Happier Times: A Walk in Greenwich Village

[beamjockey]

About a year ago, we were visiting my brother and his wife, and walking through New York, window-shopping on our way to somewhere. Suddenly I stopped. I'd spotted a delicatessen with a sumptuous display of various foods in its window. "Wait!" I said.

My family were puzzled, but they are used to eccentric behavior by now. I was pulling out my cellphone camera. They sighed. "Why?"



"This is Greenwich Village!" I said. "Jack Kerouac may have eaten here! Or Allen Ginsberg! Or William S. Burroughs!"

Right there in the window were something I'd always heard about:

The legendary Beets of Greenwich Village.

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

obGroan

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

You'll pay for that.

And I'll bet you're looking forward to it, too.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Why Bill? WHY? What did we ever do to deserve THAT?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Because we hurt the ones we love... Ouch.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

I assume this is some sort of play on words?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Yes. Here, have a small clue.

(I was taking a chance that you wouldn't understand. Comedy entails risk.)

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

The "beets" of Greenwich Village.

Groan.
Sigh.


Yes. I remember much the same feeling my first time there -
without the horrible pun though. :-)

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Ow...

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Sounds like they've got the beet.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

So yesterday at my mother-in-law's house a bunch of us were playing Taboo, which is a silly party game in which one has to induce one's teammates to guess a secret word by shouting clues that are not on the prohibited list on a card. samantha2074 got "beatnik" and started saying names like "Jack Kerouac" (who was apparently not prohibited). Her teammates weren't familiar with Kerouac and didn't score that point, but her mother later said that she'd have gotten "beatnik" if Sam had said "white lipstick". I guess this is the difference between a historical and a firsthand perspective.

[(Anonymous)]

Ginsberg might have been a better clue for me than Kerouac. However, the best clue which would have given it to me right off the bat would have been Maynard G. Krebbs.

[charlie-meadows.livejournal.com]

I'd *like* to believe you weren't actively scouting the storefronts for an opportunity to use that pun (I know *I* would have been...).

A ways back (was it already *ten* years before this blog entry), there was a touring exhibition of Beat culture. One of the memorable items for me was *the* typewriter with *the* original manuscript scroll of _On The Road_ placed in it (one long strip of pages all taped together...). Don't know if Kerouac would have been amused or found it perverse for us to have the thing under a vitrine box after 40 years...

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Vile, putrid, loathsome, and toadlike!




Well done. Very few puns manage all four.