Out and about, from Red Rooster to Angel of Harlem

On any given Harlem evening there is so much to see and to do. Here are just three events I felt compelled to attend towards the end of last week, due to the great significance of each.

Tuesday, Sept. 23, I was off to the 7th annual Maysles Documentary Center’s (MDC), Albie Award Dinner. It was held in the festive Red Rooster Restaurant venue so evocative of a 1930’s Uptown nightspot, the atmospheric Jenny’s Supper Club downstairs. Before feasting on delicious fried chicken, catfish and greens, followed by a lemony mouse, guests enjoyed assorted cocktails and canapés.

Named in honor of legendary filmmaker and MDC founder Albert Maysles (1926–2015), the Albie Awards recognize visionary artists whose films help illuminate the world with beauty, righteousness, or sometimes both. Challenging the status quo and hopefully inspiring meaningful dialogue and responsive action, these are works indicative of just how meaningful art can be.

Proceeding the hoopla of the New York Film Festival, many fail to appreciate just what a big deal of international importance this seemingly modest award has become. Both locating his educational film center here, that introduces youth to the basics concerning New York’s most lucrative industries and hosting the Albi Awards, Albert Maysles gave Harlem a new institution with world-wide impact.

The three movies recognized this year are Brydie O’Connor’s “Barbara Forever,” chronicling the heroism of an LGTBQ+ pioneer Barbara Hammer; Pegah Ahangarani’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution,” juxtaposing the simple sweetness of ordinary Iranian family life amidst the exigencies of the banality and evil of war; and David and Liani Greaves’ poetic “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” an elegiac musing remembering the Harlem Renaissance.

The effectiveness of Greaves’ movie, which was started by his father, celebrated filmmaker William Greaves, is that in the tradition of Albert Maysles’ “Gray Gardens” or “A Hard Day’s Night,” it is brilliant work of cinéma vérité. We become that proverbial ‘fly on the wall’, as it were, at a long ago, booze-fueled party held in Duke Ellington’s Upper West Side townhouse. All these greats and near-greats of the Harlem Renaissance have foregathered to spill the tea and dish the dirt as they replay the highlights and hotspots of their lives, producing wonderful work, which changes the world forever. Old and in some cases, no longer active, they know they were “fire.” And, watching the footage roll by, we know it too. No wonder this magical time capsule reunion, like its two fellow Albie winners, has already gained critical acclaim on the film festival circuit at Sundance and Cannes both.

Another night, last Thursday, there was another dinner. Again below stairs, but, in the lofty and imposing stone Riverside Church Assembly Hall. The Morris-Jumel Mansion’s annual George Washington Dinner this year commemorated the role Manhattan’s oldest surviving house (built in 1765, it’s been a city-owned museum for about 120 years), played in the American Revolution and the crucial Battle of Harlem Heights.

One of the first white columned temple fronted houses built high on a hill in America (the builder’s father was an English architect), the museum’s mission is to preserve history and to serve the community. Initially, household servants working here were enslaved Africans. Even after New York State’s final emancipation circa 1830, free Blacks were still employed here. Included among them was Anne Hampton Northup and her daughter Elizabeth. They cooked here during the captivity of their husband and father, Solomon Northup, of “Twelve Years a Slave” fame.

Funds raised by the dinner help support the year-round free and low-cost exhibitions, concerts, and educational and other cultural programs the museum produces.

As we ate our entrees, we were addressed by Dr. Robert Snyder, former Manhattan Borough Historian and Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. He related how at the start of the War of Independence, the British Armada landing on the East end of Long Island, routed American troops again and again. In Brooklyn, it looked like the end would come at the beginning. But then, much like at Dunkirk two centuries later, shielded by fog and aided by boat rides from sympathetic civilians, the troops were ferried to safety.

At least, temporarily. The superiorly equipped redcoats, who outnumbered the patriots, still rapidly, successfully, pushed their way northward. But then they reached Harlem, at about today’s 110th Street. Fighting raged all the way up to where 146th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue are. Making their way behind the British, Patriots caused the Brits to retreat. That was how, for the next six weeks, Washington was able to establish his headquarters between today’s 160th and 162nd Streets at the Morris-Jumel Mansion.

Ordinarily, this dinner is in memory of one hosted by George and Martha Washington to bid farewell to his Cabinet and their wives in 1790. But, this year, it’s a tribute to the United State’s 250th birthday. With an eye to the future, the house is closed temporarily for a comprehensive exterior restoration.

Two Harlem leaders were honored as recipients of the museum’s community service excellence Award. Laurie Cumbo is the former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). Under her distinguished leadership, public art funding tripled and publicly subsidized cultural organizations grew to include five new groups.

Is there any Harlemite who does not know or know of Curtis Archer? Is it necessary to explain that he is a public service and community development powerhouse who served for nearly two decades as President of the Harlem Community Development Corporation (Harlem CDC), from which he only recently reluctantly relinquished the helm? Certainly no one on hand needed to be told who either honoree is.

Each year, I get an email inviting me to yet another anniversary celebration at Angle of Harlem Restaurant. I love to go, because co-owner Kathleen Adams is a dear friend. We are both from Northeastern Ohio and sharing the same surname, call each other ‘cousin’. But, this year, for the eleventh birthday bash, I’d first thought I couldn’t make it. Why? Well it’s my custom to take a big beautiful bouquet of flowers to Kathleen at these events, as a token of my admiration of her tenaciousness as a businesswoman, restaurateur, brand strategist, and community patron. ‘Why is it!’ I thought, recalling Path Mart being open 24/7, ‘that, unlike other neighborhoods, after nine o’clock, there is no place to buy either food or flowers in Harlem?’

I’d noticed right away what elegant arrangements were on the tables for the George Washington dinner, enormous white roses and hydrangea, like a wedding. And then I recalled that on top of everything else, Kathleen, whose parents were both doctors, pursues philanthropy as a member of the Junior League. This group started when some rich New York debutantes, regretting all the exquisite flowers they got from boys attending their coming out parties, decided to take them to patients in hospitals. So grabbing a big bunch of perfect blooms from the bar, off I went.

I’m so glad I did. A jumping place with good food, drinks and happy music, Angel of Harlem is one of the area’s most popular places for Black young people to meet. Guests had already been eating, drinking, dancing and laughing for hours, and there was my ‘cousin’ right in the middle of things.

We hugged, she loved my ‘thrifted flowers’ and so did her lovely mother. I had never met her brother before and we all took a picture. ‘What do you think of Kathleen, leaving the lap of luxury in Shaker Heights and coming to make a name for herself in Harlem,’ I asked? “We knew she would do great things,” Dr. Adams answered, “and as unusual as some of her ideas seemed, we always supported her!” To which I could only respond, ‘Our parent’s support is something we all should have. Bless you and your husband for giving it.’