Boy is it good to be home. Last week, the Music City became a speck in my rearview mirror as I tied up loose ends and left Nashville for good. The entire experience left me with a sense of freedom I only longed for and until that moment hadn’t fully claimed.

Now, I am back in New York City and took the weekend to catch up with old friends and family. Walking through Harlem from Central Park, it was easy to see just how much the old neighborhood changed.

Post-9/11 Harlem looks quite different from its pre-9/11 predecessor. The pre-WW II buildings are still here, the Starbucks remains where 125th Street meets Malcolm X Boulevard and you can still buy fried fish, brown-stewed chicken, bootleg DVDs or make it a Blockbuster night all on the same block.

But the elephant on the street corner is the not-so-quiet fact that Harlem no longer belongs to the blacks that have supported it for generations.

This is the same neighborhood that was castigated in the 80s as a haven for blacks and dangerous for whites. Following suit, whites avoided it like the plague often boasting about never traveling above 96th Street. This weekend, however, it’s clear that old habits have gone by the wayside as whites, Hispanics and Asians convene on 125th Street to shop, eat or simply hang out where they live.

This is evidenced not just by seeing them around the neighborhood, but by the mere fact that the famed Apollo Theater — home to the likes of James Brown and the talent show "Showtime at the Apollo" — is hosting Icelandic singer, Bjork, next month.

Bjork? In Harlem? This same chick wore a swan dress to the Academy Awards.

 

Yeah, so what do the two have in common? One could venture to say Harlem and Bjork have as much in common as swans and dresses.

Who knows what sparked it. Maybe it was Magic Johnson’s Starbucks and AMC movie theater, which resulted in many other corporations establishing locations in historic Harlem. Maybe it was former President Bill Clinton’s move to a building on 125th Street. Or maybe, and perhaps more than likely, it was the ruination of several residential buildings in lower Manhattan along with more than a few commercial ones that displaced and scared a fairly affluent demographic out of Battery Park City straight up the FDR all the way to Harlemworld.

I wonder if the first few whites in Harlem felt like the Europeans did when they landed on Plymouth Rock. “Wow, it IS part of the city,” someone might have said upon emerging from a subway. One thing is for sure, nothing's changed much from those early days when it comes to the realm of real estate.

In the years since 9/11, those new to Harlem have bought up, renovated and moved in to brownstones that were all but forgotten in a neighborhood filled with systematic blight because there was no money.

Today, individuals and families who have lived in Harlem for generations are being pushed up into Washington Heights, the Bronx and Yonkers because the rents where grandma and mom lived are increasingly too high.

All of this just begs the question: what price are we willing to pay to live multi-culturally? If having a mix of blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, or any other ethnic group that can afford the price of admission means that generations of families and their history are displaced, then isn’t it too high a price?

Either way, it's happening and gentrification does have its perks. I did love walking around my old stomping ground seeing the African hair braiders mixed in with storefronts like H&M, Starbucks and MAC Cosmetics. And I didn’t seem to mind watching the newcomers scoop up hot dog shit off of streets they previously demeaned as beneath them.

Then again, I am part of a minority in a minority who can afford to still call Harlem home.

(For some New York flavor, check out my photo album, here.)