167 Languages, "Hot Beds,"
a Gay Parade Parade,
and a Sundae for Eight
A neighborhood barely half the size of Central Park, with 180,000 residents speaking 167 languages.
Signs in Spanish, Bengali, Urdu, and Hindi, the most interesting ones from tiny shops on the second floor, facing the elevated subway tracks.
A building with a Turkish owner, a Greek super, and Indian, Pakistani, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Muslim, and Uzbek tenants, plus some former Soviet Jews.
Romanticos, taxi dance halls where lonely Latino males go to dance with Latinas in short skirts. They chat, they show each other photos of their families back in the Dominican Republic or Mexico, they coo over each other's kids, and they dance. For a few dollars exchanged, they all feel less lonely.
Undocumented immigrants who are allowed to rent an apartment or get a job without a Social Security card, which lets them pay the rent and send money back home to their families.
Gentrification: Big garden apartments that once cost $300,000 now go for close to $1 million, forcing more and more immigrants into basement apartments, some of them fire traps, and some with cubicles called "hot beds," shared by people in shifts.
Right smack in a neighborhood with very conservative religious communities -- Bangladeshi Muslims and Latino Catholics -- a thriving Latino LGBTQ bar scene, and once a year, the second biggest Gay Pride parade in the city.
A Methodist church where Scrabble was invented, and where services are now offered in Urdu, Bahasa, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish.
A neighborhood where you can come from anywhere without papers, start at the bottom, and work your way up.
The promise of America: a legendary ice-cream store offering a punch-bowl size Kitchen Sink Sundae for eight.
Such is this New York neighborhood. Can you guess what it is and where?
Source note: To come.
Coming soon: Trees.
©. 2020. Clifford Browder
Believe it or not a neighborhood just outside Atlanta has more languages than any other school district in the USA.
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