duke ellington!!! i knew there was another famous black man in nyc who wore suits, played piano and lived near me in harlem ....

well, back when harlem was the trendy hotspot for blacks because the wealthy whites moved to westchester and the the city dwelling jews didn't move fast enough to overtake the entire northern end of manhattan island....thus causing the very high percentage of the population in the judaic arena to become isolated and later, even segregated, amongst the up and coming free blacks of nyc.

the newly visible black population of nyc enjoyed the wealth of beautifully built townhouses (built for the white collar whites from wall street and midtown), suddenly vacated, and on fire sale, by developers who'd overextended while developing the area, and the upscale white owners (originally intended inhabitants) -- who found they didn't like the element of society that was also attracted to the new and glamorous area -- thus leaving the jewish working and service class behind, as the every "evolving" aryans moved north, east and west of the island to the "country".

thus, circuituiously enough, an area that was originally a large single family's land grant from the king of england, and mostly orchards and fields, sparsely cut through with wagon ruts and foot paths, was denegrated into the hottest, hippest, most exlusive and luxurious, pre-planned, urban construction in the the brief history of america....suddenly, fields, trees, flowers, chickens and cows were replaced with the elevated high-line train (now underground, except along park avenue right near my apartment which still has 125th street train station stops on all trains into grand central station from points north of city), streets, pockets of public parks secluded like gems in a sunken treasure chest just waiting to be discovered, avenue after avenue of stately houses with the best quality work, inside and out, each telling a story of who built it, who would buy it (well, so they thought), and what the area was meant to be....well, everybody makes a mistake at one point or another right? so the generation of engineers and urban planners miscalculated the high-class white man's desire to live on top of his neighbor and seek out hidden treasure after working AS THE MAN all day....so what if they jews saw an opportunity and jumped but couldn't jump quite quickly enough to satisfy their desire to be the "other white meat", i think it's pretty damn cool that the blacks ironically induced terror in the hearts of those who remained here for esthetic or financial reasons, thus establishing black as the new white....

so it is, sort of, even today, except that hispanic, particularly mexican and mostly puerto rican, are the new black which was the new white which leaves white as an utterly un-distinguishable shade of palsy gray nowadays....but once again, i've digressed, the point of this was to let you know that the larger than life black man in bronze a top the columns near the grand piano at central park north and fifth avenue is none-other than mr. duke ellington. and that's a man who does indeed deserve to immortalized in bronze for nothing other than his music and his human spirit...the fact that his black was actually high-yellow is an entirely different blog (and i'll probably not revisit this topic again since almost all blacks of slave ancestry in the u.s.a. are technically high yellow, and that in turn will set me off on how annoying it is for anyone to need be identified as african-american -- um, hello, you were born here, you were never a slave, hell, you've never had a job in the time i've known you, you're lucky to be a freakin' american....so technically, if someone needs an adjective to identify an ethnicity in america, i'd be irish-american --atleast i've been to visit the country --but more likely identafiable as pasty-american, where as all those annoying folks using african-american, sorry, haven't seen the place person, you'd best choose to be maybe black, or just high-yellow if you must, but i think african american should be reserved, with much respect intended, for the very hard working class of truly beautiful dark skinned people emigrating to nyc and elsewhere from third-world conditions of africa for betterment of their lives and those of their kids....these folks are african-american and every day they do the jobs no one else can bother or likes to do, without complaint or high wages...we're lucky that they don't ask to be called mexicans or canadians after all the bullshit that comes along with the mis-nomenclature given by the overall use of african-american as adjective."