Harlem

The 121st street is the borderland between two ideas of New York, a piece of the city that changes. Artists, old barbers, renovated buildings, sandwiches and skulled buckles. Harlem: people come, people go and removals are ordinary things. Old inhabitants that still live here, sitting on their plastic chairs or on the stony stairs, stare at the new ones. They are watching the future of the borough: rich businessmen, artists, intellectuals. New people, put up a close-fitting track suite and worn the helmet, start their mornings riding a trekking bicycles to explore the zone, under the amused sight of the babies that are playing with the hose water. And the new ones, the artists, the intellectuals, stare at the playing babies. With a new house, they have gained a image of New York that was thought no more existing, often seen in the museums photos. This is Harlem, the 121st street between Lennox Avenue, for twenty years also called Malcolm X, and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. We are in the exact point where is passing the wave of “gentrification”. Literally it means the reclaiming of damaged and poor boroughs by new and richer inhabitants. This the cause of buildings growing prices that makes old inhabitants to move in other quarters. Standardization gives new shops, restaurants, gyms, banks and the same way of living in every borough of the city. This corner of Harlem is changing is very fast, but old and new inhabitants live and blend together both in Jemel’s barber shop and in Harlem Vintage, the Harlem wine shop that sells only rare bottles and that could be called a “wine boutique”. An hotel in Harlem is the right way to find a cheap accommodation, to live New York real life, to gain the respect of the borough, to know its history and to eat in a real “soul food restaurant”.

Malcolm X at 125th, facing north
by ILuvHarlem

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