In my life time I've seen
Ghettoization via heroin, the "Great Smack Attack", to the cocaine snowstorm gentrification.
The future now is in the hands of the children from 96 St. on the West and 96 St. on the East to 170 St.
The little "h" on the map, to pay the positive and negative taxes have to pay to be the Landlords of the Harlem
"Live the all Harlem Life!"- Mayo
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Here, on the southern edge of Morningside Heights, is what they like to call a "Real Mixed Bag." You’ve got the gracefully landscaped greenery of Riverside, Morningside and Central Parks – those luxurious expanses where you can let loose your hound before 9 a.m. and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow dog people, that is, if you time it right and avoid the crackheads finishing off their morning binges. There is a noticeable dwindling of baby strollers and those pretty fair-haired packages under the guard of their brown nannies, all of which are teeming just below in the West 70s and 80s. Stressed out doctoral students procrastinating with shopping or reading the papers at the diner are more likely to populate this area, as are the teens who gather in front of apartment buildings and talk in their shouting way, “Niggah this, niggah that, niggah, niggah, niggah, niggah, tellin’ you, niggah . . . Right, yo?” until all hours of the night. And then there’s the familiar face with its familiar gait strolling up Amsterdam Avenue toward w.108th Street, selling cigarettes at 50 cents a pop. He has to walk around the line of folks waiting for a cheap, good Mexican meal, to give his mami a kiss. A few doors up, women waiting to redo a month-old French manicure or simply have their calluses shaved and their toes glossed with an unassuming shimmering silver cram Sassy Nails. Everyone is forced into more intimate terms with each other in this narrow storefront. You almost feel obliged to coo admiringly at someone’s French tips or commiserate with another’s disappointing shade of polished toes. “It’s too autumn,” said a blonde girl one Saturday morning, as she extended her toes. The ladies, both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking, nodded and mimicked her pout. Here is where you’ll realize that there are rats and then there are rats. None are as bold as the tribes of rodents who emerge at night on 108th and 109th streets. Their engorged shadows gallop beneath the street lamps. It would be almost poetic if it weren’t for the near misses with these guinea-pig size critters. Open-toed shoes are not recommended in these here parts at night.
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