'I see rainbows over 7th Avenue': Stories from Washington Square Park

WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk and the nonprofit, Street Lab, are working together to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We recently set up shop inside Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Here's some of what we heard.

The transcript of the voices we collected have been lightly edited for clarity.

Nathan Borgman: "I moved here in 2010. I took the U-Haul on the wrong bridge, you know, that I wasn't supposed to take it on. I don't remember, like RFK or something. So, it was like the tolls were too narrow, and I was the designated truck driver, and then, the mirrors were scraping against the side of the toll [plaza], and it was too late for us to back up and turn around. And it was this super corny thing because it was the summer of 2010 when that New York song came out with Jay-Z. And so that was blasting while we were going over the bridge. So that was the fun iconic coming to New York kind of moment."

Lisa Holm: "I live in the West Village. I have lived in the same apartment since February 1968. It's an 1880s tenement walk-up. I have three windows in my living room, two east, one south. I see rainbows over Seventh Avenue -- if there's an evening rainbow, which is kind of cool. And having grown up in Finland, getting an apartment with all those windows was the height of luxury because where I grew up, so much of the year, we have so little daylight, but I kind of came to the neighborhood and to the city thinking I'd spend a year and maybe move back to Finland, and I fell in love with this crazy city. I'm still in love with this crazy city."

Dylan Markowitz: "I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but this is my favorite park. My girlfriend's actually over there selling her art right now, and I'm going over to meet her after work. It just kind of feels like the nexus of the city in a way. This park specifically, it's just a matter of it feeling like when you're here, you're in everyone's backyard all at once. My girlfriend's over there selling her art. You have the guy that plays the grand piano over there. You have people that just sit here all day long and play chess. It's a feeling unlike any anywhere in the city. Even when you go to the other parks like Madison Square and Union Square -- Washington Square Park is an environment all on its own. It's its own thing."

Massimo Accardo: "I was born and raised in Queens, New York. I'm 21 years of age. I go to school in Manhattan. I go to Baruch. The reason why I'm here today is because I want to open up a little table. I want to sell copper lamps, all handmade. I make them at home. It's just been really hard to get out of the house because I'm trying to build this confidence. I'm so intimidated. I don't know what to do. So I was just talking with a man who makes leather and a couple other people who do things by hand. Some are seamstresses, others are tailors, a lot of them sell weed -- that's very popular here. That's probably the staple of Washington Square Park -- and chess. There's a lot of opportunity and I don't want to miss out. I think it's a prime time. I think all things are aligning right now, so I have a lot of hope."

Celia Karp: "I grew up in Greenwich Village and I still live here. It's always nice to sit on a park bench. Once I fed the pigeons in the wintertime and like 300 pigeons followed me right around the park on my walk, and that was pretty cool. I would say they're not rats with wings. They're like the nice bird. I think that rats, well, I have this theory that squirrels are friendly because people are friendly to them, and rats would be just as friendly as squirrels if people were nicer to them. The rats will come to you just like the squirrels, but we need to be nicer to the rats so we can train them to be friendly to us."

Becca Zimmerman: "I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My story is that my great grandmother lived in the Washington Square Village, those big buildings right over there, and I would come here to this park many weekends with her. She lived until she was 104 and the only thing that she would like to eat was a hot dog with extra sauerkraut. So I like to come here and get a hot dog with extra sauerkraut and think of Rose Aginsky Zimmerman."