Friday we were around the house to talk to contractors and toward the end of the day we had a friend come by to see our place before going out for dinner, etc. We were doing a quick walking tour of the neighborhood and were over on Mount Morris Park West when a guy approached us and asked us if we lived in the area. We explained we just bought a shell nearby but didn’t live there yet. He said he was a photographer doing work for the Observer in the UK and they were doing a piece on the changes in Harlem and asked if he could take our picture. We walked him over to our place, showed him the inside and then he took some pictures of us on our stoop.

Well, the article came out, and thank god our picture wasn’t used… The article is titled “There Goes The Neighborhood…” and then continues to complain about the demographic changes that are going on in Harlem.  It makes it sound like white people are taking over Harlem, when we’re actually just 15% of the population (in Central Harlem). The article in the NY Times earlier this year was far more balanced and objective. White people aren’t taking over Harlem, if anyone is taking over Harlem, it’s Latinos and Asians.

Here’s one snippet from the Observer article that gives you an idea of where it’s coming from…

It is no surprise that the changes in Harlem anger some. Tarik Haskins, 61, makes a living by selling CDs from a stall on 125th Street … He is furious at the changes he sees around him. “It is a threat to the indigenous people. We do not have the same salaries as these new people. Our choices are more limited,” he said. What is the answer? “We have to organise,” replied Haskins, who proudly wears a Black Panther badge.

The “indigenous people” comment is laughable. Harlem was built for white people and initially occupied by white people. One of our (white) neighbors found out that her grandmother was born in Mount Morris Hospital which used to be down the street from where we are. When she gets snide comments about her not belonging she loves to bring up her grandmother and tell the person she has as much right to be there as they do.

The other problem with that statement is that if you go over to “SoHa” (centered around Frederick Douglass Boulevard south of 125th Street), where the gentrification is most dramatic, you’ll see the bars and restaurants are filled with “buppies” – hard working, educated, successful BLACK 30-somethings. Sure there are some high-income white people buying places, but the far bigger trend has little to do with race and everything to do with economic class. Harlem is gentrifying and getting more expensive. That’s going to change things, but it’s more likely that a higher-income Black or Latino will be displacing the lower-income Black, than a white person. Most of the white people I’ve met in Harlem bought (and often renovated) long-vacant townhouses and displaced no one in the process.

Personally, Dan and I aren’t displacing any poor black people – our house has been vacant for at least a decade and, by New York standards, we’re hardly rich. While we’re not black, we are an interracial couple, and being gay we’re both minorities. I’m sure some people might resent me moving into Harlem, but I’ve got nothing to apologize for and in time they’ll get used to it.

That said, I do completely understand that systemic and deep poverty are still real problems in Harlem and that the poverty is strongly correlated with race. You’d be hard pressed to find many New Yorkers who don’t understand that. But leaving Harlem a run down ghetto is hardly the way to fix the poverty problem.

One of the things I learned early on about New York is to never complain too much about change. Change is a constant in NY and the City would stagnate and die if it didn’t change. Change is usually good.  It’s a good thing, not a bad thing, to see Harlem get cleaned up, vacant, burned out buildings get rebuilt, and fancy new condos go in.

We still need to take care of those who are less fortunate and to that end our back yard abuts the back yard of some brownstones that are being turned into affordable housing, and catty corner across Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd is an 11 story housing project. The Harlem of the future can and should accommodate the needs of a diverse group of people – black, white, Latino and Asian; rich, middle class, and poor. People shouldn’t be scared of diversity – hell, that’s what makes New York a special place.

We should have known better… You get what you pay for and Manhattan Mini Storage‘s “free move” probably should have raised alarm bells, but we signed up for the free move anyway.

So these three guys show up. Manhattan Mini Storage had hired Moving Ahead for the job and it was obvious that Moving Ahead had sent their absolute worst team to do the move. It’s probably an instance of Manhattan Mini Storage buying the excess time of various moving companies and then the moving companies filling the order with the moving teams that are at the bottom of their list to send out on “real” jobs.

So these three guys show up. The leader was talking about how he’d been up until like 2am the night before. The fat guy on the team managed to rotate every box he picked up 90 degrees and then he’d drop it on the moving dolly. He was too lazy to do the bending required to set it down properly. They took out a bunch of boxes and Dan went outside to watch over them. I’m not exactly sure what he saw, but he had a bad enough reaction watching them that he called me. I was sitting in a chair exhausted praying we wouldn’t completely regret the move. As soon as he started with his misgivings I interrupted them and said I didn’t want them touching our stuff either and to stop them. Well, Dan is a feisty little thing when he gets mad and apparently he totally went off on them and everything ground to a halt.

I was already on my way down and then we had to get everything off the street and into the courtyard of our building to get the moving dollies back to the idiots doing the move. It was a huge amount of work on a morning that started with me waking up completely exhausted – so sorta a complete nightmare.

The team leader tried to justify their actions by saying he didn’t have any problems when he moved an art collection that one time. I told him Dan had run an art trucking company at one point and understood how to do moves properly. Then he went on about how he’s done moves for millionaires and not had a problem. There were a number of problems with that statement so I didn’t bother responding. But honestly, he should treat everyone like a millionaire and who was he to assume we weren’t millionaires? Plus, the one other time I heard a line like that was when a contractor was trying to justify putting greenboard in a shower by saying he’d done it in “million dollar homes”. People just don’t have a clue sometimes.

Needless to say I wanted nothing to do with Manhattan Mini Storage or Moving Ahead ever again. In fact, if it weren’t going to cost an arm and a leg I sorta wished we could get the stuff we have in storage with Manhattan Mini Storage out and to a different facility. In the end we’re going with Manor Moving who are recommended by our real estate agents and a neighbor. They’re going to pull everything from our place and Manhattan Mini Storage and put it in their warehouse. Their sales tactics are a little heavy handed for my tastes, but given their recommendations, I trust them a lot more than Manhattan Mini Storage.

And honestly, I should have known better about Manhattan Mini Storage was well. Last fall one of their owners was instrumental in having Animal Haven shut down two of their three locations which completely changed Animal Haven’s mission from animal rescue to a SoHo boutique pet store with a few “adoptable” animals available. The Manhattan Mini Storage person was on the board and one of the strongest advocates of the change (half the board resigned in protest over the change). That decision resulted in the killing of something like 50 or 60 cats and dogs many of whom were unadoptable and who Animal Haven donors had gladly supported for many years. In fact, the upstate sanctuary for unadoptable animals brought in more money than it cost to run – so there was no good reason to close it and sell when real estate prices were low.

On a more positive note, I’ll say Shleppers did our main move to our new apartment and they were wonderful. I’d highly recommend them.

I just want all this moving and selling stuff to be over. But it’s only the beginning… Hopefully soon we’ll find a townhouse in Harlem and then we’ve got a major renovation to do. Needless to say, a good contractor will be absolutely critical. And next move I’m hiring someone to do packing and starting the packing early. Unfortunately our personal assistant quit a month ago or so and we’ve been on our own through this whole ordeal.

UPDATE:

First, we had a very good move with Manor Moving. Given that we were in a rush they didn’t really understand how much they were moving and putting in storage they under bid the job. They could have messed with us once things were on the truck, but they were completely fair.

Second, Dan finally got to talk to Manhattan Mini Storage and they were really good about the situation. By that time we’d already moved everything out but they offered 8 months free on our current storage unit which was extremely generous and will actually come in handy since we’re short on closet space in our interim rental. So while I still have issues with their involvement in Animal Haven, they did handle the situation as well as they could. The fault then really lies with the movers – Moving Ahead – not so much with Manhattan Mini Storage.