Bagel Love
My relationship with Harlem has love affair written all over it. When it's good, I'm high as a kite. I've got a skip in my step as I cross each neighborhood block, eagerly anticipating what the day will bring. There are little surprises, inside jokes, mysteries to unfold and a deep well of stories that I have only begun to mine. I feel excited, fortunate and mostly... inspired.
But when it's bad, I can't breathe—like the neighborhood is suffocating me. These are dark days when I have trouble letting the annoyances here roll off me; days that I am angry about all the trash on the sidewalks, upset by the incessant cursing I hear on the streets and the late-night stream of men proposing hot bagel love as I make my way home from the subway.
In the journalism graduate school program I attended in Chicago, I was trained to not only get both sides of a story, but to get as many sides as possible. I recognize that this is simply a blog, but I feel obligated to crawl out of my skin and provide, however small, some amount of objectivity in my posts. Lately, however, that has proved difficult, as my bagel is a bit broken.
I suppose what I'm feeling is nothing new to New Yorkers, and certainly isn't confined to my neck of the woods uptown. It's a tough city no matter where you live.
My love affair with Harlem is up and down; it ebbs and flows and veers off track. Only time will tell if we're a good match. But for now, it's a ride I will continue to take—with caution and optimism.
posted by Rachel Natalie Klein at 1:53 AM
32 Comments:
This is a great post. I feel much the same way. Some days I love Harlem, some days I can't help get annoyed by the noise, dirt and the not-so-subtle "get the crackers out of Harlem" remarks as I walk on 125th. This hatred for new residents really upsets me and as much as I love Harlem's wide streets and architecture, I wonder if I made the right choice when I moved here. But then, some mornings, I pass by folks who look me in the eye and say Good Morning. Or I go to Settipani and the owner comes by to introduce himself and welcome me to the neighborhood. That's when Harlem feels like the welcoming, wonderul home that I could never find downtown.
I'd be curious to know what sparks the down-lows for you, bagel?
Same here. I have lived in Harlem for five years with my boyfriend. We both have had ups and downs. He was recently pretty violently bumped for no reason by two guys.
Neither of us had been bumped in a while. I have heard remarks again lately. Although to be honest, I wear my headphones most of the time even, if I have the iPod off. I just get hasseled less that way.
I also love the friendliness of my neighbors. We live on a great block. But the hostility is unrelenting and I sometimes wonder if I really want to live where people are hostile all the time.
It's not threatening but it really does chip away at my quality of life,
It's interesting because I don't feel like much of the hostility is directed at me, the cracker. What I do see is a lot of agressive/hostile behavior being directed at anyone and everyone who comes into contact with the neighborhood. Mothers telling their children to shut the f**k up, people screaming at each other about this or that. I just wish they'd stop yelling. it's so juvenile.
My experience, great neighbors, great block, more like a neighborhood than anywhere I lived below 96th St.
As for the local red necks, there are a few, hear very little from them.
I have heard comments on occasion and my reaction is still disbelief that such ignorance exists in this big international city.
It is disheartening to hear such talk but it always rejuvenating to be back on my block amongst people who know me.
As is typical with racists, their beliefs are based on ignorance, and never from anyone I know.
Also, it is not just a black white issue, that same ignorance prevails between a few in the different black groups, old timers, new immigrants from Africa, Rastafarians etc etc.
Also, amongst my friends and neighbors and old timers, there is much wisdom and interesting people.
I am here to stay and like all NYC life, you have to take the good with the bad, for me the good far outweighs the bad.
I have not yet moved into the neighborhood, but signed contracts on a new condo about a year ago. I have visited the area many times since choosing to live there, and have a different experience every time I go. Sometimes it feels sunny and welcoming and exciting... sometimes it feels hostile and dirty and no place I would want to spend my time, let alone live.
Optimist that I am, on New Year's Eve last year I decided to go uptown and spend the first minute of the New Year standing outside the place I would soon call home. It is my first home, and my first move in NYC in nearly 16 years. Needless to say, it was a wonderfully romantic and symbolic scenario I had painted in my head. Not 50 feet out of the subway at 125th Street I was met with a shouted greeting: "Tall faggot!" At that moment, I realized that Harlem, with all its pros and cons, would never be what I want it to be. Rather, it would only be what it is at any given moment. We'll have good days and bad as we get to know each other, but one has to remember it is a bad idea to go into any relationship thinking you can make the other person change. Same goes for neighborhoods.
Anon at 3:46PM
Life in NYC is full of good and bad moments, everyone is sharing the streets with everyone, there are jerks everywhere.
My years of Harlem experience have taught me for every bad interaction there are 100 good interactions.
Harlem has some wonderful people, hope you take the time to get to know some of them.
Then Harlem becomes a truly great neighborhood, well worth making the effort.
This is a good post, very well written. But; do you ever stop and wonder why the people in Harlem have that hostility? Would it be better to live in a palce where you were not getting "bumped"?
I currently live in a new co-op building in Harlem and have witnessed hostility towards new comers in the neighborhood, which I find disturbing. I also have noticed that the comments are always made on 125th street, which makes it quite possible that those making the comments are not Harlem residents. When I first purchased the apartment with my husband, who is Harlem born and bred, many of our friends who live in Harlem questioned our decision “I wouldn’t buy an apartment in Harlem, I would buy a house down south,” “I would buy a house upstate,” Some even took measly pay offs to move out of their apartments rather than take ownership of their building as a tenant collective and making improvements. For those who realized that their dream of purchasing a home would never come true and are now stuck in a crummy building or block, why get angry at new comers and not the politicians who have been in office for decades and have made few changes in Harlem? The same politicians that attend ribbon cuttings to the new constructed buildings, that never advocated for cleaner supermarkets (Pathmark) until gentrification was inevitable, the same politicians that allowed the community to be overrun by programs that attract a criminal element ( FIVE drug treatment programs + homeless shelter + SRO on one block = criminal element)
I think Harlem residents have always been welcoming towards others; the problem is that despite the revitalization in Harlem, there is still a lot of despair and therein lies the problem.
What I am getting from reading this thread of comments is that the people of non-color seem to feel that those feelings are based on the color of their skin. Not fair Mon Frere! I have been black my whole life and although I am not native to NY or Harlem I also have a love/hate relationship with the neighborhood. Some days it is incredibly bright and unique and others it is the last place in the world I want to be. I experienced the same thing in N.W. Washington, D.C. in the late 90s. It's called living in a changing neighborhood and you signed up to accept the good with the bad when you decided to move into the community. Suck it up!
I live on 145th and the trash is depressing. And the parents swearing in front of their little kids. And you know those kids will be doing same things in front of their kids in fifteen years.
We don't hear much anti-white stuff here though, but the neighborhood is also very Dominican/Hispanic, not just black.
Anon at 11:42 AM
Disagree, when you hear the words whitey and cracker, guess what, it IS about the color of skin.
But as always, this is the FEW that give a bad rap to the many good people of Harlem.
These FEW are the dinosaurs struggling in the tar pit of bad life choices.
To be fair, some Harlemites are equal opportunity haters, not just against whites but for a few haters it is the old timers vs. the new African immigrants vs. the Rastafarians vs. the Mexicans etc etc.
So when you hear this hate talk, we should NOT just suck it up, or there would have been no civil rights movement and where would America be.
Anon at 2:01 AM
Confirming your theory of non Harlem residents, my white friend when shopping on 125th heard some of the same old ‘stay out of my neighborhood comments’, when confronted, turns out they where from Brooklyn, not Harlem.
Also, Harlem had some trouble at the African American day parade, again, lots of visitors, not the same people you see everyday on the streets of Harlem.
The Harlem locals are to the most part really nice people.
Glad I found your blog! I'm a white girl on 125th street, and I really love it. Mostly it has been a totally positive experience, although last week there was an anti-gentrification rally around the corner on Tiemann. Am I "gentrification" soley b/c I'm not Old Harlem? Not sure. I won't live in NYC forever, but this is the place for me while I'm here.
This is anon at 11:42 as you've referred to me. As it turns out I have lived in Harlem for several years and NEVER heard anyone use those "slurs." I've also lived in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn and also never heard them. Hmmm, am I losing my hearing?
Anon at 5:05 PM, I rarely hear these ‘slurs’ on the street, but it does happen.
I am happy for you, you can live in Harlem and never have to hear this.
The times I’ve heard racist comments on the street is around tourist frequented areas, draw your own conclusions.
Also it is not just street comments, talking to some locals, I am shocked by the open racism used casually about other groups.
I never heard this kind of talk until I came to live in Harlem.
Thankfully it is the few, but these few really should know better.
This is the issue; when whites move in to a neighborhood of color where they have more money than those that previously existed they are not coming to peacefully live side by side rather they are coming to conquer and they settle down in the manner of white pilgrims before them and European settlers in Africa and that is why I call them Rhodesians. What angers me is that many of themselves think of themselves as progressive liberals and they use almost the exact same language as colonizers used in decades past in saying that they are the saviors of a God-forsaken land.
It is fine for white people and professionals to move and live anywhere if they want to be a part of the community and not take over the community and that is the issue. Harlem has played a special role in African-American history and culture and its uniqueness needs to be preserved; there are already plenty of places to go in New York to get a latte, eat a bagel, read the New Yorker and pat yourself on the back for being so progressive (in your mind) and do your best imitation of what you have seen in Sex in the City and Friends. .
Umar -
In New York, people squabble over real estate. The bigger the economy booms, the more there is going to be a $$ 'creep' out into neighborhoods that are perceived as undervalued. Sure, it's a kind of colonialism, to the extent that economic migration always affects people. But why should the people who live there now really care? I would guess that economic revitalization of Harlem would be (and has been) considered a positive good by the large, silent majority of residents there, notwithstanding the highly vocal 'activist' types who claim to speak for everyone. Those who own apartments or operate small businesses in Harlem would certainly benefit from more money coming into the neighborhood, all residents would benefit from better neighborhood services, infrastructure, cleaner, better lit streets, parks, etc. Why wouldn't black people want that too, or why do you somehow consider that to be antithetical to black culture?
Furthermore, Harlem doesn't 'belong' to the black neighborhood any more than the Lower East Side belonged to the Jews. Yes, Harlem culture in the '20s was a monumental period in American history, and Harlem has traditionally been black since the late 19th century (though it was built by rich white people before that). However, the bigger of an economic engine NYC becomes, the more valuable Harlem is going to become. And then, yes, there is going to be some 'blandification', like, a liquor store will close down and a starbucks will open up instead, and the self-proclaimed progressives can sit around and piss and moan about the good old days while discussing the marginalization of the subaltern. I think you anger may be misplaced. Here's an article that I suspect will make you seethe, but it's an interesting read anyway:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-19-gentrification_x.htm
Finally, I don't see that bagel was complaining about racist comments one way or another...she seemed to be complaining about the trash and general stress of living in Harlem, if I'm not mistaken...
The beauty of this post is that bagel wasn't complaining about anything specific. It was an open book to be interpreted by us, the readers, in any way we wish - and so it brought up the issues that concern/ affect us the most. Again, this is a genius post, maybe one of bagel's best. Thank you, bagel, for initiating such an interesting conversation!
Umar,
Sorry to challenge your racist stereotypes, but not all white people aspire to the lifestyle of Friends and Sex and the City.
Just like we should never have neighborhoods that disallow blacks, we should never have places that are hostile to whites.
Defending hostility to whites is hypocritical and an insult to the struggles of those of the civil rights movement.
All of America should be open to people of color, including the color white.
Umar:
-You are the personification of the 'run-on-sentence racist'.
P.S. -My English Great-Grandfather lived on 119thSt/Park Ave in the 1880's, when it was "his" neighborhood. Now, after more than a hundred years, my family has moved back to Harlem. Do I have any less of a claim to these streets than you do? Should I claim "land-rights" over you (I mean, I guess "we" were here first right)? Does that sound ridiculous? I hope so.
my armenian grandmother, and great grandparents lived in harlem when "they were building the george washington bridge" - so i claim land rights too.
Umar,
Posts at 4:28 PM and 5:36 PM somewhat weaken your colonization argument.
... the sad thing is that the Umars of Harlem aren't willing to open their ears to our arguments. It makes all the sense in the world to us that no one can claim Harlem - or any other part of the city, for that matter! But tell that to the "old residents" - and you know you got yourself into one of the most racially-charged issues brought up since the 1950s.
The sad thing is that that it seems you guys have no respect for the opinions of other people. They do not have the education that you have and they do not have the jobs you have and their job is to shut up and serve you and be gone.
The fact of the matter is that everyplace in America is for whites and that there are very few places in America with the cultural significance of Harlem to black people. This is a story of those with money and power running over those without power with the help of the state, it is only a friendly version of the tactics used by those such as Robert Mugabe.
If a city is going to survive, and be a humane place, how can that happen when working-class people have to commute two hours to work? Or is it better that New York no longer be a city for families, of any color, and turn into a playground for the secular wealthy elite?
On the issue of the area improving what does that mean? If a Jamaican carry-out closes that the neighborhood loves and a Sushi place opens that the people don’t like and the prices are too high that doesn’t benefit them.
On the issue of me stereotyping which is a concept I don’t necessarily believe in, show me the working-class white families moving into Harlem and show me the cops, firefighters, construction workers and religious families. For every one I will show you ten guys walking around wearing tight t-shirts, rimmed glasses and a man bag.
umar-
i completely respect where you are coming from and even though when you say harlem is historicaly black, you are not entirely right, i understand that it's not the FACT of that, it's the impression of that which is important to black people around america. i think when you talk about the gentrification of bed stuy when you are not in new york, you wont get much of a reaction out of people....but if you talk about the gentrification of harlem---you've walked into the same racially charged conversation no matter what city or town you find yourself in. harlem represents black culture and that's why it's so sensitive.
having said all of that...im middle class (a teacher) and i moved to harlem because i my rent control apartment got deregulated. of all the places i could afford to live, i loved harlem the most. so now im here. so are other white people. so i just dont know that you posting on this board that maybe we'd all be better off if we just packed up our bags and went somewhere else is helping the situation.
what you are doing is giving the new arrivals of harlem the impressoin that you and others hate us...which serves only to cause a deeper rift between the residents of harlem. MORE tension. MORE hate.
how will that change anything or help anyone?
"I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating."
- Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country
Umar, why do you equate white with rich?
I am white and I make VERY little money. So little, in fact, that the only place I could afford in the City is Harlem. Why am I so different from the blacks in Harlem who have similar income? Should I maybe write "White, but POOR (so don't be hatin')" on my forehead?
Umar,
We have had stereotypes…
“tight t-shirts, rimmed glasses and a man bag”
We have had unfounded assumptions…
“their job is to shut up and serve you and be gone”
We have had justifying hostility…
“why the people in Harlem have that hostility”
I am sure you would not like to be described as a stereotype, accused of unfounded assumptions and treated with hostility.
Please do not do it to others, this is a double standard.
Umar,
This is now 2006 in America, you can now get ahead and own a piece of Harlem if you want, but you will have to work for it.
This is not the 1860’s, the civil war was won by the North.
This is not Africa in the 1900’s, interesting argument but Harlem is not being colonized by the Europeans, trust me, you will not lose your right to vote or own property in Harlem. But your favorite hair braiding store may be replaced with a sushi bar.
This is not the 1960’s, the fight for civil rights has already been won, you can sit anywhere on the bus, but you may have to sit next to a white person.
If black America wants to own Harlem then they are welcome to buy property like anyone else.
If you keep living in the 1860’s 1900’s or 1960’s, the 21st century will pass you by and you will be really angry and really left behind.
The posters who talk about their white ancestors who lived in Harlem 100+ years ago miss the point. For those of us who are protective about Harlem, it's not really about who was here first (native americans, truly) but who has sustained and remained in Harlem and not abandoned Harlem. Black folks came and stayed and have truly made the internationally-known black culture of Harlem from the renaissance to hip-hop respected and emulated throughout the world.
I'm a 3rd generation African-American Harlem girl (although I've also lived in DC, LA & Boston) and I am loving being back in Harlem. I live in a new condo and I try to spend my dollars in Harlem, although the lack of some services lead me downtown still --- I love Hue-man bookstore, but sometimes I need something from Barnes and Noble, and dang if I can find a decent manicure pedicure place--. I also love the dichotomy of gentrified Harlem. Seeing white moms pushing their babies in $600 strollers on the same street brothas are shooting dice. You gotta love it! Can't we all just get along?
Hey Harlem girl,
have you been to the new nail spa on 125th St, between 5th and Lenox (right next door to MoBay)?
I haven't been there yet, but it's brand spanking new and they're still running a grand opening special - mani + pedi for $17! Sounds pretty good, and the place looked clean. I'm tired of getting my nails done in midtown!
Harlem Girl,
You are the new Harlem, proud of your ancestry, new apartment, not threatened by outsiders, spend your money locally, willing to get along.
Very happy to have you as part of Harlem.
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