Welcome to Harlem, USA

I love marathon day. Last year I didn't realize it ran down First Avenue, which is near my apartment, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the runners doing their thing from afar. I watched some of it on TV, too. It was nice.


This year, I saw the runners again as I was leaving my apartment, heading out to meet Jenny for an show downtown. I was out earlier this year, so I noticed a lot of non-runners walking toward First Ave with signs, checking maps, talking about how they hoped they were the right direction, too. And then something occurred to me, really for the first time: these people have no reason to ever visit Harlem. They probably don't have friends uptown and they don't go there to eat or shop, so I'm sure they rarely visit, if ever.

A stop lots of downtown Manhattan never sees.

If you look at a map of Manhattan, a third of it is Harlem and other uptown neighborhoods. It's a huge part of the city and of city life. But it's so often overlooked. I often hear stories about white people accidentally ending up in Harlem. In one such, a 20-something year old white girl missed the 86th Street express stop and, since the next stop is 125th Street (the heart of Harlem), she ended up there. Later, she updated her Facebook status with her mistake, and friends commented "Oh my god!" and "Are you okay!?" She eased their fears: "At least it wasn't after dark!"


Sure, at first, Harlem is hard to get used to. The people up there aren't flighty 20-somethings, they're New York City residents with family histories and relationships. My floor neighbor, a white woman, has lived in her apartment for 20 years, and her friend from the building next door was raised on the street and is now raising her kids there as well. The old woman on the third floor of my building lived there since the building opened, and her best friend lived in my apartment before she died. (One time she was hit by the M15 bus while crossing the street. She survived, though with a broken hip. Tough bitch.) These aren't rich people with daddy's money to blow or fancy jobs and houses, they're citizens of the city and, even more so, of their neighborhood.

East 103rd Street in the fall.

I never felt really uncomfortable in living in Harlem. The city is shady everywhere, and I've spent more 3 a.m. night waiting on the bus on the 125th Street or walking from the 103rd Street subway stop than I have anywhere else. The food is amazing. The views are gorgeous. After spending two weeks trying to locate an affordable belt and some sunglasses for Halloween, Meghan and I both had luck in Harlem, when even shitty ass Union Square failed us. We should have just looked uptown first.

I love Harlem. I've lived West, I've lived East, Meghan lives Northeast and Jenny lives Central, so we know a lot the neighborhood and spend a lot of time there. And while I obviously don't want it to be the next Williamsburg, I do wish more people would give it a chance. I'm glad I'm living my first years in the city here, and I'd love a big brownstone to raise my kids in eventually.

The view East Harlem out of my bedroom window on a sunny day.

After the show yesterday, Jenny and I were near the park and saw the end of the marathon. People were cheering on strangers and friends got onto the track the encourage and run the last half mile with their friends. I couldn't help but tear up, thinking about this sense of community that is New York. And I thought about the community that is Harlem, where my neighbor will look out the window and check on me sometimes. New York is so much more than Gossip Girl and townhouses and bankers and money. And I just don't know if people who haven't lived in a real neighborhood like Harlem, one that real estate moguls didn't combine words to make the name of, get a sense of that that history. Or of that change.

I wonder if people look at me and think I'm invading that history and causing that change. I know they can't see it when they walk past me on the street, but I hope they realize that I respect their traditions and history and their neighborhood, and that I want to grow within it as much as they want to preserve it. We love it in different ways, but we love it all the same. And I'm in it to stay.