Cody
Williams
Rethinking Harlem
A rather entertaining panhandler stood up on the Bronx bound Number 2 train seconds before the subway reached the 96th street station and announced that he was gifted with magical powers.
“Watch me make all the white people disappear,” he shouted.
Sure enough, when the doors of the train opened each and every Caucasian straphanger gathered their belongings and quickly exited. Blacks and Hispanics replaced them, the doors closed and the train proceeded to its next stop, 110th street; its first stop in the village of Harlem.
This scene took place in 1994 when it was damn near impossible for me to get any white friend or coworker to breach the 96th street racial divide that separated the Black, Spanish and culturally rich Harlem from its Upper Eastside and Upper Westside Manhattan neighbors. If a Harlem address was on the invite whites had two guiding edicts: don’t go there; don’t invest there.
That was then. This is now.
Stand today on Harlem’s 116th street and look north up St Nicholas Avenue towards 125th, with its construction and housing renovation boom and Paris, France comes to mind. Stroll along Lenox Avenue today and you’ll see a multicultural splash of white folks, black folks, yellow and brow folks getting their grub on in side walk cafes, eating desserts in patisseries, grooving to live music in world renowned jazz clubs and worshiping in gospel music swaying churches.
Harlem, famous for its artistic renaissances, is in the midst of what seems like a multi-cultural one. Any time of day or night one can look around and see different nationalities strolling Harlem’s envied wide boulevards; shopping, working and making their home in what was once considered the forbidden zone.
At one time you’d be hard press find a Harlem home or apartment listing in the real estate sections of mainstream newspapers like the New York Times, Newsday or the Post. The Village Voice would list a few dwellings in its “Above 96th Street” section. Now you can find banners slung across scaffolding announcing Corcoran Group (brokers for the rich and famous) properties for sale or rent in and around Harlem. Even Columbia University, peering down its Morningside Heights perch, is eyeing prime Harlem Valley real estate to develop. Residents atop Morningside Park, which includes the Ivy League university, once petitioned to secede from a blighted Harlem to become its own neighborhood.
With the recent ‘take-a-home, build-a-strip mall’ Supreme Court decision allowing local governments to take land from one private citizen and give it to another to reap greater tax benefits many long time Harlem home and business owners are shaking in their dreadlocks for fear of having their ancestral stumping grounds snatched up, forcing them like refugees of war to migrate into less desirable locations across Manhattan’s bridges or through its tunnels.
Harlem has rebounded from years of bank loan neglect. Aided by America’s first honorary Negro moving in, President Bill Clinton, the boom that started on 125th Street, with the opening of a Starbucks and The Body Shop has increased the property value and investment options for much of the area. While investing in real property anywhere might be risky at the height of the current bubble, rental units, restaurants, night spots and other storefront services in the area will probably boom for a long time to come. With this boom you can expect Harlem to become even more diverse, and fun.
Below is a list of helpful tidbits that may help the new urban pioneer’s transition into Harlem, the heart and soul of Black America.
-
Harlem honors its own: 6th Avenue downtown is Lenox Avenue / Malcolm X Blvd uptown. 7th and 8th Avenues downtown are Adam Clayton Powell Blvd and Frederick Douglass Avenues respectively.
-
In restaurants like Native, Harlem Grill and Bayou you can expect as good a meal and atmosphere as anywhere else in the city. Expect to pay the downtown prices in them too.
-
For real down home live blues, jazz and soul music on many nights The Lenox Lounge, Nikkis and Showman’s can’t be beat for the price of admission (free) anywhere else in the country.
-
However, remember this while uptown: Never stand with your back to the bar. It is viewed as either an insult to the proprietor, or as tradition holds it, you have agreed to purchase a round of drinks for everyone in the joint.
-
Strongholds: gentrifying newcomers beware 113th and 114th streets between 7th and 8th avenues ain’t changing for nobody. Enter at your own risk.
-
The queue is a European concept. There’s no such thing as standing in line at the corner bodega. Think old-world market place. Bum-rush the clerk waving your money and merchandise until you get his attention. He’ll snatch the money and toss your change and a carrying bag to back to you.
-
The Plexiglas dividers that cut the bodega up in cubes is bulletproofed to protect the clerk in case of an armed robbery. If you see him do a belly flop behind the candy stack you’d better duck too. Somebody’s got a gun.
-
That little square window in the Plexiglas near the register is for playing your ‘numbers’ only. Even if its line is short, don’t think about sashaying over to it with your Evian and fat-free granola. The taunts and shouts you’ll endure as you slink back to the mob vying for the cashier’s attention can be humiliating.
-
Don’t join church thinking all of the Caucasians you see in service are members. They are Scandinavian tourists and will leave as soon as the buses parked out side give the 30-minute signal.
-
If the calendar date is nowhere near the 4th of July, don’t mistake that popping sound you occasionally hear for firecrackers. Take cover. Somebody is shooting.
-
Don’t buy batteries, DVDs, movies or tapes anywhere in Harlem expecting to be the original owner. That Ever-Ready Bunny is most likely going and going and going on its third or fourth life.
-
Chances are that the athletic socks, video games, designer watches and occasional pot roast hawked in the bars, barbershops or on street corners belonged to someone else too fifteen minutes before you got the pitch.
-
No, MTA policy does not allow passengers to enter city buses through the rear door. Use the front door in Harlem too, where the driver and fare box are. Don’t follow those heading towards the back door trying desperately to avoid both.
-
Harlem is bring BYOPS (Bring Your Own Pooper Scooper). Too many Harlemites have yet to embrace the concept of curbing your dog.
Note however, Harlem is still a fun and culturally rich place to live, dine and be entertained. Its new diversity can only make it better and capitalizing on it can possibly be very profitable.
© 2005 www.codywilliams.com
Send Feedback
Send Feedback