the first uptown/downtown performance: chinatown

last night was some kind of wunderbar.

zipped to chen dance center, for the first night of uptown/downtown in no time at all: fully made up, fully dressed up and ready to rip it up. i looked like a drum magazine pin-up girl -- actually, i look like an african pin-up girl no matter what i wear. i stopped fighting that one a long time ago. i made a pitstop in a chinese bakery for tea and a sticky bun of some sort. while i was in there, i watched a bunch of ultra black folk who were shopping for a ton of fortune cookies explode with glee as they recognized some pastry from a jackie chan/chris tucker flick. is it true that most people seem to learn about other people and other cultures from movies and television? from behind the counter, the chinese baker's puzzled but somewhat bemused expression seemed to mirror my thoughts.

chen is a hoot. lean and strong and really up and interesting and kind of a prankster. he's one of those dancer/artists that's seen and done everything. some rock n' roller's name will come up and he'll go on about how he stood in the mud and saw them at woodstock and someone will go, you were at woodstock and then we're off to the races. it was nice, watching him walk through the place, greeting people, making suggestions, hanging out.

we had a brief meeting at 6:30pm and somewhere in there, my permanent boyfriend shows up along with daniel carlton, who gives him a digital camera to shoot our segment. (yes, they're shooting everything -- but i'm paranoid.) i'm bobbing in and out of the holding room that's filled with everyone's personal effects, actors chatting sotto voce, someone putting on makeup here, setting props up over there -- and of course, dancers in varying stages of dress, warming up.

it's a small black box situation and i had a short tech rehearsal earlier in the day so everything is well-lit and mood inducing. amazing, the way lights can create a set. daniel and i were in the second half of the evening, so we could take it easy sort of, run lines, whisper. once the audience is seated, the 40 inch plasma screen in the vestibule comes to life, and everyone gathers around it quietly and watches and observes, occasionally nodding at each other and smiling with these knowing looks. it's all very relaxed and serious and fun, with a high degree of that flying by the seat of your pants sensation buzzing in the air.

and then all of a sudden, it was over. (and coming soon to my youtube channel!) daniel and i are a real gang of two -- and he is the king of props.

there was a talkback afterwards that felt awkward because we couldn't say anything while the audience shouted all this stuff off the cuff. we seemed to glide out of the place, lost in thought. one of the coolest things about being married to an artist that's also an intellectual (why he won't cop to that last part, i'll never know) is that i can talk to him in depth about what i do. as we walk along, we unhinge all of it from the inside out and share ideas. he has a lot of insight.

of course, all of that is predicated on the fact that he is a safe place. but that's a whole other conversation.

and so, as my permanent boyfriend and i noshed on vietnamese food afterwards and traipsed westward through the narrow streets in the dead of night, we held hands like lost toddlers and somehow managed to simultaneously float down a sun drenched memory lane that was flooded with sweet loving moments from our earliest days as a twosome.

happy days.

Rezoning Harlem

it's all over -- but as a friend told me recently, this war was fought and lost a long time ago.

the city council has opened the floodgates to real estate developers and retailers to turn 125th street into a strip mall, complete with hotels and the like. they've already got east harlem. and they've already got a 17 acre chunk of my neighborhood, thanks to columbia university's campus expansion. (can you say eminent domain? evidently, if it involves black folks and our neighborhoods, the local and state government can say it very easily.) harlem's main street -- a thoroughfare that was named one of the nation's top 10 last year -- will lose all of its character, just like almost every other neighborhood in the city. in a few years, it will be virtually unrecognizable and poor people won't have affordable housing. this, coupled with the fact that according to the latest pre-census records, african-americans are leaving the city in record numbers for the south means that soon enough, the historic capitol of black america will be no more.

you know what? they'll never take chinatown.

san francisco's chinatown was the first, but new york city has the biggest one in the world -- and in fact, it's growing. and why shouldn't it? chinese people live, work and shop in chinatown, and they also raise children there -- just as we do in all parts of harlem. the big fear is that chinatown will overtake what's left of little italy eventually, in part because very few italians are there anymore. let's face it: if you want to go to the real "little italy," try bensonhurst.

there are a myriad of reasons as to why chinatown won't fall the way harlem has collapsed. there is the language barrier, of course. but you can't underestimate the fact that the chinese have always looked out for their own, in part because assimilation is not an option.

here's a question: why do you suppose white middle americans love to come to the city and traipse through ethnic ghettos -- ghettos that are there because of a history of racism and bigotry and white privilege, all of which are still intact and in place and very much alive in our american way of life?

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Council Approves Rezoning of 125th Street, Over Loud Protests of Some Spectators

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Published: May 1, 2008

The boos and cries of “sellout” and “liar” came so loudly and persistently that the entire audience was removed. But in the end, the City Council overwhelmingly approved a plan on Wednesday to rezone 125th Street in Harlem.

The Council approval augurs the most significant change to the avenue in nearly half a century, one that supporters say will bring new businesses and housing, and that opponents say will forever alter Harlem’s character for the worse by ushering in a new wave of gentrification.

“When I came into office, we promised to stimulate economic growth and strengthen neighborhoods across the city, and our plan for the area around Harlem’s famed 125th Street is the latest example of how were doing it,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. “Not only does the plan lay the foundation for economic growth on Harlem’s Main Street, but also it preserves its noted brownstones and reinforces its arts and culture heritage.”

The 47-to-2 vote came after months of political and legal squabbling that has divided Harlem among those who believe the rezoning will lead to an improvement in the quality of stores and the availability of services in the neighborhood, and those who believe the changes will turn 125th Street into a generic Manhattan thoroughfare lined with skyscrapers, chain stores and a new set of wealthy residents.

On Wednesday, members of those two groups sat side by side in the City Council chambers, some clapping politely in support of the plan, the others angrily denouncing Harlem’s three Council representatives — Inez E. Dickens, Robert Jackson and Melissa Mark-Viverito — who all supported the rezoning.

After a series of disruptions, in which audience members shouted “sellout” and “liar” and booed loudly as Ms. Dickens tried to explain why the rezoning was an important step forward for Harlem, the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and the city’s public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, asked that the chamber’s balcony, where the audience was sitting, be cleared of spectators by police officers.

But Councilman Charles Barron brokered an agreement with the officers and City Council security, and only a few of the 100 spectators were ejected.

Once the meeting was back in session, however, the shouting and catcalls resumed during remarks by Mr. Jackson. After Ms. Quinn and Ms. Gotbaum, who was presiding, asked again for the room to be cleared, police officers and City Council security escorted everyone outside the building. As they left, they sang, “We Shall Overcome.”

The meeting was interrupted for about 30 minutes, and the vote was eventually held in the Council chambers with only council members, council staff members, law enforcement personnel and reporters present. Council and administration officials said they could not recall another meeting in which the chambers were cleared of spectators.

Councilwoman Helen Diane Foster, who voted for the rezoning, said she was concerned that the audience was treated harshly because its members were predominantly black and Latino.

“We had more officers in here than we’ve had in the chambers ever before,” she said. “I hope we did it across the board and not based on color.”

Ms. Dickens said that her recent discussions with the Bloomberg administration had vastly improved the proposal, and she said the rezoning was supported by a broad cross-section of Harlem. “I need no one to document my commitment to my community,” she said. “I was born in Harlem.”

The vote itself had become a formality after Ms. Dickens, Mr. Jackson and Ms. Mark-Viverito agreed to the rezoning last month in exchange for pledges from the Bloomberg administration that included additional units of moderately priced housing, government loans for 71 businesses that may be displaced, and about $5.8 million in improvements for Marcus Garvey Park.

Including the 125th Street plan, the Bloomberg administration has now rezoned more than 6,000 blocks since 2002 as part of its effort to revamp the city’s zoning laws, many of which had not changed since 1961.

City officials said none of the other plans had been as hotly contested as the rezoning of 125th Street, which is far more modest in size than previous rezonings, but which threatens to transform what has long been the symbolic center of African-American cultural life.

The plan calls for 24 blocks of Harlem to be rezoned, stretching from Broadway east to Second Avenue, and from 124th to 126th Street. The Bloomberg administration said its intent was to remake 125th Street, now dominated by four- and five-story buildings with small businesses on the first floors, into a regional business hub with 19-story office towers and more than 2,000 new market-rate condominiums. The plan includes incentives for arts- and entertainment-related businesses.

The Bloomberg administration and Ms. Dickens have said that an agreement they negotiated reserves 46 percent, or 1,758, of the 3,858 total new residential units that would be permitted to be built in the rezoned area as moderately priced housing.

But according to the formal agreement, signed on April 15 by Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber, only about 5 percent of the housing — or about 200 units — would be affordable for families earning $30,750 or less.

dim sum in chinatown

yesterday i went to have dim sum at grand harmony palace in the heart of chinatown with two friends who happen to be chinese and native new yorkers—miona is from the bronx and evan was born and raised on mott street. they both speak chinese as well, which isn’t always the case with the children of immigrants. usually, the push is to make their children and themselves as american as possible. by the time they realize that what they are is american enough, it’s usually too late. but that’s not the case with miona’s parents, who still don’t speak english. as i walked to our table in the restaurant, i could fully understand why.

the room was awash in red fabric on the walls, with chandeliers and gold touches all over the place and bright yellow seat covers and tablecloths that made everything look elegant and drab all at once. everywhere was a flurry of activity: babies crying, children laughing, old people chatting, everyone eating, and starchly uniformed servers with these huge layered trays on sturdy wheels moving slowly through the room like metal oxen, pausing for a moment at the hint of a signal that anyone wants anything at all. it was easy to make them stop where we were because miona loves food and evan was starving.

i found it especially amusing that no one was speaking any english whatsoever. the effect was not unlike a pane of glass breaking over and over again, at different pitches, and different angles, from different directions.

i followed their lead, pointing at things, then asking them to tell me the names of the things that i liked, then pronouncing them badly until they stopped cringing and i won their tentative approval. white teapots filled with crysanthemum tea were constantly refilled. if i wanted my tiny cup refilled, i tapped my finger next to the cup and kept tapping until i wanted them to stop pouring.

dim sum is the asian equivalent of english high tea but much, much tastier. it’s like a heavy snack (yes, i know—that’s oxymoronic, but it’s true). i love dim sum and i’ve certainly had it before but not in a place where that’s all they served at that time of day. and the experience of being the only black person in a gigantic roomful of chinese people was more than a notion. if you are of color, you are black as far as i'm concerned. that would include everyone except the white people -- and quite a few of them ain't telling it.

frieda kahlo was right: chinese babies are the most beautiful babies in the world.

one of the things that miona and evan couldn’t stop talking about was my impending nuptials in charleston, south carolina that are happening approximately a year from now. interesting but true: they have never lived outside of new york city. they both went to college in the area. miona travelled to southeast asia recently for some months and had great adventures but before that, she’d never really left home. so the south is this great mystery and they’re both wondering about the asian presence there.

what i’m trying to show them is that there has been a strong chinese presence in the south since reconstruction but they don’t seem to know a lot about chinese-american history in general. so i’ve promised them a reading list, documentaries, and welcome packages filled with maps and things to do when they get there. clearly, they want and need to be primed.

we’re already planning to have lunch in harlem somewhere soon. maybe the new italian restaurant up the street from me. i’m not sure. next weekend is already earmarked for english cuisine at my favorite anglo spot: tea and sympathy on greenwich.

all in all, a new and exciting experience. next month: i’m getting my learner’s permit!

See more progress on: enjoy the second quarter of 2008 by having one new and fulfilling experience in April, May, and June. Woo Hoo!