The Village & All That Jazz
We hope you can join us for The Village and All That Jazz, an evening of music and history at Zinc Bar Monday, March 4th presented by GVSHP’s Brokers Partnership – RSVP here. Pianist Joe Alterman will perform and award-winning music critic Gary Giddins will explore the jazz scene of the Village during the 1960s, touching on his thirty years writing for the Village Voice as well as his personal recollections of the Village.
The event will take place at Zinc Bar at 82 West 3rd Street between Thompson Street and Sullivan Street. Zinc Bar’s home on West 3rd Street has seen many changes over the years.
Until 1939 the much of West 3rd Street was shrouded in shadows, as it sat underneath the 6th Avenue el. Despite being the ‘6th Avenue’ line, the elevated railway ran up West Broadway until it hit West 3rd Street, when it turned west and ran down 3rd Street until it turned north again on 6th Avenue.
The actual building at number 82 housed the former Cinderella Club, where from the 1930s to 1950s jazz giants like Billie Holiday and Thelonious Monk performed, and Mae West hung out in the audience. By the 1960s and 1970s, the after-hours club Tenth of Always (subjected to raids by the police in the early 1970s) was using the space as well as the noted lesbian bar Bonnie & Clyde’s. By the 1980s and 1990s, as the stand-up comedy scene blossomed, The Baggot Inn called the space home and became a watering hole for many of today’s familiar comedy faces.