Similarities and differences

We caught the train up to 125th St to have a look at the Apollo theatre. This is a landmark in Harlem. It is where a lot of now famous comedians have got their start and more tragically, it is where Malcolm X was shot. It is a very simple looking place.
We then walked along Fredrick Douglass Boulevard, Martin Luther King Drive and Malcolm Shabazz Ave: all the big names. At Sylvia's, we sat at the bar and ate southern style home food: fried chicken, collard greens, okra gumbo, fried liver, mashed potato and corn bread. Charles had been very keen to taste the cornbread, but it was more like cake than anything else, so after a couple of bites we gave up on that. There was even a guy who looked remarkably like Spike Lee. You will be pleased to know that I restrained myself; but I was for a brief moment in danger of winning the "Greatest Idiot In the Whole World Competition".

There is lots of rubbish piled up on the footpaths (sidewalks in the vernacular). In Harlem the rubbish is piled up, but also floats across the streets and footpaths. There are lots of rats in New York (one even dare to run across my foot, and horror of horror I was wearing my new boots). Because the rubbish in Harlem is somewhat less contained, the rats spread out as well. I nearly stepped on a squashed dead rat of the footpath (thankfully the new boots were not subject to that horror).

One phenomenon that I have just started to get a handle on is the barber shop. Hair is very important in New York. We met a guy who works in Radio Shack who has the most intricate pattern cut into his hair everyweek. It takes 2 hours and is what he does every Friday night. This made little sense till we saw a few barber shops open late into the evening. At the one near where we are staying, the customers and the hairdressers each have a beer, music is on and they seem to spend their time crapping on and looking out the window. They cut really intricate and/or precise designs and the process takes up a good deal of time. The hairdressers/beauty salon we passed in Harlem today must have had 50 women inside, some being braided and beaded, some under those big old fashioned hairdryers, some sitting on the window sill with curlers in their hair, and others just hanging out. It looked like a real scene.

As you can see below Ben and Charles have become twins. Ben imitates Charles and Charles imitates Ben. Naoli and I have to be very careful so that we can tell them apart. To make matters even more confusing, Charles is teaching Ben to play the digeredoo, so soon even this difference will disappear.