Tuesday 8th April 2008

Tuesday 8th April 2008
Today was our last day in NYC, we were lucky enough to have a Big Apple Greeter to show us around Harlem… It was a fantastic and informative tour, but I will get into that later… Harlem is such an interesting place, in its rise and fall, only to be coming up again… Great architecture and culture…

The tour ran late and we had to get home and have some dinner before the Joell Ortiz show… I was feeling pretty crappy with the cold but we made our way out, the restaurant we wanted to go to had a 45 minute wait, and we didn’t have the time, we ended up at a local Italian, it wasn’t great, we didn’t get the name or exact location and no photos of the food… We were hungry and in a rush, it filled the spot… Then off to SOBs for the Joell show, it was a fairly interesting night… The sound took a while to iron out, there were a few interesting acts… Was totally bizarre to hear M Phazes being shouted out, haha… It was good to see Ari again, but I was struggling to stay awake… I left just before Joell came on, sad I know, but Mark had Ari to chill with, so I walked home and went to bed as we had a 5am start to get to Vegas…

Big Apple Greeter

Big Apple Greeter
http://www.bigapplegreeter.org/
‘A free public service that helps visitors discover the hidden treasures of New York City, the world's most exciting and diverse city.’
I applied for our spot with a greeter to see Harlem about 6 months ago, as I knew that older requests take priority to new ones… So if you are going to do this, get on it!
We meet Chaffin, a 70 something retiree, at the subway stop… I had no idea of his age as he was very interesting, articulate, knowledgeable and funny… Only when we told him it was our wedding anniversary did he say that he and his wife had been married 57 years, I was doing the math, blown away!!! He lived in Harlem from childhood until the mid sixties when he moved to Brooklyn with his wife to get away from the violence of Harlem…
The first stop was the Time Warner Centre, we went up to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to check the view, AMAZING, if you get a chance go and have a drink, or if you have the time and cash, a meal up there… Then off to Columbia University, walked around the campus to get an idea of the size, and the universities history with Harlem… Up to the ballroom where Malcolm X was shot and killed… After which we walked around for hours all around Harlem, hearing about the buildings, churches and overall history of the area…
Downtown to the African burial ground in the foyer of a massive building, they discovered the burial ground when excavating to build the building, stopped building for 8 months while going deep into the ground to get all of the bodies out, and then did a tribute to the Grounds in the foyer… Over to Brooklyn to check out some more history and great views…
Not sure whether I have gone into enough detail but I am still processing all that I learned and saw in this trip it was fantastic! Chaffin was a fantastic guide, such an interesting and engaging character…