separate but equal (grim reaper remix)
116th street is the main artery of my neighborhood. it hosts the crosstown bus, community gardens, churches, shops, cart vendors and two funeral homes. the funeral homes are just one block away from each other. we’ve seen confused cabbies trying to drop people of at “the funeral home on 116th street” only to realize they were at the wrong place. not surprisingly, we’ve seen lots of funerals: the hearses, the nervous smokers on the sidewalk, somber faces sharing grief and lineage all at once.
a quick scan of law and order shooting locations or the local news (see East Harlem Focus for an excellent East Harlem news round-up) will give you a feel for why I thought 116th street may need two funeral homes. in the last two weeks, we’ve seen news stories like this one, East Harlem Residents Call for Justice in the Murder of Adan Gonzalez, in addition to the street cat hit-and run. butcher knifed for a cell phone just a block away. makes Vermont seem like paradise right about now.
the real reason, however, is religion and culture. Baptist vs. Catholic. Latino vs. African-American. and that’s why we have the R.G. Ortiz and George H. Weldon funeral homes as fixtures of 116th street.
