A Farewell Note to Spanish Harlem

He adored Spanish Harlem, he idolized it all out of proportion ...

No, wait. That’s not right. Nobody adores Spanish Harlem. Nobody idolizes it. And if they did, they definitely didn't idolize it out of proportion.

After three years, I’m saying goodbye to East Harlem -- specifically 101st Street and Third Avenue, Apt. B-7D (b as in boy, d as in dog for food-delivery purposes). It’s a neighborhood that looked to be on the up-and-up (sort of) when I first moved, but now, as I depart, seems to be falling back by the wayside. Within the past year, an entire block of restaurants/cafes have closed. A pizza shop went out of business. Families are running for the hills. Rats have foreclosed on garbage cans. A SUBWAY CLOSED. DURING SUBTEMBER.

And even though things have taken a turn for the worse, this place, a few blocks north of the nearest Halal food cart, has been my home for my first few post-college years. It’s SpaHa. It’s taught me wrong from right. It’s solidified my belief that a bodega sandwich is the only sandwich. It smells like molding cheese six months out of the year. For all these things, I owe it a farewell -- fond or not.

Fine Fare Grocery

You were my first grocery store, and yes, your fines were indeed fare. But your food ... questionable. Sausages that last for two days. Chunky milk. Babies eating Lucky Charms in the aisles. However, I did enjoy your collection of Oreos. From double-stuffed to Halloween's cream-colored orange, you always knew the way to my heart.

Gunshots

We heard you more than a few times over the past three years. Sometimes you were all by yourself. Sometimes you came in bunches. Sometimes you were accompanied by screams. Sometimes there was laughter. Either way, we knew you were out there. I’ll miss you, gunshots. Not too much, though.

Emmerson Deli (directly below my building)

I love you. Your Cold Italian sandwiches, your sunflower seeds at 2 am, your ever-changing prices, your Caesar salads, that I got sick from, but continued to order because I thought they were healthy.
A 24/7 deli is crucial. My next apartment needs to have one. If not, I’ll have to learn how to make a ham sandwich.

The Laundry Lady

Because you wear a surgical mask, I've never actually seen the bottom half of your face. But that's OK. I know it's there.
You laugh at my jokes, you work hard, you once sewed up a tear in my corduroys (goddammit I love corduroys) free of charge. You're the best.

Do you deliver to/from Brooklyn?

96th Street Halal Cart

It may be true that one of my fellow SpaHa’ers saw you bathing in your own cooking oil. It may also be true that the lamb over rice is not actually lamb over rice. But you know what, I don’t really care. Your late-night service, your white sauce (what is that shit?), your conversation on a Friday night when there’s nobody left to talk to.
You’re the best food cart in all the land. You deserve a spot in Restaurant Week. You’re to die for. Really though, this guy may have died halfway through his meal:

The Reservoir Run

Yeah, I run. Seriously, I do. You wanna race? I did a 5K this past spring at the Bronx Zoo. Did it for the elephants. I love elephants. Great memories.
Anyways, sometimes I run outside. When I do, I usually run around the Central Park Reservoir off 96th street. The trees, the fresh air and the water provide a kind of oasis away from the city. It's especially nice at night:

And yes, I know that's not exactly Spanish Harlem. But I often end my run up towards 110th street:

Yeah, by the time I get there it's day again.

My Rooftop

It’s where I’m typing this love letter to you, Spanish Harlem. I can see the Triborough Bridge straight out in front of me. Manhattan towers over my right shoulder, while the Bronx fades off to my left. I can see the lights of Yankee Stadium on August nights, fireworks from three different boroughs in July and strobe lights from Central Park dancing in the sky during summer concert tours.

But the one thing I’ll really miss seeing is the traffic moving up Third Ave. Leaning over the ledge and just watching it.  Knowing that I’m in a city that’s always moving and never sleeping. Cars and buses maneuvering their way in and out of different lanes, near-accidents occurring at every cross street, stoplights setting the rhythm to the city's song.

Me seeing it all happen from a safe distance.

I'll definitely miss that.

I'll miss all of this -- the good, the bad, the wonky. That's what Spanish Harlem is, and that's what it always will be. 

But I'll be back living on this side of the city some day. And hopefully it's in that part of town that only exists in black and white.

Walking through Spanish Harlem in the summer

A blurry picture of Mike Francesa standing can only be compared to seeing the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot

I couldn't believe my eyes.  I'd never seen him not sitting behind his desk, waving off lawst listenas, sleeping or throwing back Diet Cokes. I'd never seen him stand up.

Was it really Da Pope at the All-Star Game? The King of Nuah Yawk? THE Mike Francesa?

If it was, it was a rare sighting indeed.

Keep sippin' that gin & juice and let me tell you why 1994 was pop culture gold, yo

Real, grainy Hip Hop flowing off cassette tapes, Andy Dufresne holed up in a Shawshank cell, Run, Forrest, Run? Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends, ER ... Al Borlin?

I don't know what my fascination is with 1994. I was 7, but I wish I was 17. It just seems like everything was imperfectly perfect. Even the fashion. The stretched-out tee/baggy shorts, the backwards snap-backs (made popular by David Robinson), big headphones, small studs. I would still wear all of that today -- if today was 1994 and I had style.

And it seemed even more real and edgy in NYC.  The 2008 movie "The Wackness," set in '94, reaches back and captures the time period pretty well. Even the word "wackness" screams early-90s.
The film's soundtrack includes mostly R&B/Rap from that era -- Biggie, Faith Evans, A Tribe Called Quest, R. Kelly, etc. And along with the nostalgic shots of the city, the rooftop parties and the "fresh-to-death" lingo, you can almost feel the humidity of those warm city nights and live in the innocence of the main character, Luke Shapiro, as he sips forties and puffs Parliaments in Central Park. Fire Island looks like Bermuda.

That's the Hollywood version of '94 and it's pretty spot-on. But anyway, enough of the Wackness. Let's talk a little about the dopeness of this memorable year.

First off, Hip Hop was Hip Hop. No Lil' Wayne. No auto-tune. No Ke$ha. Off-the-street, socially-conscious Hip Hop. Ready to Die, Illmatic, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik(keep trying to pronounce that), Resurrection, Regulate ... G Funk Era. Top singles ranged from Snoop's "Gin and Juice," Biggie's "Juicy," Wu Tang's "C.R.E.A.M.", and R. Kelly's "Bump N' Grind" to Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign." And oh yeah, there was this. 1994 probably consummated mad babies:


And the movies. Oh man, the movies. First off, we have The Lion King -- which is still the top-grossing traditionally-animated film of all-time. I still hope to be a father figure like Mufasa someday. Then there was Forrest Gump, which won Best Picture and nabbed Tom Hanks his second consecutive Best Actor award. Pulp Fiction, Speed, Dumb and Dumber and True Lies also came out in '94. Hoop Dreams, one of the greatest documentaries ever, balled out that January. And a Stephen King short story you can almost definitely watch on AMC right this minute, came out later that Fall. "I have no idea, to this day, what those two Italian ladies were singing about ..." but it went a little something like this:



TV, like it is today, was also pretty tremendous. Some of the greatest shows were in their prime or more or less entering it. Everybody was watching E.R. Seinfeld was huge. Girlfriends watched Friends with girlfriends while talking about boyfriends of other girlfriends' girlfriends. The Simpsons was taking off AKA moving away from Bart and pushing Homer as the funnier, more marketable character. Saved By the Bell reruns, Boys Meets World, SNICK ... the premiere of All That?!?! What an intro:


That's it. Honestly, I really have no idea why I wrote this post. Why am I still writing this blog? Does anybody read it? This is pretty pointless. But yeah, I do love "The Wackness" and you should go see it.

That flagpole in the middle of the street

What was a flagpole doing in the middle of Main Street? Whose idea was this? You're telling me it didn't make sense to put it in front of the Meeting Hall or next to the Newtown Bee? How tall is this thing? Can people see it from space? And will I, while driving to Greg Smith's house or the wine vineyards for a vintage baseball game, ever crash into it? 
That's what I used to think about the Newtown flagpole. It was strange. Out of place. But it had been there since 1876. It had survived major thunderstorms, fires and car accidents. So in a way, it was stubborn.

Then I saw it again on Friday afternoon in the above picture. The day that kindergartners were killed -- young children taking their fundamental first steps in life.

And I teared up. The flag that I'd passed by so many times as a kid was being lowered to half-mast. It was on the national news. Not because somebody got their tongue stuck in the morning freeze or some astronaut spotted it from space -- it was because of a horrific tragedy.

The 100-foot structure looked dramatic and striking against the dreary sky. But you know what, the flagpole still left me with stubborn feelings.

It was the stubbornness of our elected officials for not thoroughly examining our gun control laws. The stubbornness of Republicans. The stubbornness of Democrats. The stubbornness of some bill in some holy document created hundreds of years ago. It's not 1780 anymore. We're not dairy farmers with pitchforks and pistols.  It's 2012 and suburban teenagers are wielding assault rifles.

Let's get this done, America. Let's discuss regulation. Korea, a place I lived a year, does not allow guns to any civilians. Just hunting rifles. Murders last year in SK: 1,251; US: 12,996. Korea's neighbor Japan (with similar gun control laws, and closer pop. numbers) had just 442. Some telling facts. Who needs 47 guns? Who needs two? One? Tell me why?

And it's also the stubbornness that we have in not dealing with our mental health system. Many families are too stubborn or scared to admit their child or father or brother has serious mental issues. They can't fathom the embarrassment or implications, so they ignore and deal with it on their own (sometimes to a fault). But let's not forget the stubbornness and ignorance of the larger societal system within our country. People who are bi-polar or suffering from other severe disorders are not given the care or proper support in our society. They're more routinely thrown in prison than admitted into a hospital. It's easier. Just clump these mentally-challenged individuals into an institution with murderers and degenerates, because they're cut from the same cloth, right? A great article that's been circling the web on this very subject is here.

And finally, the other stubbornness I felt when I saw that very same flag I'd seen so many times throughout my life, was the stubbornness of Newtown, the stubbornness of Connecticut and the stubbornness of our country. The U.S. has been through some incredible moments in recent past, from equal rights movements to 9/11 to natural disasters. But we've endured and taken appropriate courses of action. We've passed equal rights laws for women and worked toward eliminating racial discrimination. We've increased security measures and shut down numerous terrorist threats. We've held onto that American stubbornness that we are a great nation and we need to do the right thing. And this recent tragedy deserves that same attitude.

Let's discuss. Let's take action. We need to do it for ourselves, for our pride and for our future, but most importantly, we need to do it for Sandy Hook Elementary School, the families involved and for that town with the funny little flagpole in the middle of the street.

A fellow Nutmegger,

- Matt Monagan