You must understand as a kid of color in those days, the Harlem Globetrotters were like being movie stars.
You cannot mention Harlem Heat without mentioning Sherri Martel at the same time.
He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.
‘Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto’ is a surprise and a fresh way of looking at Harlem, connecting the black district with the architecture of its historical past.
Spanish Harlem is like every ghetto in America. There’s every distraction possible. To make it up out of there is really a task itself.
I’ve been able to provide for my family, move out of Harlem and travel the world.
Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father’s folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn’t do this and offer me this background, I wouldn’t be here.
I’m lucky to live in New York, a city that offers so many options for lunch. I can pick up dumplings from a Midtown food truck, grab empanadas by the dozen in Spanish Harlem or get a fantastic bowl of ramen in the East Village.
I grew up in Harlem, a block away from what was then the most crowded block in New York City, according to the 1950 census. Something like ten thousand people lived in one city block.
Harlem was the main chance for the east end of New York, for eastsiders, as that real estate boom that took place in the 1890s – and it was a preposterous one where people bought and sold, and everything appreciated with each sale – and eventually, of course, the house of cards would crumble.
We don’t windsurf in Harlem.
I feel like ‘Harlem River’ was me putting one foot out the door of New York, and ‘Still Life’ is between Point A and Point B. It’s the grey area.
I don’t think the arts would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn’t grown up in Harlem.
I’ve lived all over the world, but Harlem is very special to me, and when I decided to open a restaurant near my home, I didn’t want it to be business as usual.
In the 1940s, boxing was a mainstream sport and deeply ingrained the fabric of Harlem. Joe Louis ruled the world, but the local icon was Sugar Ray Robinson.
At first, Hendrix went and became a superstar in London, but if he walked past the Apollo in Harlem, no one would know who he was. I’m the hip-hop version of him.
The riot isn’t seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then.
‘Harlem River’ is about the Harlem River in uptown Manhattan. I don’t know much to say about it. I came upon that river a couple of years ago. I was doing a walk the length of Manhattan, from the top to the bottom, and I had never seen that river before.
There were the people that believed in me when I was walking around Spanish Harlem, saying that I was going to be a Hollywood actress. They were like, ‘Yeah, you could do it!’
I worked at an old folks’ home once in Harlem, and I was an activities volunteer. I used to do all these plays with the old people. I did ‘The Wizard of Oz;’ it was adapted. There was a guy there who played the harmonica, so we had an overture, and The Wizard was 96.
As a Latino growing up in Spanish harlem, it’s not easy trying not to be hot-headed.
In Harlem, I got all my black friends. But when I go downtown, I got black, white, Asian, Indian friends. There’s no borders, no barriers.
It’s still amazing, but when I was growing up, Harlem was the Mecca of black culture. I was so inspired by it, the aspirational feeling you’d get spending time there. Experiences that were really specific to that place.
Marcus Samuelsson is a chef who inspires me everyday. He has such a deep understanding of flavors and techniques. His food is representative of the diverse world that we live in. What he has done in Harlem with Red Rooster is very special. Marcus is not just a chef, he’s a food activist.
I grew up in Harlem Grant projects, and I didn’t have a whole lot then. I’ve always been good about only getting what I need, not what I want. Just because someone else has something, I don’t feel the need to.
I love Harlem, it’s like a second home to me.
My family were Conservative Jews. My parents were both born in this country, but my father grew up on the Lower East Side, and my mother was born and raised in Harlem when there was a large Jewish ‘colony’ there. Eventually, they moved to Jersey City to get away from New York.
I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.
Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.
I’m the only tenured black faculty in the sciences at Columbia, in the middle of Harlem.
I like musk and oud in a really, really delicate way. Because sometimes, if there’s too much oud, it just smells like you’re in the back of a cab in Harlem and I can’t do it.
Appropriation is a fact of life; no point in complaining about it. But if that’s the way the game’s being played, let’s do it on both sides. I don’t want some white guy making ‘A Rage in Harlem III’ if I can’t do ‘The Godfather V’ or ‘E.T. III.’
I want people to take pride in Spanish Harlem. These are people that everyone in the community could relate to… people who mean something special to us.
I’m just a Harlem dude that can rap, and people dig my style and persona.
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