Dozens of tour buses drive tourists to Harlem's famous historical landmarks every weekend (Photo by Sandra Ifraimova)

On the weekends, double-decker buses have become a common sight in Harlem – tourists who choose to hop on and off at the neighborhood’s historic landmarks look down at the long lines of people waiting outside the Apollo Theater on 125^th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Frederick Douglass Boulevards.

New York welcomed a record-breaking 48.7 million visitors in 2010 and tourism has been booming in the five boroughs, according to reports by NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

“The business is coming back on track, the fear is gone,” says Neal Shoemaker, Harlem’s tourism veteran and founder of Harlem Heritage Tours, as he recalls the industry’s evolution since 1998. That was the year he first got paid for giving a tour of the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque to Turkish visitors.

“When I started the business 10 years ago, there was a lot of talk in the air about the future Harlem, about businesses developing, condos coming,” he says.

Today, Harlem is experiencing what some call a “second Renaissance” with chain stores, like Starbucks, and luxury condominiums rising side by side with small soul food restaurants and iconic gospel churches that give the neighborhood its distinctive flavor. “People now feel safe coming up here,” says Kathy Benson, project director at Museo Del Barrio on 103^rd Street and Fifth Avenue.

Samantha Jacomin, a 24-year-old visitor from Paris on her first visit to Harlem, says: “I heard a lot of terrible things about Harlem, and I wanted to see it myself. But I personally don’t see it at all. All I see is a vibrant community, great music and great food!”

The Apollo Theater – famous around the world for launching the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder and for epitomizing black talent – is Harlem’s major attraction.

“We attract over 1.4 million visitors a year in between shows and tours,” says Nina Flowers, the theater’s marketing and communications director. Amateur Night, which has been taking place every Wednesday since 1934 is a favorite of tourists, who come from as far away as Japan.

Some tourists’ desire to satisfy their curiosity in regard to the neighborhood’s alleged “ghetto culture” – or the visitors’ fascination with poor people – angers locals.

“I cannot stand these tourists that come to our neighborhood, walk around the projects hoping to find men dealing crack or whatever,” says Diana Moore, 47. “We have a difficult past, and a difficult present and I don’t want people exploiting it for entertainment.”

While gospel tours grow in popularity among European and Japanese tourists, regular churchgoers complain about the visitors’ disrespectful behavior.

“These guys who come on the bus make so much noise during the service,” says Rob Evans, who has been going to the Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138^th Street for over 15 years. “They talk to each other during the service and sometimes speak on their cellphones, it’s unacceptable!”

Yvette Jones, who lives near the Abyssinian Church, is used to people gazing down on her street from the buses, and wishes they would come down and mix with the people.

“I don’t get what these people can see from up there,” she says angrily. “If they want to come to our community and experience it they better come off and talk, socialize with people, we don’t bite.”

While some residents are bothered by dozens of buses riding up and down their street every weekend, store owners nearby enjoy the dollars the Apollo brings to their businesses.

Every day Leah Mitchan sells about 30 T-shirts of black heroes, like President Obama or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,  for $15 a piece. “Sixty percent of my business comes from tourists,” she says, adding that she picked a strategic location for her stall – next to the Apollo Theater and opposite Franco the Great, also known as Harlem’s Picasso, who is known for painting on metal security gates on storefronts on 125^th Street.

Franco Gaskin, also known as Harlem's Picasso, greets tourists every sunday on 125th Street (Photo by Sandra Ifraimova)

Every Sunday, Franco greets hundreds of visitors, who come to get a glimpse of what is unofficially known as “Franco’s Boulevard.”

“I began to bring the tourists when I started to paint the gates of the store owners on 125^th Street,” he says. “It brings a lot of money to the community.” He admits that constantly marketing himself and using African-American culture to build his brand is what made him so successful. They are fascinated by Harlem because it was forbidden,” he says of the tourists. “And I capitalize on that.”

Sylvia’s has been the No. 1 destination for authentic soul food in Harlem. But since Sylvia Woods opened her restaurant in 1962, the clientele has changed and so has the number of customers.

“In the mid-90s there were more African-Americans here, but now the real estate is more developed and Harlem attracts more and more people,” says Shauna Woods, the granddaughter of Sylvia’s founder and the third generation to run the family business.

“We get over 2,000 people a day,” she says. “A lot of tourists during the weekend but people from our community come too, it bounces out our profit.”

Amy Ruth’s, another famous soul food eatery, is a hotspot for Japanese tourists and visitors from the Northeast corridor.  “This place is famous for fried chicken and waffles,” says Dwayne Ribel, from Hoboken, N.J. “And I don’t mind driving from New Jersey to have some.”

As more and more people venture into Harlem, the number of tourism companies in the neighborhood increases. “People want to see what is hot and Harlem is hot,” says Kebe.

The Harlem Chamber of Commerce monitors these businesses, and the website www.harlemtourismnow.com serves as an online directory of all the tourist attractions in the neighborhood.

“There are a lot of companies, five or six companies and they are all behind me today,” says Shoemaker. His company offers an array of different tours – gospel, food, civil rights, walking and shopping are all available to visitors for an average price of $35.

“Whoever has the most experience, whoever can be the most imaginative pretty much wins the game,” he says of the fierce competition between the owners.

Jacqueline Orange started her company, Taste Harlem: Food and Cultural Tours, in 2008, and has added another activity to Harlem’s list of tourist attractions.

“We started an art tour called Art Crawl Harlem,” she says. “We showcase art galleries and we let gallery owners bring the artists.”  Three times a year, for $55, visitors travel by an old-fashioned trolley and get the chance to discover Harlem’s Art Scene.

“It has been extremely successful,” Orange says. “We promoted it, we used our own money and now the community knows us and we have a following of customers.”

But lately, tourists have had to choose where and what to spend their money on. Street vendors who sell incense, body oils and shea butter along bustling 125^th Street say tourists no longer stop at their stalls.

“Since the recession, I don’t sell half as much as I used to five years ago,” laments Mustafa, who declines to give his last name because he works illegally in the country. When Mustafa moved to Harlem five years ago from his native Mali, he was making a good living selling his products to tourists.

“I was making $200 a day, they bought souvenirs and brought stuff back for their families,” he says. “They wanted to have a memory of Harlem, but now they will spend the money on food, or tickets to the Apollo.”

The community has grown to understand, and accept the role that tourism plays in the local economy and residents slowly start to appreciate it.

“It warms my heart to see people coming into Harlem and enjoying our culture,” says Ross Leighton, who was born and raised in Harlem. “It helps our economy and makes us feel proud.”

Harlemites want to show their cultural history while growing their tourism industry and getting their share of the city’s estimated $16.6 billion in tourism-related wages. “No gentrification, no killing Harlem,” says Shoemaker. “We want to use this industry called tourism to preserve our culture, traditions and local economy”.

Many visitors come to see the painted gates on 125th Street (Photo by Sandra Ifraimova)

On 125th Street, some vendors are part of the underground labor force (Photo by Krishn Kaushik)

Tony Smith is sitting on a bench facing the basketball courts in Colonel Charles Young Playground on East 145^th Street. A short, heavy man, he looks lost and gloomy as he watches teenagers enjoy a Sunday pick-up game. “It’s not fair,” says Smith, 42, eyes still on the game. “But I know it could have been worse.”

Smith has worked as a delivery van driver for a small transport company in Washington Heights for four years. For the last nine months, he has been pushed to work off the books. “I was at least lucky to not lose the job,” Smith says, mentioning that the only other driver, “a nice Latino guy,” was fired.

Smith is part of a workforce earning a living without any government documentation or workplace protections, due to the still struggling economy. “I know two more people working off the books now,” says Smith, who believes the underground economy is growing.

At Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, Tony James distributes handbills to pedestrians promoting a nearby pawn shop. James, in his late 50s, says he’s had many jobs previously, including working in garages, but has been leafleting for the past three months. “Five of my friends are into same thing,” James says. Not everyone with this job works off the books. “Some of these shops like to put in the paper, some don’t,” he says.

“The underground workforce is made up of individuals from many walks of life,” Susan Pozo, an economist at Western Michigan University, says via e-mail.

Smith says, “They can be tailors, janitors, nannies, dog walkers.”

While he thinks the undocumented workforce is on the rise, it’s tough to find data to support the claim. Pozo estimates that, based on the documented unemployment rate in upper Manhattan, off-the-books workers constitute roughly 13 percent of the labor force. She knows of no estimate of the total worth of the country’s underground economy.

Harvard economist Lawrence Katz says via e-mail, “There is no good systematic data on the size of the underground economy.”

Even government authorities can’t provide any figures. “We really don’t have data,” Martin Kohler, regional economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says in an e-mail. “And I am not sure who would.” Employment services uptown were unable to shed any light on the subject.

“I gotta do what I gotta do to not let my family starve,” says Greg Browne, selling winter hats and scarves from a small wooden table on West 125^th Street. Browne says that while most 125th Street street vendors are legal and have trader’s licenses, some work without authorization. He believes the high unemployment rate might even be pushing some young people to work in “drugs and the likes.”

While undocumented immigrants always work off the books, the population of legal residents joining their ranks may be growing. “It is always on the rise,” says Richard Weiss, communications director for the Construction and General Building Laborers Local 79 union,  serving New York City.

Legal citizens form a substantial part of undocumented workers, Pozo says, and “I would guess that the proportion of legal immigrants/natives in the underground workforce has risen.”

While employers might increasingly hire legal residents, she doesn’t see an appreciable rise or fall in the total numbers of such workers. “While those laid off from the above ground sector might look for jobs in the underground sector,” Pozo says, “there aren’t many jobs there either.”

Those working without any benefits, legal protections, or without paying taxes don’t prefer to work off the books, but may do so out of desperation. “I have to pay for electricity, rent, gas, phone, food and I need some work for that,” says Browne, who was laid off a year ago from the restaurant where he worked.

“Can’t survive on welfare and unemployment,” he adds.

Weiss says, “These people are exploited due to their economic situation.” He adds that many times underground workers are paid less than minimum wage while their employers also evade taxes. “They are treated as disposable commodities,” he says.

Browne won’t specify how much money he makes in a month. He says he has to move his location often to avoid being bothered by the police. James says he only makes $300 a week distributing handbills and advertising the pawn shop on a signboard he wears. Smith reports earning $750 a week as a driver, good money, but without any benefits.

“I do hope things improve soon,” Smith says. His van is parked outside the playground. He fears he might lose his apartment in Brooklyn, where he lives alone, if things don’t change soon.

“Sometimes I sleep in the van,” he says. “Just to get used to it, in case.”

125th Street is “Franco’s Boulevard.” If you’ve seen the murals of Barack Obama or Martin Luther King Jr. on storefront gates there, chances are Franco Gaskin has painted them. Gaskin – who calls himself “Franco the Great” but points out that others have christened him “Franco the Magnificent” – has been painting gates for 30 years. “This is my contribution to Harlem,” he said.

A native of Panama, he’s been painting since childhood. At 3, Gaskin fell from a building in an accident that left him mute and introverted; using art to connect with others, he began speaking again, with difficulty, at 10. Now 83, Gaskin has been invited all over the world – Germany, Japan, Italy – to paint.

During the Christmas season, Gaskin paints winter scenes and other holiday-themed décor on storefronts across Harlem.

Kenyan carvings on 125th Street in Harlem. (Photo by Zaheer Cassim)

The song is called “Yearning for Home” and it’s a perfect blend of African rhythm and New York soul and jazz, the defining sound of Nigerian-born Siji Awoyinka.

But after spending nine years in New York perfecting his music, Awoyinka is not yearning for home anymore. Three weeks ago, he returned to Lagos.

Just like Awoyinka, a rising number of African immigrants uptown and throughout New York  are packing their bags and preparing to go back to their homelands, as the prosperity that America was once known for has been tarnished by the global recession.

“There’s been a significant number of my peer group who have started to return home,” Awoyinka wrote in an e-mail. “The economic crisis in the Western world has of course meant, we’ve had to seek opportunities back home in the developing world.”

Abu Bakr Sylla, 41, is on a crosstown bus in Harlem. His shirtsleeves barely cover his elbows and a tight belt holds up his loose pants. He is in a rush to pay his phone bill and get back to work, yet he makes time to talk about Ivory Coast’s poor performance during the World Cup. Sylla has been in the United States for five years and says many Ivorians think he is lucky to be abroad. But he disagrees and intends to return to Ivory Coast once he can afford a one-way ticket home.

“Inshallah, I’ll go home in June,” he says, blaming economic woes for his decision to leave.  “Before it was a little cheap, people could work hard, save a little money to help the family, but now we can’t.” Though he has a job, “you have nothing the end of the month.” In Ivory Coast, he sees better prospects. “Lots of Chinese investing in Africa now. Try to help the African people to live better.”

Sylla says he knows 10 Africans in New York who have returned home this year because of the recession. Harlem leaders who work with African communities have also noticed an exodus.

Kaaw Sow, general manager for the Association of Senegalese in America, located in West Harlem, says in the last four months, a dozen people have gone back to Senegal. “People have realized it’s not the El Dorado it used to be,” he says of New York. Sow’s office is surrounded by Senegalese shops, whose owners will sell just about anything to make a living.

“Every type of business that you know, they have their own economy,” explains Louis Prezeau, director of development at the Harlem Commonwealth Council, a non-profit that trains small business owners. Although he finds it surprising that African immigrants want to go home, he says it’s a logical move.

“Family structure and family support units in rough times are a big thing,” he says. “In the past, an immigrant would come here from a third world country … and find a job and be able to send money home to support his family there, that’s basically what they do. But with the economy the way it is, it’s very difficult for them to find those jobs where they’re able to support themselves and send money home, so they just go home.”

Muhamed, who refused to give his last name, sells scented oils on the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and echoes Prezeau’s sentiment. “Africa is better, because they do business over there and they have a lot of money to do business,” he says. Muhamed adds that his friends who have gone back to Mali are living better than he is.

Mustafa Diop has spent the last eight years in New York and doesn’t speak a word of English. He is planning to leave for Senegal within a few weeks. A translator relayed Diop’s words in Wolof: “He won’t miss America. He wants to go back home to do his own traditional work, which is agriculture.” The mosque on West 116th Street, which Diop attends, will hold a fundraiser for his journey home.

The imam at the mosque, Moustapha Diop, says it’s common, within the West African community, to help pay for an individual’s migration home. The imam, not related to Mustafa Diop, has led this mosque for 10 years and says he knows at least seven families who’ve left his congregation in the last nine months to go to Africa. “Before the recession we hadn’t seen that.”

He adds, “They always have this dream, but once they are here for five to six months, they realize the dream is wrong.”

Yet according to the Department of Homeland Security, the African immigrant population continues to grow about 10 percent a year since 2007. Last year, nearly 130,000 Africans legally immigrated to the United States, 20,000 more than the previous year. The biggest groups came from Ethiopia and Nigeria; each sent more than 15,000 people to the United States.

Although Awonyika spent two-thirds of his life in the west, he says he has no regrets. He has accomplished what he wanted in the U.S. “I wouldn’t have ventured back home if this were not the case,” he wrote.

As thousands of fans in America say goodbye, millions of potential fans in Nigeria say hello.

After waiting in line since 6 a.m., Mike Cristal, 17, finally sat down in the light-filled audition room at the famous Apollo Theater. Hoping for a spot in the Harlem landmark’s Amateur Night 2011 season, he watched the  contestants before him step onto the makeshift stage to perform before two black-clad  judges.

“I’m going to sing ‘Ordinary People’ by John Legend,” he said. “I have confidence when I sing that song. I love it.”

Amateur Night, held on Wednesdays since 1934, has launched the careers of  Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Jackie Wilson, Gladys Night & the Pips and the Isley Brothers, among many others.

Contestants who attended the newly added Brooklyn auditions and the second annual Atlanta auditions, both earlier this month, experienced a similar process to Cristal’s. Different this year, however, is the addition of  “virtual” online auditions.

“We began online auditions in an effort to reach a national talent pool,” said Nina Flowers, an Apollo spokeswoman. “Not everyone can come to New York. In today’s day and age, the way to do that is through the Internet.”

Having started Oct. 16, the online auditions ran until 5 p.m. on Oct. 23. Using a customized Apollo micro-site, the first 300 applicants were accepted. From these, 35 applicants will be picked from the pool, one for each of the 35 Amateur Night shows beginning Jan. 26.  Caffey and the judges now begin the difficult task of choosing contestants  for the $10,000 grand prize.

“We will not tell you today if you made it or not, because we have other auditoners to see,” Caffey told Cristal and the others in the room. “Then we put the season together.”

The Apollo set up this customized micro-site where contestants could submit their auditions.

Some who auditioned in Harlem saw auditioning online as a disadvantage.

“People have always been willing to come to the theater to audition,” said Mary Walters, 35. “I guess it could be a good thing that they choose to go into people’s homes. But it makes me wonder as to why they would need to do so.”

Cristal, who spent 10 hours traveling from Calera, Alabama, said: “I would consider online auditions if I couldn’t get a chance to fly. But it is not as exciting. I like that adrenaline.”

He believes that the wait, the people and the judges are part of the audition process. “I don’t know why you’d do it at home,” he said. “You can’t show your personality as much.”

Online auditions provide another way for the Apollo  to compete with the likes of Fox’s “American Idol” and NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which have become popular through a formula similar to the Apollo’s 76-year-old contest.

“I am too old for ‘American Idol’ and all the other shows,” said Beverly McClain of Brooklyn. “I am 48 years old.” McCLain discovered her musical talent late in life, and felt that the Apollo was the best place to audition. “The Apollo is a legend,” she said. ” You know you’ve arrived when you’ve stepped  on the Apollo stage.”

“We are the great grandfather of them all,” Caffey agreed.

McClain felt at peace after she performed “Dr. Feelgood,” popularized by Aretha Franklin.

“I had to shimmy a little bit,” she laughed.

She vowed to keep singing at her Seventh Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn, whether she made it or not. “I refuse to allow myself to go there mentally in a negative way,” she said. “I’ll just trust in God and believe what is for me is for me.”

General Ulysses S. Grant Houses and other projects in the spotlight. (Photo by Zaheer Cassim)

On a warm Monday morning, 17-year-old “Cheddar,” gets a call from his girlfriend who has just finished a session at the gym. “She is coming over,” he says. In need of privacy, they end up on the roof of his building in the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses on 125th Street.

Fifteen minutes later, a police officer is standing next to the two teenagers. At housing complexes like Grant, Manhattanville and now at St. Nicholas Houses, someone is always watching.

St. Nicholas Houses has begun installing 160 surveillance cameras throughout the project, following Manhattanville, which set up 96 last year. Privately sponsored, these cameras aren’t monitored by the police, like the “video interactive patrol enhancement response” (VIPER) cameras at Grant Houses.

Councilwoman Inez Dickens secured the $2.5 million funding for the Manhattanville and St. Nicholas systems. St. Nicholas received the bulk of that and the system should be operational by November, says Heidi Morales of the New York City Department of Housing.

The VIPER cameras at Grant Houses, remotely connected to Police Station Six, are in demand with Harlem public housing managers.

“They all want it,” says Detective John Ramos who works with the VIPER team at Police Station Area Six. But he says, “it’s very expensive. When you get the VIPER program, somebody has to monitor those cameras.” He acknowledges that St. Nicholas Houses needs a VIPER unit, but there is no money.

With VIPER cameras, police at local stations in what are known as “VIPER rooms” are watching. When they see a crime committed, a squad car heads for the project, usually within minutes. The VIPER video footage then serves as evidence in court. With a closed-circuit system, as at Manhattanville and now St. Nicholas, it’s up to the buildings’ management to find someone to monitor the cameras.

Still, residents at St. Nicholas sound happy about the new cameras and say they have seen improvements already. Vera Robinson, a St. Nicholas resident for more than 50 years, says she and other residents are upset with neighbors who keep urinating in the elevator. “I’m 69 years old. If I can make it upstairs they can make it to where they are going,” she says. Since cameras were installed in the elevators, the nuisance has stopped.

Manhattanville Manager Kamilla Kusiec says that after Grant Housing received the VIPER unit, “criminal activities migrated to Manhattanville”, which was forced to get its own surveillance system. “Ideally everyone in the city would like VIPER cameras,” explains Kusiec. who now watches the cameras in her spare time. Since installing the cameras, crime in Manhattanville and Grant housing projects has decreased by 17 percent, according to Ramos’s internal statistics.

The 32nd Precinct police report, which includes St. Nicholas, shows that overall, crime has risen nearly 5 percent since last year, though it remains 28 percent below the level of 10 years ago.

The cameras have drawn criticism from outside the projects, however. A 2008 University of Southern California study, “Measuring the Effects of Video Surveillance on Crime,” shows that while such cameras help apprehend criminals, their presence doesn’t stop crime. Conducted at several Los Angeles locations, including the housing project Jordan Downs, the study found that “cameras used in conjunction with larger crime-reduction strategies should be viewed as one tactical element, not a strategy in-and-of themselves.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has published several reports arguing that video surveillance hasn’t proved effective and violates individuals’ right to privacy. Communications director Jennifer Carnig explained its position. “It’s essential, when the government engages in surveillance, that it acknowledges that there are privacy risks and takes steps to reduce the harm,” she wrote in an e-mail. The ACLU wants police to consider residents’ privacy and to place cameras where they don’t intrude on people’s lives.

As for communication between Cheddar and his girlfriend, he’ll have trouble arranging private conversations at Harlem housing projects. He was lucky the officer was in a good mood that day and only reported him to his family. He now lives under the close surveillance of Grant’s VIPER unit and his mother.

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.

An architect's 1833 drawing of the Corn Exchange. (Photo courtesy HarlemBespoke.com)

Until she starts talking, Ethel Bates looks like anyone’s grandmother with her maroon windbreaker, a dun scarf wrapped turbanlike around her head. Short, forceful and sharp as a whip, this energetic 77-year-old community activist has spent much of the last decade in court – mostly pitted against various city departments. “She’s a little dynamo,” says Garry Johnson, Community Board 11’s treasurer and Economic Development Committee chair.

Johnson’s architecture consultancy on 125th Street looks right over the Corn Exchange, a landmark building that is the locus of Ethel Bates’ legal struggles. From the street, the 126-year-old red brick building decorated with ornate white masonry looks to be in good shape, though cosseted with scaffolding. From Johnson’s window, though, the building’s dilapidated innards present quite a contrast to the ordered lines of the adjacent Metro North station.

The building after demolition began in September. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

The city is in the midst of carrying out an “emergency demolition” of the five-story building’s top three floors. Since 2003, Bates has officially been in charge of renovating this building, one of 125th Street’s scattered 19th-century landmarks. Bates, who harbors an above-average suspicion of government, claims that the disrepair is due not so much to neglect on her part as to obfuscation by the city and to the Department of Buildings’s “secret agenda.”

The Corn Exchange was built, in the Queen Anne and Romanesque-style, as the Mount Morris Bank by architects Lamb & Lamb. With well-appointed apartments on its upper levels (it earlier had seven stories, with gables at the top), the building later became the Corn Exchange, a bank that eventually merged with JP Morgan. Used briefly as a church, the building was abandoned in the 1970s and lay empty for almost 30 years. A fire destroyed the decaying upper levels before Bates decided to adopt the Corn Exchange as the site for a pioneer culinary school in upper Manhattan.

The Economic Development Corp. had doubts when Bates first approached the city with her proposal in 1999. “I wasn’t anybody as far as they were concerned,” Bates said. Bates said she got a boost from developer Lew Rudin, who put in a cameo appearance for her at an EDC meeting – “you would have thought a saint had walked in, or God himself.” Bates eventually landed an appointment with then-deputy mayor Rudy Washington.

Washington had “heard on the one hand that here was this elderly woman that had a good heart but who didn’t know squat and it would be a disaster to let her have this building,” Bates recalled. “On the other hand she was a person who had these certain merits.” Impressed by Bates’s personality and business acumen (she had studied business at New York University and City College), Washington told Bates that he was on her side.

So she was surprised to find that the building had suddenly been auctioned off to Elie Hirschfeld (son of Abraham), who she said just wanted to sell it back to her for three times the cost. Bates sued the city. It took a year for the decision, but she won her case as well as control over the Corn Exchange. In 2003, Bates held the property deed with a promise to develop the building in three years.

It wasn’t the first time Bates had sued New York. In the 1980s, she was involved in the restoration of Marcus Garvey Park. She sued the parks department after she was handcuffed by some of their officers.

Ethel Bates speaking at a Town Hall meeting (Photo by Edmund J. Eng)

Bates’ dream of opening a culinary school stemmed from a long history with foreign travel, food and art. Bates was born in Birmingham, Ala., but moved to New York with her father, a railway employee, her mother and her six siblings when she was a child. After college, Bates traveled to Europe and lived in France, England and Italy for several years. She worked as a contract negotiator for performers and traveled to Israel, Palestine and North Africa. When she returned to New York, she did everything from being an accountant to running a bakery.

Bates wanted to open a culinary institute because she felt that “in this community you have so many people who are able to do some cooking but they can’t compete. They can’t afford the Culinary Institute of America, they can’t afford the French Culinary… you can’t go and compete with somebody who’s got a reputation behind them and all you’ve done is work in a greasy spoon place.”

She was set on this building, “a place that gives you a certain amount of cachet… That’s my idea: save the building and do a culinary institute.” Bates had already signed on Ark Restaurants and several other potential tenants for the New Corn Exchange project.

Finding a developer proved more difficult. While candidates came to her in droves, Bates felt that each was after her valuable property and had no interest in creating a community culinary institute. Her unwillingness to cede equity control kept stalling the project.

Johnson felt Bates bears some responsibility. “I believe she’s had opportunities,” he said. “The real estate boom has come and gone now.” He said he knew of a big-name developer who had offered Bates a 49 percent stake in the building and that she had refused. He also said that the Community Board approached Bates with a proposal financed by its members. If Bates could not find a developer, he said, she should have tried to open the school elsewhere first, so that it could build a track record.

Bates’ account of her dealings with developers over the years is a laundry list of shady proposals and corrupt maneuvers. About once a year, a newspaper would report that restoration was about to begin. But Bates repeatedly wound up in court, fighting with would-be developers who she claimed wanted to wrest control of the building from her. The city held off on taking any action until 2007, when it moved to rescind Bates’ ownership.

Bates said she has spent $300,000 of her own money fighting cases and paying various fines the city imposed. She also arranged for the protective scaffolding that surrounds the Corn Exchange. Eventually, Bates filed for bankruptcy in order to restrategize. “We fought it nip-and-tuck,” she said.

Bates lost her plea for bankruptcy and the matter reverted to Supreme Court, where a judge ruled in January that the city could take over the building in a non-final disposition. The city claimed that the building was a danger to pedestrians and the 125th Street station and moved to tear down its top floors. Demolition began in early September, but Bates still hasn’t given up. She says her legal status is “sensitive,” but that she hasn’t given up on regaining control.

There is a discrepancy between the Court’s ruling that the deed revert to the city and an April 20 letter asking Bates’ group to take immediate action on repair and demolition. The letter stated that if Bates failed to take action, the city would move to demolish and “recover its expenses from you.” This summer, Assemblyman Adam C. Powell wrote to the Economic Development Corporation strongly backing Bates. The advocacy group Historic Districts Council wrote to Deputy Mayor Edward Skylar in August, stating that council members had visited the building and found the proposed emergency demolition unfounded. The members asked the mayor to intercede until “a more experienced developer can be found.”

The demolition of the Corn Exchange’s top stories may have been drastic. Calling for an emergency demolition allowed the Building Department to bypass authorization from the Landmarks Preservation Commission in the name of public safety. In an April field report, investigators cited loose bricks in various places, but maintained that the protective scaffolding around the building was sound. Johnson, for one, believes that demolishing three floors was overkill and that the fifth floor is the only one that really had to go. “As an architect, I believe those are load-bearing walls,” he said.

Bates suspects that the city will wait, then propose another demolition and eventually hand the building over to a prominent developer. Developer Vornado owns the lot across the street and the Corn Exchange is prime property, with empty lots and the train station just next door.

The Corn Exchange in its heyday, circa the 1920s or 1930s. Until recently, the building had five of its original seven stories. (Photo courtesy HarlemBespoke.com)

If the building is restored by the city or someone else rather than commercially developed, it may never be profitable. Real estate agent Eugene Giscombe, whose office overlooks the Corn Exchange, thinks the building is “economically obsolete.” He estimated that even if the Corn Exchange were raised to 10 stories, the cost of building (about $13.5 million) would be far beyond the recoverable yearly rent ($1.35 million). Giscombe believes the only commercial solution would be to combine that lot with others around it. If the building remains a low-rise, he said, the landlord might be able to get tax incentives to rent to a non-profit.

In all this controversy, the building’s historical significance has been largely overshadowed. Johnson thinks the city should have better preserved the building’s shell. He pointed to the example of a mental asylum on Roosevelt Island that has been kept intact pending future development.

“Had it been in the Upper West Side or Upper East Side there would have been meltdown,” he said. “People would have been screaming bloody murder. This wouldn’t have happened. It just shows a complete disregard for the community.”