Greenwich Village - also known as the West Village or the Village - is more upscale than the East Village and is the original corner of cool, the closest any American neighborhood comes to a corner of Paris. This part of town has been home to artists and writers, nonconformists, entertainers, intellectuals, and bohemians since the turn of the 20th century. Downtown charm is personified in lots of low-rise townhouses, thumbnail size gardens, secret courtyards, and a wacky serpentine layout of streets.

Washington Square Park and the rows of townhouses around it with charming alleys behind them are all frozen in time. The park, with its arch famous from much movie exposure, is the heart of the Village. This 9 ½ -acre park at the foot of Fifth Avenue is an oasis and circus combined, where skate boarders, jugglers, stand-up comics, sitters, strollers, sweethearts, chess players, fortune tellers, and daydreamers converge and commune.

In the early 1990s Chelsea, just north of the West Village, became a center of New York's gay male life. A weekend visit here might include the neighborhood's art galleries, dinner at one of the dozens of restaurants lining 8th Avenue, and club-hopping.

June is a great time for a LGBT-themed visit to New York. Pride Month highlights include the New Festival, a multi-venue, 10-day film fest; and the Heritage of Pride events, which include the Gay & Lesbian Pride March, the Rally, Pridefest, and Dance on the Pier. The march, which commemorates the Stonewall Riots, draws up to a million spectators who line 5th Avenue from 52nd Street down to Washington Square and west to Christopher Street in the West Village.