Remembering George Capsis – The Voice of the West Village

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” It was the end of a man’s life and downtown newspaper legend when family and close friends gathered to remember and give thanks for George Capsis in a private ceremony at St. John’s in the Village on Thursday, August 7. George, publisher of WestView News, “The Voice of the West Village,” passed away on July 24 at the age of 97.

Father Graeme Napier, Rector of St. John’s, officiated at the memorial, which is available for viewing on YouTube. Eric Bottcher, the New York Council Member representing the West Village, gave a heartful memorial speech about the extraordinary West Village patron, observer, and notorious eccentric, George.

Anastasia Kaliabakos, who got her start as a columnist for WestView News seven years ago at age 16, gave a thoughtful speech about how George believed people should stand for something, and how he protected the characters in the neighborhood he loved. Finally, Doric Capsis, George’s son, related stories from George’s life that those of us who knew him may have heard before but always love hearing again. How he met his wife during an unexpected tour of the United Nations, and married her three months later. How he wrangled a promotion at IBM from the showroom floor to head office. How he bought a Bridgehampton property directly from the farmer on a payment plan. And how he became a community advocate in 1968 when 1.1 million students were impacted by a teachers’ strike, including his three children.

Early in his marriage, George and his wife bought a brownstone at 69 Charles Street, former home to author Sinclair Lewis. The street was pretty barren at that time. In the 1970s, George became active in the Charles Street Block Association, where he raised money to plant the fully-grown trees you will see on this beautiful, shady street today. This became the nascent start of WestView News, which George began publishing when he retired in 2003.

George was known by all for his passion and tenaciousness. One of his most beloved, decades-long crusades was to bring a hospital back to the West Village after the closure of 161 year-old St. Vincent’s Hospital in 2010. He advocated ceaselessly, and a decade later, announced in WestView News that Northwell (Lenox Health Greenwich Village), the local clinic and emergency room, was going to open a catheter lab, essential for the efficient treatment of heart attacks. Five years later, in May of 2025, the lab opened. George gave the full passion of his heart to saving the lives of others.

George loved classical music as well. A string trio played a selection of his favorite pieces at his memorial service. One of George’s innovative ideas, in partnership with his companion, Dusty Berke, was to hold a series of concerts for seniors at St. Veronica’s Church on Christopher Street, which held its last official services in 2017. The series was free to seniors and very popular in the neighborhood, garnering kudos from George’s famous neighbor and friend, Sarah Jessica Parker, who used to live a few doors down from George.

George knew celebrities and politicians, but he fought for the voiceless and overlooked. I first wrote for the paper in 2017, but I didn’t meet George until 2019, after writing “A Sad Farewell to Beloved Cornelia Street Café.” He invited me to come meet in his kitchen, and he asked me an unexpected question. What did I want to write about? To my surprise, I answered “fashion”! I don’t know where this came from, but at that moment my monthly column “Karen’s Quirky Style” was born (now “Karen’s Quirky New York,” published in these Straus Media papers). Though George said he hated style, and never read my column unless I forced him to, nonetheless he published it every month.

This meeting led me into the world of WestView News, and I also met George’s companion and assistant, Dusty Berke, that day. I spent many hours around their welcoming kitchen table, and in their beautiful garden. It was always a lively place to be, with contributors new and old stopping by. George had an endless curiosity about other people—their stories, their lives, their worries. He always wanted to help, and used his position as much as he could. He also enjoyed his notoriety. His zest for life sometimes mingled with a hot temper and could lead to shouting, insults, and the occasional punching of a wall, which I witnessed. He also frankly admitted those occasions when he wanted to punch me!

Though WestView News was a monthly paper, George loved the excitement of a deadline, and he often disrupted the front page layout at the last minute with a late-breaking story, driving his low-paid production staff crazy. Everyone who wrote for the paper did so for free, out of love for George and the drive to express and contribute.

George was born on December 20, 1927 to his Greek father, Costas, and his German mother, Martha. He grew up in Washington Heights and studied at Columbia University. He met and married his wife, Andromache (Maggie), née Geanocopoulos, in 1958, after a whirlwind 3-month courtship, which inadvertently began at the legendary White Horse Tavern. (Years later, George was filmed interviewing the owner, Eytan Sugarman, there.) They both knew the day they met that they would marry, so why wait too long?

George and Maggie had two daughters and a son, all of whom attended P.S. 41. After his tenure at IBM, George worked as a consultant to the United States Council for International Business. This led to many exciting travel adventures, and upon his retirement in 2003 he began WestView News as a monthly newspaper, which at its height had a print run of 12,000 and was delivered to almost every residence in the West Village.

During the pandemic, the paper was in danger of shutting down due to loss of advertising revenue. The neighborhood rallied and 245 people donated a combined total of over $20,000 to a GoFundMe campaign. George was surprised and very moved by the show of support. He hadn’t realized how much the paper meant to people. This short clip from October 2020 shows George expressing his thanks.

Doric said that his father believed that the secret to a long and fulfilling life is to stay active physically and intellectually. He said his father swam in the Atlantic into his seventies and rode his bike throughout Manhattan into his late eighties. The final edition of WestView News under George’s leadership was published in July last year, when George was 96.

But prior to that, in December 2022, his core staff and many contributors left to found the breakaway paper, The Village View. A feud ensued between George Capsis and Arthur Schwartz, which was covered with a great deal of relish by Lincoln Anderson, then editor and publisher of The Village Sun, with sensationalism by John Leland in the normally staid New York Times, and with thoughtfulness and depth by Zach Helfand of the The New Yorker.

In an article of remembrance published on August 3, George’s now arch-enemy and erstwhile friend—the lawyer and senior editor of The Village View, Arthur Schwartz—copied many paragraphs verbatim from an Our Town article about George by Ella Martin-Gachot from May 27, 2022. I’m surprised by this blatant disregard for copyright law.

George, who married at age 27 was predeceased by his wife of 55 years, Andromache (Maggie), and a daughter, Ariadne. He is survived by his daughter Athena, son Doric, daughter-in-law Ariadne (who had the same name as his daughter), and grandchildren Sophia and Teddy.

Karen Rempel is a New York-based writer, model, and artist who writes a monthly column for Straus News.