On Saturday we wandered into the Chelsea area again and saw a small one-off Design Market which was similar to our Esplanade Market (St Kilda) and I bought a 3/4 length mid-weight top.
There was also a local food market close by.
Afterwards we passed a couple more flea markets and antique/ collectibles markets and looked through layers of rubbish to find a couple of gem items.
Had we been planning to furnish an apartment with some good industrial pieces, we could have done quite well. Mark was very impressed with an old dentist chair and some lovely old sideboards but just not realistic for carting overseas.
Later that night we travelled to Lincoln Centre (66th street) to see a one-off performance by Bill Cosby. He spoke in a rambling stream of consciousness fashion for almost 2 hours and the concert hall (normally used for the New York Philharmonic) was magnificent. Lucky for those in the virtual nosebleed seats (read - us), they had a video screen to magnify his facial expressions. Bill is 72yrs old now but still very amusing. I had no idea he'd left school at 15yrs to go to the Navy and then after leaving the service, went back to complete High School and eventually got a Bachelor and Masters of Education.
It was a bit of a drama getting home as the 66th street subway station was closed when we left, so had to walk up 6 blocks in the freezing cold (the wrong way!) to 72nd street and then catch an express train the other way. Had a very late dinner of a couple of Kosher pizza slices around the corner from home. They do vegetarian and vegan pizzas but we had no choice as starving. Not too bad really.
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This morning was an early rise so we could make it for the Harlem Welcome Tour which included a visit to a Gospel Church service, walking tour of Harlem which is massive in comparison to other neighborhood zones in Manhattan and brunch/ lunch at Amy Ruth's a true Southern style cooking diner.
As mentioned earlier, we put on everything we owned practically but still frozen through. It rained constantly and very cold wind. We managed to get the right mix of trains leaving 8.30am and got there in time. On the trip was a girl from Elwood (!), some British friends travelling with a Californian mate and a mother and 2 sons from Minnesota. Carolyn our guide was excellent and knew everything about the history, old and recent, real estate, politics, church and daily life of people living in Harlem.
First Carolyn took us to a Gospel church about 10 blocks away, showing us various points of interest along the way. The service went for about an hour and was the 'celebration' part of the day. Apparently church can go for about 4 - 5 hours each Sunday. The celebration has a substantial choir and everyone is up & jumping, clapping the hands and 'praising the lord' excitedly. There is a pastor who leads the singing and they even had a band which consisted of a drummer, 2 keyboards and several choralists doing percussion, triangle or other smaller instruments as well as singing. There were a few tourist groups there, maybe totalling about 45 people but it wasn't too much and we were intermingled with the local congregation. We were expected to stand up and clap our hands a lot and 'give witness' or 'praise the lord' at various times, although we were silent, we did clap. The only unfortunate thing was that the band was actually too loud for us to clearly here many of the song words from the pastor / leader.
After the service, we headed towards lunch and Carolyn gave us some more local information. She was raised there and has lived there her whole life (probably about 35-40 yrs old) and was telling us how lots of the areas were either derelict or empty blocks where there are now brownstones (20 feet across by approx 50 feet depth and usually 3 stories).
Apparently there was some Government funding which came to Harlem and various other areas in Detroit, LA and Chicago to fix up the poorer areas. They had a special thing where they'd sell a property for $1 to a property investor to then spend the money to gut and re-create the building. Those were sold in the first tranche for $50K USD but a lot of people didn't want to live there for free. In 1992, they sold the second tranche for $165K USD (when Carolyn bought) and in 1996 they sold whole buildings for $450K USD which could be converted into 2-3 apartments. By the time they had the final tranche, there were 1000's of applications per apartment.
In 2000 Bill Clinton made the dramatic move to settle his post-Government office in Harlem which immediately made house / apartment house values increase by 30% and increased Government money to Harlem. In 1998 there was not ONE movie theatre in the Harlem area and now there's plenty. Magic Johnson actually built the first one in 1999. You wouldn't believe how much has changed in just 10yrs. It's like the middle of Manhattan.
The food at Amy Ruth's was quite amazing and both Mark & I chose waffles and southern fried chicken (together on the same plate) plus cheesy grits which is corn meal.
We ended up being able to view inside Carolyn's brownstone which was lovely and absolutely huge (1600 square feet) with a back yard as well!
We caught the train back to East Village to warm through and I think we'll have a calm night, maybe a local meal or movie.
1 comment:
wow a real harlem church choir - that must have been great -I can just imagine your half hearted "hallejulah's"!
didn't know Bill still did stand up - he must have a heap of material he can drag out form across the decades of his performing!
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