all the pictures i posted on here from exploring harlem today are just random buildings but it's to show you how beautifully maintained it is, whether they're rebuilt, or original, the people up here have done a bang up job trying to take harlem back from the bad reputation that it had earned. 200 years ago, harlem was all farmlands and was a full day's ride by horse or carriage to the walled enclave that was nyc (it's fascinating, the city grew in 20 block increments, starting with the original village which was wall street to the water south of it - wall street is called such because originally there was a wall built there to protect city inhabitants from indians and the british and french). then the city grew from wall street up to spring street (modern day soho - south of houston). i worked at the manhattan bistro on spring street for a while. they have the original well for which spring street is named, it is walled in, in the basement. they also have a famous resident in the same space - she's a young girl, very, very famous, who was murdered in the well. she haunts the place still and they actually did a special on it for the history channel. i never saw her, but the well wall is next to the desk where the manager did the books in the basement office. he used to come upstairs all the time to tell us that we needed to stop something or other...usually something we were doing...he was being haunted. you can read about this factoid in "weird new york" which is a great book of oddities dealing with nyc and state. thanks to p.j., he gave me a copy for christmas a few years back, amazing how many links i've got to the stories in there on many levels....i'll tell you sometime.

moving north, the city soon ended on 14th street. near my old apartment. that's when the astors and gettys and the others with fur trade and railroad or oil money started cultivating mansions along fifth avenue....before the city got to 14th street, there was no fifth avenue.

in fact, fifth avenue truncates at washington square park now, which is on 8th street to the north and 6th street (?) to the south....this was the public gallows back in the day. and it was the potter field where they planted the indigents after cutting down their corpses from swinging repose. now it's the center of life at new york university where i did my m.b.a. there are a lot of young folks who probably feel like they're swinging in the wind down there at all times. that's another haunted place according to city lore. i think it's just haunted by the jamaican weed dealers near the public restrooms in the corner of the park (by my old dog run, and my psychiatrist's office!)

soon enough, the wealthy had each built a tidy little 20 or 30 room manse along fifth avenue and the city ever so slowly crept up to surprise them. so the rich, in their fifth avenue digs, began to crave country life, and began with summer homes along the harlaam meer. so, harlem, former farm, and long time bastion of drownings in the east river due to very severe confluxes of tide between 3 converging bodies of water (thanks be to the spirit of new york boat tour around nyc, best 3 hours ever spent in a boat with a non-english speaking friend who stayed 2 weeks too long with me to be entertained any more!) harlem became the country home and summer estate place to the wealthy...much like jersey city a hundred years before. thus the relatively similar architecture in the jersey city and harlem neighborhoods i've lived in.

the big difference is that harlem, built by the rich, was inherited by the poor and what the rich once coveted, they divorced themselves from and disengaged from. the poor, the hungry, the needy, the willing, the able and the occasional malcontent, all converged to make harlem what it is becoming today....i'm once again living in an area on the edge of tremendous explosive growth and rebirth. i love to people watch and walk the streets in these types of places...i also like to be able to say i was here....or there....i lived in chelsea before the gays and the galleries moved in and made it so fabulous that only one of the two could survive there....i lived in jeresey city when people didn't care how gorgeous the view was - if you didn't have a gun, you weren't going to look away from your purse to check the view. now i'm in spaha and i think it's going to be an easier revolution than the last ones i experienced. after today, i'm feeling good with life, and i'm hoping i'll be around to see what happens.