Malcolm Shabazz Market

In The Brother from Another Planet there is a scene in which the Brother, played by Joe Morton, meets a magician on the uptown A train. As the train stops at 59th St. the magician announces his next trick: "Want to see all the white people disappear?"

The ethnic shifts along 116th St. are similarly abrupt. The area around Columbia University is mixed race, the section by the East River is predominantly Hispanic and the section directly above Central Park is entirely black. So it is a surprise to enter the Malcolm Shabazz (Malcolm X) Harlem Market, right in the middle of 116th St. between Lenox and 5th, and find a large group of white suburban eighth-graders busily shopping away.

The eighth-graders are from San Francisco, and they came to the market on a tour bus. When I ran into them they were gathered outside a shop called the Candle Room. Sherae Adams is the owner of the shop. She sells scented candles that she makes herself, and she says that the Harlem Market attracts a lot of tour buses. "California, Canada, Virginia. People come from all over, they just don't come from downtown."

Adams is an attractive young woman, trained as a fashion stylist. She spends most of her nights making candles while listening to smooth jazz on CD 101.9. "Something mellow," she says. "I used to do everything out of my apartment, but it was taking over my home. Boxes everywhere, candles everywhere. I wanted a storefront?so this is what I could afford."

Storefronts are cheap at the Harlem Market because it's part of a business incubator program organized by the Malcolm Shabazz Development Corporation, with assistance from the Harlem Business Outreach Center. The market was first organized in 1994 as a result of Mayor Giuliani's attempt to get rid of sidewalk vendors on 125th St. The effort to remove the vendors sparked protests, and as a compromise the city agreed to arrange a space for them on 116th St.

Today the Harlem Market is an awning-covered outdoor mall that houses about 100 small stores running along several narrow passageways. Most of the stores sell West African imports, and most of the store owners are West African immigrants. All day long the market hums with the sound of zook music and foreign tongues: French, Wolof, Mandinka and Fulani.

Keur Serign Falilou Mibacke is from Senegal. She sells African jewelry and mahogany carvings. She says she has come to feel very much at home in Harlem. "All my family is in Senegal, but I like New York. God is helping me to work hard and take care of my children. It's good." Mibacke is a regal-looking woman, and I was told that she was a Senegalese princess. I asked her if she missed being a princess. She said, "Oh, yeah!"

The West African countries are Islamic. Most of the vendors at the market are Muslims; when I visited many of them were busy at worship. A few doors down from Mibacke there was a tailor sitting at his sewing machine with his head bowed in prayer. Jabbie Al Haji Kunda, a fabric salesman from Gambia, had just returned from the mosque. He explained that Friday afternoon prayer is obligatory. "Sure, every Friday. I don't miss that one."

Kunda has been living in New York on and off since 1989. He has worked at the market since its inception; he is one of the vendors who used to sell from the sidewalk on 125th. He says he's much happier in the market than on the street. "Yeah, I like it. Even if I made more money on 125th, I like it better here. There's no problem. It wasn't right before. I would just sit down on the street and sell and I didn't pay nothing."

Today Kunda has a proper store of his own, and though still sympathetic to the street vendors, he has begun to sound much more like an established businessman. "If they want to set up outside the Harlem Market, I'm not happy for that. They don't pay tax, they don't pay rent and maybe they sell the same thing I sell in here. I'm not gonna be happy for that." He laughs and tells me that his fabric costs $4 a yard.