Greenwich Village Gambit

Manhattan, early '60s --  a place and a time. 

     One of the few sources of insight into this particular chess scene comes to us through the pages of the March-April, 1964 issue of Frank Brady's marvelous, though short-lived, magazine, "Chessworld." 

... John F. Kennedy was dead. Lyndon Baines Johnson took office unelected but would defeat Barry Goldwater by a landslide in the fall.....The Great Society replaced Camelot; Leonid Brezhnev replaced Nikita Krushchev....The CIA fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for direct US intervention in Vietnam.....the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted.....BASIC programming language was invented.....Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali became heavyweight champion of the world.....FTC requires health warnings on cigarette packages, even Newports.....Beatlemania

Twist and Shout, I Saw Her Standing There, Love Me Do, She Loves You were instant hits...but so were I Get Around and Fun, Fun, Fun by the Beach Boys.....Baby Love and Where Did Our Love Go? by the Supremes.....as well as Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison and You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling by the Righteous Brothers.....Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released Wednesday Morning 3 a.m. but not as Tom & Jerry.....Dylan ruled. 

     This article gives a brief but perhaps unparalleled glimpse into the Greenwich Village chess venues of that time.

"Chessworld" March-April 1964