Clarkson St, West Village

Clarkson Street has good bits and bad bits. When it's nice, it's really nice: the eastern end of the street, where Clarkson turns into Carmine Street, is home to charming cafes like Tanti Baci and Cafe Espanol, plenty of green space at the James J. Walker Park, art galleries like Gran Enzo Sperno, and plenty of boutiques and chocolatiers. The prestigious City as School is here, as is the Carmine Street Pool. But while proximity to the West Side Highway is a plus for plenty of athletes, who use the running and bike paths obscured from traffic by a wall of foliage, on Clarkson Street the atmosphere gets a bit sketchy: this place is home to Mystique Gentleman's club, a seedy strip joint, Hot 97, the hip-hop radio station that has seen shootings and violence as late as 2006, and a pornographic video/gaming store - none of which are places many New Yorkers would feel comfortable walking past on their way home at night. A great street - but make sure your building is on the eastern side of it.

Clarkson turns into Carmine when it goes from West Village to Greenwich, so technically, Clarkson can be considered a little more exciting than it actually is. It's mostly residential and not many of the buildings are particularly old or history laden. There's one thing on Clarkson that totally doesn't fit in and that's the Hot 97 headquarters. It's the big NY hip hop radio station smack in the West Village and it's notorious for rap rivalry violence. People get shot in front of this building and I think that's both weird, sad and hysterical considering it's in the most uppity neighborhood in all of downtown. Across the street there's a linen store owned by Julian Schnabel's wife. His paintings are all over the walls, so if you want a quick museum trip with your bedding, this is the place.
There's a really interesting high school on Clarkson and Hudson that, apparently, teaches students by putting them in real world situations. I'm not sure quite how it works, but I guess business people in the area are always more prone to hire kids from this high school. There's a park that used to be the original Trinity Parish Cemetary. Edgar Allen Poe used to walk through here for inspiration. I doubt they moved the bodies. They never do. There's a public pool next door which is really rare for New York, let alone Manhattan.
The corner of Varick and Clarkson is an infamous spot for the lynching of a man during the Draft riots of 1863. There's no commemoration which I find interesting in a city that has statues all over the place for ridiculous things and people. Tiny street and not a ton on it, but it's not the worst street to live on if you can afford it. That's for sure.