This chapter offers an introduction to Washington Square Park as a social space, a place that is meaningful and comprehensible, amenable to sociological analysis. Visitors (“actors”) engage in behaviour that others, onlookers or bystanders (“audiences”) consider wrongful; what do they do in response? The author’s intention in this book is to address and answer two questions: What constitutes deviance in a fairly unconventional milieu? And: How does a very diverse collective of such unconventional parties get along in a fairly confined space? Unconventional, non-normative, or “deviant” events taking place in the park are observed and described by the author, such as a dog-owner letting a dog off-leash, beer-drinkers speaking loudly and in a vulgar fashion while listening to loud, amplified rap music, skateboarders whizzing by, almost colliding with pedestrians, marijuana sellers soliciting customers, the mentally disordered screaming and ranting, a percussionist banging extremely loudly on a metal plate. Some park-goers chastise the offenders, some walk away from them, others ignore them. What are the dynamics of these interactions? The author details these events and points out their implications for the sociology of deviance and social control.
