nuyorican poets cafe
It's unusual to get to Third Street, between B and C Avenues in Manhattan, and not see a long queue of people at weekends. It's a place with no neon lights and all the graffiti on the giant wall all but covers up the name there: The Nuyorican Poets Café.
When you go in you'll settle down just anywhere to see the poets, MCs and other artists that seduce, entertain and/or hypnotise their audience. After a few minutes you realise there's no way back: the words are bouncing around your inside like a basketball and you've been captured by Staten Island raper or by an 18 year-old poet who doesn't have any intention of taking his headphones off. You know you're going to go back to 236, E3 Street.
Those meetings were first held in Miguel Algarin's sitting room back in the 1970's, and it’s become the hottest place in south-eastern Manhattan. Nowadays if you go for a walk around Tompkins Square and see the fashionable bars and restaurants there you'll hardly guess that only 15 years ago Spanglish was the main language there and Puerto Rico flags were everywhere. From the 60's onwards the Puertorycan took over the city's "red district". Loisada was the name for Lower East Side in Spanglish. Previously, German, east European Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants had lived in the area. Like the Hispanic communities in South Bronx and Harlem, the Puertorycan community on Loisada was infected by poverty and criminal activities in its daily life. But the artists who were born and grew up in the streets there didn't turn their backs on the area: they stayed there. They turned the tables on people who had looked down on their culture and origins by turning them into new symbols. They were and are Nuyoricans. Political and social pride and affirmation, a voice which makes it clear what it is to be from Puerto Rico in New York in past and current times of exclusion.
Perhaps on one of your visits to Nuyorican Poets Café you'll come across the poet known as La Bruja del Bronx in those four walls: a woman with a sharp tongue and fast verses, she was born and brought up in South Bronx. Or maybe the singer and actor Flaco Navaja, a skilled night-time performer of poetry slam. Or maybe you'll find a young person as yet unknown but destined to revolutionise rap: they may not be Puertorycan, but they are sure to be ¨Nuyorican".
When you go in you'll settle down just anywhere to see the poets, MCs and other artists that seduce, entertain and/or hypnotise their audience. After a few minutes you realise there's no way back: the words are bouncing around your inside like a basketball and you've been captured by Staten Island raper or by an 18 year-old poet who doesn't have any intention of taking his headphones off. You know you're going to go back to 236, E3 Street.
Those meetings were first held in Miguel Algarin's sitting room back in the 1970's, and it’s become the hottest place in south-eastern Manhattan. Nowadays if you go for a walk around Tompkins Square and see the fashionable bars and restaurants there you'll hardly guess that only 15 years ago Spanglish was the main language there and Puerto Rico flags were everywhere. From the 60's onwards the Puertorycan took over the city's "red district". Loisada was the name for Lower East Side in Spanglish. Previously, German, east European Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants had lived in the area. Like the Hispanic communities in South Bronx and Harlem, the Puertorycan community on Loisada was infected by poverty and criminal activities in its daily life. But the artists who were born and grew up in the streets there didn't turn their backs on the area: they stayed there. They turned the tables on people who had looked down on their culture and origins by turning them into new symbols. They were and are Nuyoricans. Political and social pride and affirmation, a voice which makes it clear what it is to be from Puerto Rico in New York in past and current times of exclusion.
Perhaps on one of your visits to Nuyorican Poets Café you'll come across the poet known as La Bruja del Bronx in those four walls: a woman with a sharp tongue and fast verses, she was born and brought up in South Bronx. Or maybe the singer and actor Flaco Navaja, a skilled night-time performer of poetry slam. Or maybe you'll find a young person as yet unknown but destined to revolutionise rap: they may not be Puertorycan, but they are sure to be ¨Nuyorican".
