Harlem

Harlem is the village that I grew up in.  My Harlem is the town located in The City that never sleeps.  My Harlem is the town that many did not want to live in.  It was the town with abandoned buildings, nightly 4 alarm fires, and corners festooned with the walking dead.  The walking dead were those hooked on heroin, and crack, who nodded and scratched on the many corners of Harlem.  My enclave was a town not often visited by Whites who often only ventured into the region on their way to upstate NY or Conneticut via The Major Deegan, AKA I-87, traveling 65 miles an hour.  I remember the simpler Harlem,  the town that no one wanted to live in, but African-Americans did, and called it home.  It is home to many who thrived and became the movers and shakers of the world despite some of the aspects of Harlem and because of a lot of the aspects of Harlem.  It is the home that I grew up in that though it had its problems was and is the place I revere.
 
I remember a Harlem that when walking along your block,  you were greeted by your elders who were quick to chastise if you were doing wrong, and as equally quick to praise if you were doing the right thing.  The Village of my youth had me and friends going to The Rucker Tournament on 155th and eighth Avenue to see incredible B-Ball before it became commercial as there are now corporate signs everywhere at Rucker.  My Sugar Hill Harlem was the one that had its yearly block party on Edgecombe that provided the obligatory politicians, shaking the hands of the elders of the block for votes, and the kids scurrying about, dancing to the the emerging hip-hop and rap music of the time that was being blasted from king size speakers, illegally getting juice from jerry-rigged public street lights.  The children playing games, and swimming in monstrosity of the pool-on-wheels that was driven into the block every year, and clamored after and luxuriated in.  The buildings of my Harlem are majestic and sturdy and many have been around since the turn of the century.  Strivers Row, Morningside Heights, Sugar Hill  and Riverside Drive are areas of Harlem that all have buildings that can remind persons of a Parisian, Holland or San Francisco Street as the architecture of buildings of Harlem are eclectic and many represent these regions of the world.
 
The Harlem of my youth is different from the one that is here now.  The Harlem now has the Starbucks with $2.00 coffee Lattes, and a movie theatre right up the way, both on 125 Street,  and owned by a prominent African-American Man and not like The Harlem of my years that had the vast majority of business in that area owned by  jews that didn't and wouldn't want to live in the neighborhood they served.  The Harlem of today's has jews and many other races of people that formerly would have never dreamed of living in Harlem clamoring to live in its enclaves as the drugs, and empty, burned out building, and nodding congregants have gone, and are replaced with buildings resplendent with opulence, and over-priced rents, and purchase prices. 
 
My Harlem of old has been replaced by a new Harlem,  and they mirror each other.  Both are riddled with problems, and both have the problem of racism, unemployment,  and inequities in housing.   But throughout the history of Harlem are people who subsist as no one can as this place is populated with generations of native Harlemites that have proven their stock.  The people of Harlem are people that regardless of change cherish the neighborhood of their birth, just as I do.