Harlem: Conference Research/Meditation

As I work through transcriptions upstate in Poughkeepsie New York, visiting friends and family, I've decided to narrow my attention back to Harlem. It is my home, but I am a stranger here. I am part of the gentrification and the struggle of privilege, race, economy that has existed here forever. I continually work through footage I have collected, the trouble I have separating this from my life, and the reality that New Yorkers older than I have been through far graver tragedies, I can hardly remember 9/11, I wasn't alive when Times Square was all smack and hookers and I do not remember when I left the city, my parents crunching crack vials under their feet as they left their east village apartment .As I gather more stories I look farther than this college semester, towards a life of documentary service and community work...the stories are far bigger than I elusive and ethereal...as I continue to explore the stories, the stories of all New Yorkers, I get father away from the concrete I that has for so long dominated my wanderings. 

I will post my transcript tomorrow. 

If you have time I would love some feedback on the new media/oral history blog I have been updating:: There are more of my past writings on Harlem within it. (Gabriel's wordpress)

Here are a few of the sources I am currently looking at

96th Street Border

Central Park North (interactive oral history project)

Maria turns on the tired and beaten television and plays with the antennas until Univision can be seen through a bearable amount of static. She takes a seat in her own barber’s chair, crosses her legs and waits as the chatter of a morning news program fills the shop.

A young man pushes the front door. “Vic here yet?” he asks. His oversized white T-shirt hangs down around his knees, and his eyebrows arch beneath the perfectly flat brim of his all-black Chicago White Sox cap. Maria shakes her head, and the young man sits down in one of the garish red metal chairs to wait.

In a few minutes, Maria will be joined by Victor, a Puerto Rican barber who shares the space. The both pay the owner, a local Puerto Rican, a percentage of their earnings to use the shop. The young man will wait for Victor, who will trim his quarter inch of hair and meticulously trim his pencil-thin beard, all while comparing notes in music, movies, and women. A small crowd will gather around Vic, their voices rising, their language becoming more coarse. Maria will try not to hear.

In the chaos, she will have her customers, mostly Mexican, mostly unauthorized, undocumented migrants. A few will have just arrived, full of stories about the crossing, the load houses, the long car trip to New York, or maybe even landing at JFK. Maria will offer advice, share her stories, and wish them luck. Vic will put some salsa music on the stereo that will drown out Univision, but Maria will be too busy to mind.

For now, though, it is just Maria, her television, and the young man sulking by the front door. For now, she is alone.

excerpt from Tenants of East Harlem 




Above is the second video from the fire on March 12th, exactly one month ago today. As I observe the trauma that the neighborhood has encountered and look back at the month that has past very little has changed aside from the police presence. Again they have retreated and our NYPD have forgotten about El Barrio, Spanish Harlem is no longer a "threat" to "New Yorkers." The flower beds filled with glass, I bring home what I can carry but I have no use for it as well.

My neighborhood isn't looking back, they have only ever moved forward.
Yesterday as I left for the 125th metro stop, a group of 20 teenagers swarmed the building across from 106 East 116th street, part of the blast blew out all of the windows and displaced a few dozen families. They cleaned and smiles, and laughed, and moved on...