You are probably saying to yourself, what the hell gives a white guy originally from Staten Island the right to say anything critical about the hood? Who the hell does he think he is? Well aside from the First Amendment and a laptop, my ultimate qualification is that I have seen it from both sides of the coin. I did grow up in Staten Island, the hands down whitest borough. My graduating class from a private school had zero black people and the few Spanish kids we had, they were all third and fourth generation Americans. To the best of my knowledge none of them were native Spanish speakers. Even more so, after a few years of community college, I joined the New York City Police Department. Yes that’s right the same 41 shot (and you can expect a blog on that) and Haitian immigrant sodomizing (on that one too) police department. After marrying rich and retiring on a vested pension it was a fairly cushy life on Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side. That’s right I moved on up just like George and Weezie.
Well life hands you some funny cards and you have no choice but to play them. After close to five years of marriage, divorce happened and I left with my clothes, television and my dignity. I had no money, no job, but a hell of a lot of hopes and dreams (just like lots of kids in the ghetto) I ended up in Harlem. Not Spanish Harlem, but Black Harlem as I heard it called when I was in the police academy. It was Harlem World that’s for sure. Whatever you call it, it was an education you can’t get in any book or classroom. Harlem might have gone through some kind of renaissance, but I am not sure what they were talking about. A Starbucks on 125th Street isn’t going to revitalize an area that has been downtrodden for so damn long. They added some nice buildings, sure. And speculators, pioneers, developers, whomever they may be even fixed up some of the old Brownstones to make them look like they could have been dropped onto Striver’s Row.
But that wasn’t my Harlem experience. After my bout with homelessness going from spare bedrooms to air mattresses on various floors, to overnights at various women’s houses to even a night or two in my car, I was desperate for a roof over my head. Through the generosity of a close friend, who spoke up on my behalf to a relative who owned a brownstone, I managed to score a gig building sitting. Being desperate, and down on my luck I would take anything. Didn’t matter it was the middle of January and the place had no heat. It didn’t matter that the only running water the place had ran from ceiling to floor when it rained. It was still better than folding down the seat on a beat up Honda Accord. After that joint got renovated it was off to another brownstone. This one had heat and hot water, but not much else more. Well it did have leaky ceilings, big ass ghetto rats, roaches that you had to fight for what you were eating, and crack heads who occasionally would break in and steal my stereo. It was the hizzy, but it was my home.
It was that education of not knowing where my next meal was coming from, or saying to myself “Are they outside, or are they inside my building where I’m the only one who lives there.” with no gun, no vest, no radio and no partner that made me understand what the ghetto experience was all about. It was about eating a butter roll and a small coffee for breakfast everyday because it was cheap. It was about having to go to the I-Hop around the corner to be able to take a dump. It was about being looked at like I was trying to steal a neighborhood for it’s long time residents where the fact of the matter was it was I who was the low man on the totem pole.
My boy Mateo always says, poor people got nothing, broke people have shit. I was poor! I learned about scratching and clawing to survive. I learned the lesson every kid in the ghetto knows as law…NOBODY HANDS YOU SHIT! It was taking one shit job after another. It was about serving people who had more than you, people who had all the breaks while you learned that these are the breaks. It was about walking into a city hospital because you have no money and no insurance. It was about life!
It was four years that I have no choice and look back on with a great affection. It was every day lessons that taught me constantly. Most of all, it opened my eyes, and taught me one great lesson. Ghetto is not a place to live, but is merely a state of mind.
HerMadgesty says: 
