Morrisania, South Bronx (Part 2)

Following the previous post, we took a fairly clean elevator and after the WHEDco staff unlocked a door, we emerged to see one of the most spectacular views of New York City, one that is likely that very few tourists have ever seen.

We were pretty awestruck by the view, but started musing how the area would be like at night. I jokingly said that the likelihood of hearing gunshots if we stayed overnight would be fairly high, although on hindsight, this area of South Bronx is definitely not the worst (maybe Soundview?).

Soon, the WHEDco staff was ushering us indoors and we reluctantly bade farewell to the view. However, the tour was far from over.

We headed back downstairs to another part of WHEDco, which is the kitchen area.

What WHEDco does is that they help small food business owners get started by providing them large-scale kitchen amenities at a nominal monthly fee in the low hundreds. I recall one of the vendors was making hundreds of tamales here before delivering them to restaurants around New York City.

In a serendipitous turn of events, during my first trip to the Bronx to the Bronx Night Market at Fordham, I bought some delicious white and dark chocolate coated popcorn from a booth called Kernelicious, and later on, I found out that he was actually preparing his popcorn from the kitchen here at WHEDco. He was extremely nice and I told him I was from Singapore, where Garrett Popcorn is fairly popular, and he said he’ll be coming to take their market share soon and we both shared a laugh. His popcorn is really good (I got the premium white and dark chocolate flavour for $7 but there are many other flavours – you can’t stop eating once you start).

The last part of the tour was showing a pre-school/nursery area within the WHEDco premises.

I also asked the WHEDco staff what was the student to teacher ratio here, I believe it was 1:10, which seems like a good ratio. I stayed behind a little to chat with one of the teachers and she said that after-school programs were especially important here to make sure that kids are brought up with the right values and they do not fall into bad company easily from a young age. I complimented the premises and that they were even better than those I have seen in Singapore and said the kids seem to be in very good hands, which made her beam and she clasped my hand tightly and thanked me.

With that, the tour of the WHEDco building came to an end and we soon exited. As much as I wanted to explore the area more after seeing this hidden gem, I had a prior appointment with another friend to meet at the Queens Night Market, which was around 1.5 hours in the Corona neighbourhood of Queens. Arby and Gregor were going to head downtown to grab a burger from a place in the Upper East Side and as much as I wanted to join them, I wanted to make sure I had enough ‘space’ for the food at the Queens Night Market.

We made our way back to the 167 St. subway station, only to find that there were no downtown trains! Instead, we had to take the 4 train uptown to Burnside Avenue (between 179th and 180th street) in the Morris Heights neighbourhood or walk down to 149 Street Grand Concourse, which was in the Melrose neighbourhood. Even though I was keen on walking to explore the area more, my companions did not share my enthusiasm and we decided it would be safer to stick to the subway.

Again, the subway was packed with people and when we got off at Burnside Avenue, the platform was pretty packed with people. I made the call for us to walk to the end of the platform where there it was less crowded (something I usually do in Singapore too).

Most of the strap-hangers waiting at the platform were Latin Americans and African Americans, and I wondered which part of the city they were all headed to, since I did not anticipate that it would be this crowded in the Bronx. We stood out like a sore thumb but again, no one really paid us much attention.

I believe we waited for almost an hour here, which was excruciating long just for a subway but the subway finally came. The duo got off somewhere in the Upper East Side and I made my way to 42 St. to transfer to the 7 train to get to Corona. The Queens Night Market was okay but not impressionable enough for me to feature in a post, but I will feature Corona and one particularly memorable dish I had there during my final weeks in New York.

This concludes my post for just ONE half-day of my New York travels, and there are tons more adventures that I need to get around to writing, including the real Little Italy in the Bronx. I stayed in Chinatown/Manhattan’s Little Italy while I was there, but I only ate at a somewhat authentic Italian restaurant there once, as I always walked by many tourist traps masquerading as restaurants, with touts outside. However, for the next post, I may feature a Brooklyn neighbourhood instead, so stay tuned!

If you’ve read up till this point, thank you for reading till the end! I was thinking of doing some good with this blog since I visited many blighted areas in New York, and decided to see how a Patreon would work out, where donors can make a one-time donation and I will consolidate the donations and send them to a nonprofit based in New York.

Read more about it at: https://www.patreon.com/nytravelswinston