Meet Ashley

Although she did not want to have her picture taken, she graciously shared her Harlem story.

Ashley has been a Harlem resident for a little over 5 years now, living with her partner, a lifelong resident of Harlem, and their infant son. She went to grad school at Columbia University and mentored at a Community Center at Polo Grounds on 155th St. and Frederick Douglas, “... If you consider that, I guess it's been… over 10 years that I've just been spending a lot of time in the area… I’d say I've spent… the majority of my… early adulthood [here], so it's definitely influenced [me].”

We met her on one of her daily walks with her son through Morningside Park. “We love it here… there's really a sense of community like you see the same people in the park every day… We're actually moving in a few weeks up to Westchester just to have more space for [our son]. So we're going to miss it a lot.” She reflected, “... I'm really anxious about moving… I just have so many memories here and having gone through… a lot of… good and bad… it'll be weird to leave. It'll feel like I'm… leaving a part of my life behind. I… associate so much… emotional, mental growth with this park specifically.”

“We love it here… there’s really a sense of community like you see the same people in the park every day… I just… associate so much... emotional, mental growth with this park specifically.”

One of her favorite memories of Harlem took place in the park we interviewed her in, “... for his baby shower, we were gonna have it… right there…”, she says, pointing to a space nearby. “And it was… pouring that day… You have to get a permit… [for] anything over 20 people. And… my partner's mom… pre-ordered all this food from Melba’s. And… I didn't want people coming over to our place because… we were fixing something… and I was like ‘It’s too many people’. So we just had the baby shower in the pouring rain. And there was… no one else in the park, which was kind of nice… Then this area started flooding so they had to move everything onto the pathway. And the park patrol people came and [said], ‘You're not allowed to… obstruct [the path]’. I'm like, ‘It's pouring rain, literally no one's in the park. Can we just… have our baby shower?’ So we just… hung out in the cold rain for like two hours. We probably looked really crazy.” The unexpected rain made a fond moment that she won’t soon forget.