The South Bronx

Here’s one of the first things I saw upon entering the South Bronx late last week with my excellent guide, Alexandra Maruri at bronxhistoricaltours.com. It had been close to 10 years since I was there to produce an article for a magazine (either Allt om Resor or Inrikes) and I was way beyond curious about how things had developed in the area.

While most of Manhattan seems to be under siege by construction companies renovating old buildings and erecting new and impossibly tall glass towers, in one of New York’s most legendary boroughs, the neighborhood called the South Bronx or SoBro, isn’t getting nearly as much attention as it needs and deserves. Not that nothing had changed for the better, just not as much as I (naively) had expected. Sometimes, I’m just way too optimistic (and impatient).

The good news is that I did see quite a bit of positivity, mostly from within the community itself. Spoke with police officer while I was visiting the 40th precinct and he seemed optimistic. And a rep named Joe for a developer called Somerset went into some detail about his company’s committment to developing a big chunk of land near the Harlem River and will be hiring locals for the commercial and residential property project.

The South Bronx a.k.a. Boogie Down Bronx is a survivor and I am confident the neighborhood will thrive once again – as it did when folks like Al Pacino, Edgar Allan Poe, Colin Powell, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and many others lived there.

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