NEW YORK—Dede Emerson began her journey three years ago on April 24, 2005. Her goal was to walk every street in Manhattan. Not just to cover the territory on foot—all 508 miles—but to savor the neighborhoods and revisit places she had known as a young jazz pianist in the 1950s, when she arrived in the city a fresh-faced girl from Minnesota.
In those days her haunts were the Bowery, Harlem, and the East Village, where real jazz was played in smoky dives reached by climbing rickety stairs sometimes lined with hobos and other colorful characters.
More than half a century later, Dede decided to re-discover Manhattan street by street. Sometimes braving downpours and gale-force winds, over the next two years, nine months and two days, she finished her trek on a cold, sunny Saturday this past January—Dede peered through window panes, climbed hills, navigated narrow alleys, shared stoops with locals from Harlem to Greenwich Village and learned some of the Big Apple's secrets.
The best kept secret was that New York City is full of kindness. Especially in Harlem, Dede had the feeling that people were watching out for her. While admiring a rare old clapboard house near Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., she struck up a conversation with a young African American.
He asked if she was interested in buying the house. She replied that if she were younger she might be. They chatted about the history of Harlem and the changing racial influx, Irish, German, Jewish, African American, and most recently the gentrification by all sorts of people.
As she walked away he smiled and said "You seem like a nice lady and I hope you'll buy this house!" On another occasion she stopped to stretch, leaning against a building. Alarmed at what he thought was a person in distress, a man in a wheelchair rolled up to her with a concerned look on his face, asking if she needed help. She re-assured him that her long walk required stretching from time to time and that she was fine.
Sometime the contrasts she encountered were stark: glistening high-rise buildings and stretch limousines juxtaposed with hopelessness and misfortune embodied by the prostrate form of a homeless man asleep in a bed of black plastic garbage bags.
Noise, garbage, and wall murals were the keepers of other secrets. The Upper East Side had elegant garbage that included stylish hat boxes and antiques while Greenwich Village trash was "artistic," containing painters' palettes and other creative throw-aways.
From Inwood in northern Manhattan down to the adjacent Washington Heights was the most sound-filled area with all manner of blaring music, vendors' shouts piercing the air, and constant high-energy conversation everywhere. In contrast Chinatown, even busier than Washington Heights, was surprisingly quiet! Wall murals in Harlem were mostly political or religious; in Greenwich Village, wall painting was more inclined to be just art for art's sake.
And then there was the mystery of the banana tree in Tompkins Park. On a summer Sunday's walk in the East Village Dede admired the tropical foliage of this strangely out of place plant that seemed to belong more to Hawaii than Manhattan. In January on a return trip to the park she noticed the tree was gone. Frozen to death, she speculated to herself. The following May she was back in Tompkins Park and so was the banana tree!
Fascinated and mystified, she sought out the park superintendent who cleared up the mystery. Every November the tree was lovingly wrapped up and taken away to its winter home in a Parks Department warehouse where it hibernated till spring.
Aside from the Lenox Lounge in Harlem where Dede had played jazz gigs, none of her old haunts remained. She had played at Birdland in 1954, but the original location on Broadway near 52nd Street closed down in the 1960s.
Gone was The Five Spot on Saint Mark's Place between Second and Third Avenues where she had heard Thelonius Monk play in jam sessions, replaced by a bar. Another favorite hang-out in Greenwich Village—Grandma's—had been taken over by Starbucks.
The building on 141st Street that had housed the famed Savoy Ballroom was now an apartment complex. Dede realized that part of the fascination of New York City was its floating crap game nature; nothing stays the same too long.
Responding without hesitation to the inevitable question, "Was New York City better 50 years ago?" Dede answers with a resounding "No!" Today she finds the Big Apple more friendly, cleaner, and much safer than it was in the old days when she often felt compelled to walk in the middle of the street returning home after late night jam sessions.
Looking back on her three-year trek, the equivalent of walking from New York City to Philadelphia five times, Dede said it had given her renewed enthusiasm for Manhattan and its invigorating diversity.
Furthermore, it was challenging as a 70-something to step out of her comfort zone each week and have a sense of adventure instead of limiting herself to the all-too-familiar. Most of all, Dede said, she was thankful her feet didn't let her down!
Sam Oglesby is a writer who lives in Manhattan. His email is ogl39@aol.com
Feeds