Famous Ankles

In celebration of the new camera, some photos of Harlem buildings and neighborhoods. (UPDATE:  I’m using a new process to make them fit into the blog’s format.  Before, they were thumbnails and oversized….a real pain.)

Here’s a snap looking southward from 125th and Lenox.  I think of this area as the “heart of Harlem”.  I don’t know if I’ve heard that somewhere or whether I’m just wrong.  The church is Seventh Day Adventist.

Here’s a building on 125th Street.

Here’s a nice shot of an area next to Marcus Garvey Park.  The area is wonderful.

Here are three quick photos taken around 127th through 137th Streets.  I didn’t note exactly where, but they are between Lenox Avenue and Frederick Douglass Blvd.

Look at the next.  What a wonderful looking place!

It’s easy to make Harlem look good.  Maybe this can show some of the effects of the Harlem Renaissance that’s going on.

-H

No visit to Harlem is complete without a view of the Apollo Theater. (UPDATE:  I’ve re-sized the pictures.)

Here’s Magic Johnson’s mega-theater at 125th and Frederick Douglass Blvd…

And a friendly message from the Victoria theater…

You can go into the lobby of the Apollo Theater, but they don’t really give tours.  (Technically, they do tours but only for tour groups.)

-H

The weather was perfect.  It was sunny, it was cool (60s and 70s), and it was a Saturday.  Time to wander through Harlem with my brand new camera!

I had a very nice time.  I’m going to break it into a series of posts (to get some practice as a “real blogger”), so you’re probably going to run into this “first” Harlem post last.

That’s not an issue.  You just need to come more often.

Okay, I’m no stranger to Harlem.  I started visiting it last year and I’m always impressed with the place.  If I were to move to NYC anew, Harlem would be one of those places that I’d take a very hard look at in terms of living.  In fact, in a later post I’ll show some pictures of a place I sort of looked at but couldn’t get inside despite the agent’s best efforts.

At about 10am, I took the bus up to Harlem and got off at about 5th Avenue and 125th Street.  It’s a nice area to get off the bus because it lets me just kind of stroll up to the “heart of Harlem”, 125th and Lenox Avenue.

African influence seems as strong as ever up here.  Here’s a storefront grill that I’ve seen before and found a little odd.  I didn’t describe it in my e-mails to friends and family because I don’t think I could quite describe it.  Even here, this is just a couple of feet of perhaps a 20 or 30 foot grill.  It’s my favorite part, though. 

I’m particularly enamoured by the knife and head (I don’t know if the skull is supposed to be from a human, a beast, or a hybrid).  The store is “The Body Shop”, which I wouldn’t normally associate with knives and beheadings.  But I’m not their target demographic, so I can’t be sure.

Of course, you might not usually associate such a picture with a blog post titled with the words “a very pleasant day”.

-H