An ode to what was, what is, and what could be…

Tucked away across the Upper West Side – New Jersey to be exact – during a time when gentrification didn’t exist, you’d find me in Hollyhood. A collection of towns within Hudson County, NJ all interconnected by Bergenline Avenue. Where my gold doorknocker earrings and my nameplate necklace introduced me before I did. A place where stoop kids are still stooping. A place where the rice and beans are always on. A place where the .99 cent store also sells Fabuloso and Juan Gabriel’s Querida plays melodically on repeat. Also, a place where my all-girl private school friends were too scared to ride the jitney bus with me. Somewhere you could be hella hard and hit up the laundr0mat on the corner to meet your crush. The place that made me who I am today, a 30-something year long relationship. Yet I keep coming back looking for what was, its glory days that I vehemently bashed, now simply gone.

Mi papá arrived in Brooklyn from Ecuador and mi mamá came to New Jersey by way of Colombia, in the mid-1970s. They met in downtown Manhattan while they were both in school and together decided to build a life across the river. Parading up and down Bergenline was their pastime along with dancing at Studio 45, a dance hall in Union City often confused by its non-rival Studio 54. Back then, their best friends were the Cuban family down the block; really the entire neighborhood was comprised of old-school Cubans, many of which left their island as a result of fleeing the anti-Batista era.

Thankfully, one of these Cuban migrants was savvy enough to open La Gran Via on 39^th street, a classic stop complete with Mima in the kitchen making your beloved croquetas, empanadas, ropa vieja and pastelitos de guava con queso. Many locals would argue that El Artesano up the block is where the real Cubans eat, but their walk-up window advertising 10 churros for $.75 cents is what I’m going for – my dessert.

Bodegas in Hollyhood did not begin to popularize until mirroring their NYC counterparts in the late 1980s and 90s. Here, you could purchase your cafecito and daily scratch-offs with gusto that today was your lucky day. Soon enough, our neighbors hailed proudly from La Bella Quisqueya, the Dominican Republic or La Isla Del Encanto, Puerto Rico. I made friends at the corner laundromat where my new clique taught me how to dance merengue, bachata, properly lay down the edges of my hair, and shake the candy machine for free loot, until it came time to fold.

It took a village, this village of Hollyhood to make sure I was both book and street smart by the time I started at an all-girl private high school in Bergen County, the opposite of Hollyhood. I traveled to the burbs and was labeled the token Spanish mami among my peers, expected to bring the Latin heat but carefully watched to not pop-off. Avoiding the catcalling and stares as my cursed body unraveled in Hollyhood, I was exposed in every way possible. Exposed to gang fights, unwanted gropes on the jitney bus, drinking, drugs, the angst – all the things that come with inner city life. Yet, I still find solace in a hot cafecito from Mercy at La Gran Via, because after all these years she still knows my order by heart.

Now, when I log onto Facebook and see family still checking into local places finessing for parking and paying less than $40 bucks for a family of 6 to have a complete meal, I get a little jealous. I’m angry at the new nail bar that opened charging over $100 dollars for a set, I’m even mad at the Playabowls that recently opened. Where was this when I was there? When I moved into my first apartment in Jersey City, no one came to visit; granted, there was a mice problem. Now, JC is the cool kids club and I’m an outsider merely looking in. Will Hollyhood still be itself the next time I return?

The decision to leave was propelled by the pandemic as many fled inner cities for the suburbs. I guess I’m one of those who flee now, too. There’s a litany of things I do not miss such as the rising rent, littered streets, parking tickets, or dembow music blasting before the birds get to sing. I now relish the silence of the mornings and walking barefoot in the grass but I’ll admit, I miss the sounds of sirens and my vecinos or neighbors arguing and then making love at midnight. I miss the sounds of ballads the mariachi band practiced next door, plus the rice and beans from Lula, my former Cuban landlord. I evolved from being a stoop kid to stoop adult while people watching and waiting for Mister Softee. Nowadays when I go back and visit, I take in every quadrant of its history and it soothes me to know I was merely a part of it, this place imprinted within me. In the smallest sense, I take it wherever I go.