in which a lily-white harlem resident waxes philosophical on diversity and gentrification

At UW-Eau Claire, there is a lot of verbal wankery on the subject of diversity — why there isn't any, how they can get more of it, how they can change around their educational requirements to get students to think about it. But even so, the student body is still 93 percent white.

Well, now I live in central Harlem, in a neighborhood that 85 percent black, 14 percent Latino and 1 percent white. I *am* the diversity. It's a wee bit of culture shock.

When I came here, one of the movers asked me why I had decided to move to *this* part of town. (Well, because it's probably the only place in the city I can afford a nice 1-bedroom apartment in a well-maintained building and still make it to work in about 30 minutes door-to-door).

"Well ... usually certain groups of people live in certain areas of the city," the mover said.

Not being part of said "certain group" of people is definitely a new experience for me. Say you are a white person, living in a typical midsize, mostly white Midwestern town. You probably deny this to yourself, but when you walk down the street and you pass someone from a minority group, your eyes glance that way for a fraction of a second and a voice in the back of your head says, 'look, a black/Latino/Native American/whatever person.' Now imagine living on a major city street, going to the store, walking to the train, whatever, and getting that not-really-looking look from practically everybody that you pass. It's an adjustment if you've never been a minority. Actually, it's a lot like being in Spain was — minus the catcalls every five seconds.

It's not so much a question of safety, other than the obvious reservations I have about walking at late hours of the night through the neighborhood where "American Gangster" was filmed. I've been assured that all things considered it's a safe enough neighborhood. According to police precinct reports, it's more on par with the bulk of downtown Manhattan than with the Bronx, which is just across the Harlem River. And the super says in the eight years he's been in my building there's never been a break-in.

But there is a certain amount of racial tension involved, and that is compounded by the fact that people who are priced out of richer neighborhoods tend to equate "ungentrified" with "undiscovered," see the neighborhood as dangerous and rundown and in need of being fixed, and slowly push out the locals as if they were just in the way. (See the Village Voice piece The Second Battle for Bushwick if you really want to understand how this plays out.) Adding to that, in Harlem at least, Columbia University is buying up a bunch of real estate. From what I've gathered in my short time here thus far, the gentrification battlefront has effectively been pushed up from 96th street to 125th street.

Truly it's a double-edged sword — popularity of a neighborhood equals investment equals better facilities and often lower crime rates and the like. I'm not in the best situation to opine on gentrification because a. I haven't lived here before it took off and b. as a tenant of a management company that's buying up huge chunks of Harlem and upper Manhattan I'm part of the problem. But isn't there a way to improve a neighborhood and accommodate new residents without pushing the old ones out?

It's capitalism run amok, really. I don't think you can fight basic supply and demand without a. more people owning instead of renting, therefore not having to pay someone else skyrocketing amounts of money just to stay in their apartment and b. a serious crackdown on the kinds of unethical property management practices in the aforementioned Village Voice story, and/or c. regulations on landlords and businesses that many people would consider profoundly un-American. In that way I can see Manhattan as a microcosm of how the American free-market system will eventually cannibalize itself if left unchecked.

What boggles my mind about European urban development is that in so many places it manages to balance the past and the present — you can go to school in the very same building in which Inquisition prisoners were held 500 years ago, and big wealthy business chains can't swallow up the smaller ones just because they can afford to break the rules that confine their competitors.* Which requires not only some intervention from -- gasp -- democratic socialism, but the squelching of the colonize and conquer, destroy and rebuild, darwinist mindset that has fueled American history since the first white dudes set foot on this continent. Europe has a few centuries on us in the western-civilization business, and we could take a few hints from them on pacing ourselves.

*In Spain, for example, most businesses aren't allowed to be open on Sundays, and I believe there's some kind of regulation on closing for siesta. Though that made life a huge pain in the ass at times while I was in Valladolid, I think it was a small price to pay for keeping the city as close-knit as it was ... with the side effect of legislating a more relaxed way of life.

Your WTF for the day

There are no words for this:





Totally made up? That would be my guess, but Ellen DeGeneres proved me wrong.

I'm back ...

Welcome to the new and improved Hoty Takes Manhattan. I'm here for the long haul, and so is this blog — at least when I feel like updating it.

As a warning, this blog will not only be all things New York but my general-purpose ranting blog as well. So prepare yourself.

I'm Blue (aba-dee aba-di)

So today I was going to work on the subway and I saw a girl painted head to toe in blue body paint. I mean, literally, head to toe. She was a walking mass of blue swirliness and eyes (wouldn't be my first choice), wearing nothing but a thong (she even had a face painted on one of her butt-cheeks). No bra or anything. Craziest thing I've seen in the city so far.

Speking of no bras ... yesterday I was editing this story about the workplace generation gap. Now for any of you non "gen Y"-ers/personnel management types, have you ever had a 20-something employee show up at a business meeting in a crop-top? Or send you a text message asking if bras were REALLY part of the dress code? Sure there's a generation gap (at The Times, for example, it tends to manifest itself in discussuions about whether the rapper Paul Wall should be referred to on second reference as Mr. Wall, or whether The Simpsons is instrumental in understanding America). But let's be serious. Or maybe it's some rich-kid thing that I'm just not aware of.

I heart NY ... and bulleted lists

So now that people are actually reading this, I guess I have to write something.

The walking, eating, shopping and working continues. I can't believe it's almost over; less than two weeks left. I even have a hair appointment scheduled at home, which is a (slightly consoling) reminder that real life is looming.

That being said, it may still be a little premature, but, in the tradition of my Spain blog, here is what I miss about home (in no particular order):

1. My roomies, even though they were just here
2. Jenny and Anna, who I hadn't seen for way too long before I left in the first place
3. The family, and the pets
4. Wearing sweatpants in public
5. Running across the street without hearing, HOOONNNNNKKKK!
6. Nature, in any form
7. Cheese curds and Spotted Cow
8. The Spectator, strangely enough
9. TV (and Internet that's not in a dorm lobby)
10. My car!

And here is what I am going to miss about life in the city:
1. Having practically everything I need within walking distance
2. Working at The Times!
3. The other interns, who will soon be scattered all over the country again
4. The sheer variety of random happenings/things that can be found just by walking around for awhile (for example, street fairs and coconut ice cream served in half of a real coconut shell)
5. Street performers, from the truly talented (the a capella group that makes its way through the subways) to the utterly bizarre (the man in Port Authority who plays the keyboard accompanied by a band of little anamatronic people)
6. Random moments of tranquility, for example in the busiest parts of the city at about 6 a.m. on sunday or the view across the hudson river from Lower Manhattan
7. The village/union square, which remind me of the best parts of spain
8. Strand Bookstore
9. Cafe con leche (and iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, for that matter)
10. The Village Voice (which reminds me, it comes out today)
11. H&M!

I have some more pictures upstairs; I'll get to those later. But it's almost time for work.

Dorkfest 2007

So you've just moved out of a 94-year-old landmark historic building that's about to be completely gutted. What do you do? Party in the newsroom! I was working last night but the boss said whoever wanted to stop in for awhile could do so (free beer on company time? I'm there). It was a good time, even though Gawker.com called it dorkfest 2007. I heard they were drinking on the roof by the end of the night.

How To Identify the People on the Elevator

I think it was Mom who told me a few months ago that she saw a picture of the newsroom of the Virginia Tech college paper, in which everything was immaculate and all the staffers were dressed up. She was wondering if they always dress that way, and I've concluded that they probably don't. Journalists are not big fans of dress codes. At the New York Times, for example, there isn't one. You can walk in wearing sweatpants if you want, and every so often people do. They say dress for the next job up, but whenever I see the executive editor he always seems to be wearing jeans and a polo shirt. But I guess he doesn't have any higher up to go.

The people in corporate, on the other hand, are suit-and-tie types. And I hear the ad representatives get a clothing allowance so they can wear designer clothes.

Also, that's the flip side to being a journalist and not getting paid much — you have a whole department of people who get paid (a lot more) to worry about money so you don't have to.