Susan Buckland: Human face of New York

COMMENT

New Yorkers know how their fast-moving city can bewilder first-time visitors. Hence the Big Apple Greeters, enthusiastic New Yorkers who extend a friendly hand to introduce their city.

I had read about their free service and was keen to visit the largely black neighbourhood of Harlem in upper Manhattan. Conjuring images of gospel choirs, pimps, smoky jazz dives and urban blight, I telephoned the Big Apple Greeters office. No problem, said the woman. Tuesday Brooks, a Harlem resident, would meet me in my hotel lobby at 1pm.

Greeters love their city. Brooks was no exception. We set off enthusiastically to her neck of the woods on the subway. The dreaded New York subway turned out to be efficient and reasonably clean. And en route Brooks gave me a potted history of her slice of the Big Apple.

Nineteenth-century Harlem was an elegant retreat for mostly German and Dutch immigrant families, she said. They worked hard, made money and built substantial homes at the northern tip of the island, a peaceful distance from the burgeoning city.

But in 1904 the Lenox Ave subway opened and Harlem ceased to be a haven. Developers fell upon the newly accessible neighbourhood. Graceful houses and gardens were bulldozed. Characterless blocks of apartments sprang up in their place.

Black Americans who were being shunted out of central Manhattan moved up to Harlem and into tenement houses. Tidal waves of migrant workers did the same, adding to urban pressure on the area.

Brooks showed me a few grand survivors of Harlem's more prosperous past - brownstone houses with window boxes ablaze with flowers. Some of the originals were undergoing facelifts. These isolated pockets of a more elegant Harlem stood not far from tired looking apartment buildings and public housing. It was hard to ignore the signs of decay.

But the main shopping streets were lively with enterprise. Harlem has been undergoing a second renaissance, Brooks explained. The first occurred in the 1920s and 1930s when the area began humming with Afro-American artists.

Within a few square miles, gifted writers, musicians, singers and dancers lived and worked together, electrifying Harlem with their vitality. People started flocking in from around New York to hear the compelling rhythms and see the lithe dancers at the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom.

Brooks knew the place like the back of her ebony hand. Leading me down personally chosen paths, she introduced me to favourite shops, restaurants, flea markets, museums and churches.

We watched a bus full of tourists rumble through the streets. Insulated behind the glass windows, they were deaf to the catchy rhythms pumping from the buskers on the sidewalks.

The spicy cafe aromas, giggling children, chatty vendors and friendly church ministers were all lost on them. They would rumble out of Harlem again with no more than a passing glimpse of the wonderful old Apollo theatre and the intriguing Black Fashion Museum on Malcolm X Boulevard.

On foot I was able to catch some of the Harlem spirit with my New York Greeter. Young and pretty, she attracted plenty of male attention. "What's your name, honey," asked a tall dude who was clearly struck by her good looks and panther-like grace. "Tuesday," she said with a bashful smile. "Tuesday, honey, meet Wednesday," grinned her hopeful admirer, his hand outstretched.

This year is the 12th anniversary since the founding of the volunteer New York Greeters. They are informed companions in Chinatown, on and off Broadway, in the great shops of Fifth Ave and in Central Park. They are engineers, computer programmers, bankers, taxi drivers, historians, actors, mothers and college students, like Brooks, and do a great job of showing the human face of New York.