner Gardens, right at the Bleecker Street corner, is another plot with vegetation. This one is very small but every bit helps. 

I like walking through that little pathway in between. Occasionally in the daytime I have had small mice scurry across in front of me, heading into the garden area. But they're harmless and are probably baby mice who don't realize that they shouldn't be out during the day. 

That's all from this block which mixes green with urban, local with tourism and nightlife. I hope you enjoyed the journey and thanks for reading!

The Rubin Museum and West 17th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue

I get the sense that the Rubin Museum in the Chelsea neighborhood is not very well known, even among local New Yorkers. I had never even heard of it until a few years ago. Now, however, it is one of my favorite museums and I consider it a great little secret of the city. 

The Rubin features mostly Eastern religious art, especially from the Himalayan region. Some of its exhibits change from time to time but the permanent areas include religious statues, scrolls, carvings, and more. For example here is a sculpture from the 7th century (!):

The museum has required admission fees, which isn't as good as the suggested fees of places like the Met and Natural History Museum. But there are various discounts available at certain times, and also you can get in for free if you have a city university id, which is not mentioned on their website.  

There are 6 floors but each one is small and basically just a short circular walk around the building's center spiral staircase. Here is the center area at the top floor:

And a view up from the ground floor!

And from a middle floor!

I think I've made my point that there's a center spiral staircase. 

A recent visit to the Rubin began at the 6th floor, because hey why not take the elevator to the top and then work our way down?

This strategy led to a shaky start to the visit, at least for me personally, because the exhibit up there was very avant-garde and not typical of the rest of the museum's sensibility. I'm open to many different kinds of art but this wasn't doing it for me, perhaps especially because I was in the mindset of seeing more of what the Rubin typically has to offer in terms of older Eastern religious works. 

Here is one piece from this exhibit, which had the top head continuously spinning and the knife-tongues almost touching at one point:

This was actually one of the tamer works in the exhibit. No offense to the artist but I'll move on to other areas now. 

There was an interesting exhibit that explored the rainy season in Nepal and how important it is to annual cycles of life there.

Most of the rest of the floors, however, featured the religious art that I associate with this museum. Here are some looks:

There were some interesting figures with rather intimidating expressions:

One of the floors had a shrine room with many elaborate figures and objects. Here is a portion of it:

Here are a few more looks around the floors:

You can see in the photos that the museum is not generally very crowded, to say the least. That makes it even nicer to visit, along with it being small and well air-conditioned (I'm assuming it's properly heated in the winter as well).

At the ground level there is a gift shop and a very pleasant cafe area, along with stairs leading to a lower level with a few more works of art. Here is an out of focus photo from the stairs, with the cafe to the right and the gift shop to the left:

The gift shop has lots of cool little items. For some reason I only took a photo of a small corner of it:

But don't worry, the shop also has incense and religious and spiritual books and much more. 

I didn't have anything at the cafe but it had a nice menu and seemed high-quality:

The lower area was small but very nice and had an exhibit on Cuban art. I guess that breaks with the Eastern/Himalayan theme but it still looked interesting.

I was excited to see this info on the wall that the lower level does not require admission, and it turns out that the same goes for the cafe and gift shop areas as well. 

That makes the ground floor and lower level a really nice and quiet place to stop in for a while, whether for a bite or beverage in the cafe or to relax in the lower level where there generally seem to be very few people. It's kind of like a hidden public library that has good air-conditioning and more space to spread out. Nice. I'm hesitant to even share this information but I'm not worried because my blog shares the characteristic of not being very well known. 

Let's take a brief look at some more of the block besides the Rubin Museum. Nearby is a Housing Works Thrift Shop:

Housing Works is a non-profit organization that particularly focuses on fighting HIV/AIDS and homelessness. 

Closer to 6th Avenue is also the Angel Street Thrift Shop, with the blue awning:

Just to the right of that is a church, and then a private school called Winston Preparatory School:

And to the left of the thrift shop is a florist and a psychic:

This block has a lot of range. 

At the 6th Avenue corner is a parking lot and a T-Mobile store.

Admittedly these are not very exciting, but in the parking lot is a big and interesting work of art:

I think he's writing 'I heart NY parking lots.' So do I.

Also near 6th Avenue is a row of three restaurants: an Italian place called Da Umberto, Haven's Kitchen which is also a cooking school, and Serenata which serves Mexican food.

I think that covers most of the block. It's a very pleasant street to walk down, and the Rubin Museum is worth visiting for its interesting art and chance to escape the harsher weather of the city in a quiet place that isn't crowded. It's hard to beat that, even if you want to avoid the admission and just hang out at the cafe and lower level. 


Until next time, thanks for reading.