Dick says in "The Light That Failed" that an old device for an unskilful artist is to stick a superfluous bunch of flowers somewhere in a picture where it will cover up bad drawing.

I'm afraid writers are apt to use stock phrases in the same meretricious fashion.
But this is a fact just the same.

Nearly all the Greenwich Village places really have atmosphere.

You can be cynical about it, or frown at it, or do anything you like about it, but it's there, and it's the real thing.

It's an absolute essence and ether which you feel intensely and breathe necessarily, but which no one can put quite definitely into the concrete form of words.