Folk Music Found Dead in Washington Square

When I first moved to New York in the summer of 2001, I wasn't at all surprised to find the West Village practically devoid of folk music. I knew Gerde's Folk City was long gone, as was the Gaslight and the more recent Fast Folk Cafe. I knew the glory days of Bleecker, MacDougal, and "Positively Fourth Street" had long ago hitchhiked the wind into some pop culture memory.

That's precisely why I made a point of sitting in Washington Square with my guitar as often as possible. I wrote some great songs there, but I was usually the only one. My Songwriter comrades were all on the east side or somewhere in Brooklyn doing there thing. So it didn't really shock me at all to come across this article in the Rhino Rzine, that eulogizes the long ago death of Folk Music south of 14th St. and West of 5th Ave.