The Voice published all sorts of notices placed by ordinary people.
I used the Voice to find an available kitten. I called the owner that evening, and was told to come to the Village as the owner wanted to interview me to see if I was suitable. I was 20 and I brought my mother. It was a good thing that I did, the owner loved my mother and I was acceptable. I went home in a taxi with Yum Yum pussy cat, and she yowled and squalled all the way home.
4
It was 1964. I was a kid from the NJ burbs, commuting to a Catholic High School in Manhattan. My father was a Nixon guy. My mother kept her politics to herself. Then in 1965, I bought a copy of The Voice on my way home from school. So much of it was beyond me that it made me want to catch up. I had to ask my mother what many things in the paper were about. For an Irish Catholic woman growing up in the days before the depression, she was amazingly open to me about the issues (abortion, civil rights, drugs, music, dance) explored in the articles. Sitting down with her to go thru The Voice every week was one of my life's Master Classes. Thanks, Mom & thanks to the Village Voice.
17
What a gorgeous, fantastic paper. When I was young I couldn’t wait to get into the dirty, smart, tough, sexy city that produced this thing. It was NY and what it felt like to be seriously alive.
11
The Village Voice, to its credit, printed essays from people who disagreed with its writers. On March 6th, 1969, the Voice published my response to articles by Charles Wright and Jack Newfield. My piece was called "The Left Is Soft on Anti-Semitism."
http://jochnowitz.net/Essays/TheLeftSoft.html
3
You left out the fight to prevent NYC's Park Commisioner from banning folksingers from Washington Square, and the fight against making West Broadway Fifth Avenue South, with Fifth Avenue extended through WSP, and the Voice Auto Rallies, where I met Dan Wolf and Ed Fancher and Jean Shepherd, and...
I've still got copies of the Voice from 1960. They're crumbling, now, and I'm not in such great shape, either!
7
Will Jules Feiffer draw a dance to the demise of the Village Voice...for old times's sake?
4
The Voice was THE model for all the underground papers/alternative papers of the 1970's. No self-respecting city could not have an alternative press, attempting to be as good as the Voice.
4
The Voice was destroyed when it was purchased by Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin in Phoenix just as Craigslist devastated newspaper classifieds, the paper's economic backbone. It went free to compete with Time Out, but the owners could not make it work.
4
Maria Laurino, Arthur Bell, Michael Musto, Paul duBrul, great investigative and cultural reporters and even though they wrote for the daily news cannot forget Lars Erik Nelson and Beth Fallon. Laurino and Fallon were the first female bylines I followed. good New York memories.
4
Nice article, nice remembrance. Oh for the "good old days"!
JimF from Sewell
2
On Americans who thought things through, it had a great influence far beyond NY. The Voice was The Great Curmudgeon. On a national/international scale, the NYT was intellectually linked to the village and its Voice.
Now intellect has closed its doors in New York and America. Curmudgeons have been rolled flat by the high-pitched voices of the flood of sloganized victimhoods. Clear thinking has been forced into hiding like the Intercept, gone to Brazil, and Consortium News that's only online.
1
The Voice is gone...a part of my NYC...arriving 1973...attending Parsons. Living in NYU dorms. Nice article!
4
And let’s not forget the Voice’s important role in validating the Gay Liberation movement. The very first public street protest mounted in September 1969 by the newly-formed Gay Liberation Front was against the Village Voice’s refusal to carry an ad for the group’s first gay dance because the Voice would not print any ad using the word, “Gay.” Seems incredible now, but after a few days of public harassment the publisher caved and agreed to change the paper’s advertising policy. Getting the first news outlet to start calling an oppressed group by the name of their choice was one of many major breakthroughs in those early days of LGBT activism. Remember that the New York Times itself took until 1987(!) to change its editorial naming policy from “homosexual” to “gay and lesbian.” By that time, those same words must have appeared in the Voice over 100,000 times.
5
Over the last 20 years the Voice was mostly a repository for advertisement of sex and drugs and was distributed from ugly red plastic boxes that blighted Our corners.
I served as press secretary to Mayor Koch from 1978 - 1980.
The day the "Pooper Scooper" law went into effect, my office received more calls from journalists around the world than on any other topic. The possibility that NYC avoided bankruptcy wasn't even a close second. Guess the Voice could claim that it was heard around the world!
12
Richard Goldstein was right about "Sgt. Pepper's...," BTW.
From Wayne Barrett in the paper's first expose on Trump in 1979:
Another Manhattan developer said it differently: “Trump won’t do a deal unless there’s something extra — a kind of moral larceny — in it. He’s not satisfied with a profit. He has to take something more. Otherwise, there’s no thrill.”
1979! Says it all, doesn't it?
16
The personal ads were priceless. We used to read them in the office and laugh out loud. My favorite, from a man who evidently realized it didn't pay to be choosy: "If you're breathing and between puberty and death, call me." Phone number followed.
9
The NYT is next if it does not change its ways. No one under 30 believes anything the main stream media says. Ask my kids. Capitalism is brutal, if you don't adapt to people's taste you die. The Voice made the mistake that it was important and so wonderfully wise. The NYT is making the same mistake.
My favorite columnist in the Voice was Nat Hentoff -- a real liberal who would often infuriate the so-called "Feel-Good Liberals" with his opinions and observations --
Such as the time he wrote about a baby girl who was born deformed with a condition known as Spina Bafida - who's parents wanted to withhold medical attempts to treat her and prolong her life - and demanded they could do so due to a legal "Right to Privacy" -- and Hentoff wrote a number of columns asking what about the baby's right to "Life, Liberty and the Pusuit of Happiness" --
Or -
When liberal college students shouted down speakers who's message the didn't like -- and Hentoff would point out - as he often did - that the primary point of the First Amendment is to protect the speech of others which you may deem to be offensive, insulting, disgusting and reprehensible -- because the day would come when your speech would be on the wrong side of the politically-correct spectrum --
Unfortunately - local news now are pap stories about another weekend march for a "good cause" - or the latest fad on social media --
The reason papers like the Village Voice have faded away can be directly traced to a cultural dumbing down regarding our social priorities...
7
Nat Hentoff was a great columnist. However he had his prejudices. He wrote a scathingly anti-gay column after Stonewall, describing the gay men in horrendously homophobic terms. I still remember my shock.
5
Let us not forget Wayne Barrett's multi-part expose of the detrimental effect of stop-and-frisk abuse by the NYPD. This was "Black Lives Matter" well BEFORE that phrase became a rallying cry for racial injustice in law enforcement.
5
The article also failed to mention the great cartoonists, like Feiffer, Mark Stamaty, and of course Matt Groening who got his start there, with "Life In Hell".
11
@Daniel
Groening, Portland, OR native (who was a geoduck; a Evergreen State alum) started his career at the LA Reader. Life in Hell ran in many alternative papers (including here) not just the Voice.
1
I started reading the Voice in 1974 during my freshman year at Brooklyn College. I figured I looked sophisticated reading it on the B6 bus. I would but it if the cover story looked good. I still have a few 1970s and 1980s issues saved (in my basement of course) for whatever reason. I may have picked up a copy from those boxes they had out on the street when it was free but that had to be years ago.
6
I hope media-literate journalism students or laid-off newspaper reporters will read this story and figure out a way to provide the same kind of services in the digital world.
You could never do the identical thing but you could do a modern equivalent.
I learned that, as long as you're providing useful information that people want and need, you'll attract a dedicated audience.
Making enough money out of it to keep it going is something else. But it does happen.
8
i was involved with the campus newspaper at UMass Amherst in the early 70's. i basically sacrificed my undergraduate education to spend countless hours in the office on the second level of the student union. the kicker underneath the newpaper's name was "New England's Largest College Daily." and it was. daily press run was 13,000 papers.
in the summer of 71 i happened to be in new york city. it was my birthday and i thought it might be fun to congratulate myself on my 21st in the classifieds in the Times. The Times declined, saying it would have to be someone other than me to buy the ad. so i went to the village voice and they were happy to take my money., so somewhere in the archives of the voice there will be an issue from early august of 71 with a classified that reads, "New England's Largest wishes himself a happy 21st."
7
The Voice had the best entertainment listings in the city including performing artists who were both unknown and ignored by the mainstream media . And every Spring, their "Shares" section for places in the Hamptons and beyond was avidly read by tens of thousands of New Yorkers. Their investigative reporters were the best--and sadly, have never been replaced elsewhere.
6
Electeds feared a call from Wayne Barrett. A visit to their office would send the entire staff into a frenzy. I remember being warned on a Primary Day in the early 80s that if Wayne Barrett showed up to stop all campaigning immediately. Also my go to when looking for apartments I could afford. Sad when it closed its doors. Need it now more than ever.
4
Living in the city from the late 1970's to the mid-1990's, I can remember clear as day what Wednesday meant- it meant the new Voice would be on the stands. For what I recall being less than a dollar, one could not only be informed on the real stories as opposed to the mass-media version, but also one could be in the know about almost any cultural happening from museums to gallery openings to who's playing at CBGB's. And one could even look on the back page to see if someone was leaving them a desperate love-call, like: "Saw you on the A train Monday 3/3 you were wearing red bell bottoms I looked away, want to meet for dinner?"
Like many things today, we have lost something precious and no one cares. Let the Voice go to its grave with those who really cared.
14
Grit in America.
How wonderful for those who lived it and have The Voice memories in their minds, hearts, and souls.
8
Terrific story about Mary Nichols's gift of carbon paper saving Robert Caro's brilliant Power Broker. Remember carbon paper? Oddly emblematic of our digital age, the Village Voice sadly going the way of carbon paper.
13
Here is another way the Village Voice made New York a better place.
My uncle Jimmy aka JAF had a weekly cartoon published until the late 60s/70s. His style of humor fit in perfectly.
RIP to both JAF and the Village Voice.
9
@Manderine Feifer was always spot on. Loved his"dances". I think I will go dig out some of the collections of his work.
2
My paper. Started reading in the 60's and 70's and on. Loved it.
3
I didn't read the Voice as much as I should have, but on the way back to New York in January or early February 1983, I bought a copy at O'Hare airport that contained the first article I ever read about AIDS. Indeed this was the first I had heard of it. Within months we all knew, and no one's early coverage beat that of the Voice.
19
Some of my earliest civics lessons came from the pages of the Village Voice.
While my peers got their drama fix with 90210 and its ilk, I was more interested in the occupants of Gracie Mansion.
As I would read the Voice in the Chick-fil-A break room where I worked in high school, I marveled at how the Voice was a tenacious muckraker that used sunlight as the best disinfectant.
From Koch to Dinkins to Giuliani and beyond, I saw the Village Voice as an example of how alternative media are essential to keeping our government honest and the public informed.
In the end, I mourn the loss of the Voice because we know that quality journalism and muckraking are not sexy or profitable but that their value to our democracy is priceless.
20
I can't believe that neither the article, nor any of the comments mentioned the incredible innovative cartoonist Jules Feiffer. His cartoon was the first thing I always turned to in the Voice.
31
@bobjbkln
And up until the 70s my uncle JAF had his special brand of humorous cartoons as well.
Bravo for mentioning the cartoonist.
7
...with creativity and hard work and without fear we need somethings to replace a vital piece of democracy that The Voice newspaper represented ! Don't let New York City become less...less than in so many ways the greatest city in the world.
6
While the Voice did review classical music, some of it, they never provide listings for concerts, and this was severely damaging. It led their readership away from serious music rather than to it, even the events happening "downtown." It was a shameful choice that was never corrected. And it would have increased their readership. That is why I gave up reading it back in the 1980s.
4
In the 80's I placed an ad for a newly "renovated" apartment in what is now called the East Village.
My phone started literally ringing non stop, and my friend and I became giddy after a while. I told one caller that we only rented to Rocicrucians. He called back to check, and he was relieved when admitted that was not true.
A woman asked my friend if it had a walk in closet. "Lady," he replied, "it IS a walk-in closet!"
Time passes. Were those the good old days? Maybe not really. But they were the old days, that's for sure.
13
The Times needs our voice, and we need The Voice.
13
Wonderful piece! Thanks, John Leland.
11
This article made me very emotional. Thank you for reminding us what the Voice meant and what we are missing by its absence.
I remember visiting NY as a child and then moving here and always seeking out the Voice for its cultural coverage, but then finding great investigative journalism in its pages.
Long live the Village Voice!!
19
We need this type of reporting throughout the country but we don't have it anymore because being a muckraker doesn't pay the bills. Local citizens don't support hard hitting reporting as they did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because they don't see the corruption thrown in their faces every day. The corruption is much more hidden now and even worse than it was then, producing white collar corruption that's not just skimming a little off the top of the till. People like Manafort, Cohen, and even taxi company owners not paying multi-millions in income taxes meaning they're getting multi-millions in income from who? Who's giving these folks multi-millions in income? We need muckrakers to find out, but they're gone, no one is interested in paying them, people don't want lose their chance to cash in like sports team owners, all profit, no risk. Amazingly their are a few independent journals out there like 'High Country News' in Colorado (high as in elevation, not THC) fighting the good fight. Find one you like and support it financially.
19
The Voice was at the cutting edge of reviewing / critiquing the "third estate" with Alexander Cockburn's piquant "Press Clips" column.
9
What I enjoyed most about Cockburn was his on-point nickname for Norman Podhoretz: The Frother!
1
All during the nineties and early thousands I used to walk past 50 B Cooper Square. Every time I did, the Voice's banner that hung above it, would catch my eye. It was as much a part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth.
So much of the news that "mattered" was brought to my attention, in brilliant manner, by them. It was with baded breath that I kept up with all the sordid details of my favorite club, The Limelight, big scandal. Numerous corruption scandals by countless city agencies. Broke open by the Voice. As an LGBTQ youth I found comfort, advice and direction from the brilliance of Dan Savage. My musical social calender was dictated by the endless club listings and I was able to keep my head above water in all things culture simply by reading the genius archer articles that filled their pages.
A huge part of me died when I first read that the Village Voice would be no more.
12
One should mention that the Village Voice published the excellent monthly VLS (Village Literary Supplement) in the 1980s and 1990s.
14
@New Yorker
If I remember correctly, that was "Voice Literary Supplemen.t"
3
Did you know there's another scandal in the NYC Board of Ed?
A former police detective who screened potential school bus drivers was fired for not approving enough people. A clerk at the Board of Ed began forging his signature on applications of candidates with DUIs, convicted child molesters, etc. Over 700 so far.
That's a story the Voice would have covered. It is being covered by the struggling Daily News, for which I have a digital subscription.
It was Nat Hentoff who got me thinking about First Amendment rights. Cynthia Heimel and Stan Mack made me laugh. Wayne Barret got me angry at the crooks in charge.
Nobody is doing it the way they did. But if you support local investigative news, support the Daily News. It's often all we've got.
29
@Talbot thanks for pointing this out. I just subscribed to the Daily News.
3
I especially loved the photographs by Sylvia Plachy.
The demise of the Voice is yet another marker of the end of an era. Sexist warts and all, it nevertheless brought verve and passion to political reporting in a way that made its readers understand why this stuff matters. I hope that another Voice, tailored to the times, arises again, and soon.
11
Let's not forget about the personals and the advertisements for the sex industry and the downtown scene. Problematic to be sure and sometimes dangerous but on the whole, it opened up a whole new world for this closeted boy and gave me an entry point into a world where I belonged, for the first time.
And, I can't forget about Jill Johnston. While there really wasn't a place for me in Lesbian Nation, her essays were mind blowing for me, and I learned a lot from her writing.
19
@Gerard Malanga
Before internet dating, there was the Voice personals. I met my wife through one, 20 years ago. And I read jill johnson, to feel a little gay "community", even she felt little to radical for this suburban chick.
4
I lived in NYC and read The Voice religiously for years. Especially the great Nat Hentoff.
One thing I remember was when Paul McCartney married the photographer Linda Eastman in 1969, The Voice published a shameful article detailing dozens of famous men she'd reportedly had sex with and painting her as a slut. Linda Eastman at the time was a 28 year old divorced woman with a young daughter. What had she ever done to The Village Voice that she deserved such treatment?
There was a lot of good at The Voice but it was far from perfect.
18
@fast/furious Just my opinion but I always felt that The Voice also had an peculiar antipathy towards Italian-Americans, Italian-American neighborhoods and Italian-American elected officials. With the exception of the always sainted Mario Cuomo. Catholics weren't too popular with the Voice either.
2
The item on the dog poop crusade left out one memorable thing, a letter to the editor. The writer offered a solution to the problem: Carry a rolled-up newspaper at all times. If you see a dog pooping on the sidewalk, or anywhere, confront the issue by rapping the dog's owner smartly about the head and shoulders, all the while exclaiming: "No, no, bad owner."
13
You overlooked one of the Voice's most significant roles in how Greenwich Village functioned - the Apartments for Rent ads. On any Wednesday afternoon you could find a line of people at the local news stands waiting for the Voice to arrive. The arriving bundles were cut open, the papers snatched up, and the ads circled as the hopeful headed to the nearest phone booth to call their prospective landlord. If you were lucky, the apartment was within walking distance and saw the apartment that afternoon. If you were really lucky, your potential landlord would take your check and you would have a place to live at the first of next month. That's how it worked.
24
@Ed Morrow I found a place on Sullivan St. that way, in 1979. Another tenent helped me prove that the flat was rent-controlled and Atty General helped me get a big rent rollback, the landlord hired thugs to murder said tenant (unsuccessfully), and wound up on the cover of, what else, The Village Voice, as one of NY's Worst Landlords! Only in New York.
16
@Ed Morrow
I found an apartment in Park Slope in 1998 that I am still living in today!! My landlord is great and my rent has not increased since. Thanks to Village Voice. Great articles and news coverage too. I picked it up every week, I believe it was every Wednesday? I also enjoyed reading the horoscopes in Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny. So fun!
There won’t be another Village Voice.
6
@Ed Morrow 1973 - brand new college grad, new to NYC. The Voice taught me everything I needed to know - and I found the most amazing apartment - in much the same way Mr. Morrow describes. Wish I still had it - couldn't afford it today.
3
I came here in 1965 and immediately began to read the Voice. I particularly liked the "Runin' Scared" column that Newfield and Barrett produced each week. Both, but especially Newfield, were top notch political reporters.
6
I was a recent college grad living in Washington, D.C. in the mid-'80s when I started reading The Voice. Its cultural and arts coverage was my guide for checking out cool places and events when I visited the city.
It was also my introduction to writers Lisa Jones, Joan Morgan, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Nelson George, Greg Tate, Peter Noel and Vernon Reid, who covered Black culture in a such a compelling and vibrant way, I'd often clip their articles to share and discuss with friends. Journalistically they affirmed hip-hop before magazines such as The Source and Vibe existed, and inspired many up-and-coming journalists including myself.
I eventually moved to New York to pursue a career as a fashion journalist, and pitched a story to The Voice about an artist who hand-painted designs on vintage clothing. It was the first of many fashion articles I would write.
8
It was the Voice of a generation that didn't want to be their parents. Now people don't mind being their parents. The Voice became irrelevant.
14
Ain't no substitute for the real thing!
Where may we find another?
6
Bravo for doing this piece and doing it well.
17
On one level, the passing of *The Village Voice* is like the passing of the old Penn Station, of Gimbels, of the good coffee at the old Chock-Full-Of-Nuts Restaurants, of the last Automat on the corner of 42nd St. and 1st Avenue, and of a counter-culture Greenwich Village. They’re all proverbial “lost New Yorks” in a city that is always renewing itself, always tearing things down and building things up.
The renewal is frequently for the better.
However, better is not always the case. The things that replace the lost ones are frequently not of the same quality: the current Penn Station, the coffee at McDonald's, and an expensive Greenwich Village that has forced out its counter-culture tradition to the outer boroughs.
Sometimes the old things aren’t replaced at all.
In the case of *The Voice*, the paper acted as the conscience of New York. The paper made one feel that at least someone was sticking up for New Yorkers. It didn’t do investigative reporting on corruption, and then turn around and endorse for office the very people it had found guilty of corruption.
It was good to know that *The Voice* was there. And now it’s not. Like the old Penn Station, it belonged to another era. But unlike the station’s shoddy replacement, there is nothing to supplant the journalism of The Voice, especially in a new era of “fake news”. Contemporary New York is worse off with the void that was The Village Voice.
75
This Seridan Square where the Village offices were situated -- where is that exactly?
3
@Larry King
The Voice offices were where the Duplex bar now operates on 7th Avenue and Sheridan Sq.
4
Northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street, a few buildings west of the Lion's Head (also gone).
1
@Larry King Thanks. Fixed!
3
One of my favorite writers for the Village Voice when I was a young resident of NYC was Nat Hentoff who wrote about Jazz and other interesting subjects. Sorry to read that such a creative paper is gone while the National Enquirer is still alive.
37
@Tonjo
The lowest common denominator survives...
3
The Village Voice was the first to introduce me to all the music to be offered in the world. Especially those produced by independent labels. As a teenager and into college I remember going to the Siren Music Festival every summer put on by the Village Voice. An amazing, one day, FREE music series at Coney Island. Still have the t-shirt from 2008, and a running gag between my dad and I is planting one of the Voice's branded sunscreen packets in our mailboxes or underneath our windshield wipers.
9
I found my first apartment in Williamsburg through the Voice Classified. Grand & Marcy, 1986. I signed the lease across the street from the Voice at Phebes.
I found musicians to jam with, and instruments to play, along with some of the earliest employees to work at my company. All through the Voice.
The Voice was present all through my time here in NYC from 1982 until -
I wonder what my life would look like if the Voice had never published. Different for sure...
Thank you VV. For everything.
22
I remember it all so well. It was wonderful and important, and you could find an apartment. My first? $50 a month. A few years later, $175 got you a rather nice place, and after that? $400 and you were middle class, all thanks to adds in the Voice. It was a better world then, and a better NYC.
28
I became a weekly reader in the 1960s when I was in high school in New Jersey. Not to be overlooked in this reminiscence is the wonderfully insightful cartoons of Jules Feiffer. His work rounded out the political reporting, the arts commentary, and the cultural coverage of our late, lamented friend. RIP, VV.
22
I'm that rare bird, a person who was actually born in Greenwich Village when there was no East or West Village, just THE Village.
My parents were blue collar workers as were most of our neighbors. There were also the wealthy, particularly along Fifth Ave, near Washington Square, but the Village was not the homogenized and oppressive wealthy enclave of the rich that it is today.
The Voice was a breath of fresh air, authentic, hard-hitting, a teller of the unvarnished truth, often hilarious.
In short, a relief from the mainstream media's fixation on wealthy New Yorkers. The venerable New York Times constantly engaged in that worship, from its ads and articles to its wedding announcements, which were inadvertently hilarious with their bios of newlyweds who held ancestry and credentials that only the highest echelons of New Yorkers could relate to. Needless to say the Times also was characterized by the same neoliberal tendencies it demonstrates today.
The Voice took no prisoners. Reading it was an education in and of itself.
I wonder if the Times would consider more in-depth coverage of the great city whose name it bears, as well as hiring some authentically leftists voices as regular columnists. What we have now are neoliberal and conservative voices.
Educate your readers with voices from all portions of the political spectrum.
92
@TM: Does the Times' still do "society page" coverage? That stuff was always a hoot. The "Grey Lady" seemed so appropriate a name after reading that stuff.
3
What an inadequate appreciation of the "Village Voice," which completely ignores its historic impact on New York's (and the world's) cultural identity. For the record, the "Voice" founded the Obie awards to both honor and promote New York's vibrant alternative theater scene which gave rise to playwrights such as Edward Albee and David Mamet. The "Voice" also featured Andrew Sarris, arguably the most influential film critic and film scholar ever, as well as Robert Christgau, dean of American rock critics, along with other influential music journalists such a Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs. It is also where James Wolcott began, initially as a television reviewer. And that's just for starters. Leland is guilty of a middle-brow notion that the arts are mere fluff compared to "real" stories regarding social problems and corrupt politics.
43
Beyond journalism, The Voice provided roommate classifieds—so widely utilized that strategy was required. The paper hit the newsstands on Wednesdays, but those in the know knew that a copy could be purchased at the Astor Place newsstand on Tuesday night around 9:00. When I was the apartment hunter, this early-bird snag made all the difference in the success of my quest. When I became the advertiser, I had literally 100 phone calls by Wednesday afternoon. The internet has robbed younger people of classically NY experiences like this. The Voice was a vital resource for me throughout my 20s.
52
@Susan
Yes! As a teenager I waited for the Voice to come out on Tuesday nights to look for a summer job. I found one in a sweatshop in 1989, calling from a pay phone the next Weds... I later found an apartment the same way. I snagged a great storefront rental in 2000 by finding it listed in the wrong section of the classifieds, thereby giving me the edge over all the other apartment-hunters.
5
In this age of "Localism" it is a complete shame that The Village Voice has shut down. Now is the time when Citizens need to connect with Solutions more than ever. Federal Government is pushing Services down to States. States are setting up Systems and pushing Execution of Services to Counties, Cities, and Towns. Local News has never seen an opportunity like this before. There are needs to connect that Local Media can serve. In doing so, there are multiple Revenue Streams from Multiple Stakeholders waiting to pay Local News for Connection and Amplification.
Sadly, it seems Village Voice could not wait this out and see the opportunities for Local News in today's shifting business and societal landscape.
6
Back in the day, the Voice was the go-to resource for finding an apartment in NYC. I recall getting the new edition the night before, on a Wednesday I think, to get an early start calling the rental listings, from a phone booth.
19
My second (and first full-time) job upon coming to New York in 1979. Working as a sales clerk at B. Altmans during Christmas and at the Voice was the best introduction to New York City!
12
Well they had cutting edge writing about the arts, too. The go to for music and movies.
18
Here's a piece about how Andrew Cuomo did when he headed HUD which is as relevant today as it was when it came out 9 years ago:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2008/08/05/andrew-cuomo-and-fannie-and-fred...
It details how Andrew Cuomo, practically, singlehandedly, caused the housing and mortgage crises of the last decade which resulted in people losing their homes to foreclosure, bank failures, bankruptcies, and ultimately the recession.
Rarely has one person caused so much damage. Good going Andrew!
28
@MIKEinNYC: And we note that this newspaper has endorsed Andy for governor at least two times. Go figure.
It "saved" an enclave for wealthy elites, preventing an excellent tool that could have reduced our traffic problems? No thank you.
Remember the name "Jane Jacobs" every time you're stuck in traffic on the GWB, or any of the very few other means of getting to and from NJ.
3
@MA
Thank goodness for Jane Jacobs. Standing up to a Goliath that never drove. He ruined cities. Take public transport.
23
I strongly suggest you read Caro's book. Moses inflicted horrific damage upon this city, obliterating entire neighborhoods and starving mass transit, schools and hospitals of money and resources. I live in this city, and prefer to think of it as something more than obstacle for people trying to get to New Jersey. If a fraction of what Moses spent on highways had gone to mass transit, we wouldn't have traffic problems.
45
@Margo Channing I do take public transport. That doesn't change the fact that traffic is a major problem, and the building of roads, bridges, and tunnels throughout NYC helped both to reduce traffic and helped commerce within and without NYC.
These were good policy decisions for the people of the NY area. There should have been more roads and bridges, starting (but not ending) with the highway going right through Greenwich Village.
I can still remember a day when there was great local reporting in The Times. But when you read this piece, you’d think the paper is located in some other city and not in the heart of Manhattan.
While we appreciate The Times’ excellent reporting on national and foreign affairs, would it be too much to ask if some additional content could focus on regular, everyday life instead of just the people who make over a million dollars a year? Do the rest of us not count for anything when it comes to your subscriber base?
88
@LIChef The Times serves Suburban enclaves quite well thank you.
@LIChef Local "news" seems to have devolved to features like "what to do this weekend" and "where Celebrity X likes to eat." There's very little news anymore. As a subscriber, I'd like the New York Times to cover New York as well as it covers D.C., Brussels and Beijing .
2
For my generation, in college in the '80s, the Voice was a shared context, the lens through which we got much of our information and news and understood the world -- even living as far away as California. I learned about Al Sharpton, Karen Finley, the Central Park 5, and Bess Myerson in its pages.
20
I subscribed to the Village Voice when I was in college in Kansas City in the mid-1970s. I had never lived in New York, let alone visited, so it was a window into another world, especially the emerging downtown music scene.
Reading about everything happening at CBGBs, I snapped up LPs by Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, et al, and as soon as I was done with school, I made a b-line for Manhattan.
Thanks, Village Voice. You changed my life!
51
@John Bennett Very good to hear this, John. I'll always be grateful to the Voice for giving the bands at CBGB the exposure we needed to make a living and expand our horizons.
5