Harlem's Catharsis: 1968 to 2008

The days of darkest despair following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. pitted the American ghetto against itself. Inner city neighborhoods in over 50 cities burned to the ground, as rioters sought to avenge the death of the century's most powerful black American leader.

While this tragic climax of the civil rights movement in April 1968 was a spasm of understandable rage, the destruction wrought was sometimes counterproductive, as black-owned homes and businesses were also indiscriminately targeted. Although merchants suffered extensive property damage, black neighborhoods ultimately paid the highest price for the arson, looting, and violence.

Forty years after the nadir of racial conflict in which Harlem suffered less than many other inner-city places, Harlem erupted in ecstasy after the election of the first American president of African descent. Across Harlem, the night of Nov. 4, 2008, was cause for some of the nation's most cathartic celebration.

Election night was a frenzy of pent-up patriotism, communal bonding, and political redemption. The evening of Barack Obama's inauguration promises to be even more triumphant on the streets of Harlem, U.S.A. Memories of racial strife are supplanted by a newfound optimism in the black ghetto - even if there are no guarantees about how Obama will govern.

"This is the manifestation of so many dreams that were deferred. So many people who came before us died, were lynched, faced dogs and hoses. They went through all of that so that we could enjoy tonight - Barack Obama being named the president of the United States," said Renee Wright-Woodside, 36, a teacher from East New York, who gathered with friends in front of the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on election night to watch the results on the big screen.

“We're gonna celebrate tomorrow. Words can't explain how it's going to feel tomorrow when I wake up. It will be a brand new day for America, for all Americans. Sorely needed change is here,” she said.

"I'm moved to tears when I think about all that we've overcome. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for all of us. Who knows when this is going to happen again, and look how long it took for it to happen," Wright-Woodside added.

Rewind to Apr. 4, 1968. New York was one of a few cities with a large African-American population that was spared catastrophic damage after King was assassinated. Harlem emerged relatively unscathed, with two riot-related deaths and $3 million in property damage. Central Brooklyn, the city's other major African-American area, also remained relatively calm.

Harlem's toll of destruction pales in comparison to a nationwide total of 43 deaths, 23,987 arrests, 5,117 acts of arson, 1,928 homes and shops wrecked, and $39.5 million in property damage - as 72,800 Army and National Guard troops were called up during four days of rioting.

Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Chicago saw the worst destruction. In the nation's capital, Shaw, H Street, and Columbia Heights were among the worst hit areas. The remnants of that fateful aftermath are still abundantly visible in those neighborhoods.

"Fires crackled three blocks from the White House and from the air the capital looked like a bombed city," read a Time magazine editorial dated Apr. 12, 1968. Light machine gun posts defended the Capitol, and the helmets and bayoneted rifles of National Guard troops became indelible images of the soldiers who tried in vain to save vast African-American sections of the city.

Baltimore, placed under martial law by Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew, had 3,000 rioters, mostly teenagers. The final toll there was six dead, 700 injured, 4,500 arrested and over 1,000 fires set. More than a thousand businesses were looted and burned. Many of them never reopened. The total property damage, in 1968 dollars, was around $13.5 million - more than double the damage by the Hurricane Gladys, the worst storm of 1968.

Trenton, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and other urban centers also saw their black ghettos implode in racially motivated rioting.

The New York Times of Apr. 7, 1968, assessed the logic of despair: "In sullen corners of the country, revenge was sought in the name of the man who preached against it...Moses who would lead them out of the wilderness...was universally hailed by almost all as the man who represented their aspirations."

A Newsweek editorial from Apr. 15 labeled the riots "a black rampage that subjected the U.S. to the most widespread spasm of racial disorder in its violent history."

"For every Martin Luther King who falls, 10 white racists will go down with him," said Lincoln Lynch, the chairman of the radical United Black Front, in rejecting King's strategy of nonviolence during the immediate aftermath of the assassination.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey sought to placate a torn society: "This nation of law and order, which has its Presidents shot down in cold murder, its spiritual leaders assassinated, and has those who walk and speak and work for human rights beaten and killed. My fellow Americans, every one of us must resolve that we will never, never, never let it happen again."

The 20th century's urban race riots expressed the stifled political power of black communities. They began with Atlanta in 1905 and then continued with East St. Louis in 1917; Charleston, Chicago, Washington, Boston, and Knoxville rioted in 1919; Harlem was set off in both 1935 and 1943; Detroit also burned in 1943. Then, beginning in 1964, the riots became much more severe across the country. Detroit and Watts burned most intensely in 1967.

In 1968, Harlem did not suffer to the same extent as many other urban centers because of the rapport that Mayor John Lindsay enjoyed with the city's African-American communities. Lindsay's liberal Republican bent facilitated relations with civil rights groups.
The night that King was shot down on the balcony of the Hotel Lorraine in Memphis, the sage mayor rushed from Manhattan's Theater District to West 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard to calm the frenzied crowd. Lindsay was politically astute, and many of the city's African-Americans believed that the racism they experienced was not as severe as in many other metropolises. Their rage was tempered by a belief in the egalitarian promise of New York City, according to sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod.

Her 2007 book Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles analyzes the impact of the riots in light of the federal government's Kerner report on the riots. She argues that New York's political culture was much more responsive to black grievances than other cities. The former New School for Social Research professor also attributes the city's relatively calm reaction to New York's racial tolerance, an ethnically diverse black population, less intense housing segregation, and accessible mass transit.

"Harlem got off lightly in the back draft of the slaying that ignited racial explosions elsewhere. This is attributed to the good works of Mayor Lindsay," reported the Amsterdam News, the primary New York African-American weekly, in its Apr. 13, 1968 edition.

Mayor Lindsay, as well as New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, went to King's memorial service in Atlanta. Several hundred thousand marchers followed behind a denim-clad Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee honor guard, two mules, and a rustic wooden hearse-cart.

"With all New Yorkers, I hope that calm will continue. No serious disorders have taken place...It depends on us," said Mayor Lindsay, during the tense weekend after the assassination.

In Harlem, as elsewhere, rioters did not refrain from attacking black-owned businesses, such as Davega Sporting Goods Store and Unique Records and Gift Store.

One Amsterdam News headline read: "Mini Riots Fail to Clip Easter Sales on 125th Street." Lindsay had successfully pacified the city with his good looks, WASP charm, and conciliatory sensibility.

"That happened with every riot in Harlem. Politicians were always eager to make change seem less severe than it was," said Michael Henry Adams, the author of the 2001 book Harlem: Lost and Found.

"But, all it would take would be another Rodney King or Amadou Diallo incident to set off a riot in Harlem," added Adams.

"Blacks aren't as oppressed here as they are in other cities. New York was never as racist. That's why they didn't burn the city down in '68," said Tom, a 69-year-old tee-shirt and DVD vendor on 125th Street, who was living in Berlin in 1968.

"But, the mentality was, white people killed King, so you kill white folk. That's the way black people in America were thinking then," he added. Tom does not see Obama's election as a sign of change, due to the "unseen hands" that he said still control American politics. However, other merchants on 125th Street disagreed.

"Obama's election is a celebration of humanity, not just of black people. Humanity has stepped into line, not just Harlem," said Scarecrow Anonymous, 43, a Harlem-based artist.

"As a three-year-old in 1968, I saw my mother and grandmother crying and everybody holding each other. But I didn't understand at the time," he said.

Scarecrow attributes Harlem's appeasement at the time to Mayor Lindsay's ability to show the black community that segregation was changing. He also cites James Brown's legendary performance of "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" in Boston on the night of Apr. 4. The VH1 documentary "The Night James Brown Saved Boston" depicts how Boston's city government, with a political shrewdness not unlike New York's, enlisted Brown's help in pacifying the predominantly black Roxbury neighborhood.

Oddly enough, according to Amsterdam News columnist Les Matthews, King had faced a string of trouble in Harlem during the last decade of his life.

In 1958, he was stabbed in the chest with a Japanese penknife by mentally unstable African-American woman, Izola Ware Curry. The next morning, the New York Times reported that, if King had sneezed afterwards, he would have died from a punctured aorta. In 1965, he was egged at Salem Methodist Church by radical black nationalists. And just three weeks before his death, he was ridiculed as he preached at the New Canaan Baptist Church on 116th Street.

Regardless, the Civil Rights movement had invested in the future - until April 4, when King's assassination plunged the nation into an abyss of racial anguish.

Middle-class blacks began to flee from many inner-city neighborhoods, leaving mere shells of communities, with high concentrations of elderly, impoverished, and uneducated residents in many once-vibrant urban cores.

1968 unleashed a generation of economic decay and stagnation, whose scars are still vivid in vast swaths of inner-city America. In most cities, white flight accelerated, and decades-old businesses closed shop for good. The monumental year was a watershed one for America and for the rest of the world.

Radical social movements saw sexual liberation, feminist agitation, ecological activism, and drug experimentation offend the sensibilities of the old guard.

Just up the hill from Harlem in Morningside Heights, anti-war and anti-racism activists clashed with the establishment at Columbia University in the most violent encounters that the 200-year-old institution has experienced.

Anti-war protests rocked the nation at Harvard, Boston University, Orangeburg, and Catonsville, as the Tet Offensive sacrificed American lives.

In the same year, student uprisings also paralyzed Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and West Berlin. Elsewhere, the Prague Spring challenged the yoke of Soviet domination.

Generalized protests hit France, Spain, Poland, and Brazil. Religious conflict stewed in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

Robert F. Kennedy's assassination on June 6 further shocked the nation.

In August, protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago provoked some of the worst political violence that Americans had ever witnessed.

Then in October, racial tensions stewed at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where black American track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their Black Power fists.

And now, 40 years after a pivotal year at the abyss of racial strife, a pinnacle of reconciliation and rejuvenation has uplifted many Harlem residents.

Although some Harlemites fear that Obama could suffer the same fate as King, America's black mecca remains optimistic about the 44th president.

The Reincarnation of Exodus House: East Harlem School

On a formerly downtrodden stretch of East 103rd Street next to 2nd Avenue, the Arcs construction crew hastily finished sidewalk digging for fiber optic cables and hauling off chunks of concrete. An irate blond driver of a shiny Lexus SUV several vehicles into the queue yelled, “Come on, man. Let us through.”

The motorist’s view was blocked by another SUV in front of her, so she could not see the futuristic phoenix that has risen from the site of the erstwhile Exodus House drug rehab clinic.

The current avatar, East Harlem School at Exodus House, will provide similarly beneficent services to the blighted neighborhood, upon relocation in under a month.

These are the last days that the 106-pupil school will spend at St. Lucy’s Church, one block from its nearly complete new digs at East 103rd Street.

Co-founder and Principal Ivan Hageman’s family history will have come full circle when his school moves back to the Exodus House site. He was born and raised in the rehab clinic, which his parents Lynn and Leola Hageman founded in 1963.

The Exodus House became an after-school program in 1984 and subsequently a school in 1993.

While his upbringing and professional success may not be typical for a neighborhood of ubiquitous public housing and fast-food eateries, Hageman was always exposed to the substance abuse and indigence that plague East Harlem.

“It’s been a pleasure to build for Ivan and his group of kids, who will truly appreciate this,” said Marc Gee, the construction manager for Arcs. The company did a design-build with architect Peter Gluck, who has done non-profits such as Harlem RBI and Bronx Charter Prep, in addition to projects in Westchester County and Aspen, Colo.

“Most of these nonprofits are just getting by. They still think they’ll just be bringing the old building’s furniture over,” said Gee. “So this project hits home.”

While the East Harlem School’s new building was expected to open at the start of this school year, administrators had to settle for a November grand opening, the exact date of which has not yet been announced.

Gee said that the city was dragging its feet in issuing permits, due to backlog in the aftermath of several crane accidents.

In the meantime, the school is readying for an October 28th benefit at Chelsea Piers, which will attempt to generate the final $700,000 of the $12 million capital campaign that began over 10 years ago to raise funds for the school’s new home.

Around the corner in the well-worn stairwell of the school’s temporary home, a stern Grace Eagar said, “You all are never going to do that again,” as she scolds her humanities class for having broken a cardinal class rule.

Eagar, like most of the über-attentive staff, has multiple roles in ensuring that the strict academic and disciplinary policies are enforced. As the development director and a teacher, she said that the last days at the St. Lucy’s building have been hectic.

“Yet, I’m not shocked that people say this is a great school. Students are always our top priority, and the average class size is just 15 students,” she said.

In a city where 84% of minority high-school students attend dropout factories, Exodus House has a stellar record of graduates matriculating in some of the city’s best private high schools.

“The East Harlem School’s new building is beautiful for the area,” said 61-year-old Esther Rodriguez Hill, who lives in the St. Lucy’s Apartments next door. Hill’s mother was a community organizer who worked with Principal Hageman’s father.

“I have four cousins who went to the old Exodus House. Although the center really helped them, two died from heroin overdose and the other two from AIDS,” she added.

“You see those Exodus House kids walking in straight lines? That shows the progress of our neighborhood,” said Hill, after she scolded one-year-old Skyla Boldon, for whom she babysits.

“I’ve seen the Exodus House built, knocked down, and rebuilt. Ivan better send me an invitation for the grand opening!” she declared.

The new four-story avant-garde structure with Ikea-inspired 1960’s minimalism contrasts with the tenements nearby. With black, white, and grey rectangular trespa panels, the façade looks more Malmö tech park than East Harlem middle school.

Locals stroll by toting their laundry in handcarts and clutching 32 oz. Styrofoam cups of watered-down Mug root beer from the JFK Fried Chicken restaurant on the corner. Though incredulous about the new structure, they seem to betray a sense of delight in its visual novelty.

“The new facility is pretty much like a regular school, except for the front,” said 8th grader Daniel Lucero, who recounts the full-sized gym, science labs, smart boards, and spaciousness.

The building is consistent with the educational philosophy that some parents described as “New Age,” including vegetarian food and an annual spring poetry slam. Yet, passing the high-demand school’s entrance test places applicants, who must live nearby, into a competitive lottery system.

In the neighborhood, criticism of the school was scant, but Marisa Steffers, a resident of 1199 1st Ave., said that the mandatory summer classes and over-emphasis on test preparation were not ideal for her 11-year-old son Jude, who attends P.S. 3 in the West Village.

Fausto Lopez recently moved from a building down the street from Exodus House to the Bronx because of rent increases. Yet he feels blessed that his 6th grade son Richard can still attend the East Harlem School.

“This school has the highest standard, no negatives, and is so far so good. We want to send him to a New England boarding school later,” said Lopez.

“This is a huge step up for kids who used to have torn textbooks,” said Karen Ayala, 35, whom Hageman taught at University Heights Secondary School in the early 1990’s.

“Before he was my homeroom teacher, I was a hot mess. Look where I am now,” said Ayala, a teacher at the Head Start across 2nd Avenue from Exodus House.

“The school and its new building are not the norm for this neighborhood,” said Ayala. “But they try to show the children that there is something better. An opportunity of this magnitude is a beautiful thing.”

“If Ivan’s gonna do it, then he’s gonna do it big.”

East Harlem Public Housing and Homicides (2008)

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This map shows the location of public housing projects and murders in 2008 within Manhattan Community District 11, which encompasses NYPD precincts 23 (East Harlem South) and 25 (East Harlem North).

The 23rd Precinct went from 31 murders in 1990 to 2 thus far in 2008. There are 23,028 public housing units in Community District 11, the largest number in any NYC district.

Only two of the six murders in East Harlem are marked. The locations of the other four have not yet been found...Any and all tips are welcome...

(Sources: New York City Housing Authority, Emporis, NYPD's 23rd Precinct, and Wikipedia)

King Towers Homicide

On day two of a likely month-long murder trial, a confident key witness testified that he saw the defendant pull the trigger just before nightfall on April 6, 2006. As part of a bargain with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Harlem resident Eric Calvin offered his account Monday in exchange for exoneration from a string of drug crimes.

The defendant, Travis “Trav-Ice” Woods, lives down the street from Calvin in the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers and faces a possible life sentence for his role in the murder of Barry “B-Low” Miller, among other charges, including attempted murder, drug conspiracy, and weapons violations.

The Woods case is one of several cases that resulted from Operation All the King’s Men, a police investigation that began in early 2005. The original watershed indictment from December 2006 charged 43 suspected drug dealers and three suspected gun dealers. The suspects were associated with two rival gangs in Central Harlem, the King Towers Gang and the Schomburg Crew, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“The King Towers Gang’s PCP product was well-known in the area because the defendants sometimes sold the drug packaged in empty baby food jars,” according to the D.A. Moreover, the gang grossed over $1 million annually in dealing PCP and crack cocaine around 115th Street and Lenox Avenue next to the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers.

Manhattan assistant district attorneys Christopher Conroy and Eric Arnone are prosecuting the Woods case before Judge Bruce Allen of the New York State Supreme Court. Arnone quizzed the case’s key witness, Calvin, who appeared alternatively discombobulated and composed in articulating his account of the murder, as well as in explaining his own checkered history of drug dealing.

“After approaching B-Low from the back, Trav Ice looked straight at him, raised both hands on fired four shots,” said Calvin, who identified Woods as having worn a black thermal hoodie, black jeans, and black Nike ACG boots on the night of the murder.

Both Arnone and Williams attempted partial reenactments of the murder, using cartographic and photographic evidence, but Calvin’s responses about sequence and direction somewhat seemed to confuse the jurors. The 16-member jury also appeared perplexed by a seemingly endless array of drug dealer street names, including “Leather,” “Playboy,” “Foot,” and “Ant.”

Calvin, a 21-year-old 10th-grade dropout, said he started robbing drug dealers at gunpoint with his friends and dealing PCP, crack cocaine, and powder cocaine in his early teens.

Calvin also discussed the logistics of dealing PCP, which is also known as angel dust, embalming fluid, wet, and sherm. He stated that a $50 investment in PCP “juice” could result in a $500 profit for a street level dealer.

Woods, who wore a white dress shirt and a striped blue tie, appeared unconcerned by Calvin’s incriminating words.

According to prosecutors, Miller was the ringleader and chief drug supplier of the King Towers Gang. They said that Woods, a gang manager and enforcer, killed Miller so he could take over.

"It is easy to say he did it, but it doesn't mean he did it. We're being tried by association," said court-appointed defense attorney Norman Williams, before poking holes in Calvin’s statements during an awkward cross-examination that included questions about Calvin’s consumption of marijuana, relationship with the D.A., and geographic details of the crime scene.

“Ultimately, the success of Calvin’s testimony depends on how much the jury believes him,” said Williams. Having represented Woods for 10 years, Williams added that he hoped Calvin’s testimony was not too damaging in bringing about “the best possible result: a full acquittal.”

Kevin “JD Black“ Harris and Terry “JB“ Patterson, two additional defendants named in the original grand jury indictment, both pleaded guilty, according to Williams.
Jurors’ ears perked up when prosecutor Arnone asked Calvin how he was perceived in his community for having agreed to testify as a crucial witness in the murder trial of a fellow King Towers resident.

“I’m viewed as a snitch - a rat,” said Calvin, who could barely look at the defendant after identifying him by name.

“You know that where I’m from it don’t work like that. I grew up with these people. What happens to snitches is you get shot,” said Calvin.

“But, I have more things to live for. My five-month-old girl and other kids are why I’m cooperating,” added Calvin, who testified that he would receive $500 and reimbursement for cab fare and meals for his testimony, in addition to vindication from several drug charges.

Defense attorney Williams acknowledged safety concerns in an urban environment that often brutally enforces the “Stop Snitching” dictum. Calvin’s attorney, Gabriel Tapalaga, declined to comment.

Woods is also charged with the attempted murder of Germaine “Maine” Gordon, who Williams expects to testify against his client.

Later in the week, a doctor, chemist, and more cops will be testifying. On Monday, the medical examiner will take the stand, said Jennifer Kushner, spokesperson for the District Attorney. Kushner would not say whether the District Attorney had ironed out cooperation agreements for any other members of the King Towers Gang to testify.

Italian Harlem: Claudio's Barbershop

Claudio Caponigro is one of the last relics of a bygone era. Yet, almost 60 years of snipping the locks of East Harlem residents might come to an end. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year.

But, the mercurial steward of erstwhile Italian Harlem’s East 116th Street hub is still anchored firmly at Claudio’s Barber Shop.

In contrast, the old Delightful coffee shop on 1st Avenue, where Caponigro used to get coffee every morning at 7 a.m., is now a “classy Dunkin Donuts,” said 79-year-old Caponigro, who added, “Colonial Tavern is now a gay and lesbian bar.” Community fixture Morrone Bakery closed one year ago, after 50 years in business.

Despite some signs of resurgence, Italian Harlem’s Old World charm continues to fade. As the last bastions of this immigrant culture disappear from the cityscape, the virtues of certainty, simplicity, and loyalty lose some of their most faithful beholders.

Still, Caponigro’s favorite Italian wall-hanging adage resonates from his stalwart barbershop throughout the lost blocks of El Barrio: “My grandpa lived so long because he minded his own f***in business.”

The tightlipped barber recently finished a yearlong probation term for refusing to reveal the names of his Genovese crime family customers to police. In the case, Caponigro’s alias was given simply as “Claudio the Barber.”

Joey, an Italian Harlem resident who did not want to appear to be “ratting,” said that Claudio’s Barber Shop was the place where wiseguys always got their haircuts. Notable customers have included comedian Jimmy Durante and the last Tammany Hall bosses, Carmine DeSapio and Frank Rossetti, who ruled in the 1950’s and 1960’s, respectively.

“Almost a dozen films, including Carlito’s Way: the Beginning, been shot here, and also Law and Order and Third Watch,” said Claudio. Jennifer Lopez used Claudio’s Barber Shop as a backdrop for a music video.

Most of Caponigro’s customers are much younger than the kitschy tchotchkes that line the peppermint-green walls of his one-room shop - a fin-de-siècle cash register, hunting paraphernalia, September 11th tributes, and a 2002 Sports Illustrated magazine photo of a supermodel clad in a rose-red bikini while sprawled on Claudio’s barber chair. Figurines adorned with Puerto Rican colors complement the dusty red, white, and green flags.

While the Puerto Rican community has dominated the area since the 1950’s, Mexican immigrants have recently changed the fabric of the neighborhood. Also, white New Yorkers in search of lower rents have begun to flock to the parts of East Harlem not covered with public housing.

Caponigro jokes that he speaks enough Spanish to know what haircut his Mexican clients want. He also says that his favorite lunch is rice and beans with pork at Sandy’s, a Dominican restaurant on 2nd Avenue.

Indeed, Caponigro’s professional gusto has not waned since he cut the locks of wealthy Doctor’s Row residents, who resided on the stretch of 116th Street that is now Little Mexico. Caponigro said that he is busiest just after the first day of every month, when public assistance checks are mailed out.

The neighborhood was formerly host to the largest concentration of Italian-Americans in the five boroughs. The nearly extinct Italian community’s largest annual celebration is the July 16th Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Caponigro is the pivotal figure in Chapter 3 of New York Times writer Joseph Berger’s multi-cultural odyssey through New York, The World in a City, which states that there were 80,000 Italians in East Harlem through the 1930’s. Residents estimate that there are now around 1,000 Italian-Americans left in East Harlem, less than 1% of the area’s population. Yet, between Pleasant and 2nd Avenues are vestiges of the amiable past.

Although the early immigrants from South Italy and Sicily crammed into the basements of Irish Catholic churches upon their arrival, they created a thriving hub of New York Italian culture. Al Pacino was born in East Harlem; Fiorello LaGuardia lived there until 1943, when the area began its precipitous decline. Born into a family of barbers in Campania, Italy, Caponigro immigrated to Italian Harlem in the early 1950’s.

Urban renewal brought down many of the community’s main establishments, including coffee shops, bakeries, and delis on 1st Avenue. Claudio’s Barber Shop, Patsy’s, and uber-exclusive Rao’s are among the last to remain.

“Rao’s used to be my hangout 50 years ago, but now Rao’s high class. I remember Frankie Pellegrino was a little boy,” says Caponigro, whose crisp, silvery hair is impeccably slicked back.

Patsy’s Pizzeria is one of the few Italian Harlem restaurants still afloat. Caponigro giddily recalls Patsy’s 75th Anniversary celebration on August 19th, when prices reverted to the 1933 level. Customers both old and new enjoyed 90-cent steak and 35-cent tiramisu.

Brother William Sherlog, a teacher and athletic director at nearby Rice High school, has been Claudio's customer for 13 years. “I don’t know how Claudio puts the hours in, seven days a week,” said Sherlog.

Another customer, Vinny, is a 49-year-old Upper East Side doorman and lifetime resident of Italian Harlem.

“I didn’t know you were a brother. I wouldn’t have used foul language,” said Vinny, to Brother Sherlog, as they exchanged thoughts about the latter’s contention that global warming allows street crime to last even longer into the winter. Vinny declares, “It used to be that the neighborhood protected itself, but now there is no more neighborhood.”

Vinny can no longer speak Italian but remembers purposefully infrequent conversations as an adolescent - for fear of being mocked. Yet, he extols his barber’s mantra, in Neapolitan dialect, which hangs next to the door: “O barbiere, te fa bello / O vino, te fa guappo / A femmena, te fa fesso.” (“Barber, you make me pretty / Wine, you make me drunk / Woman, you make me lovey-dovey”).

“Sometimes I don’t even bother to clean anymore,” said Caponigro, who gruffly laments the decline in steady, loyal clientele in colorful Neapolitan-accented phrases. His pastel green tiled floor is covered with many more shades of hair than were sheared from the heads of that day’s customers.

The same three barber chairs remain in his shop, yet his three co-workers – all his senior – passed away over 30 years ago. Caponigro still has no telephone in his barbershop.

“All my friends around here dead. I buried ‘em all,” said Caponigro, shuffling through a stack of mass cards for his deceased customers, which are neatly stowed away in a narrow drawer of a rickety chest otherwise reserved for haircutting equipment.

Tony Ascione, who owns the pharmacy at 2268 1st Ave., suggests that the best strategy to leave the area would be speedy retirement. Eddie Trongone, a retired bailiff for the New York State Court of Claims, disagreed: “I still like it here.”

Having moved from the neighborhood in 1969, Caponigro lives with his wife in the Pelham Gardens area of the Bronx, and their three daughters and two grandchildren live in Scarsdale.

Caponigro’s business is day-by-day. “If I had a son who wanted to become a barber, I’d choke him,” said a jocular Caponigro, showing off a photo of his oldest daughter with Rudy Giuliani, taken during a fundraiser for the ex-mayor’s 2008 Presidential bid.

“Here’s the bullet hole in the storefront’s side window, which also shattered part of that inside mirror,” said 28-year-old customer Brent Lamberti, a bartender at Corner Bistro in the West Village. He is one of a growing number of third generation Italian-Americans who have returned to live in Italian Harlem.

“I’ve never had a problem with anyone around here. My main window is the original and the only one in all of East Harlem without a gate or bars on it,” said Caponigro.

“Claudio is the best barber in El Barrio,” said customer Jimmy Horacio, a 70-year-old retired reporter for El Diario.

Horacio and his neighbors at El Boricua apartments on 117th Street, Jimmy Diaz, 66, and Jimmy Rodriguez Negron, 75, recall how Claudio’s haircuts – now $10 - were only 50 cents when the shop opened in the 1950’s – and that included a shave.

Obama McCain in Harlem