Cotton Wears Thin.

I haven't written about Harlem for awhile, not for lack of material, but for concern that I was on the verge of creating a blog entirely about it. However, while Shaun was in town my coworkers arranged reservations for an evening at the infamous Cotton Club of Harlem resulting in an experience worthy of blog time. The Cotton Club happens to be in the middle of my project site redesigning the streets of Manhattanville for the impending take over by Columbia University. I've been dying to check out the joint, considering it's questionable future in the current locale. I think my coworkers have become increasingly intrigued by the urban phenomenons of West 125th Street through my sometimes over exuberance. I've never worked on a more hostile, yet thoroughly engaging project in my life.

True to Cotton Club form, we were ushered into a performance entirely by African-Americans for an entirely Caucasian crowd, geriatric Europeans to be exact; this to my total surprise. Yes, the Cotton Club, once the seminal Prohibition venue for some of the greatest African-American entertainers, and a public spectacle of the racist imagery of the times, is now akin to after dinner entertainment at an all-inclusive resort somewhere in the Caribbean. Perhaps one in Cuba where American tourists are scant, and European ones are aplenty.

The whole scene made me realize that it's over. I have to be careful not to be naive here, but a phase is over. The music, the culture, the controversy, the shameless American spectacle of racism; now a much more subtle and less honest contemporary. I guess experiences like this are further confirmation that the only way forward is through an invested interest in healthy urban evolution rather than nostalgia. Things can't stay as they were, nor should they. Urbanity in America is not 'done', as several of my American professors in graduate school in Canada proclaimed. Rather, it's in transition and although I don't really get it sometimes, I have to continue to be an active part of it all.

So here's to almost 100 years of the Cotton Club.

[Image: © Ronald C Saari]