Sidi Ibrahima smiles up from his 125th Street stand. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

Harlem’s 125th Street is a bazaar of cottage industry products: incense and earrings, knit hats and demo CDs. But the goods on one table near Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard are more colorful than the rest. Bright books with racy covers are spread over the stand. People, mostly women, stop to flip through “Homo Thug II”, “The Lesbian’s Wife,” “Mandingo,” or Sister Souljah’s latest title.

On any given morning, you can find Sidi Ibrahima at his bookstand, stacking paperbacks and recommending good reads to passing ladies. He hands “A Streetgirl Named Desire” to Deborah McKenzie, a self-described “bookhead” who goes through five titles a month. “If you don’t like I’ll take it back.” Besides this stall, Ibrahima distributes books on five other stands across New York, including the Bronx, Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. Besides being Harlem’s main distributor and street fiction enthusiast, Ibrahima, who is from Ivory Coast, is a self-published author who made his foray into the industry with a book about a West African girl, Fatou.

Variously called hip-hop, street or urban lit, the pulp genre has been growing in popularity since the 1990s, when activist and author Sister Souljah first published her autobiography, “No Disrespect,” and then her debut novel, “The Coldest Winter Ever.” These books are widely credited with resuscitating the tradition of 1970s authors Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim, streetwise counterparts to Ralph Ellison.

Ibrahima owns one of Harlem’s few bookstores, the Harlem Book Center, a small outlet that also sells movies and cohabits with a lively hair-braiding salon. Harlem Book Center consists of two walls of shelves, a counter, a computer and another wall of shelves for movies. Ibrahima, tall and dark-skinned with a piercing gaze, spends his afternoons behind the counter at his crammed bookstore. Dressed casually in running pants and a jacket today, he sports a newsboy cap and round glasses that give him an earnest look. In between checking his email and conversing with the women who come in to get their hair braided, he describes the long road he’s travelled to get here.

Ibrahima, born in the capital Abidjan, read a lot when he was young, but was especially impressed with the works of African “Negritude” writers like Amadou Ba. Ibrahima immigrated to Germany in the ’90s to start an import/export business based in Nuremberg. In 2000, he moved to New York to pursue more opportunities.

“In Africa, on TV, they’re always talking about America. We think America is a paradise,” he says. “When you come here, you see the reality. You have to work. But for that you need a work permit. You have to start from scratch.”

It was this reality that Ibrahima, then driving a cab, decided to write about. He had just discovered urban lit, which he describes as targeted mostly to African-Americans and African-Caribbeans. Ibrahima learned the genre by reading books like Sister Souljah’s “Coldest Winter” and Terri Woods’ “True to the Game.”

A tubful of urban lit at Ibrahima's stand. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

His first book, “Fatou: An African Girl in Harlem,” might not be a “World’s #1 Bestseller” as it’s cover proclaims, but the author says he has sold 85,000 to 95,000 copies since publication in 2004. Accurate sales figures are hard to come by, since most of these books sell on the street. “Fatou” begins with a man raping his young daughter in an African hut before sending her off to Harlem to marry a much older man in exchange for a big dowry. She escapes into prostitution, drug dealing and gangs. Despite its incredibly graphic sexual and violent content, Ibrahima says his book is based on the true story of an immigrant he met on his first trip to the U.S. in 1994. When the woman who inspired “Fatou” told her story, he says, “I was in tears. I said, ‘I’ve got to let people know what happened to this brave and smart – not only book smart, but street-smart – girl.’”

Ibrahima approached several publishers, but says he lacked the connections to get his book printed. A few mainstream publishers have urban lit imprints, Random House’s One World and Simon and Schuster’s Atria/Strebor Books, for example. Most major urban lit publishers, however, started with one author on a shoestring self-publishing budget and grew. So Ibrahima decided to try and go the way of Terri Woods Publishing, Urban Books and Triple Crown Publications and published 500 copies of “Fatou” on his own.

He had saved money from his stall and from cab driving to publish “Fatou.” “It passed my expectation,” he says, recounting how the first run sold out in a week. He published another 1,000 copies, and says he was inundated by calls from Barnes & Nobles, Borders and distributors wanting more. Mary Davis, a spokesperson for Borders, said that although the stores do have dedicated African American and urban lit sections, they do not currently carry Ibrahima’s titles.

Despite the fact that “Fatou” appears nowhere on any of the national book review sites for urban lit like streetfiction.org and theurbanbooksource.com, local success is part of the genre’s vitality. The book’s popularity, particularly among New York’s African and Caribbean readers, led Ibrahima to his next project. While shopping at a 116th Street West African grocery, Ibrahima ran into a fan. She told him her own story, which eventually became “The Lesbian’s Wife.” “Fatou was a girl coming from Africa to America and ‘The Lesbian’s Wife’ had a woman going back to Africa,” he says, pointing at the cover of the latter book, which features a buxom woman in a power suit against a backdrop of palm trees. Ibrahima says the book has sold  about 15,000 copies. Under the moniker “Sidi,” Ibrahima has also written a sequel to “Fatou”; “Tamika”, about a Jamaican girl; and two books about a male prostitute, “Mandingo.”

Readers and writers of urban lit can’t seem to quite agree on why it’s so popular. McKenzie, the “bookhead” says that she likes stories with “drugs, killing and sex,” and reads them to escape from her life for a bit. Ibrahima, though, insists that his books reflect reality. “Most of it is about our day to day struggle,” he says. He extends his arm to reveal a bullet scar on his hand and describes how he was shot at while driving a “young thug” passenger who was dealing drugs.

Ibrahima insists that urban readers have already been exposed to sex and violence; to pretend these don’t exist would spell irrelevance for his books. “You know America – anything with sex sells. People really like violence,” he says. “Violence in our books, it doesn’t really mean that we’re trying to teach the violence. At the end of the story, there’s always a lesson to learn from the story. Because if you raised by the gun, you’re going to fail by the gun, and that’s what we’re trying to say.”

Marva Allen, who co-owns the more highbrow Hue-man Bookstore across the street, disagrees. When it comes to urban lit, “I’ve heard all the arguments for it, but I believe that what we’ll see is what we’ll be,” she says. “It’s an unfortunate life for people to emulate.” She’s read Ibrahima’s books and objects to more than their violent content. “I read it with a red pen,” she says. “You might as well put the book on Twitter.”

Ibrahima believes that getting African-Americans to read – anything – is a worthwhile endeavor, however. “If you want to hide something from black men, put it in a book,” he quips. He points out that he sells non-fiction as well, like Barack Obama’s memoirs and various biographies. He believes that urban fiction can open the door for readers who then get hooked on more serious literature.

But Allen believes that urban lit’s popularity will wane. “It’s like what happened to hip-hop,” she says. “It started as a solidarity movement and it’s become an urban commodity with nothing to do with liberation. Hip-hop lit is kind of passé right now. It’s like eating too much sweet and then feeling sick. I’m hoping that’s the trend.”

Ibrahima makes personal recommendations to potential customers. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

Ibrahima’s outlook on the genre remains positive though. He’s started publishing other authors, like Ashante Kahari (aka Aaron Fraser), who has spent time in jail for check fraud, run for City Council from Brooklyn and penned the “Homo Thug” series. Ibrahima dreams of fostering more authors and becoming a global distributor of urban fiction.

Eventually, Ibrahima would like to return to Cote d’Ivoire. Speaking over a piped CD of African drums he says, “I’m not rich, but I have a lot of experience and ideas and, God willing, I will go back soon. We cannot leave the responsibility of building our continent in the hands of Europeans or Americans,” he adds. Meanwhile, he’s working on an autobiography. “Self-made Millionaire,” he calls it.

One of the two buildings that still sit under the Metro North rail tracks, taking up three blocks instead of five as they used to in the 1930s. (Photo by Cecile Dehesdin)

On a regular weekday, the stretch of Park Avenue between 111th and 116th Streets in East Harlem is all but deserted, with four passers-by at most. Blocks away from the newly opened Costco, two brightly painted buildings sit under the Metro-North railroad tracks. Only one is open, welcoming visitors with a sign spelling La Marqueta in joyful letters. Inside, the two first stalls are rented and open, plus a few more next to them, but that’s all. The rest of the building consists of empty stalls barred by iron gratings, some of which can only be seen from afar, because a huge grid blocks half the building. The only noise is the soft humming of Latino soap operas watched by some vendor waiting for customers to serve, and every so often a discussion with those few customers.

Shopping at La Marqueta used to be a real bustle. “In the ’60s you couldn’t even come through here because it was so busy,” butcher José Cintron fondly remembers. “It was packed from 6 to 6 Monday to Saturday, it was loud, and there was a fish stink like hell!” He pauses. “It was the good days.”

The good days passed in the late ’70s, when La Marqueta started slowly dying. Since then, the city has tried various times to revive it, without success. Today, a new plan is in place: part of the market is to become a kitchen incubator, where food entrepreneurs will rent kitchen space to get their businesses started at a low cost.

It was the city that first created La Marqueta, East Harlem Chamber of Commerce President Henry Calderon explained. “It started with Mayor La Guardia in the ’30s,” he said. “There were vendors all over the place,” and so the idea was to regulate the activity of all these street vendors by putting them in one place. Merchants quickly filled the five buildings, and evolved with the neighborhood. It was the place to find food impossible to spot in New York. “The food in the rest of the city catered to the majority” of its residents, said Calderon. And so as Puerto Ricans settled in East Harlem, La Marqueta “became a place where you could find food that your recognized. So La Marqueta became a symbol of El Barrio.”

Yuca, yautia, bacalao, malanga, morcilla, chorizo, longaniza were among the specialties at La Marqueta. “Everyone came here, from the Bronx or Brooklyn too, especially those who didn’t have the staples of their diet,” said Pedro Pedraza, a longtime resident of East Harlem and a researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. “And since you were here you might eat here too, since on the West Side you couldn’t find Puerto Rican restaurants, unless you went farther up.”

Marina Ortiz, founder of the advocacy website East Harlem Preservation, said, “That was the shopping district.” Goods would be “pouring down on the sidewalks, blocking the access,” she said. “It was just a trip. You could spend a day there and buy cheap. We didn’t have chain stores or as many bodegas.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment of and reasons for La Marqueta’s slow death. According to Pedraza, the East Harlem community started changing in the late ’70s, diversifying. As he and the few merchants still at the market explained, some vendors died, some retired, and no young generation came to replace them.

At the same time, supermarkets and bodegas started carrying the ethnic food that used to only be found at La Marqueta. “Before, people came from all the boroughs and all over the city because they couldn’t find it elsewhere. If you can, then why make the trip?” Calderon said. Ortiz added, “It became a place where people didn’t go, and even avoided.” The downhill slide “culminated in a fire that destroyed most buildings,” she said. Today only two buildings are still standing: the one with the market, and a large empty one. A third lot has become a gated outer plaza, while the two last ones are empty.

With fewer and fewer shops, La Marqueta stopped being that giant open air market, and “people like to shop in places where they can buy everything at the same time,” fishman Bernard Lifschultz said. At 90 years old, Lifschultz, who goes by Benny and is affectionately nicknamed “the old man” by some customers and vendors, has been working at La Marqueta for 63 years. He came at the end of World War II, and hasn’t left since. He still remembered the time when “there was a long waiting list to have a stall here, because it was very lucrative.”

Today business is not as profitable, but Benny and the handful of current vendors are not ready to leave. “It occupies my time,” said Benny, whose savings from the glorious days of La Marqueta help carry through his older years. “I doubt a newcomer would do very well.”

Jose Cintron watches a Latino soap opera while waiting for potential clients. (Photo by Cecile Dehesdin)

His colleague of 40 years, José Cintron, said: “I’ve got two more years before I retire. I don’t need to get rich, I don’t want to die rich. I make enough to have fun now.” Cintron, Benny and the few other vendors benefit from low rent since the building is owned by the city. Cintron pays $600 a month, utilities and insurance included. He said he had enough to live with around $5000 a month after expenses, 60 to 70 customers a week.

“Forty years ago, I had 1,000 customers a week,” Cintron said. “I don’t think this place is going nowhere.”

Throughout the years, city administrations have tried to revive the space but one plan after another fell through. Calderon said, “The plans to revive it have been mislaid because they were trying to recreate something that was there in the ’50s.” Ortiz added: “People are very nostalgic. They don’t want to let go of the heart of El Barrio, it’s a landmark.”

For the New York City Economic Development Corporation, one of the reasons previous attempts failed was their large scope, spokesperson Janel Patterson explained. So at the beginning of August, the group decided to take another, smaller approach, by announcing the construction of a kitchen incubator in the market’s building. The fully equipped shared kitchen will take over a little more than a third of the 10,000 square foot building. Young food startups or food businesses looking to expand will be able to rent a kitchen space and equipment to cook at a cheaper rate than elsewhere in the city.

Contractors sent out proposals to undertake the construction at the beginning of September. They are now being reviewed, Patterson wrote in an email. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year, and the incubator should be completed by the end of summer 2010. Ultimately, the group hopes to revive the whole La Marqueta area, but for now the focus was on the market building and the empty building, which could be used for storage. The city has budgeted $1 million, allocated by Speaker Christine Quinn for the outfitting of the incubator, Patterson said.

For the vendors, it’s a simple case of being burnt one time too many. “I went to so many meetings,” Cintron said. “We sit down there like dummies hearing those people say, ‘We’re gonna do this and that’, and then they get the money and they vanish. Promise, promise, promise, yeah, promise in your pocket!”

Patterson wrote that the vendors have been “informally informed,” and that the kitchen’s construction and operation should not affect them. Cintron said he learned about the plans from a reporter in September. “I got to see this to believe it,” he said. As for Lifschultz, he said he may have heard of it, but that “it sounded so ridiculous to me that it slipped my mind.” La Marqueta’s veteran thinks the area will not support the initiative. “People come here to buy food cheaper than elsewhere, they’re struggling to subsist. See those tails I cut off the fish to put in the garbage? Yesterday someone asked me to give it to them to make soup. Times are bad, and they are making fancy projects.”

Calderon said: “To me, it’s a sad ending. Having a commercial kitchen sounds good because it creates these jobs in this economy, but the symbol is lost.” While agreeing that nostalgia was not going to help La Marqueta, he would have preferred it to be turned into a destination for tourism, something with local restaurants and ethnic cuisine, but also local artists creating crafts. “Something that brings tourism, money, and jobs for the people who live there, while keeping the name of La Marqueta,” he said.

Deciding to start small might not necessarily be the best answer, said Kathrine Gregory, who started working with kitchen incubators seven years ago. As a consultant for kitchen incubators with her company “Mi kitchen es su kitchen,” she was in touch with the New York City Economic Development Corporation over the plans for La Marqueta. She said though kitchen incubators were a good solution for food start-ups since they reduced costs drastically (renting a kitchen space means not having to buy a $50,000 bread oven for example), they couldn’t be sustainable by themselves. “No incubator without other streams of revenue is financially viable,” she said as she was touring the kitchen incubator she runs in Long Island City, Queens, because without them “you can’t keep prices low enough.”

Ovens like this one, lit up by Kathryn Gregory in her Queens kitchen incubator, can cost up to $50,000. (Photo by Cecile Dehesdin)

The Queens kitchen was built into the Consortium for Worker Education building, and is used for a culinary certification program as well as for the incubator. Those classes, as part as numerous other classes the consortium provides, are the reason the incubator can survive, Gregory said.

“To be sustainable in and of itself, an incubator has to be 75 percent occupied,” she said. If the 4,000-square-foot incubator in La Marqueta was broken into four kitchens, available to rent for three shifts seven days a week, like the one in Queens is, that would amount to 336 shifts. The incubator would need to rent 252 shifts out of those 336 a month in order to be sustainable. “That’s why an incubator as a stand-alone project will not work,” Gregory said, arguing that side projects could help pay for utilities, maintenance and managing fees, especially at the start.

Gregory, who did not answer the city’s requests for a proposal but would consider working with whichever contractor wins the request, said she had tons of ideas for La Marqueta, “to create something that becomes like a Mecca” for East Harlem. She thought side projects should include renting small stalls in the market to incubator users or other food merchants, as a way to create a buzz. “More stalls equals more excitement equals more people coming and more chance of them buying!”

When asked about the possibility of incubator users renting stalls in the market to sell their products, Patterson said that those were still early days, and that “lots of decisions will be made by the manager.”

Wells Chicken and Waffles hopes to take its sweet and salty Harlem delicacy nationwide but faces challenges. (Photo by Ashley Foxx)

Ann Wells, owner of Wells Chicken and Waffles, announced plans this fall to bring a Harlem tradition to hungry eaters across America with a string of franchise restaurants.

But those plans have stalled after the latest version of Wells’ restaurant, a small takeout that opened last year just ten blocks from the restaurant’s original Harlem location, shut its doors for more than a week. Wells was hospitalized for pneumonia and asthma, an ongoing battle. Now, the business is under new management, although Wells will retain ownership and continue to be involved.

Amadou Diop, who has more than 15 years of experience in the restaurant business managing Manhattan eateries like The Smoke Joint, said he has signed a 90-day management contract with Wells with the option to renew.

However, for many fans of this soul food institution who anxiously awaited word of her return, Wells wouldn’t have been the same without “Mama Wells,” as locals affectionately call her.

And after just a few minutes in her small storefront, it’s clear why. Her neat, silver gray bob is tucked behind a headband and her hazel eyes are full of both warmth and worry. She hovers like a protective mother, greeting customers at the door, overseeing each order and checking on the few diners who’ve opted to eat in.

“You’re not eating your chicken. Is it okay?” she asks one regular, Carl Holley, a local pastor having a plate of fried chicken and potato salad.

“It’s a little salty but it’s good, Miss Wells,” he replies.

But even the slightest criticism concerns Wells. She wipes her hands on her apron and sits down at the booth to discuss how her new chef should tweak the seasoning.

Wells, who’s in her 70s but demurely declines to specify an exact age, hoped to “complete the dream of the late Joseph T. Wells,” her husband and the restaurant’s founder, by taking his secret waffle-batter and chicken recipe nationwide, with Diop’s help.

However, Diop said 90 days may be insufficient to see the type of results Wells is expecting.

“When you’re running a restaurant, you sometimes don’t see profit or loss until 120 days,” said Diop, who’s also the head chef. “ But my vision right now is just to get back to serving the customers. Customers appreciate the food. I haven’t heard any complaints.”

Since 1938, Wells—as regulars call the place– has dished out home cooking, including the sweet and salty Harlem delicacy, chicken and waffles, that made it famous. During the Harlem Renaissance, late night crowds and post-gig performers frequented the hot spot for this unique dish that struck a balance between breakfast and dinner. Wells has been a part of the business for 48 of the 70 years it has served Harlem.

But the restaurant shut down after an early 1980’s recession.  After several attempts to reopen at its original location on 133rd and Seventh Avenue, Wells “decided last year to return with a new concept,” a casual takeout, with “anticipation of franchising.”

She’s looking for investors who can take Harlem’s signature dish, and the family recipe, across the country to cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and her hometown, New Orleans. However, Increasing competition and her occasional health troubles, may have placed some stumbling blocks in her path.

Local customers like Nicole Banks, who’s lived in Harlem for 34 years, admits that versions of chicken and waffles can now be found on every corner, at Amy Ruth’s on 116th Street, Melba’s on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Harlem Wing & Waffle, also on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. But Wells is “home” and “where Miss Wells goes, the neighborhood goes” Banks said.

“When you expect home cooking, you want to go home,” Banks said. “Well, this is it. Ms. Wells is like Harlem’s mother.”

Source: New York State Department of Labor (Graphic by Tim Kiladze and Lisa Waananen)

By Andrew Keshner and Joshua Tapper

Widespread unemployment in uptown Manhattan is forcing people to find new careers or juggle several jobs, while touching off concerns that those lost jobs might not come back, local business leaders say.

Elbagina Bonilla, deputy director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Economic Development, sees rising unemployment rates weighing heavily on local residents. A particularly hard-hit demographic is young heads of household from their 20s to their 40s, she says.

As the economy dives, a way of life becomes tougher for low-income individuals and families, says Ernest Johnson, senior director at Strive, an East Harlem-based agency that assists the chronically unemployed nationwide. “It’s difficult,” he says. “People are having it pretty rough. A lot of people are hurting.”

Looking at the numbers, it’s not hard to see why: The unemployment rate has essentially doubled since last year. As of October, the unemployment rate in Manhattan was 9.2 percent, says Jim Brown, labor market analyst for the New York State Department of Labor. In October 2008 – the month after Lehman Brothers imploded – it was just 5.5 percent citywide. Unemployment rose from 6.3 to 10.3 percent citywide during the same period.

Unemployed Inwood woman sells her belongings from Shane Snow on Vimeo.

But the unemployment rates of uptown Manhattan neighborhoods are drastically higher than the borough or citywide numbers. Historically, neighborhoods with a high concentration of African Americans have been hit harder by labor market shocks than the rest of the population, explains Kevin Foster, a City College economist. Typically, African Americans work jobs susceptible to layoffs, like personal care and food preparation, Foster says. The black unemployment rate is 15.7 percent nationwide, and it’s especially dire among 16-to-19-year olds, nearly 40 percent of whom are without work. Even before the recession, African Americans had an 8 percent unemployment rate. “It started at a level the country would have called a recession,” Foster says. “Now it’s at a depression level.”

In East Harlem, for example, unemployment climbed from 16 percent in 2005 to between 18.3 and 19.2 percent so far this year, according to Johnson. Johnson believes the East Harlem unemployment rate will peak at 19 to 20 percent over the next two or three months. The neighborhood represents a “microcosm for the rest of the country,” Johnson said.

Bonilla sees some people taking on two or three small jobs to make ends meet; others look to change careers or improve their computer skills. Her organization offers training for child care and security jobs and she reports increased interest in both. Between 20 and 25 people have taken the security training course this year, says Bonilla, compared with 10 to 15 who took the course last year. Last year, the organization offered six classes aimed at helping people open childcare businesses; this year, the organization may offer eight, owing to higher demand. Both Johnson and Foster says green collar jobs are becoming popular in low-income neighborhoods, a result of President Obama’s economic stimulus package. Strive, for example, offers training in green construction.

Henry Calderon, executive director of the East Harlem Chamber of Commerce, has seen some businesses cut back on employees as local consumers trim their own budgets to necessities like rent and food. Though some well-established businesses are still getting by on lower volumes, others, like restaurants, are feeling the pinch.

Foster, the economist, believes many unskilled labor jobs will return once the economy rebounds, simply because they don’t require much training or education. But Calderon, heading an organization representing almost 230 businesses, says there is still a lot of pessimism about the economy improving anytime soon.

And when it does improve, he worries that businesses won’t rehire the same number of workers they let go and will try to do more with less. “The net result,” he says, “is a loss of jobs even if it picks up.”

Marisa Angebranndt scoops vanilla buttercream on hundreds of whoopie pies after midnight at a rental kitchen where she works once a week, trying to catch up on dozens of orders from people who saw her cookies "Real Simple" magazine's holiday gift guide. (Photo by Lisa Waananen)

Chocolate whoopie pies are cooling on the counter, while the smell of molasses spice cookies wafts from the oven. Scoops of red velvet dough wait on baking sheets near containers of vanilla, mint and raspberry buttercream filling.

Orchestrating this kaleidoscope of colors and scents is Marisa Birky Angebranndt, spending sleepless nights mixing, baking and packing whoopie pies in her St. Nicholas Avenue apartment.

Angebranndt expected this holiday season to be the busiest yet for her young business, launched last year after she got laid off from a finance company. But an endorsement in this month’s “Real Simple” magazine is turning busy into crazy. There it is, on page 59 of the December issue: a full-page photo of her whoopie pies leading the “50 Gifts Under $50″ section as a “universal crowd pleaser.”

Angebranndt has received more than 50 orders since magazine-inspired calls started coming in about a week ago – as many orders as she usually gets in a month. She knew she’d be in the magazine, but didn’t know it had started reaching its more than 8 million readers until she got a call asking about the featured tins of whoopie pies.

Then her phone rang again. And again. “It’s been great,” Angebranndt said, “but it’s been insane.”

Last week she ran between the kitchen and the office, preparing boxes and tins between trips to the oven whenever the timer beeped. She rinsed baking sheets and washed bowls by hand while chatting with potential customers in Florida and California.

“WannaHavaCookie, this is Marisa,” she said calmly, phone cradled against her shoulder and hands working without pause. “Can I help you?”

Before WannaHavaCookie, Angebranndt never saw herself as the entrepreneurial type. She was happy working as an office manager in the finance industry, getting handed a daily to-do list and keeping executives’ offices running smoothly. But when her company got hit hard by the bursting housing bubble that heralded the recession, she found herself without a job.

What she did have was a love of baking and a decent severance package. She’d been baking cookies for friends and colleagues since college, developing a holiday tradition and a loyal following. “It was kind of a stress-reliever for me, because my job was so crazy,” she said.

Friends always said she should sell her treats, and when she learned in October 2007 that her office would be closing in five months, launching her own enterprise became more appealing. Her husband, Mark, a project manager for Bank of America, encouraged her to go for it. “Why don’t we try it?” he told her.

Mark convinced his wife to at least do a “focus group”: They passed out the usual holiday packages to friends and coworkers early that year, and included a variety of cookies and order forms to pass on to other friends. The experiment brought in about $800 in orders – not a lot, Angebranndt said, but enough to convince her that the business could work.

WannaHavaCookie offers a variety of cookies, but the whoopie pies get the most attention. Unlike the sticky marshmallow-filled version traditional in the Northeast, Angebranndt’s whoopie pies are based on a Midwestern family recipe and filled with buttercream – like a personal layer cake, she says, or an inside-out cupcake.

The attention from “Real Simple” started at a June trade show set up for editors seeking holiday gift guide ideas. Representatives from “Real Simple” barely stopped at her table, but Angebranndt sent a follow-up package and got an email a few months later requesting more samples. The magazine’s questionnaire asked whether the business could handle 1,000 orders. At that point, Angebranndt’s young company had received about 1,000 orders in its entire history. She went ahead and answered yes.

The joy of seeing her whoopie pies in the magazine alternates with the reality of working around the clock required to fill the orders. Angebranndt doesn’t expect a day off until Christmas, but she knows this will help her reach her business goals, like hiring an employee.

“That’s going to be a lot of work – in a good way,” she said, back to scooping buttercream after another promising phone call. “But still a lot of work.”

African-American and Hispanic households, the majority uptown, lack basic financial education and services. (Graph by Tim Kiladze. Source: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2009)

On a sunny autumn Friday, Bader Bahmad and fellow members of a financial education seminar at the Fort Washington Public Library branch were discussing rudimentary principles, such as the difference between needs and wants.

In a run-down conference room on the library’s deserted second floor, they talked about saving money. Asked to give examples of items they should save for, one woman mentioned a $7.99 blouse she saw earlier in the week and another said a pack of cigarettes. A talkative blonde said she has never saved for anything.

Cheryl Hines of Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension community program led the discussion. She provided handouts that explained the difference between short, medium and long-term savings goals; she offered tips for tracking money, like using a notebook to record expenditures.

Bahmad, 39, found the seminar a bit basic, but she liked the reminders because she and her three children are supported solely by her husband’s earnings as a taxi driver. She strictly limits spending on discretionary goods. “In every hour of the day, if I don’t need it, I’m not doing it,” Bahmad said.

Badmad’s struggle is complicated. In Washington Heights where she lives, families are lucky to have a bank account. While 12 percent of Manhattan households don’t have a standard checking account, 25 percent of African Americans and 27 percent of Hispanics in Manhattan – the majority populations uptown – live unbanked, according to a survey last year by Pew Charitable Trusts. In effect, they pay an average $1,042 annually in check cashing fees.

Bahmad has been trying to make ends meet in the U.S. for close to 15 years. An immigrant from Lebanon, she used to sew scarves and dresses for stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan. When she returned to her home country three years ago to be closer to her family, leaving her husband behind in New York, she sold her sewing machines.

But the distance strained her marriage, and Bahmad returned to New York after two years. “Here you’re missing something, over there you’re missing something,” she said.

Now back in America without a job, Bahmad is looking for financial advice. As a start, she attended the free seminar at the Public Library.

Instructor Milly DuBouchet, who teaches similar classes in Washington Heights, finds it hard to address intricate financial problems because her audience has never had the means to save money. “It’s hard for them to save 10 percent of their income monthly when they can’t necessarily pay their phone bill every month,” she said. “Financial literacy is at a bare minimum in our community.”

To help, the Bloomberg administration created the Office of Financial Empowerment, where DuBouchet also works. It offers personal finance workshops and free private counseling.

Lower-income people may lack a basic understanding of credit ratings and the principles of debt, according to DuBouchet. Many of her clients have been denied loans and “they want to see why,” she said. Moreover, “A lot of people consider credit cards quote unquote free money.” She tries to tell her seminar members and private clients how FICO scores are compiled and reminds those in debt, “If you stop paying it, they don’t forget about you.”

Workshops offering basic financial information can be found all over upper Manhattan. Friends Jenny Gil and Angela Ariza attended one specifically for women at City College. Both women, immigrants from Colombia, readily admit they know little about personal finance.

Gil, 27, is lucky to have less than $5,000 in debt, which she described as “not impossible.” She works in a restaurant office and is trying to repay what she owes so that she can start saving and investing – only she doesn’t know how.

She blames her financial illiteracy on Colombian cultural norms. She was raised with the belief that women don’t handle finances because they are too complex. “It’s the new days and now women take care of their own business,” she said.

Gil has done some reading on her own, like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, but still has trouble grasping certain fundamental financial concepts. To remedy the problem, she thinks personal finances should become part of the high school curriculum.

Donny Lynn Burton agrees. A vice president at the Harlem office of the non-profit Operation Hope, which offers seminars in credit and money management as well as individual credit counseling, she constantly meets people in similar situations.
Her clients live very differently from the middle class. “They live paycheck to paycheck,” Burton said. “They don’t understand the benefits of having an account” in a bank. She shows them how to create budgets and has them come in regularly to stay on track.

But often they start much too late, which she blames on pride. It frustrates her that most people in foreclosure know what lies ahead but don’t take action. ‘They never try to call their bank to work something out,” Burton said. She spends a lot of time assuring her clients that they can negotiate because the bank is better off if they stay in their homes.

She, too, would like to see financial education begin in high school, before people wade into major financial decisions.

A Supermarket Need Index determined areas lacking access to fresh food. The dark green areas show FRESH Food store areas and light green shows additional areas where financial incentives may be available. (Map courtesy of NYC Department of City Planning)

Growing up in Harlem, Gail Brown got used to having limited access to fresh foods. She now shops at Fine Fare, a chain supermarket on Lenox Avenue and 116th Street, but still doesn’t see farm fresh or organic food. “I’m a little disgusted with this,” she said, pointing to the package of cellophane-wrapped chicken in her cart. “But this is the selection they had tonight.” Brown describes it as “second class food.”

Laura Purcell, who moved from the Upper West Side to central Harlem, also shops at Fine Fare when she needs something quick. For larger orders, “I tend to shop at Fairway,” she said, adding that she appreciated that store’s wider selection when she lived further downtown.

The City Planning Commission has voted to approve a fresh food program that offers incentives to develop supermarkets in targeted neighborhoods, including Central and East Harlem and Washington Heights. The City Council has until November 24 to review the proposal.

The Planning Commission developed a Supermarket Need Index last year to pinpoint areas with high levels of diet-related disease and limited supermarket access. The index showed that East and Central Harlem and Washington Heights needed better access to fresh food. New Yorkers living there and in Inwood are more likely to be obese and to have diabetes and other diet-related health conditions than other Manhattan residents, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The FRESH program, short for Food Retail Expansion to Support Health, would allow businesses certified as “fresh” to be 20,000 square feet larger than the law currently permits. Such businesses would also benefit from reduced real estate taxes, sales tax exemptions and reductions in the amount of required parking.

A fresh-certified business would dedicate at least 6,000 square feet to selling groceries, according to the amendment, with 30 percent of that area designated for perishable foods like produce, meat and dairy products.

The FRESH program aims to improve the health of New Yorkers in “underserved areas,” according to a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of City Planning. The department also expects the program to generate new jobs for neighborhood residents.

The lights lowered and the first model hit the runway in a strapless lemon-yellow dress overlaid with taupe lace. Lialia’s collection, inspired by light reflecting on water, opened the show for a crowd of 300 people at the Harlem Gate House on Convent Avenue.

Harlem’s Fashion Row staged this fashion show, its second time since 2007, to “showcase the emerging talent and designers that are based in Harlem” said co-founder Danita King. It brought what King considers much deserved attention to Northern Manhattan’s often-neglected fashion community. ”You had Bryant Park Fashion Week, you even had Brooklyn Fashion Week,” she said. “And no one was paying attention to uptown.”

From left: Outfits from designers Lialia, Dinna Soliman and Jose Duran (Photo PR Noir)

The event featured three emerging designers, committed to their craft despite mounting odds against them and their industry. Showing alongside them was veteran designer Rodney Epperson, appearing a few days after being booted from the reality show “Project Runway.”

The show’s glamour, however, represented just a brief respite from the challenges uptown designers face on a daily basis.

International design stars like Christian Lacroix and Yohji Yamamoto have fallen victim to the recession; both recently filed for bankruptcy. The odds of survival are infinitely more daunting for young, self-financed, unestablished designers on the fringes of the New York fashion world.

A “showcase” barely makes a dent in the hurdles for Washington Heights designer Dinna Soliman, for instance, who showed her “Urban Survival” collection, integrating utilitarian pockets into feminine apparel.

Soliman, 27, launched her self-financed women’s ready-to-wear line four years ago after working on the design teams of several urban fashion lines including Rocawear. She enjoyed some early success placing her collection in boutiques in and outside the city. However, several accounts closed their stores and others demanded lower-priced merchandise as the economy contracted, said Soliman. Boutiques dropped her because she was unable to lower her costs; The clothing retails for $150 to $500.

Because designer clothing is a luxury, sales figures have plummeted. Shopping volume has been in negative territory since May 2008, according to a market research report by MasterCard SpendingPulse. This year, US apparel sales decreased 10.5 percent through May; women’s clothing took a bigger hit, declining 11.8 percent.

“I don’t want to lose the momentum,” said Soliman. She briefly considered taking a hiatus but will instead continue with her current line and add a new diffusion line, Donuts by Dinna, to satisfy the demand for lower priced clothes. “I’m not giving up on it,” she said, although Donuts has not yet found any buyers.

For designers with companies near collapse – like Jose Duran, who showed his first menswear collection at the show — few financing options remain. Even institutions dedicated to supporting aspiring designers, like the Council of Fashion Designers of America, are cutting back. In 2007, the Council spent $6.2 million to support young talent; in 2008, it came up with less than half that: $2.8 million. Duran turned to his parents in the Dominican Republic to finance the collection he presented at the show.

Without backing, Duran doesn’t know where the money for his next collection will come from. He is getting by with friends’ help for now. ”New York is the only place you can make stuff happen with very little money,” he said, after running out of money during a stint in Paris. But without an infusion of capital, he can’t offer the collection to buyers, because he can’t afford to fill the orders.

Duran’s problems are compounded by his radical aesthetic. “I don’t like pretty,” he said. Although the clothes are meant to be “avant garde but wearable,” only half of the runway pieces fit those criteria, he admitted.

“I really can’t see that on the street at 125th and Lenox,” Harlem resident Brett Williams said of Duran’s Sahara-inspired collection. Duran showed deconstructed menswear worn by bare-chested models, several wearing shrouds.

For Harlem-based Lialia, the recession couldn’t have come at a worse time. “We were all primed to get into Saks and then the economy tanked,” said Julia Alarcon, one of two sisters who launched this once-flourishing young company five years ago. It is no longer offered in boutiques. Not sure if they should continue, the duo turned to Roopal Patel, senior women’s fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, and asked if they should shut down. “She said, ‘Just keep going,’” said Alarcon, although the prestigious department store is not currently picking up new designers.

Buoyed by Patel’s words, self-financed Lialia shrunk the collection, cut the prices and hunkered down for the long haul. But Alarcon asked herself, “If we were to sell nothing for four seasons, how much can we afford to spend?”

With America still deep in recession and unemployment on the rise, consumers have cut spending, focusing on essentials. But at BBraxton on 116th Street and Fifth Avenue, customers like Jeff Augustin still find time and room in their budgets for a male salon that features fresh flowers, a relaxation room for massages, a manicurist, and a full bar.

“I had never seen anything like this,” said Augustin, gesturing toward the gleaming wood floors, rows of intricate light fixtures, and supple leather chairs.

So Augustin, who’s studying to be a neurosurgeon, travels more than an hour from Queens to get his shoulder-length dreadlocks maintained.

“There’s a place like this for every woman on the planet,” Augustin said. “To find one for men of color, that was amazing.”

Owner Brenda Braxton says that was her plan: to create an “exceptional” but affordable grooming experience for men of color. A quick “fade” haircut, hot towel shave, or manicure costs under $20. For those willing to splurge, a $225 spa package includes a facial and a Swedish massage.

Braxton and her husband, Anthony Van Putten, opened their high-end barbershop in 2006. Now, the 53-year-old entrepreneur and actress, separated from Van Putten, divides her time between running the show at BBraxton and performing on Broadway, where she has appeared for more than 30 years, including a recent starring role as Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”

The salon’s inspiration was from a conversation with her husband about pedicures. He said “he wouldn’t mind having those services done, but he didn’t want to sit in a women’s parlor.” They envisioned “just one place where gentlemen can go and have a haircut, a manicure, a pedicure, a facial and do it in privacy. I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s do a barbershop.’”

Black men in the neighborhood, accustomed to the bustle of traditional barbershops, had to get used to a shop like this one. Initial foot traffic was “a little slow,” Braxton said; residents “had never seen anything like this” for men and “thought it was a white-owned business.

“But the community finally realized that, ‘Oh, okay. It’s reasonable. It’s for us. They know what they’re doing. It’s black-owned,’“ she said. “ So, it took a minute but we’re getting ready to go into our fourth year.”

But BBraxton will mark its fourth anniversary at a time when one-third of Harlem’s businesses closed between July 2008 and June 2009, according to a survey cited by the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. Braxton says that rising rents are her major concern.

But Harlem men “are still pampering,” she said, although women are usually the ones who won’t give up grooming during an economic downtown.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the salon was full of customers — a clientele that Braxton says ranges in age from seven to 70, and includes business types, hip hoppers, and even recording artist Freddie Jackson.

Jackson, a BBraxton regular who recorded a string of hits during the 1980s and early 1990s, described the salon as a “place where men can —strange way to put it — let their hair down.”

Reclining at the shampoo bowl, Jackson said he prefers to get his hair cut where he doesn’t “have to buy tube socks” from street hustlers and can get a drink in “a nice long stem glass” instead of “a plastic cup.”

Every customer gets a cocktail, like a cranberry and vodka or a white wine, on the house, plus a smile from Ms. B, as her customers nicknamed her.

Not all locals are so particular. Amir Thomas, who lives a couple of blocks away, doubts he’d ever go to BBraxton. He saves money by cutting his own hair. “Why would I ever want to look at some other dude getting a manicure or pedicure?” he said.

Like acting on Broadway, running a business keeps Braxton center stage —answering phones, greeting customers at the door, serving a glass of Chardonnay — all while wearing four-inch heels and flawless make-up.

Now, Braxton wants to launch a BBraxton Academy for barbers looking to hone their skills, plus other luxe male salons in Washington,D.C., and Las Vegas.

“I’m realizing being an entrepreneur is exciting,” she said. “The day-to-day of trying to run it, trying to make sure the lights stay on, everyone gets paid — it’s a little nerve wracking, but it’s still exciting, like theater.”

Just a few years ago, Tonnie Rozier ran a Boys and Girls Club in Jersey City while baking cakes at night for wholesale clients. Demand for his products grew quickly, pushing him to open his own bakery, Tonnie’s Minis Cupcake and Coffee Bar, in 2006—but its West Village storefront was so small that cakes took up too much space. To adjust, Rozier switched to cupcakes.

Tonnie’s Minis became an NYU hot spot. Celebrity awareness soon followed, catching the attention of people like Jay-Z and Kimora Lee Simmons. Now, Rozier is expanding with a bigger Harlem location on Lenox Avenue.

The new store had its grand opening last week. It is a precarious time for small businesses to expand, but the new Harlem location has had a steady stream of customers since it opened. Rozier still has some technical glitches to smooth out—hiring enough staff, training—and he occasionally runs out of certain flavors because he is gauging demand, but the customers don’t seem to mind.