MY-NY

NEW YORK—It's hard to ignore the young woman — and the cacophony of cursing — barrelling toward us, ranting into her cellphone about her boss. The only sound more piercing is a nearby police siren.
But none of the noise draws a bit of attention from the noon-hour crowd on bustling Martin Luther King Blvd.
"Ah, the sounds of Harlem," says a smiling Chafin Elliott, 76, looking completely at home, yet somehow out of place, in New York's most notorious neighbourhood.
"You don't get this on a tour bus."
These are the street scenes Elliott clearly relishes when introducing newcomers to the gritty neighbourhood where he grew up, bouncing from one Harlem flat to the next with his single mom and three siblings before finally moving to Brooklyn in 1965. He lived in six different places here in as many years until his struggling mom moved into what Elliott calls his "permanent home": a walk-up flat on 114th St. where he lived for eight years before getting married in 1951.
It would be more than a decade until the "downward spiral" of poverty, drugs and violence plaguing Harlem would make life so difficult — and the offer of a Brooklyn co-op with a view of the Manhattan skyline so appealing — that he and his wife joined the stampede of people who'd already moved out.
"But I've always loved Harlem. This is where the juice was," says Elliott.
That's why, for almost a decade, he's been bringing tourists to the old 'hood as one of about 300 New Yorkers who show newcomers the places they love, or where they live, as part of the volunteer program Big Apple Greeters.
"People who come here don't really know what they want to see. They can say, `I want to see the Statue of Liberty,' `I want to see the Empire State Building,' but when they do Harlem, they want to know about Harlem. That's how personalizing tours gives them an idea of the place."
Most visitors are surprised, for instance, when he tells them that this legendary black neighbourhood — once the epicentre of African-American culture and music — used to be "one of the better places to live" for middle-class Jews, Germans, Italians and Irish families moving up and out of southern Manhattan.
The rush to build housing for those desirable new families created such a glut of units, and pushed developers so close to bankruptcy, they started selling to blacks.
That, in turn, started the exodus of whites.
"When I tell people there were once 15 synagogues here, and that I got married in one of them that had become a Baptist church, that's of interest," Elliott says.
"They understand Harlem better than just having the image of drugs and crime."
By the 1920s, Harlem was the undisputed centre of African-American creativity — a period still known as the Harlem Renaissance.
But by the Depression, Harlem was in a freefall.
Even middle-class blacks were moving elsewhere, leaving more room for the poor and their new neighbours, drugs, gangs and crime.
Fed-up landlords boarded up the battered old brownstones, two-thirds of which remained empty reminders of Harlem's decline until the early 1990s.
"People come here and they have no idea about what's happening in Harlem now," says Elliott.
"You can drive around on a tour bus, but when you're walking around, you get closer to it. Basically, what you're seeing — it doesn't matter where you go in Harlem — they are renovating building after building."
Basketball star Magic Johnson opened the first Starbucks here at Harlem's epicentre: the intersection of 125th St. (also known as Martin Luther King Blvd.) and Lenox Ave. (also known as Malcolm X Blvd.) Tourists often drop in hoping to see former president Bill Clinton, who has a law office close by.
But your cappuccino could get mighty cold craning for a glimpse. His much-celebrated move seems to have been largely symbolic support for Harlem's rebirth. He's only been spotted in the 'hood once or twice.
Elliott does two to three tours of New York neighbourhoods a month for Big Apple Greeters and is always called on when visitors want to see Harlem.
He connects with them by phone beforehand to get an idea of their interests, arrange a time and a meeting spot.
"They usually ask, `How will I recognize you?' I tell them, `Don't worry. I'll be wearing black,'" he says with a devilish smirk.
Amazingly, most are shocked to discover that he is black.
Elliott touches on the Harlem landmarks — legendary jazz clubs like the Apollo Theatre, Lenox Lounge, "Strivers' Row" (once home to Harlem's wealthy and influential blacks), and soul food havens such as Sylvia's (328 Lenox Ave.) and Amy Ruth's (113 W. 116th St.)
But this isn't so much a history tour (for that, consider Big Onion Walking Tours) as a social studies lesson — a chance to walk in Chafin Elliott's shoes, so to speak.
He doesn't like to focus on the dark side of Harlem: "I say, `It was bad.' A white person would say, `You were taking your life in your own hands coming here.'"
Instead, he points to the many signs of Harlem's "second renaissance" — the renovated Apollo, the resurgence of the arts here, the Marriott Hotel planned for the area (although it's suffered endless construction delays).
Hoardings and forklifts grace virtually every block, including the sidewalk outside of Elliott's teenage home on 114th Ave., where Robert Johnson and his friends are whiling away the afternoon.
"I used to live right here," says Elliott, pointing to the stairs of the old rowhouses, dubbed "the poverty block" in the 1960s when black politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. grandstanded here for the media, pressing Congress for grants to kick-start a Harlem cleanup.
"I don't remember you," says Johnson abruptly, "and I moved here in 1944 when I was 2."
"I don't remember him either," Elliott whispers in my ear, "and I was 15 at the time."
They chat in the shade of the hoarding for one of the old poverty row homes that's undergoing a reno.
"The whites want Harlem back," Johnson says. "There are tour buses here every five minutes."
Sure, there's still lots of the old Harlem left.
Trendy new eateries such as the Italian bakery Stephanie (196 Lenox Ave.) sit right next door to boarded-up buildings. But just across the street is Emperor's Roe, a champagne and caviar shop, and a few blocks away is a sign advertising $1.15-million condos overlooking Central Park.
Its once crime-riddled northern edge is now a pleasant playground for Harlem residents.
"There are still a lot of myths about Harlem," Elliott says later.
"Every time you bring somebody here, and you get through, that's it — that's the reward."
Elliott delights in ending his two- to three-hour tour "with two surprises that have nothing to do with Harlem."
After an eight-minute subway ride on the D Train, we climb the stairs to another world.
"This works well for people who've never been to New York, because they go from Harlem to this ..." says Elliott.
Towering above us are some of the most exclusive addresses on the planet: the Time Warner Center and the Trump International Hotel & Tower with its luxurious condos overlooking the south end of Central Park.
The first surprise awaits us in the 35th-floor lobby of the Mandarin International Hotel in the Time Warner Center where a step down into the bar reveals the most fantastic — and free — views of Midtown and the park.
We pass the centre's chic Bar Masa restaurant and gulp at the $250 (U.S.) Kyusha Island Strip Steak on the menu, a far cry from the $7.50 salmon croquette and black-eyed peas we had for lunch at Sylvia's.
An escalator takes us to the second surprise, the naked backside of Eve and her Pillsbury Dough Boy partner Adam, a bronze statue whose disproportionately tiny penis has been made shiny by loving tweaks from passersby.
"Kids love this," Elliott says.
You can't help but laugh at these two delightful sculptures and the best surprise of all — Chafin Elliott himself.

Source: Susan Pigg