Home In “The Home of the Haze”
Over the weekend I walked and bicycled the length and breadth of Washington Heights, one of the northernmost neighborhoods on Manhattan, talking to people on the street. I’m new to New York, so I’m carrying a map and my notebook as I bike north. Juascal, a wiry black man in his 40’s wearing a beret and a salt-and-pepper beard, is just stretching out on a stoop’s metal railing as I approach. He grins when I ask him about the neighborhood. “You get all kinds around here: Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, black folks … and your kind, too, of course,” indicating my northern European ancestry with a grin. “Everyone all blended in.” At this, he laughs and knits his fingers together in front of his chest.
A block north, I speak with two beat cops sitting in their cruiser. Don and Mike — both affable, white, and in their mid-twenties — work out of the 33rd Precinct. When I explain my interest in the neighborhood they chuckle and tell me that I’ll find some great stories here. “This is the drug capital of the world, man. They call it the ‘Home of the Haze.’” Both men started working for the police only two years ago, but they regale me with stories of how rough the neighborhood was in the ’80s. When I ask them how they see the district changing, they describe slow transition. “[Improving the neighborhood] is gonna take doormen on the buildings, which you’re not gonna see for years… and it’s gonna take bringing down the housing projects, which is also gonna be hard.” They shake their heads ruefully when I ask about community relations: “Only the senior citizens call us, or show up to community meetings. They’re the only ones with a voice.”
I walk north on St. Nicholas from West 160th Street, noting the architecture. For a non-native New Yorker, the population density in the rows of beautifully ornamented six-story brick buildings seems nearly beyond belief, although those southern blocks later feel positively sparse when compared to the four high-rise apartment buildings standing atop the Cross Bronx Expressway. Thirty stories of faded beige walls and balconies in rainbow hues made these buildings easy to use as landmarks.
«It’s a great place to live… as long as you’ve got a good, secure apartment.»
Continuing north and staying east of Broadway keeps me in the Dominican section of town. At the height of Sunday’s “Festival Dominicana” it seems every car is draped in blue, white, and red. The air fills with honking, whistles, car stereos, clicking dominoes, and in several places the blatting of hand-held air horns. I stop to speak (in Spanish) with Nelson, a Dominican street vendor selling at least 40 square feet of crisp Yankees’ hats in every color from blue to camouflage. Nelson tells me that he’s loved his 20 years living in the neighborhood. «It’s a great place to live,» he says, «as long as you’ve got a good, secure apartment.» I ask him about neighborhood troubles, and he considers for a moment before waving to the south. «Brooklyn,» he says. «Not here.»
Walking west, I approach New York-Presbyterian hospital. The narrow storefront eateries of the east side (with their ubiquitous plantains, roast chicken, and coconut water) give way to larger restaurants, sushi bars, and pubs. Blue scrubs become common street apparel. On foot, the hospital’s precise property lines are difficult to discern, and Jerry, a white man in his late fifties who I meet in a dog park just off Riverside Drive, cites this difficulty as one of his frustrations with the district. “Columbia keeps buying up property … they’re an octopus!” He also complains about not being able to find a good local restaurant, or “any restaurant which doesn’t serve Latin food.”
Continuing north along the Hudson River, I come to the area west of Broadway and north of 181st Street. When I ask about “Hudson Heights,” long-time residents Maddy and Jerry Post scoff. “It’s a made-up term which came in when realtors saw the place had gentrified,” Maddy tells me. “We moved into this building the same week Nixon resigned, and nobody called it anything but Washington Heights.” The area stands in sharp contrast to the areas south and east; a Starbucks, trendy fusion restaurants, and an older and more European racial mix on the sidewalks all leave an impression of relative affluence. Maddy credits the steep hill between the Heights and Broadway with deterring would-be criminals, and having walked up it, I can’t disagree.
I walk briefly through Fort Tryon Park before heading down the hill, through the yarmulke-dense area surrounding Yeshiva University, and finally up to the trees, rail yard, and playing fields, which mark the far northern tip of Manhattan. It hardly feels like the dense grid of 155th Street, and I add up the neighboring contrasts I’ve seen: plantains and sushi; affluence and drug corners; English and Spanish; Dominican flags and hospital blues.