Harlem Gentrifier Quits Gentrifying

Writer Susan Crain Bakos was thrown to the ground and had her handbag stolen this past spring in front of her favorite club, thus ending her three-year love affair with Harlem: "How did I not realize that I had become another poster person for gentrification, the evil that the ministers of Harlem were now crusading against? The concern, or so I have been told, is that Harlem will lose its 'culture' as whites move in. The endangered part of the vital Harlem culture is the art, the music, the literature, the jazz at St. Nicks Pub — which is threatened by the thug culture surrounding it. The bigger part of the 'culture,' thug life — celebrated in hip-hop — is intransigent like the rats and roaches and mold in gut-renovated brownstones." [New York Press]