Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 31

(3/5) “I let my granddaughter Chelsea name the literacy center....

(3/5) “I let my granddaughter Chelsea name the literacy center. And she named it ‘Grandma’s Place.’ Right away we organized our very first reading group, and five women showed up. These were mostly mothers who wanted to learn how to read to their children. I started off with short stories by J. California Cooper. She’s a famous black author who wrote about women who really struggled in life. But in the end her protagonists always triumphed. They overcame their obstacles. I wanted these young mothers to learn how to read. But I also wanted them to feel inspired, to see that their lives could get better. After the reading programs we branched out into parenting workshops. Then financial literacy workshops. I tried to let the community take the lead. Whenever I saw a need, I’d organize another program. But after five years the landlord raised my rent. They left Grandma with no choice. Grandma had to do business. At first I tried to be a bookstore, but the books weren’t selling. So I added in some toys. But this wasn’t like Toys R’ Us. I personally selected every toy and book. And let me tell you, a lot of stuff doesn’t meet Grandma’s standards. I never made much money over the years. But it was always enough to keep the doors open. And Grandma’s Place became a sort of learning mecca in the neighborhood. Parents are always coming to me with questions. Maybe their kid isn’t getting a fair shake at school. Maybe they’re refusing to read, or keep fighting with their sibling. The parent will come find me and say: ‘Grandma, what do we do?’ And I’ll either give them a book, or I’ll make a connection. Because I know everyone on the block. Everyone knows Grandma. And everyone knows that Grandma’s thing is encouraging kids to do better. The children always bring their report card to Grandma’s Place. And if they do better than the time before, they get to pick out a toy. I don’t compare them to their cousin, or their older brother. I want them to move forward at their own pace. If they were less absent, and participated more, that’s all that matters to Grandma. Grandma is very proud of you. Go get yourself a toy off the shelf.”

(2/5) “Just as I was getting ready to retire a storefront became...

(2/5) “Just as I was getting ready to retire a storefront became available next to my brownstone. I said: ‘Oh Lord, I’m in trouble. They’re going to open up a fish-and-chip joint, or something wild like that.’ And I didn’t want that smelly thing. Not next to my brownstone. Not during my retirement. So one morning I woke up at 4:44 AM, like I always do. And I started talking to God, like I always do. I said: ‘God, what should we do about that storefront?’ And he gave me an idea,  to open up a literacy center. I knew it was something the community needed. During all my years of teaching second grade, I’d met a lot of parents who couldn’t read. And their children were the ones who struggled the most. So I thought: ‘Let’s create a safe place where these parents can learn to read.’ Only problem was I didn’t have any money. I was on a teacher’s salary. But I closed my eyes, and I really pictured that literacy center. I thought hard about it. I could see the reading groups. I could see those happy kids. But when the day came to sign the papers, I got shaky. So I did what I always do when I’m feeling shaky: I called Winslow the pharmacist. I’ve known Winslow since I was nineteen. He owned the pharmacy next door to my very first apartment. I was young. I was all alone. So every night I’d stop in the pharmacy and sit at the soda fountain. Winslow always came over and talked to me. He never flirted with me, or anything like that. He’d always sit a few seats away. But he showed an interest. He’d ask me about my life. He gave me advice. He became like a father to me. And for the next sixty years, whenever I’ve felt unsure about something, I call Winslow. That day I called him up. I told him: ‘Winslow, I can’t do it. I can’t run a literacy center all by myself.’ But Winslow steadied me. He told me he’d be there for advice. He told me that he’d chip in if I ever got in trouble. But more important than that, he told me that he admired me for having the idea. He said: ‘Dawn, you’re doing something important. And you’re the right person to do it.’ He made me feel special. And God knows, that’s something this black woman needed very much.’”

(1/5) “All I have to do is think real hard about something, and...

(1/5) “All I have to do is think real hard about something, and it happens. Been that way my entire life. When I was a little girl I thought real hard about learning how to swim. No Harlem kids knew how to swim, but my neighbor Mr. Thorpe was from the islands. He brought me to the beach with his family, put me on his shoulders, walked me in the water, and taught me how to swim. Next thing I thought about was playing basketball. I wasn’t even five feet tall, but I went to the Milbank Recreation Center and tried out for the team. Coach Cherry Jackson made me starting forward. I ended up scoring 34 points one night at Madison Square Garden. Played so hard that game I had an asthma attack. Anyway, whenever I think really hard about something, it happens. My two daughters really wanted to live in a brownstone when they were younger. But I was a second-grade teacher, so I could never afford it. One Christmas I went to the store and got them a brownstone dollhouse. Set it up in the living room. It was a big joke in our family: ‘Mom finally got us a brownstone.’ But even though I was laughing, I’d started thinking hard about getting a real brownstone. Around that time the city decided it would be holding its first ever brownstone lottery. I put in our name. My husband thought I was crazy. On the night of the drawing I was attending a seminar across town. Somebody brought me the phone, and on the other end my daughter is screaming that the lottery people called. We won a brownstone! I wrote down the address and hailed the first cab that drove down the street. When we finally got to the block, the driver started going real slow. It was so dark that we couldn’t find the house. Right as we were getting close to the address, a cop pulled up behind us and started flashing his lights. He knocked on the window, and asked if we were trying to buy drugs. I pointed right past him, into the darkness. I screamed ‘Officer! I just won that brownstone!’ That’s when he ran back to his car, turned on the search light, and swung it around. The entire façade of the house lit up. And I couldn’t breathe. My heart stopped. Because it was a giant version of the dollhouse in my living room.”

(3/3) “When you sit in this garden on a summer day, you hear...

(3/3) “When you sit in this garden on a summer day, you hear things. There are fourteen homeless shelters within a four-block radius. So when it’s hot outside, and the windows are open, you can hear the stress of poverty. Sometimes mothers will yell at these kids like they’re grown men. They’ll call them names. They’ll tell them: ‘you can’t,’ and ‘you won’t.’ And after awhile the kids start to believe it. When they first come into this garden, they’re so freakin’ happy. Especially the really young ones. But at the end of the day, they’ll say: ‘I’m going home.’ And home means shelter. It’s an epidemic, man. 115,000 kids in this city are living in shelters. It’s a freakin’ epidemic. But it’s invisible. You’d never know these kids are homeless, because they’re so happy. But something happens around 9, 10, 11. I see it all the time. Those eyes dim, man. It’s just life. There’s too much stress around here. And they grow up fast. They lose that light. I just want to slow it down, that’s all. I want them to have a safe place where they can just be them. That’s all any of us want, right? To slow it all down so we can find out who we are? I was such an arrogant motherfucker when I first came here. I was unhealthy. I was 52 lbs heavier. I was depressed. My entire life was about things and money. I was doing it all wrong. Yet I came to this school thinking I knew all the answers. I thought I was going to fix these kids. But they were so fucking happy, and I wasn’t. They didn’t need to become like me. They needed to stay like them. It hurts my heart to say, because it means I’m getting old, but Nevaeh is all grown up now. She’s sixteen. Straight A student. Honor roll up and down. I still do my best to help her whenever I can. Recently she had a C in math, so I said: ‘Let’s find you a private tutor, I’ll pay for it.’ But she wouldn’t let me. She grabbed the rake out of my hand. She said: ‘No Mr. Tony, I got this myself.’ And she got a 93 on that final. She was the tiniest little thing when I met her. With glasses so big. But even back then she had everything she needed. It just required a little protection. And a little time. She just needed some space to grow.” 

We’re putting together a very unique and fun opportunity to support Harlem Grown in the next couple days, so stay tuned. In the meantime you can support Tony’s effort by ordering his wonderful children’s book ‘Harlem Grown’ wherever books are sold. Tony donates all his earnings back to Harlem Grown. You can support indie bookstores by ordering here: https://bit.ly/harlemgrownbook

(2/3) “I knew nothing about gardening. But I knew how to google,...

(2/3) “I knew nothing about gardening. But I knew how to google, so I looked up some easy stuff to plant. Turns out it’s hard to mess up herbs. So I went to the clearance rack at Home Depot and got some herbs. All of the soil was contaminated, so I backed up a dump truck full of organic soil. Nevaeh’s kindergarten class came out and planted the first seedlings. There wasn’t much structure in the beginning. A lot of times I’d just sit around with the kids and look at clouds. But over time the garden became a sort of outdoor science classroom. All of us were learning together. If something died, we’d just try a new spot. We learned about worms, and lady bugs, and praying mantises. Then we learned about food systems. I couldn’t help but notice the diets of these kids: all sugar and processed food. Some of them couldn’t name a single vegetable. But how could you blame them? There are 55 fast food restaurants in this community, but not a single supermarket. So we started growing vegetables in our garden. Not all of the kids were into it. But in every class there would be two or three, who were always around, and involved. Nevaeh was one of those kids. She came to all the camps. She came on the nature walks. She just stuck to me. At first her mother was skeptical, but she could see the consistency. And soon she was bringing Nevaeh to work with me in the garden on weekends. In the beginning Nevaeh was sorta quiet, and off to the side. But over time she took ownership of the garden. Those became her plants, not mine. Whenever volunteers came to help with composting, Nevaeh would take the lead. And if you were doing it wrong, she’d grab that rake right out of your hands. Ten years have passed since we planted that first garden. And Harlem Grown has expanded to 12 different urban farms. 6,000 lbs of organically grown products have been given to the community free of charge. But the plants are just a byproduct. We’re trying to grow healthy children. But not just children. All of us are learning together. Today our most important employee is Nevaeh’s mom. She’s learned more about gardening than any of us. And she’s the Agricultural Director of all our farms.”

(1/3) “I was a Prada-suit motherfucker. I was running a...

(1/3) “I was a Prada-suit motherfucker. I was running a limousine company. But when the last financial crisis hit, I lost all my lines of credit and the whole thing came apart. I felt too old to start again. My wife would come home from work and find me still in my pajamas, reading magazines and newspapers. This was in August, when school really starts to crank up. So I kept seeing these articles about underfunded schools: no art, no gym, no music. My kids went to private school, so these conditions were hard for me to imagine. It seemed sensational. So one morning I got on the subway and took it to 135th street in Harlem. I couldn’t have been more arrogant. I walked through the doors of the first elementary school I could find, asked for the principal, and said: ‘I’m here to try to break the cycle of poverty.’ She assigned me to the lunchroom, and that’s where I started volunteering five days a week. I was just going from table to table, talking to the kids. But they gravitated toward me. They listened to me. They called me ‘Mr. Tony.’ At home I was just ‘Dad.’ I was kinda a dick. I was old news. But Mr. Tony was bigger than Barack Obama. These kids loved the shit out of me. I had nothing to give, nothing to promise. But they acted like I was Santa Claus. Each one of them reminded me of my own kids. It was the exact same goofiness. So when I learned that almost half of them were living in homeless shelters, that shit drove me crazy. It tore me up. I was looking for some way to help, anything. Across the street from the school was an old community garden that had been abandoned. It was full of junk: car over here, engine over there. The kids called it the ‘haunted garden,’ cause it was nothing but cats, rats, and scary old people. So I contacted the Parks Department. I did the paperwork. I got the license and the key. Then I started hauling out the junk, one piece at a time. It took me six weeks. The kids kept asking me what I was planning to do, but I had no idea. Then one morning a little girl tugged on my shoulder. A tiny little thing with glasses so big. Her name was Nevaeh. ‘Heaven’ spelled backwards. And she said: ‘Mr. Tony, why don’t we plant something?”

“I’d been a singer in a lot of different bands. With a lot of...

“I’d been a singer in a lot of different bands. With a lot of different names. But I’d never been out front. It had never been like, you know: ‘Jill Fucking Fiore.’ But I finally got the courage to put my own band together. I was making moves. Then it was like: ‘Poof, pandemic.’ I came down with the OG COVID. I spent days in bed. But when my quarantine finally finished I crawled out on the fire escape to see what outside felt like. It was one of those beautiful New York City days in early spring. Birds were chirping. Skateboarders were going by. And it was like: ‘Oh, OK. Life isn’t over.’ Then at seven o’clock everyone came outside to clap for the first responders. Thousands of strangers connected by noise. I thought: ‘Wow. That’s what music is too.’ And it gave me an idea. Things came together pretty fast after that. I called up my guitarist and made my pitch. We wrote some songs. We rehearsed. Then we used the broom handle of my Swiffer to cover the entire fire escape in pink Christmas lights. They kept falling down. It was like one of those shitty arcade games, when you can’t quite grab the stuffed animal. But when we were finally finished, the fire escape looked like a mini-Broadway stage. It was like: ‘Holy shit, this could actually work.’ I pimped it out hard. I posted on all my social media accounts. My friend Teresa even wrote an article in AM NY: ‘Jill Fiore is going to do a rock show on her fire escape at 6 PM.’ It was my first ever piece of press. Can you believe that? My name in print: Jill Fucking Fiore. At 5:30 people started gathering on the street. I was a nervous wreck: trying to get ready, fixing my make-up. When I peeked out the window there were like 40 people out there. It was like: ‘Shit! This is going to be a lot bigger than I imagined.’ But at 6 pm I crawled out the window, and it all came down to calm. There was joy in the air. People were having their first night out in weeks. And from the moment the first guitar chord hit, it was a moment of pure connection. I remember feeling like it all made sense. It was like: ‘This. My entire life has been leading up to this. This is why I play. This is the reason I have a singing voice.’”

“He was different. He was so sensitive to the pain of the world....

“He was different. He was so sensitive to the pain of the world. There used to be these placemats at Wendy’s with the faces of needy children. And Michael would just fixate on them. He was only four years old, but he’d ask me why we couldn’t adopt those children. One time we visited an orphanage in India. It was just a quick stop. But he wouldn’t let it go. For weeks he kept asking me: ‘What can we do? What can we do?’ It was shortly after that trip that he was diagnosed. He’d do the most grandiose things during his manic phases. He’d invite complete strangers over to Thanksgiving. He got fired from his first job at a thrift store, because he was giving things away. I was so mad at him. I said: ‘Mike, there’s a system.’ But he told me: ‘Mom, the system is broken.’ When he learned about food injustice, it was all he talked about. He lectured everyone about food deserts. And food apartheid. He was too insistent, really. He tried to get all our neighbors to compost. He thought he could do anything, if he only pushed hard enough. It was always the mania that scared me the most. But it was the depression that got him in the end. Our friend Sally posted a poem on his memorial page. There’s a line that captures him so well: ‘He loved the world hard/ demanded we follow him hard/ in and out of comfort zones/ in and out of danger zones.’ Last September was the 7th anniversary of his death, and that night we saw an Instagram post about a community fridge in Harlem. I thought for sure it was a sign. We bought a fridge that night. The Friendly Fridge BX now serves thousands of people every month. I never realized how much hunger there was in our community. Michael would tell me. He’d go on and on with the statistics. But it was like: ‘Mike, please. I’m cooking lasagna.’ But now I see it. Now I understand. Sometimes we’ll move 3000 lbs in a week, and there’s still people waiting. One of the visitors reminds me so much of Michael. I’m not diagnosing. But he has all these ideas, and all these plans. He only wants the healthiest food. Nothing processed. Nothing canned. And he’ll always ask for extra, just a little box, so he can give it to homeless people under the bridge.”

“We got shut down two days before St. Patrick’s Day. Always the...

“We got shut down two days before St. Patrick’s Day. Always the biggest day for an Irish bar. My husband is a longshoreman, so he was trapped in the Aleutian Islands for nine months, no flights out. It was just me and six kids that needed homeschooling. I pulled all the furniture out of the bar, and made a section for each of them: pillow, blankets, everything they needed. Then I had to figure out how to survive. Other bar owners were just throwing up their hands, but I had to try something. I began catering dinners for emergency workers at a nearby hotel. It wasn’t much money, but it was something to do. Each night I’d cook dinner for thirty people. The kids would help when they could: peeling potatoes, washing dishes. But I’d be so exhausted every day. Everyone had so much faith in me to survive. Maybe because I keep the tough side out, everyone assumed I was OK. Nobody knew I was full of worries. But it was so freakin’ hard. To keep the kids happy. Month after month I’m falling further behind on the rent. It felt like the walls were closing in. But my regulars kept showing up. They ran errands for me. Sometimes they’d take the kids on walks to give me a break. There was a group of Irish musicians who would play here every Thursday night. They helped me set up an online store, so that I could sell scones to the music people. Soda bread scones with homemade blackberry jam. My mother’s recipe from back in Ireland. Really, it’s the simplest thing, but all six of us kids used to line up for them. In January a reporter named Roger Clark from NY1 came to do a story on the bar, about how I’ve been running it all alone, with my kids. And that angel, he had the anchors taste a scone live on TV. It created big scone hype for a few months. It wasn’t a ton of money. I was only making $1800 for 100 boxes of scones. It wasn’t paying rent or anything. But it was something to do, you know? I finally found something that was working. People were writing notes, saying: ‘I gave these to my grandmother, and she loved them.’ It was the little bit of light that I needed. It pulled me forward. I didn’t feel alone anymore. It was like: ‘Oh My God, there’s something out there.’”

“People love to tell me their shit. That’s always been my...

“People love to tell me their shit. That’s always been my superpower. A person in the back of an ambulance will tell me their deepest, darkest secrets. And I can usually find a connection with just about anyone. This is New York, so I’ve got patients from all over the world. When I ask them where they’re from, they might say: ‘Mongolia.’ So I’ll tell them about my trip to Mongolia. Or Nepal. Or Zimbabwe. I’ve made it to about 90 different countries so far. I’ve never been married. Never been great at relationships. So I decided early on that travel was going to be my thing. I’d work a million hours until I could afford a plane ticket, then I’d take a trip somewhere. Afterwards I’d come back and do it all over again. My world was so tiny when I started. I was just a kid from Brooklyn. I’d had a pretty traumatic childhood, my brother was murdered when I was sixteen. And I felt like the world had it in for me. Everything felt so personal. I knew other people were hurting, but it was an abstract thing, until I started travelling. I began to meet people on the other side of the world who were suffering just as much as me. But you know what? They had decided to joyfully partake in that suffering. They opened their homes to me. They cooked meals for me. They told me their stories. They shared all their shit. And I’m like: ‘Wow. You grew up in Bombay. I grew up in Brooklyn. But we have the exact same story.’ It really opened me up. Now when I’m comforting someone in the back of an ambulance, I have this great big world to pull from. In a job like this you see things that kinda make you want to pull back from the world. Child abuse. That’s the big one for me. Seeing the beatings, seeing the hurt kids. It’s just so dark. And you project that darkness on everyone. You want nothing to do with other people. You want to pull back, and close up. But travel has always been the thing that keeps me open. It keeps me curious. Because no matter how dark it gets, the moment I step on that plane, I’m surrounded by possibilities again. There’s always something I haven’t seen. Or a dish I haven’t eaten. Or a person I haven’t met, who will tell me something that I’ve never heard before.”