Washington Square Park?

My wife is taking me into the city this Thanksgiving.  Do people play there all the time or is it certain times?  And what else is there to do around there, chess and non-chess related?  I think I saw a chess shop online, does anyone know if it's walking distance from where they play?

They play chess in WSP when the weather is nice pretty much all the time. There are chess shops about two blocks away on Thompson street. There used to be two chess shops one right across the street from the other and they hated each other, I don't know if that's still going on. I don't think it is. You could visit the Marshall Chess Club at 23 W 10th steet. It's the club started by legendary US chess champion Frank Marshall... it's a nice old brownstone on a pretty block... Fischer played there many times (I think he won the club championship a time or two as a youngster) and since the demise of the Manhattan Chess Club its the only major chess club in NYC. Outside of chess of course, there's absolutely nothing to do in New York, so you should definitely spend your whole vacation getting stripped of your Christmas money two dollars at a time by the blitz hustlers in Washington Square. Actually if you want some nice games of chess -- if the weather is ok you can often find some decent slow (no clock at all) chess as well as blitz in Bryant Park, which is the park behind "The Lions" -- the old main branch (now the Research Library) of the New York Public Library.