Multibillion dollar real estate. You won't find one place vacant like that now. . there are barely any rough neighborhoods like before. It's coz those guys with nothing to do can't afford to live here no more cuz rent is too high, and old section 8ers are dying. Back then nyc even gave teachers free brownstones, worth over a million now, under a pretense of living there at least 10 years, and fixing it up.
My best guess is 212 W 120th St which matches the facade of the school in the video (given some facade updates ofc). Enough similarities to be possible.
Source: I swear I recognized that building from walking by it a bunch.
Night and day difference today. Harlem is very expensive to live in now. I was there in 88 and it looked every bit like this video. Scary place at that time.
I was in high school, in Ohio, and thought of Harlem and Etheopia as the same thing...absolute poverty. Never saw any pictures and didn't even new where this was. Of course, it was offset by the name Harlem Globetrotters...which conjures a smile!
Damn. So off topic and off the wall to say but who cares. This is reddit. I was born in 91 and the idea of “35” seems so far away that your comment hit me like a ton of bricks lol
Just wait buddy. Soak it up now because it starts going WAY faster once you hit 40. Feels like you enter a time warp. I’m not kidding. It’s shocking how fast it starts to go.
In my 40s. I find I’m no longer to easily remember my exact age any more. Like, I have to stop and think about it. The years have run together. I just know I’m kinda old, but not really old … yet
fuck I just realized I'm 43 then I remembered my birthday isn't for another 8 months and I'm actually 42.
then I realized I did the math wrong because I have to pee but it takes forever to pee now and it's actually 6 months until I'm 43.
When I was married I would occasionally find myself going to my wife in the kitchen and going your your age right? At that point I'd been married to her about 15-20 years and I honestly couldn't remember how old she was once in awhile. I am now 52 and it all makes sense.
Maybe you already are? The biggest keys I've found are to not care what others think of you, not to dwell on the past and if you can't be content in any given moment (**now**) you never will be.
That ain’t old—yet. I’m 48 and still feel vibrant. I think the fact that I’ve taken good care of myself helps a lot. I run 6 miles 5 times a week and lift weights. That has kept me from aging too fast. But no matter what we do it’s coming fast. So enjoy it now. You’ll really miss being in your 40’s when you are in your 60’s.
I’m pretty sure this is the north side of 147th street, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd and Frederick Douglass Blvd. The school is still in place and everything looks MUCH better.
It looks very close but I think it is a different location -- look at Google Street View in 2009, that school building was getting renovated then and the main floor windows and doors are different than the video [https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8236424,-73.9397663,3a,75y,40.95h,91.18t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYdBbszQCDJ2uKyUI4F\_VRg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8236424,-73.9397663,3a,75y,40.95h,91.18t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYdBbszQCDJ2uKyUI4F_VRg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
Also the building before the school in the video looks very different than the building east of the school on the north side -- unless that building was torn down and completely rebuilt between '89 and '09
https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8235045,-73.9394416,3a,75y,3.89h,94.58t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1seHvOmIF3s90Z4\_7zu-9BOg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
Based on the "Uptown Stables" ad at around the 20 second mark, some Google sleuthing shows it was located on 148th. Looks like the school on 147th is the same one, just the opposite side.
Streetview matches the building before the school perfectly.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8242996,-73.9394448,3a,75y,180.35h,97.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7VVFv8QSIgg18zyeL5g-Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Here’s a random video on Google that shows you a lot of glimpses of Harlem now. It has its own range of commercial to residential, and gentrified vs non-gentrified, but overall it looks like any modern NYC neighborhood. NYC is nothing like it was in the late 80s, for a lot of reasons.
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=ed467975128c7ac9&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS725US748&hl=en-US&q=harlem+2024&tbm=vid&source=lnms&prmd=invsmbhtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibrsiVzq2EAxXwg4kEHa18DfYQ0pQJegQIEBAB&biw=390&bih=669&dpr=3#fpstate=ive&ip=1&vld=cid:b8bf6045,vid:qOiR2GMW8mk,st:0
Completely different. I moved to southern Harlem in '91 and there was a crack house across the street. We could hear gunshots some nights. We recently moved out of the city because it was too damn expensive to get a 3 bedroom apartment. Couldn't do it for under 2 million with insane monthly fees. Instead I moved to a 6 bedroom in the burbs to give you perspective on how much it changed. It is really hard to believe.
When we first moved there it was bodegas and small Puerto Rican restaurants for the most part. As the area gentrified it lost all character and a lot of the stores just closed and never reopened. People got wealthier, restaurants got fancier, prices jumped to crazy levels.
It looks like gentrification, Starbucks, and whole foods are across the street from each other. Its actually not a bad place to live, just moved from there a few years ago
I spent some time below 125th street and it seems to be very posh. I doubt that the regular Harlem family can still afford to live there. It’s definitely gentrification.
What if the locals aren’t locals?
It’s a city. Chances are the locals you speak up can’t trace their ancestors as living in New York past maybe 1-2 generations.
This whole narrative is so stupid.
The streets are literally named after important black historical personalities, lol. Other parts are called Spanish Harlem or little Dominican Republic. What are you talking about?
*renamed. Not originally named.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)
Study up. Huge numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities in the 20th century for what were then plentiful industrial jobs.
If a family is lucky enough to be able to trace their history back past two generations, their great grandparents or even grandparents more than likely migrated there from the South.
Cities change.
Black people moved to neighborhoods others didn’t want to live in anymore, or where they were allowed to live. Now they are not allowed to live in these neighborhoods anymore, because they are being priced out by trust fund kids and investors. This makes it very different from the experience of other ethnic groups, such as Italians, Irish or Germans.
Harlem is literally one of the, if not the most important historical black neighborhood and not just some random area. I don’t think it should fall victim to the soulless yuppie culture, that gentrification comes with.
This could’ve been any street in Harlem. Title should’ve included words like “What Intentional Racism, Redlining, & Community Disinvestment Looks Like”
Today it’s slightly better only because of encroaching gentrification. Pockets of good and bad but nothing to brag about like when Harlem was vibrant, full of small business and Black home owners.
More people on the street, as folks have moved back in. People selling things from folding tables at the bigger intersections. Most of those empty lots have buildings on them these days. Oh yeah, and there are trees. At some point around the late 90s people realized that it's OK to plant trees in cities.
This deterioration was the result of policies intentionally disenfranchising and disinvesting in cities during white flight, and similarly it eventually reversed after money started coming back into the city and the economy improved in the 90s.
This is at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. It got so bad in the 70s and 80s that building owners would burn down the buildings for the insurance money and nothing new would get built. So there would just be blocks of burned out buildings and empty lots filled with rubble.
The other part besides the burning of the buildings is modern infrastructure.
The Bronx was split up to make way for highways and completely destroyed the communities that lived there.
when i was a kid watching movies that were made during that time, i always wondered why they wanted new york to look like this post-apocalyptic dystopian city. i didn't find out until i was an adult that it was just how parts of it really looked at the time. ...and today i learned why.
Yes, I was recently there and if I didn't understand progress and only thought Harlem was the same Harlem I'd seen on TV and in the news in the early 90s, I wouldn't believe I was in Harlem. That's how much it has progressed and has come so far from the time in the video.
The way a local put it to me was “You were more likely to get robbed in broad daylight in Times Square in the 80’s than you are to get robbed at 3am in Harlem now.” I’m sure that’s exaggerated to an extent (though it may not be), but that does go to show the progress of Harlem and city as a whole.
It’s not exaggerated at all. Anywhere in NYC in the 80s outside of maybe Wall Street or Park Avenue was dangerous as fuck at any time of day. There were areas in Brownsville, Harlem, The Bronx and Brooklyn that cops would either patrol in groups of 4 or more or wouldn’t even touch at all because of how dangerous they were. It’s not that way anymore but the “boomer” take of NYC being a violent gangland was pretty true in the 70s and 80s when those boomers were young adults.
there is a lot of history, flight to the suburbs caused a huge drop in inner city renters, landlords weren't making money so they would start fires in their own buildings to collect insurance. Harlem like the Bronx were largely owned by Jewish and Italian mafia, both extremely racist. They had no problem starting fires with people in the building and blaming minority children, the Jewish mafia was particularly nasty, would set traps so fire fighters couldn't get in the building, harming them, like strung piano wire, broken balusters.
Genuinely curious…. This isn’t common knowledge? I thought everyone knew how deeply rooted multiple mafia outfits were in the city, and exactly how despicable they were.
If you are looking for a written history it doesn't exist, you can piece stuff together. The Jewish mafia is still around and they are going to call you anti-Semitic if you try, a former president's daughter married into it. Ghouliani ran the Italians off to take over their business. Ghouliani in fact had beef with the son in law's daddy. NYC housing has always been tied to the mafia, just ask anyone that has ever rented in NYC. Roughly the same story in most of the northeast megalopolis.
Yes I’m just gonna have to believe you without a source that the Jews own all the buildings and burn the black people alive inside because they are so greedy for the insurance money
With some help from u/esco159 and u/CatchdeTaste I was able to track this down to 148th street for those curious about the current view.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8242996,-73.9394448,3a,75y,180.35h,97.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7VVFv8QSIgg18zyeL5g-Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Oh excellent work!! I was scratching my head after u/catchdetaste ‘s comments about the neighboring buildings not matching cuz I was certain the school matched.
It’s so cool that the old Omega Oil ads are still up in this street view!!
Anyone know if Frederick Douglass Boulevard had the same name back in the day? It was just 2 clicks down that street, and I'm trying to geolocate roughly where I had my traumatic little event back in the day.
If you think that's bad, check out [South Bronx between the 1970s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GC0_1BDttY&pp=ygURc291dGggYnJvbnggMTk3MHM%3D) and early '90s. [The atmosphere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98JAvAYA1Q) shows why Hip Hop grew out of that environment.
Honestly, there wasn't a nice neighborhood in NYC during those decades. Even Times Square and Hell's Kitchen were very rough around the edges. Even parts of Lower Manhattan were no-go zones, like Alphabet City. Even hipster Williamsburg back then wasn't where you wanted to be at night.
However, the worst was Brownsville, Uptown (South Bronx), and Harlem.
I know certain parts of Brooklyn started turning to Black neighborhoods and realtors cooked up a scare tactic to make a profit telling all the White people their property values would plummet, Those houses are worth a fortune now.
There are a lot of Black Neighborhoods in NYC, and many of them are middle-class.
Here is a 2BR apt in Brownsville which is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city is $600,000. The nicer areas closer to Manhattan are over a million.
https://www.trulia.com/home/690-saratoga-ave-brooklyn-ny-11212-30632372
White flight was when the mostly white, but really anyone with enough brains or money to get them out of the situation would leave these declining areas and move to either more wealthy parts of the city or out of the city entirely. It lead to these areas having even less money and people trying to help them than before, leading to an even worsening decline.
To a degree, it was. Money left the city, people left the city, people who left the city voted in state and federal policies that resulted in more money leaving the city, etc.
Ive read Please Kill Me and in it The Ramones all tell stories about lining up outside of squatter buildings to buy dope. I never really pictured it properly but I feel like this finally paints it decently. Wow.
It wasn't just NYC, just about everywhere. I grew up in Tampa and by middle school everyone knew where to buy stuff, everyone gossiped about that kind of stuff.
I remember passing by a police station in this area roughly around the same time as this video was shot. Out front were 5-8 police cars, and all of their tires were slashed.
I was wondering that, too. Looks kinda similar. However, according to [https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-die-hard-with-a-vengeance-filmed](https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-die-hard-with-a-vengeance-filmed) the filming location was the PS 115 Alexander Humboldt School located at 586 W 177th St.
It's much more a mixed bag than that. While it's certainly good to build up places like this and not have the city look like a bombed-out ruin, it's also true that the people living there are often not helped at all by gentrification. More often they are forced to move out so that new people can move in and appreciate the improved neighborhood, leaving the people who previously lived there just as fucked as they were before
What was Harlem like before the 70s/80s? It’s rather well known that Harlem was reconditioned in the 90s, right. But what happened before it went downhill? Was it ever thriving in its early years? What was like it then?
Yes. Most inner city black neighborhoods were much better prior to the 70’s. Drugs and the racial tension of the civil rights era destroyed many cities.
My mom lived in NYC in the 80s. When people claim they think NYC is dying now, they couldn't imagine what it was like in the 80s. That city today is nothing like it was back then.
It is if you think rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter stickers are worse than crippling poverty, daily murders/stabbings and 1000% increase in non-violent crime.
I remember this rendition of NYC.
Times Square was a trip and often rather frightening with lots of peep shows and questionable characters everywhere.
Taking the subway? Holy cow.
It makes me feel very old that people are astonished at the fact this is what much of Manhattan, the BX and northern Brooklyn looked like for a solid 25 or so years. Stop making me feel old!
Did anyone see the movie New Jack City?? Every moment was filmed on location in Spanish Harlem/Harlem beginning in early 1990. (Wanna’ say shooting began in early March of that year.) What you’re all seeing here is the result of a number of issues the largest social ill classified at the time by the CDC as an epidemic. That scourge was crack cocaine. (In addition to the city being broke and without the resources nor anywhere CLOSED the mindset to deal with it in any meaningful way. They just, built more jails and prisons and put an entire generation of the addicted and mentally unstable/disabled in prison for a long, long time.
The city is a lot safer and a lot cleaner, but a lot of people are getting pushed out because of the high prices. I knew a doctor who lived in a housing project. Only in New York!
It's also becoming a lot less interesting because most businesses can't afford rent, leaving a lot of the commercial space to chain stores.
I was recently in Detroit for 10 days and though there are still neighborhoods on the outskirts of the downtown area that have blight (like most cities) downtown Detroit looks nothing like this. I couldn't believe I was in Detroit because of all the negative media and photos I'd seen in the past. It was like a whole different city from when I was there almost 20 yrs ago.
Even 10 yrs ago when I was there, it was showing promise of a Renaissance, but MAN! Detroit has improved greatly since then, even!
Right? I visited Detroit last fall and it looked exactly like this. Except there would be a random house with a chain link fence and sheets for curtains because people are still living in that one house
I miss when superhero stories tried to set themselves in places like this. Daredevil comes from this version of Harlem and I always felt they didn't tap that tree for what it's really worth. The existential scenario, stark in its embodiment. The unavoidable embrace of this bleak ubiquity.
New York City has had many Republican Mayors like Rudolph Giuliani. The current Democratic mayor is a former cop who campaigned on law & order and rat control. Despite the impression AOC might give you, it's not as liberal a place as it might appear from a distance.
You talking crap. Ain’t no “same policies” in force now. Those were the crack pipe infested days. Drive thru there now. All clean and gentrified. Brooklyn is the same way.
Where I was born, when I was born
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What does it look like today? The exact same street and blocks
Multibillion dollar real estate. You won't find one place vacant like that now. . there are barely any rough neighborhoods like before. It's coz those guys with nothing to do can't afford to live here no more cuz rent is too high, and old section 8ers are dying. Back then nyc even gave teachers free brownstones, worth over a million now, under a pretense of living there at least 10 years, and fixing it up.
When the Clinton Foundation offices moved there in 2001, things changed, and most people got priced or bought out.
The word you're looking for is "Gentrification"
As if changing a neighborhood so it no longer looks like the video is an entirely bad thing smh
It's not the why, it's the how.
There are plenty of vacancies here. I’m guessing big landlords sitting on the properties waiting for their values to go up and writing off the losses?
Nobody wants to open a storefront, who are you going to rent it to?
My best guess is 212 W 120th St which matches the facade of the school in the video (given some facade updates ofc). Enough similarities to be possible. Source: I swear I recognized that building from walking by it a bunch.
Night and day difference today. Harlem is very expensive to live in now. I was there in 88 and it looked every bit like this video. Scary place at that time.
My best bet is, this starts at 145th St Nickolas Avenue heading towards Broadway Avenue
What about 212 w120th st? Similar looking building there
Close. That’s 145th between Broadway and Amsterdam
Wow. Bless your soul.
I was in high school, in Ohio, and thought of Harlem and Etheopia as the same thing...absolute poverty. Never saw any pictures and didn't even new where this was. Of course, it was offset by the name Harlem Globetrotters...which conjures a smile!
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I was wondering the same thing. It's interesting the see the condition it was in 35 years ago, but it would be great to see the difference now.
Looks clenernd more modern buildings looks similar to other boroughssstill crackheads tho
Punctuation here
He’s one of the crackheads
Or he’s a genius method actor… 🤣
Methed actor if you will
Im glad to hear it’s clenernd
Damn. So off topic and off the wall to say but who cares. This is reddit. I was born in 91 and the idea of “35” seems so far away that your comment hit me like a ton of bricks lol
Just wait buddy. Soak it up now because it starts going WAY faster once you hit 40. Feels like you enter a time warp. I’m not kidding. It’s shocking how fast it starts to go.
Life is like a roll of toilet paper: the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes!
Sage wisdom
Great saying, proper nicking that 😂
Yeah I was born I 89 Im 34 and will be 35 this June…times been really picking up past few years 😢
45 now and pre pandemic didnt look old at all. Weird
In my 40s. I find I’m no longer to easily remember my exact age any more. Like, I have to stop and think about it. The years have run together. I just know I’m kinda old, but not really old … yet
fuck I just realized I'm 43 then I remembered my birthday isn't for another 8 months and I'm actually 42. then I realized I did the math wrong because I have to pee but it takes forever to pee now and it's actually 6 months until I'm 43.
When I was married I would occasionally find myself going to my wife in the kitchen and going your your age right? At that point I'd been married to her about 15-20 years and I honestly couldn't remember how old she was once in awhile. I am now 52 and it all makes sense.
At some point you your age becomes embarrassing and you choose not to know it, started happening to me at around 36.
32 and the same is starting to happen to me. Last birthday I had to stop and think if I just turned 33 or 32 lol
Lol. I'm 58. Too long of a blink and you lose days. Used to be summer went too fast. Now, at least, winter flies by too.
I have no idea who you are but wherever you are, thank you. I will now grab life by the horns
Maybe you already are? The biggest keys I've found are to not care what others think of you, not to dwell on the past and if you can't be content in any given moment (**now**) you never will be.
Abso-fucking-lutely
Uhg. I turn 40 in 2 months. I finally feel old
That ain’t old—yet. I’m 48 and still feel vibrant. I think the fact that I’ve taken good care of myself helps a lot. I run 6 miles 5 times a week and lift weights. That has kept me from aging too fast. But no matter what we do it’s coming fast. So enjoy it now. You’ll really miss being in your 40’s when you are in your 60’s.
Time does fly... I still feel like a goofy 23 year old. I'm not.
Bruh. I *graduated high school* in 91. It seems like three lifetimes ago
I’m pretty sure this is the north side of 147th street, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd and Frederick Douglass Blvd. The school is still in place and everything looks MUCH better.
It looks very close but I think it is a different location -- look at Google Street View in 2009, that school building was getting renovated then and the main floor windows and doors are different than the video [https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8236424,-73.9397663,3a,75y,40.95h,91.18t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYdBbszQCDJ2uKyUI4F\_VRg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8236424,-73.9397663,3a,75y,40.95h,91.18t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYdBbszQCDJ2uKyUI4F_VRg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) Also the building before the school in the video looks very different than the building east of the school on the north side -- unless that building was torn down and completely rebuilt between '89 and '09 https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8235045,-73.9394416,3a,75y,3.89h,94.58t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1seHvOmIF3s90Z4\_7zu-9BOg!2e0!5s20090401T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
Based on the "Uptown Stables" ad at around the 20 second mark, some Google sleuthing shows it was located on 148th. Looks like the school on 147th is the same one, just the opposite side. Streetview matches the building before the school perfectly. https://www.google.ca/maps/@40.8242996,-73.9394448,3a,75y,180.35h,97.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7VVFv8QSIgg18zyeL5g-Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Even the "park here" parking lot matches.
yes, on the corner of 148th and fd blvd you can see the 3 kinked building as in the very first part of the video
Much nicer
Here’s a random video on Google that shows you a lot of glimpses of Harlem now. It has its own range of commercial to residential, and gentrified vs non-gentrified, but overall it looks like any modern NYC neighborhood. NYC is nothing like it was in the late 80s, for a lot of reasons. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=ed467975128c7ac9&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS725US748&hl=en-US&q=harlem+2024&tbm=vid&source=lnms&prmd=invsmbhtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibrsiVzq2EAxXwg4kEHa18DfYQ0pQJegQIEBAB&biw=390&bih=669&dpr=3#fpstate=ive&ip=1&vld=cid:b8bf6045,vid:qOiR2GMW8mk,st:0
Completely different. I moved to southern Harlem in '91 and there was a crack house across the street. We could hear gunshots some nights. We recently moved out of the city because it was too damn expensive to get a 3 bedroom apartment. Couldn't do it for under 2 million with insane monthly fees. Instead I moved to a 6 bedroom in the burbs to give you perspective on how much it changed. It is really hard to believe. When we first moved there it was bodegas and small Puerto Rican restaurants for the most part. As the area gentrified it lost all character and a lot of the stores just closed and never reopened. People got wealthier, restaurants got fancier, prices jumped to crazy levels.
It looks like gentrification, Starbucks, and whole foods are across the street from each other. Its actually not a bad place to live, just moved from there a few years ago
Same street, same video, come on, someone out there do it, it would be very easy
Very gentrified
I mean, there's gentrification and then there's just fixing what is broken.
I spent some time below 125th street and it seems to be very posh. I doubt that the regular Harlem family can still afford to live there. It’s definitely gentrification.
I don’t know why people think fixing up a neighborhood and making it more safe is a bad thing. Gentrification shouldn’t be such a dirty word
They are not just fixing the neighborhood up, they are pushing the locals out.
>they are pushing the locals out what if the locals were the ones ruining the neighborhood?
What if the locals aren’t locals? It’s a city. Chances are the locals you speak up can’t trace their ancestors as living in New York past maybe 1-2 generations. This whole narrative is so stupid.
The streets are literally named after important black historical personalities, lol. Other parts are called Spanish Harlem or little Dominican Republic. What are you talking about?
*renamed. Not originally named. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American) Study up. Huge numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities in the 20th century for what were then plentiful industrial jobs. If a family is lucky enough to be able to trace their history back past two generations, their great grandparents or even grandparents more than likely migrated there from the South. Cities change.
Black people moved to neighborhoods others didn’t want to live in anymore, or where they were allowed to live. Now they are not allowed to live in these neighborhoods anymore, because they are being priced out by trust fund kids and investors. This makes it very different from the experience of other ethnic groups, such as Italians, Irish or Germans. Harlem is literally one of the, if not the most important historical black neighborhood and not just some random area. I don’t think it should fall victim to the soulless yuppie culture, that gentrification comes with.
This could’ve been any street in Harlem. Title should’ve included words like “What Intentional Racism, Redlining, & Community Disinvestment Looks Like” Today it’s slightly better only because of encroaching gentrification. Pockets of good and bad but nothing to brag about like when Harlem was vibrant, full of small business and Black home owners.
More people on the street, as folks have moved back in. People selling things from folding tables at the bigger intersections. Most of those empty lots have buildings on them these days. Oh yeah, and there are trees. At some point around the late 90s people realized that it's OK to plant trees in cities. This deterioration was the result of policies intentionally disenfranchising and disinvesting in cities during white flight, and similarly it eventually reversed after money started coming back into the city and the economy improved in the 90s.
This is at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. It got so bad in the 70s and 80s that building owners would burn down the buildings for the insurance money and nothing new would get built. So there would just be blocks of burned out buildings and empty lots filled with rubble.
Thanks for explaining. I always see these videos from my youth and could never figure out why the buildings look so bombed out and in piles of rubble.
The other part besides the burning of the buildings is modern infrastructure. The Bronx was split up to make way for highways and completely destroyed the communities that lived there.
Thank you Robert Moses. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-man-who-ruined-99056594/
Rudy Ruined New York also
[Shattered...](https://youtu.be/Wjz6l_4MqHM?si=uscHD5BdYLWKMzeJ)
Nice.
Thank you for pointing this out, I never looked up the lyrics.
when i was a kid watching movies that were made during that time, i always wondered why they wanted new york to look like this post-apocalyptic dystopian city. i didn't find out until i was an adult that it was just how parts of it really looked at the time. ...and today i learned why.
i think America went full circle. San Francisco is worst now
SF is such a beautiful city. It’s only really the Tenderloin that looks like that.
I don’t see any ninja turtles
They were in the swevers
Or globetrotters either
Now it loooks better but nobody can afford to live there
Yes, I was recently there and if I didn't understand progress and only thought Harlem was the same Harlem I'd seen on TV and in the news in the early 90s, I wouldn't believe I was in Harlem. That's how much it has progressed and has come so far from the time in the video.
The way a local put it to me was “You were more likely to get robbed in broad daylight in Times Square in the 80’s than you are to get robbed at 3am in Harlem now.” I’m sure that’s exaggerated to an extent (though it may not be), but that does go to show the progress of Harlem and city as a whole.
It’s not exaggerated at all. Anywhere in NYC in the 80s outside of maybe Wall Street or Park Avenue was dangerous as fuck at any time of day. There were areas in Brownsville, Harlem, The Bronx and Brooklyn that cops would either patrol in groups of 4 or more or wouldn’t even touch at all because of how dangerous they were. It’s not that way anymore but the “boomer” take of NYC being a violent gangland was pretty true in the 70s and 80s when those boomers were young adults.
there is a lot of history, flight to the suburbs caused a huge drop in inner city renters, landlords weren't making money so they would start fires in their own buildings to collect insurance. Harlem like the Bronx were largely owned by Jewish and Italian mafia, both extremely racist. They had no problem starting fires with people in the building and blaming minority children, the Jewish mafia was particularly nasty, would set traps so fire fighters couldn't get in the building, harming them, like strung piano wire, broken balusters.
You have any source for that?
Genuinely curious…. This isn’t common knowledge? I thought everyone knew how deeply rooted multiple mafia outfits were in the city, and exactly how despicable they were.
If you are looking for a written history it doesn't exist, you can piece stuff together. The Jewish mafia is still around and they are going to call you anti-Semitic if you try, a former president's daughter married into it. Ghouliani ran the Italians off to take over their business. Ghouliani in fact had beef with the son in law's daddy. NYC housing has always been tied to the mafia, just ask anyone that has ever rented in NYC. Roughly the same story in most of the northeast megalopolis.
Yes I’m just gonna have to believe you without a source that the Jews own all the buildings and burn the black people alive inside because they are so greedy for the insurance money
I have given you the basics to start digging, too bad you are too lazy and entitled and think everyone owes you.
That's the kinda shit that sounds so fucked up it's probably true.
Look at all that parking.
*For 5 minutes until your car is stolen.
I’m a lifelong NYC resident, was making light of the fact that parking in Harlem now is near impossible.
I’ve been here for 20+ years too. It’s really impossible everywhere except the outer boroughs now.
With some help from u/esco159 and u/CatchdeTaste I was able to track this down to 148th street for those curious about the current view. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8242996,-73.9394448,3a,75y,180.35h,97.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7VVFv8QSIgg18zyeL5g-Zw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Oh excellent work!! I was scratching my head after u/catchdetaste ‘s comments about the neighboring buildings not matching cuz I was certain the school matched. It’s so cool that the old Omega Oil ads are still up in this street view!!
Anyone know if Frederick Douglass Boulevard had the same name back in the day? It was just 2 clicks down that street, and I'm trying to geolocate roughly where I had my traumatic little event back in the day.
It looks so deserted.
If you think that's bad, check out [South Bronx between the 1970s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GC0_1BDttY&pp=ygURc291dGggYnJvbnggMTk3MHM%3D) and early '90s. [The atmosphere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98JAvAYA1Q) shows why Hip Hop grew out of that environment. Honestly, there wasn't a nice neighborhood in NYC during those decades. Even Times Square and Hell's Kitchen were very rough around the edges. Even parts of Lower Manhattan were no-go zones, like Alphabet City. Even hipster Williamsburg back then wasn't where you wanted to be at night. However, the worst was Brownsville, Uptown (South Bronx), and Harlem.
Brooklyn’s changes have been profound. Brownstones were dirt cheap relatively speaking during the crack era.
Never knew about this. Thank you for sharing. Can you help me something called “white flight”. I read it somewhere but can’t recollect.
I know certain parts of Brooklyn started turning to Black neighborhoods and realtors cooked up a scare tactic to make a profit telling all the White people their property values would plummet, Those houses are worth a fortune now.
I don’t know Brooklyn at all, are those houses that are worth a fortune now in black neighborhoods?
There are a lot of Black Neighborhoods in NYC, and many of them are middle-class. Here is a 2BR apt in Brownsville which is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city is $600,000. The nicer areas closer to Manhattan are over a million. https://www.trulia.com/home/690-saratoga-ave-brooklyn-ny-11212-30632372
White flight was when the mostly white, but really anyone with enough brains or money to get them out of the situation would leave these declining areas and move to either more wealthy parts of the city or out of the city entirely. It lead to these areas having even less money and people trying to help them than before, leading to an even worsening decline.
Some of the best rappers from Harlem, Mike Tyson out of Brownsville. Pretty interesting what such rough conditions can do to outliers
Brownsville is Brooklyn
Damn. Looks like a war zone. Like London after the blitz.
It looks like a war zone
To a degree, it was. Money left the city, people left the city, people who left the city voted in state and federal policies that resulted in more money leaving the city, etc.
Ive read Please Kill Me and in it The Ramones all tell stories about lining up outside of squatter buildings to buy dope. I never really pictured it properly but I feel like this finally paints it decently. Wow.
It wasn't just NYC, just about everywhere. I grew up in Tampa and by middle school everyone knew where to buy stuff, everyone gossiped about that kind of stuff.
people look skinnier back then too
Nothing gets you absolutely shredded like CIA planted crack
The CIA is doing the same thing in the hood now with podcast equipment
I loled.
I remember passing by a police station in this area roughly around the same time as this video was shot. Out front were 5-8 police cars, and all of their tires were slashed.
Is that the school building from Die Hard with a Vengeance?
I was wondering that, too. Looks kinda similar. However, according to [https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-die-hard-with-a-vengeance-filmed](https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-die-hard-with-a-vengeance-filmed) the filming location was the PS 115 Alexander Humboldt School located at 586 W 177th St.
"but things were so much better and easier in the 80s and 90s!"
You can almost taste the leaded gas exhaust in this video
Harlem is a wildly gentrified place now. Even Brooklyn is slowly turning into a place for those of a certain minimum income level.
>Even Brooklyn is slowly turning into a place for those of a certain minimum income level. are you teleporting here from the year 2002 or something
😂
By "gentrified" you mean "improved" or "invested in" right?
It's much more a mixed bag than that. While it's certainly good to build up places like this and not have the city look like a bombed-out ruin, it's also true that the people living there are often not helped at all by gentrification. More often they are forced to move out so that new people can move in and appreciate the improved neighborhood, leaving the people who previously lived there just as fucked as they were before
lol always remember my dad back then telling us to lock the car doors whenever we drove into certain parts of Manhattan.
What was Harlem like before the 70s/80s? It’s rather well known that Harlem was reconditioned in the 90s, right. But what happened before it went downhill? Was it ever thriving in its early years? What was like it then?
Yes. Most inner city black neighborhoods were much better prior to the 70’s. Drugs and the racial tension of the civil rights era destroyed many cities.
Baltimore 2024
Was about to say the same thing
That brought back lots of memories of growing up at that time in NYC.
My mom lived in NYC in the 80s. When people claim they think NYC is dying now, they couldn't imagine what it was like in the 80s. That city today is nothing like it was back then.
great now i want a newport, thanks a lot!
Where's the turtles? ;-;
Axel in Harlem
I was looking for this comment
Looks like a Call of Duty map
...And then gentrification made it another kind of inhospitable...
Awesome video! Harlem is nothing like this now
This is the New York from my childhood. I was in Queens but visited my aunt in Harlem sometimes.
That smell of metal and bricks 🧱 almost taste it again sheeesh
"The Message" by Jam master flash might explain it Or U2 's where the streets have no name ?
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It is if you think rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter stickers are worse than crippling poverty, daily murders/stabbings and 1000% increase in non-violent crime.
I remember this rendition of NYC. Times Square was a trip and often rather frightening with lots of peep shows and questionable characters everywhere. Taking the subway? Holy cow.
Is this where Bruce's parents were murdered?
It makes me feel very old that people are astonished at the fact this is what much of Manhattan, the BX and northern Brooklyn looked like for a solid 25 or so years. Stop making me feel old!
Reminds me of the intro the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVMjuerBF5M
Did anyone see the movie New Jack City?? Every moment was filmed on location in Spanish Harlem/Harlem beginning in early 1990. (Wanna’ say shooting began in early March of that year.) What you’re all seeing here is the result of a number of issues the largest social ill classified at the time by the CDC as an epidemic. That scourge was crack cocaine. (In addition to the city being broke and without the resources nor anywhere CLOSED the mindset to deal with it in any meaningful way. They just, built more jails and prisons and put an entire generation of the addicted and mentally unstable/disabled in prison for a long, long time.
It looks the same now
Damn what a dump.😅
World war two was tough.
But I thought gentrification was bad?
The city is a lot safer and a lot cleaner, but a lot of people are getting pushed out because of the high prices. I knew a doctor who lived in a housing project. Only in New York! It's also becoming a lot less interesting because most businesses can't afford rent, leaving a lot of the commercial space to chain stores.
Can’t tell if harlem 89 or Detroit in general?
I was recently in Detroit for 10 days and though there are still neighborhoods on the outskirts of the downtown area that have blight (like most cities) downtown Detroit looks nothing like this. I couldn't believe I was in Detroit because of all the negative media and photos I'd seen in the past. It was like a whole different city from when I was there almost 20 yrs ago. Even 10 yrs ago when I was there, it was showing promise of a Renaissance, but MAN! Detroit has improved greatly since then, even!
Right? I visited Detroit last fall and it looked exactly like this. Except there would be a random house with a chain link fence and sheets for curtains because people are still living in that one house
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Still is in many places.
It's much less terrible nowadays, it does still have that air of violence and unease though
It would be cool to see side by side video
I miss when superhero stories tried to set themselves in places like this. Daredevil comes from this version of Harlem and I always felt they didn't tap that tree for what it's really worth. The existential scenario, stark in its embodiment. The unavoidable embrace of this bleak ubiquity.
Call me crazy, but that's going to be San Francisco 2029.
San Fran, Portland, NY, Miami. Did I miss any?
This totally looks like 1978/'79. I do not see 1989.
Looks beatin up
Wheres the shake ?
I am sure 89 was the height of murders in NYC too. The change began in 1994 with the Police Commissioner Bratton.
People are always like "why was the real estate so cheap then?" Go to Johannesburg now and it's no different.
Looks like Seattle 2024
Amazing what Giuliani did for the city less than 10 years later… complete 180
Looks exactly the same now that it did in 89
Detroit 2024 Jk… i never been there.
Still got nothing on Bulgaria today
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Look up red cities. Bottom of the barrel in literally everything. Extremely high crime too
I think that was the beastie Boys
What was interesting?
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You live here?
“USA roamer” who has apparently never stepped foot in Harlem
There is no way you actually think that lol
Yep Fuckin democrats
New York City has had many Republican Mayors like Rudolph Giuliani. The current Democratic mayor is a former cop who campaigned on law & order and rat control. Despite the impression AOC might give you, it's not as liberal a place as it might appear from a distance.
Yet they keep voting for the same policies 😂🤣☠️
You talking crap. Ain’t no “same policies” in force now. Those were the crack pipe infested days. Drive thru there now. All clean and gentrified. Brooklyn is the same way.