It was after 4 am on the last night of my most recent visit to NYC. I’d just gotten back to my boy’s place after a night of heavy drinking.
I was hungry. We were in Harlem. I knew from years of drunken nights in the neighborhood that there wouldn’t be shit open.
Except…
“Let’s go to Pathmark!” I said. My boy rolled his eyes and put on his sneakers.
We walked down 125th toward Lexington, home of the infamous, mostly 24-hour, Mid-Atlantic/Northeastern ghetto supermarket chain, when I spotted a brightly-lit, Murray Hill-esque bodega adjacent to the plexiglassed Popeye’s just east of Park.
It was open. At 4 am. In Harlem.
Inside, there was a wall of Soy Crisps, my favorite yuppie delicacy. They had green tea. And protein bars. And upon entry, no one tried to sell me drugs.
I stammered, stupefied by both the shock and my indisputable drunkenness. My boy smirked at me. “You remember what this place used to be, right? Think back to two summers ago.”
No way.
The same space had once been the only place we could get our cigarettes (and by “our”, I mean “non-menthol”) late night. It had been a total dive; squalid even by Harlem bodega standards. When the door was open, the interior stank of rotting meat and stale smoke; when the door closed, probably at 11 pm, a line would form at the window and the surly, scruffy little Middle Eastern owner would sell blunts, 40’s, and smokes through the plexiglass window behind the counter. I loved that place.
My boy pointed behind the deli counter, and I recognized the owner of the previous place, still scruffy and surly, buttering a bagel.
I got my yuppie food, and as we exited, a white girl with a nose ring and her nerd boyfriend walked in.
And at that moment, I knew it was true…as Stuff White People Like concluded,
“Harlem had a good run.”
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Look! Another Times article about gentrification in Harlem! The Pioneering, Open-Minded Yuppies Muster the Courage to Deal with the Natives! I especially enjoyed this part:
“And many new residents are uncomfortable with Harlem’s noisy street life, including sidewalk barbecues that can draw large crowds. Some believe there are too many churches on the one hand — Harlem has more than 100 houses of worship — and a casual flouting of the law on the other, with people littering, double-parking and drinking alcohol on the street. Some white women complain that they seem to receive more rude sexual come-ons in Harlem than elsewhere.”
(Please note that this isn’t the Times‘ photo; it’s mine. And it’s much cooler than the one they used.)
In an Evolving Harlem, Newcomers Try to Fit In.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: September 6, 2008
In the past few years, the “Village of Harlem,” as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.
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