Free Flowing Rage

After 58 years I think I took my 2nd A train to Harlem on Friday. (My car was in the shop after I wrecked my brakes after stupidly hauling 1500 pounds of tile in Carmel, New York) The first came 38 years ago when I lived for 2 weeks in Bed Stuy prior to my first year of teaching. I didn't get off in Sugar Hill, but at 127th and St. Nicholas. I had my camera ready to take in some fascinating sites. Here's a slide show. I caught this young father, to the left in the above photo, intermittingly bursting into fits of rage at his daughter while on the way to school, proving the age old axim, "Everybody needs someone to dump their rage on." I wonder who the kid takes it out on in school. From an article in this week's voice on karate schools in the Bronx: "It's easy to see the harsher side of life in the area after only a few walks along East 180th Street. The poverty (about 40 percent of people in that community district live below the poverty line) is visible, and so is the anger. "Yeah, that bitch gonna be smiling when she gets the money for the kids," bellows one guy into a phone. Down the street a woman screams into her cell for someone to "come get your fucking baby," who is also screaming. A pack of teenagers races across traffic to pummel a chubby kid, then disperses. Turning onto Mapes, a little girl riding in a stroller leans over to pick something off the ground, and the woman pushing her goes berserk, shaking the carriage violently. "Don't be fucking leaning over like that!" she shrieks."
PS, you're a true jazz aficionado if you know the the slide show singer of A Train