So we've spent the week revisiting old Greenwich Village Bob Dylan landmarks, thanks to the tireless work of SOTC writer/interviewer Rob Trucks and video guru Jeremy Krinsley; they've dropped by the Gaslight, Jones Street, Cafe Wha?, and the Washington Square Hotel, among various other Dylanologist shrines, interviewing the proprietors and sex-shop managers and other folks who now work and/or live nearby. We've now fused all four installments together into one master video for your viewing pleasure -- hopefully even Martin Scorsese can find something to chew on here, if it's only the shopkeeper whose favorite Dylan album is Free Willy. Enjoy:

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For the last day of our video series covering New York City's Bob Dylan landmarks (which has already covered places like the Gaslight, Jones Street, and Cafe Wha?), we step away from places where he lived and posed and played, instead curling back to Washington Square to find the place he met Allen Ginsberg, along with the second most famous rock 'n' roll hotel the city has to offer.

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Try and guess which famous song Bob wrote at this spot while you enjoy one of the six best margaritas in New York City. Pic by Trucks.

All this week we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's arrival in Manhattan; with Cafe Wha? and Jones Street behind us, day three of our video tour of Dylan's New York finds us heading just south of Washington Square to take in supplementary settings steeped in freewheelin' history: where he performed "Masters of War" for the first time, say, or where he wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." And in between the landmarks, we drop by to discuss present-day MacDougal Street with long-time T-shirt-shop-owner Dusan Djordjevic and his cousin Srdjan Pezo, Dusan's designated lifeline for all things Dylan.

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Pic by Trucks.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's arrival in New York City: To celebrate, each day this week we'll be taking you to a different landmark integral to the half-century-old Bob-in-NYC story, hosted by the most deadpan voice-over guy in history (that'd be me) and filmed by Voice video guru Jeremy Krinsley. In today's episode, we visit the still-intact Cafe Wha? (where it all started back on January 24, 1961) and 94 MacDougal, where Dylan lived -- unhappily, it would appear, thanks to that guy rooting through his trash -- for a few years after returning to the city in 1969.

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All photos by Rebecca Smeyne

If there's any metaphor for the price tag on elite higher education, just look to its student-run concerts. For Columbia's 250th anniversary a few years back, this alum remembers a blowout that included a no-show by Erykah Badu and one recently-hospitalized Wyclef Jean claiming painkillers as an excuse to scale the stage's light towers instead of performing more than 40 seconds of his songs. This to the horror and amazement of thousands in attendance.

Not to be outdone, this year's annual spring Bacchanal festivities (theme: "Chewbacchanal") reported a budget "over the $100,000" mark" and included performances from Of Montreal, Ghostface Killah, and Wiz Khalifa. ("Spending Columbia's money is very hard to do and takes a long time," the Columbia Spectator quoted Bacchanal treasurer Cleopatra McGovern as saying last week.) Last year's show (uber-famous alumni Vampire Weekend, Talib Kweli) brought in an estimated 1,000 students. This year's budget couldn't buy any performers scaling the stage, but it did afford Kevin Barnes, Ghostface Killah, Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa, and a white-powdered guy in his tighty whities.

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Take a guided tour of Carlos's Mexico City house here.

The genius of Todd P's MtyMx Festival this weekend is that he's introducing all of us to a gang of Mexican bands we probably wouldn't otherwise hear. Like Quiero Club, who we interviewed last week, or Los Fancy Free, a psych-garage foursome that the Fader singled out two years ago as a centerpiece of whatever was then the "Mexico City rock scene." Or more specifically, Los Fancy Free's drummer Carlos Icaza, who also happens to be one of the most prolific young drummers in Mexico City, splitting his time with psych-surf Las Comadrejas, '60s-throwbacks El Pan Blanco, and synth goofs Evil Hippie. Just in the last year, Icaza's been in Los Angeles recording with the likes of Jimmy Tamborello, jamming in Chicago with members of Bury My Teeth, and DJing "wild and crazy mexican RnR-soul-punk-psych-funk-tropical-grooves" under the nickname Tropicaza.

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Yeah it's Christmas, but it's also the dawn of the first of many, many maddeningly inconclusive conversations you're about to have about your New Year's plans. Let this guide help you. We're out of here for the day, and back on Monday. Enjoy the long weekend.

May your holidays look a lot like this. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

Our New Year's guide, below. Anything we missed? Feel free to add 'em in the comments.

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--R.I.P. Brendan Mullen, who was one of the first DIY promoters of punk and independent rock and the first regular booker of punk bands in Los Angeles. The Masque, a venue that became home base for all that is first-wave L.A. punk--including the Germs and the Weirdos--was in essence his baby and brainchild. The venue's Monster Island-like proportions (10k square feet) became famous as a cheap place to have shows and rent out rehearsal space until it was shut down by local authorities in 1978. Mullen, an otherwise completely healthy 60-year old, died of a sudden stroke. "Sometimes, your number is just up," said one of his neurologists.

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--The free download of Vampire Weekend's new track "Horchata" has shaken the dust off the intractable divides between the army of anons. Over at Brooklyn Vegan, we see college students ("The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock") pitted against college students ("...it's like the whiffenpoofs started a ska band. why would they do that? what do the whiffenpoofs know about ska? NOTHING. it's senseless."). There is also "Nathan Williams," who claims, "i have hummus on my balls," and, over at Stereogum, a Hipster Runoff reference and hateful abort-your-VW-loving-baby tirades and retributions. Notably, the track features percussion work by Mauro Refosco, the guy who played with Thom Yorke's band in Los Angeles. At this point it's starting to look like post-backlash backlash is not actually a thing. Get some lozenges and sip some rice drink, haters!

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--New York Governor David A. Paterson approves Jay-Z 's #1 spot on MTV's 2009 Hottest MCs in the Game list, and he let the cable channel know as much via e-mail. Vote-baiting, culture-critiquing gems included, "the MC that figures out that people 18 and older who got the right to vote in 1972 never exercised it till 2008 -- there's a real culture for discussing how our government works and how our society works. The MC who could blaze that trail and find a creative way of displaying it will be the MC of the next decade." G-Pat: dropping knowledge, making MSG cameos, confounding the youth vote.

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