Here’s a trip down East 119th Street from guest blogger, Laments of the Unfinished.

A good friend recently moved to the Upper East Side from Prospect Heights which means I don’t have to decide between taking a $40 cab ride home to Upper Harlem/Lower Washington Heights (whatever you want to call it) or risking the two-hour subway ride home. My cab drivers, I’ve noticed, have a preferred route from East 78th Street to West 160th Street; and I’m enjoying it because I never before ventured down East 119th Street.

A mixture of the burned-out, the revitalizing and the august – during the quiet, pleasant ride in the backseat, I get the sense that the driver likes the route because he’s comfortable there. Maybe he lives there and is checking on his home, I wonder. Maybe he’s looking to move there – who knows.

First Avenue and the eastern-most part of our ride reveal a few bright renovated brownstones existing amongst the crumbling remains of old Harlem. A house here, a sidewalk there – I wonder how quickly an entire block would take to revitalize and question whether or not I’m up to being a participant in this. My own block and building are in an endless renewal process – a constant battle between noise and trash and quiet and clean streets and culture and class wars. Do I want to start over in a place that may be equally stagnant in its promise of growth and renewal?

Further west sit a block of new yellow-bricked town homes; utilitarian and not so romantic as traditional brownstones, but they seem comfortable and satisfactory to the immigrant families I observe, presumably wanting to feel safe walking down the street at midnight with a child in tow.

At a stoplight; middle-aged women playing cards in fold-up chairs and tables, enjoying the warm dry air beside a basketball court. I watch a young man tutoring a small boy in basketball. The boy is about 12, too physically defined to be prepubescent, but clearly still a child. His lay-ups are good, but watching his expert passes to his companion, I decide he will be a point guard and wonder if I may, one day, see him play a game, forever anonymously.

Madison Avenue boasts beautiful old brownstones and quiet tree lined blocks missing only the old-time luster of legendary crowds, music and lights. Still further west, brand new mid-rise co-op buildings – too late to register for the lottery, I surmise. Middle-class buildings are popping up all over Harlem, but the resale rate will not be at market value.

The block-by-block changes represent so much of New York – I’ve known Italians who lived there before public housing high-rises stampeded the neighborhood – the communal feeling that was purportedly lost seems to be back. During a quiet night, an almost (but just almost) idyllic world lies in the few blocks representing so many different ways of life. I wonder what it’s like during the day.