The Village is the one part of Manhattan that refuses to line up. North of Houston the grid takes over and never lets go, but down here the old lanes wander, cross themselves, and dead-end into theatres — and the walk is three kilometres of letting them.
Start under the Washington Square Arch, built to frame the long view up Fifth Avenue, then turn into the park itself. The fountain is the Village's living room: chess players on the stone tables, a busker by the basin, the NYU buildings pressing in at the edges. Sit a while before you head west. From there the streets start to misbehave — Bedford, Grove, Commerce, bending past brownstones and the wonky Tudor gable at Grove Street, the Cherry Lane Theatre tucked at the end of a two-block lane. You don't need a map so much as permission to get a little lost.
Then Christopher Park and the Stonewall Inn across the street, where the 1969 uprising began and where the markers are worth reading slowly. End at Sheridan Square, the Village Vanguard's red awning round the corner — the 1 train home, or a jazz set first.
