As he walked through his old neighborhood, he seemed puzzled by the changes. On Greenwich Avenue, he paused in front of Aesop, a high-end shop that sells only beauty products.

“I don’t even know what this is,” he said, glancing at the minimalist interior. The place used to be Chez Brigitte, an 11-seat cafe where Mr. Slattery spent his afternoons eating cheese omelets.

“There was a woman named Rosa, and there was a young Latin guy,” he said. “She was this large, beautiful blond woman, voluptuous, and this guy was a head shorter than she was. They would be mooning over each other the whole time. When the place closed, we figured they ran away together.”

He decided the Village was the neighborhood for him soon after an encounter with a woman outside Patisserie Lanciani, a tiny glass-fronted cafe on West Fourth Street. (It is closed now, and a clothing boutique has taken its place.)

“I’m sitting there on this bench,” he said, pointing out where the bench used to be, “and this woman says: ‘Do me a favor. Thread this needle for me,’ like she was my grandmother or something. She holds my coffee. I help her thread the needle.”

He completed the task, and the woman told him he was welcome to cut flowers from the rose of Sharon bush outside her apartment around the corner.