Chapter 12 of the John Strausbaugh, History of Greenwich Village is fittingly called The Coney Island of the Soul. The chapter describes people and events during the infamous roaring twenties, a time of unabashed lechery and lewdness. And on that ship In New York City, Greenwich Village was the figurehead. Following is a quote from of a notorious denizen of The Village as written in History of Greenwich Village:
“A den of inequity, a sink of perversion. In other words, the place to go,” the bank robber Willie Sutton called it in his second ghostwritten memoir, Where the Money Was.” Among his many escapades, Sutton claims he was once taken to a party on MacDougal Street where the hostess opened the door topless, he saw a woman he knew performing oral sex on a man, naked women danced together, and “before long I was corralled by a lady poet who was down to her panties,” which she soon stripped off while receiving Ezra Pound.”
Coney Island indeed.
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