Stranger Experience 02: How do I get to Marcus Garvey Park?
Here was the premise: we (being Mike, Adi, and myself) were to go out into the streets and of the city and ask for directions to Marcus Garvey park (Mike’s site from Stranger Experience 01). We were to get verbal instructions and ask people to draw a map of the way.
It was mid-day on a Sunday. People were a bit more relaxed than on other days of the week. Nonetheless, it was a bit nerve-wracking at first. There were too many people to choose from, and we were a bit uneasy about our innocent deception. Mike, an East Harlem native, wasn’t sure he could convincingly portray a stranger in his own neighborhood. We started at Lexington Ave. and 116th St. A middle-aged Latino passed by, and Mike and Adi stopped him for directions. Why did we stop him? As an older man, we hoped he would have more patience, and he seemed to be a resident of the neighborhood. As it turned out, he took seriously the responsibility of directing us, mentioning all the large parks nearby and telling us to be careful of our safety at Marcus Garvey. “There’s a lot of bad people there. You have to be careful.”
We asked him to draw a map, but he chose to write out the directions instead.
Next, we walked over to Lenox Avenue and asked a man selling produce (he was easy to ask because he was already interfacing with customers). He didn’t know where the park was, and told us to talk to two black women setting up a table on the street (possibly to distribute political or community information). The younger woman was very friendly and quickly gave us the simple instructions (up a few streets and over one avenue). She obliged us with a small map as well.
We then decided to move farther away from Marcus Garvey park for the rest of our investigation. We went to 145th St. and Amsterdam Ave. We hoped to find a police officer, in the hope that his/her response would provide a contrast with the guidance we had received from civilians. An MTA employee across the street was the next best thing. To our surprise, he had no idea what Marcus Garvey Park was. Perhaps he was from another borough. One block west we encountered a group of three people outside a church: two young black women and a young black man. People were leaving the church; we thought the service was likely just concluded. We approached this group because it seemed relatively easy to interrupt their casual conversation. They expressed some surprise that we were asking about Marcus Garvey Park — it was far away. They agreed that we should only make the trip on foot if we liked to walk and wanted to take the time. One of the young women wrote us part of a written set of directions and began a map before suggesting that we follow them (they were headed the same direction). She erased her drawing and, with the other young woman, walked with us one block west before we feigned a desire to take the subway instead.
We walked back to Amsterdam and entered a nearby clothing store. We asked the clerk for directions, but a man in the store, perhaps an African immigrant, overheard us and said that he lived nearby. He volunteered to show us the correct bus. We followed him out of the store and down the block. He repeatedly told us to go to 125th and ask for clarification there. He was in a bit of a hurry, but he was willing to draw us a schematic map of the journey.
This experiment taught us a few interesting things. First, it was clear most people were glad to assist us. Perhaps that might have been different in areas with higher concentrations of tourists (although Sunday does feature a lot of tourists visiting church services in Harlem). Second, we learned that Marcus Garvey park, despite its size, is relatively unknown in the city at large. The two people we asked that weren’t from Harlem had no idea where the park was. Third, we learned that maps make little sense to people giving directions on Manhattan. The route between almost any two points north of Wall Street can be described with two vectors — the number of streets to cross and the number of avenues to traverse).