Spirit of Harlem A Portrait of America's Most Exciting Neighborhood

Lana Turner, 51 REAL ESTATE BROKER In Harlem, everything is in your face. It's a man blowing a trumpet on a subway platform or a stranger asking for a dollar. It's half a dozen African women sitting on chairs along the sidewalk, asking to braid your hair. It's a kid with his shirt open and his pants falling down, moving to the music in his head. It's walking past a group of men and one of them says, "Baby, you sho' look good today." The minute you step out your door, everything in Harlem is in your face. There's a beauty and a poetry in all of that. Some people say, "Oh, the crowded streets and the noise! How can you take it?" To me, the idea of living anywhere else is so foreign because there's so much going on here that's beautiful, that's thought provoking, that's humorous. Despite all the things we have to plow through, blacks in Harlem still have a sense of humor. There used to be a handwritten sign on a building on Lenox Avenue, across the street from Sylvia's Restaurant. It said: "This is the future home of the Crossroads Baptist Church, whenever we can raise the money." I loved that sign. It was hilarious, and yet it said something about faith. I think it's important to walk the streets of Harlem. You can't feel Harlem if you're driving by. But if you walk, you'll see all kinds of things. There's an artist by the name of David Hammons. Back when there was an empty lot filled with tall weeds next to the Studio Museum, David Hammons collected dozens and dozens of wine bottles, the cheap ones made from green glass. He took those bottles and turned them upside down and stuck them on top of the weeds. One day I was walking past the museum, not paying any attention, and was dumbfounded when I saw what he did. It was like a field of glass flowers. That to me is extraordinary. It's extraordinary because there's humor in it and there's truth in it. It said something about the larger society seeing Harlem as a throw-away society, and how Harlem, nevertheless, can see the beauty in itself, can find art in weeds and empty bottles. There's beauty in the discarded. I'll never forget that. I don't mean to idealize Harlem. There are some things that certainly need to change. No one would say they want crime or dirty streets, and everybody wants a better education for their children. But there are many things here that are so wonderful. There's a woman I've seen who wears a tiara every day, and some sort of fairy-tale dress. It would be easy to write her off, but there's a certain courage rooted in her attire. This is a woman who sees herself as royalty. Her statement is to herself, and she's true to it every day. Some people fashion a way to be uniquely themselves outside of what everyone else thinks. They are the mavericks who influence the music we hear, the books we read, the art we appreciate. Yes, Harlem has its own mythic proportions attached to it, but it's not unlike other black communities throughout the United States. There's humor, there's courage, there's art. Everyone worries about, "Oh, Harlem is becoming this or that!" I don't worry. What really makes Harlem Harlem, is the soul of the place. And despite all the change coming, I don't think you can obliterate that. If you look back to to the early 1900s, when African Americans first came to Harlem in sizable numbers, there were headlines in the papers that were written in terms of a war being waged: "The Negroes Are a Menace" or, "Negroes Take Yet Another Building on 139th Street." MICHAEL HENRY ADAMS Michael Henry Adams, 45 HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR Once, I was conducting a tour of Harlem for the Lesbian-Gay Community Center. We were standing on Seventh Avenue and I was talking about the building across the street, and how Josephine Baker had lived there with a group of women when she was a chorus girl in Eubie Blake's musical Shuffle Along. As IMarberry, Craig is the author of 'Spirit of Harlem A Portrait of America's Most Exciting Neighborhood', published 2003 under ISBN 9780385504065 and ISBN 0385504063.