She So Funny

The Bronx has Yankee Stadium, a world class Botanical Garden, and an award winning zoo. I live in the Bronx - and I hate it.

I grew up in the borough of churches, Brooklyn, the county of Kings.

I can’t forget Paul Newman’s eyes in Fort Apache the Bronx or Melanie Griffith’s baby woman lilt in Bonfire of the Vanities. Those movies painted for me the soul of the Bronx and convinced me I preferred my gritty NY, Brooklyn style.

It’s not that Brooklyn was less violent, or had a lower drug fueled body count. I just loved the county of my birth.

Not really. As a child, “Bed-Stuy do or die!” was "Mostly die!" The violence, drugs and burned out buildings made me want to leave as soon as I could. And I did.

I left with Phil, my high school sweetheart, to a 5 flight walk up on E.110th St.  
The Young Lords collected our rent and junkies paused mid-fix to let us pass by. 

We were an interracial Romeo & Juliet, searching for our Camelot. When we said goodbye to Spanish Harlem, Brooklyn welcomed us back. For a time we lived rent free as sextons of an Ocean Ave. church, then moved to a 1 bedroom (in an elevator building!) on Linden Blvd. near Bedford Ave. When Flatbush began to feel too provincial, we found cosmopolitan cache in lower Manhattan. 

It was a short walk to Soho, China Town, The Village and Little Italy, but even taxis didn't know the route to our new home off the Hudson. No neighborhood stores, banks or streetlights for Washington Market area pioneers, made moving to Independence Plaza an even more romantic adventure. 

We settled down and had a son. 

In the years that followed I was shocked to find myself in THE center of the universe, when Robert De Niro christened MY neighborhood - Tribeca. Now, we had stores; but just to buy coffee I had to pick my way through a gaggle of celebrities, like Naomi Campbell, John John Kennedy, Nathan Lane and that's just in August when no one is in NY.

Phil and I made it through 9/11 but not our marital strife. 

When divorce sent me packing back to Brooklyn I found a great one bedroom in a neglected brownstone. I was so depressed, the only time I laughed was when EVERY visitor and I do mean EVERYONE said, 
"You should rent your walk-in closet. You could get 7 or 800 a month."
"On Macon St. and Malcolm X?" (I laughed)

I was alone for the first time in my life. No husband, no work, no health insurance. My only comfort was that the hood reminded me of simpler times: Red Light Green Light 1-2-3! and Double-Dutch with that girl who was always double handed.

My life was in tatters. Emotionally adrift and so distracted, I didn't notice that the center of the universe followed me to Bed-Stuy. The lone white family on Macon St. should have been my 1st clue. Then, I missed a 2nd clue - The A train.

Usually on the A train, after Borough Hall, my fellow travelers were all melanin gifted. One night at my stop, Utica Ave., I looked at the crowd on the train and left wondering, "Where are all those white people going? Somewhere for Scientology?"

I finally got the message when the city repaved Nostrand Ave. and put benches at bus stops on Fulton St. I saw white people: walking at midnight, heads in i-phones - not even looking up! Blonds and redheads jogging in their little shorts and walking their little dogs; and that was just the men.

House after house was sold and bought changing the complexion of my block. For a minute I considered buying the brownstone I lived in. The broker said it didn't matter I was unemployed, because payments wouldn't increase until much later that year.

When the brown skin sister who wrote for the NY Post bought my building I thought, "I got this!" 

Little did I know I'd dodged a sub-prime mortgage bullet only to get hit with a rent increase cannon ball. 

When my lease was almost up, Sister Land Lady informed me I could stay another year at double the rent. Yes, double the rent! My random extra work on movies and TV, left me with a thousand dollar budget for shelter. 

Because white kids, from I don't know where, were eager to pay 3 times my "reasonable rent", I had 3 months to leave. 

"Mayor DeBlasio's Affordable Housing lottery is a joke." I tweeted daily. 
All I wanted was a nice 1 bedroom for a thousand dollars a month.

After 9 months of looking and a nervous breakdown, I bought a co-op in the South Bronx. Yes, I bought a co-op, because I didn't earn enough money for "affordable housing"; except the two times they told me I made too much???!!!
Yes, the Affordable Housing lottery is a joke.

The first week I moved to Soundview, there was a murder around the corner. After 2 years, I'm use to the helicopter noise and fleet of emergency vehicles investigating the monthly shootings.

When I notice I've no friends near, nor shops I prefer, not even my bank close by; I feel petty AND sad that I bought an apartment in Fort Apache, The Bronx. Speaking of movies...

Down the street on a lot just off Bruckner Blvd., York studios broke ground on a $100 million dollar studio for movie and TV production.

 No the Bronx isn't burning. 

The heat I feel is the center of the universe breathing down my neck. 

Rhonda Hansome (actress, director

storyteller & stand up comic)

Heard 2-5 PM Mondays on SiriusXM 

Ch 121 with John Fugelsang.

See Rhonda here, there and around.

Posted by RHC at 2:36 PM | Labels: Affordable Housing, Bed-Stuy, Black Women In Comedy, Bronx, Brooklyn, Robert Di Nero, Soundview, Tribeca, Women in Comedy, Yankee Stadium, York Studios Soundview, Young Lords | 7 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

When we left off last week:  During a pay-to-meet session with a respected casting director my mind kept drifting to the married lifetime I’d left behind (seriously, I’d been married longer than most open mic comics have been on the planet!) and my now altered life. I didn’t “change horses in mid-stream.”  I got off the horse, walked into the stream, got pulled into an undertow and there was no lifeguard on duty…  I should have had a snack before this meeting with Twinkie Byrd, even her name makes me hungry.

Divorce was a heart breaking, game changing monkey wrench in my family, income and eating habits.  Tribeca offered everything just outside my door, or within walking distance: dim sum in Chinatown, brunch in the Village, lunch around the corner at Nobu, dinner in Little Italy, birthdays and anniversaries celebrated right across the street at Tribeca Grill.  My gastronomic choices off Brooklyn’s Malcolm X Blvd. were pretty much limited to a proliferation of plexiglass protected Chinese fast-food take- out joints.  No Zagat rated restaurants, designer name boutiques, or comfy new movie theaters nearby now.  Within walking distance, I had street after street sporting a two per block minimum of store front churches and African hair braiding shops.

Don’t get it twisted.  The heart of Bed-Stuy boasts wide tree lined streets with the occasional mansion dotting row upon row of brownstone and limestone landmark homes.  And THAT is why in spite of her riotous history; Bed-Stuy was slowly but unmistakably becoming the go to gentrification destination of white folks fleeing $2,000 - $3,000 a month Manhattan shoebox size studios shared with 2 roommates.  Black long time brownstone owners were cashing in selling their homes in a bubble inflated market.  Or they doubled (sometimes tripled) the local rent on the gentrifying influx happy to finally have space, ornate woodwork, no roommates and a monthly outlay reduced by hundreds of dollars. Through providence and timing only slightly ahead of the trend, I found in a century old brownstone, on a short street wedged between Crown Heights and Bushwick, an apartment I could afford.  BTW, time would tell, I really couldn’t afford it.

 

Dollar signs danced in my head as I calculated how silence had dominated my 5 minute @ $8 per minute session with this casting director, who was going to instantaneously 

change my career a.k.a. my life. Finally Twinkie (her real name) put down her pen and fixed me with a penetrating stare. Where do you see yourself? She asked.  That’s when one of the voices in my head did a double take.

Just one of seven voices residing in my head, the Martha Raye  / Pearl Bailey / Carol Burnett  hydra 

 a.k.a.- 

Martha Bailey Burnett

Martha Bailey Burnett, is especially fond of  physical comedy: double takes,  pratfalls, spit takes and the like.  The pause following Martha Bailey Burnett’s double take, gave me the opportunity to shut her down before she responded (out loud) with an ostensibly comedic but obviously sarcastic rant about “having paid her dues”… “breaking back into show business”… and “a job that rendered more than a negative balance after rent, food and utilities!” 

     

To be continued...

Posted by RHC at 1:00 AM | Labels: Bed-Stuy, Carol Burnett, casting directors, divorce, Martha Raye, Pearl Bailey, Rhonda Hansome, show business, Tribeca | 6 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

Where we left off last week: I was having trouble staying focused in what I hoped to be a dynamite meeting with a hot shot casting director, since at this point in my life only dynamite could break the log jam in my career…

I watched Twinkie make marks from the top to the bottom of the paper in front of her.  From my side of the desk I guessed she was either constructing a six-set Venn diagram or designing a need- to- know flow chart of secret drone missions, on my resume. What the hell is she doing?  I was already uncomfortable with the whole pay to play with a casting director phenomenon that became a cottage industry in its self during my hiatus from comedy and performing.  Wasn’t that the purpose of showcase after showcase, the opportunity to be seen by an influential gatekeeper like herself? 

                                                                                              

Yes I am an unforgivingly old school by-product of the previous century, but faced with the prospect of being a non-income generating, middle-aged non-performing, performing artist, I sucked it up and stuck my toe in the now.  Paying to meet Twinkie was the iceberg tip of my adjustments.

It was a huge adjustment returning to the place of my birth - Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy - after homesteading, raising a son, reveling in Tribeca and then leaving divorced.  My lovingly supportive yet oddly passive aggressive marriage, to my high school sweet heart- fiancé- husband- parenting partner, began to chafe in its third decade.  In the fading afternoon sun of our art filled, book lined, homey apartment, Phil and I exchanged words that could not be snatched back. I was deeply in love with my husband.  Somewhere along the years I stopped liking him.  Our Dartmouth educated son was grown and leaving the nest.  Soon I’d be the next to go.  I’d grown apart from the man I fell in love with when I was 14 years old.  It felt like time to leave the most significant man in my life.

At the time I was acting in a production directed by the renowned Woodie King Jr., on NY’s Theater Row.  I had in the offing an epic blues cantata, written by a longtime friend, sure to make my mark as a theater director of note.  I did not have a second thought about the comedy career I’d left in the dust.  But how do you adjust to leaving a lifetime of love?  I clutched my rising possibilities as an actress and director on the dramatic stage. In less than a month I was out on my own.  My timing was impeccable. I left Tribeca for Bed-Stuy, I signed the divorce papers and then right on cue, came the recession, years and years of recession.

Posted by RHC at 1:30 AM | Labels: Bed-Stuy, divorce, Real Black Men Don't Sit Crosslegged On The Floor, recession, Rhonda Hansome, Twinkie Byrd, Woodie King Jr. | 5 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

The look on her face clearly said she was at a loss without a hieroglyphics to English dictionary at hand.  The fact that Twinkie* stared at the object I’d placed on her desk with prolonged bewilderment, prompted my outburst. “It’s my resume.” I offered with my voice slightly cracking. Twinkie raised her eyes with sphinx like inscrutability and said without a blink, “I’m just taking it all in.”  

So my mind races as the casting director stares at my resume.  It took me three months to construct a new/fresh/now resume of my comedy driven career.  If she can take it all in, more power to her.  Damn, that resume doesn’t tell half the story of my life onstage.  And off stage you ask?    Well, both on stage and off, it feels like I'm starting all over from the middle. 

Divorced in 2005 from several decades of marriage to my high school sweetheart, I moved from our neighborhood, the center of the universe, Tribeca.  When hubby (now my ex) and I arrived, the Washington Market Area was barely maintaining daytime activity as a food distribution center.  At night it was a no man’s land unfamiliar to even New York cab drivers.  No stores, no street lights, we were pioneers settling on the windy far west of New York’s lower west side.  The abundant loft living space drew the adventurous; hubby and I were game for the hulking subsidized project that had real-people sized apartments and desperately needed residents.  As the area developed Washington Market became SoCa (South of Canal), but really hit its stride with the moniker Tribeca; and the ensuing gourmet restaurants, designer boutiques, lines of limos and film festival. It was literally Hollywood on the Hudson. Came the time, I could not go to Bubby’s on the corner for coffee without a hello to Robert Di Nero, John Kennedy or Lorraine Bracco, my neighbors.

I came of age in the shadow of burned out shells, and litter strewn lots, the aftermath of insurrection aka “the riots”.  As a pre-pubescent aspirant to the middle-class, I wanted nothing more than to leave the gritty bleakness of the ghetto behind.  Hubby made that possible albeit with stops along the way in a ghetto of a different hue - Spanish Harlem (in the Young Lords' building) and a stint as sextons of a Lutheran church in Flatbush.  I’d made it all the way to the disco dotted, star cluttered streets of Tribeca and now I was back with head bowed on my original stomping ground.  It was a big adjustment returning to the place of my birth Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy.  

To be continued...

*A real life, big time casting director

Posted by RHC at 5:15 AM | Labels: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Yound Lords, Bubby's Robert Di Nero, divorce, Rhonda Hansome, Tribeca, Twinkie Byrd | 8 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |