A Harlem Sunday
The idea for a week in New York began years ago, thanks to a shared love of music. When his son Oualid was young, Theo Riddersma and the boy often ate breakfast while watching rap and hip-hop videos shot in NYC. Theo promised the boy that, one day, he would be able to travel from their home in the Netherlands to see the places in the videos for himself.
Cut to January 2025 when Oualid treated his dad to a week in New York. Oualid had been to the city before but it was Theo’s first visit, and they spent their first night in town enjoying a performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Greeter Ellen Gasnick joined the pair in Upper Manhattan on day two to explore Harlem, one of the city’s most storied neighborhoods for musicians and music lovers alike.
Theo and Oualid wanted to hear Gospel music, so the day began with a service at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ. The church welcomes visitors every Sunday at 10:00, and Ellen attends frequently although she isn’t a member of the congregation. Located in a former movie theater, Canaan Baptist is based in the African-American religious experience and tradition, with services including a Gospel choir, readings of scripture, and sermons. (The church is on West 116th Street, between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue, which is also called Malcolm X Boulevard.) After the service, Ellen took Theo and Oualid to a small restaurant for coffee and conversation about their impressions of New York City. They chatted about everything from US and European politics to the history of the Dutch in New York to managing the city’s crowded streets.
Oualid and Theo Riddersma with Greeter Ellen Gasnick
Eager for insights into New Yorkers’ daily lives, and astonished by the price of groceries they’d seen at a farmers market and supermarket the day before, the Riddersmas asked Ellen to show them more of Harlem. The trio walked along 116th Street to the Malcolm Shabazz African Market, just east of Lenox Avenue. The market is open daily from 10 AM to 8 PM, and showcases goods including clothing, jewelry, personal care products, and more, all sold by vendors from Africa.
The next stop: Marcus Garvey Park, originally called Mount Morris Square, the center of the 16-block Mount Morris Historic District in Central Harlem. This area, which runs from West 118th to West 124th Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, has quiet, tree-lined streets, well-preserved late 19th- and early 20th-century row houses, and a number of churches.
Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market
Ellen led Theo and Oualid from the calm of Mount Morris to 125th Street, also known as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and sometimes called “Harlem’s Main Street.” Originally a Dutch village and named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, the neighborhood was primarily Jewish and Italian American in the 19th century. By the early decades of the 20th century, large numbers of African Americans moved to the area. In the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood was the center of the Harlem Renaissance, an era when African-American literature, music, dance, and visual arts flourished and made an impact on artists and audiences around the world. Recent decades have brought gentrification to Harlem and resulted in demographic changes. African Americans are still the largest group in Harlem, but many Latinos, Whites, and Asian Americans now live in the neighborhood.
Harlem’s diversity was evident in the crowds doing Sunday errands in the shops along 125th Street. To show Theo and Oualid that New Yorkers don’t always have to spend a month’s salary in a single grocery shopping trip, Ellen took them to a supermarket where prices mirrored what they see at home.
No visit to Harlem is complete without a stop by the fabled Apollo Theater. Opened in 1913 as a burlesque theater for only White patrons, the Apollo has been a venue primarily for Black performers since 1934. The Walk of Fame in front of the theater on 125th Street features plaques dedicated to just a few of the thousands of artists who have performed at the Apollo.
With tired feet, Theo and Oualid were ready to take a city bus back downtown to their Times Square hotel, but not before telling Ellen how grateful they were for seeing a part of New York they would probably not have visited on their own.