Published: June 05, 2008 05:44 pm            

HAMILTON: New Erie Avenue: Mediterranean Street

It is almost over, even before it really began. Perhaps Mayor Paul Dyster, historian Paul Gromosiak, preservationist Tom Yots and all of the others who want to take Niagara Falls back to yesteryear are right — but in their own way.

With more and more Italians moving out of the city and Catholic churches consolidating here, there is a new “Erie Avenue” emerging out of the ashes of former mayor E. Dent Lackey’s misguided, failed and evidently ethnic cleansing urban renewal project of the 1960s. That “Erie Avenue” is Pine Avenue.

Furthermore, 40 years has passed and the outcropping of Lackey’s efforts to push minorities into a single neighborhood around Highland Avenue, like the children of Israel in the Sinai between Egypt and the Promised Land, has reached its logical, generational end. With more and more of all of our children moving south to the Carolinas for economic opportunities, those remaining, who were once clustered around the smokestacks and railroad tracks of the city’s North End, move south near the city’s designated “Little Italy.”

A senior Italian friend of mine told me of his surprise to find so many African immigrants speaking fluent Italian during his recent trip to Rome. But it should be of no surprise to anyone to find, like on old Erie Avenue — which once stretched from Quay Street (John B. Daly Boulevard near the old Moore Business forms headquarters) to now-Old Falls Street, where the Seneca Niagara Casino now stands — so many minority businesses popping up in Little Italy. But they are. I mis-estimated the City Market, minority business base at Muto’s NY Fish Market to be about 30 percent, but one of his employees corrected me and said, “... it’s closer to 60 to 70 percent.”

While many Americans look to their likely Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, as an icon of the changing attitudes on race in America, Obama could have easily looked at the minority entrepreneurs of Niagara Falls as his precursor of that change. Not counting public housing residents, there are now more African-Americans living within three blocks of Pine Avenue than there are within three blocks of Highland. Yet, for some reason, local minority politicians and administrators — the so-called community leaders — are hell-bent on making Highland the black business district. They don’t remember Erie Avenue.

There are only two minority-owned retail businesses located within Highland’s 1.3 miles length, opposed to many more on the 1.1 mile stretch between Little Italy’s arches. While Tabb Booze’s Taboo Affairs is now gone, like on the old Erie Avenue, if we looked at the entire stretch of Pine, there are many minority-owned retail businesses where clothes and fragrances may be purchased, some owned by young African-Americans, others owned by young Middle-Easterners, and others owned by the same eclectic, hodgepodge of business owners from all nations. There is also a Chinese restaurant and an Indian (Asian) general store. As the one further down the street has closed, there is now a new minority-owned sandwich shop near the City Market, with the likelihood of others joining the burgeoning market.

Another minority-owned barbershop will join the newly-opened Marcela’s Kings Royal barbers on Pine Avenue, which is a microcosm of my America. Upon entering King’s Royal, I saw a white gentleman in his 70s pay one of the barbers for his haircut. In one barber chair sat a Middle-Easterner getting his haircut by a young Italian barber — in an African-American-owned shop. My aunt gets her hair done at the other end of Pine by a young African-American woman in a white-owned salon.

That’s my America. That’s the one for which I went to war.

Pine Avenue is not only the new Main Street of Niagara Falls, it is indeed the new Erie Avenue, too. But as Erie Avenue had its Falls and Niagara streets multi-cultural businesses, so does Pine.

Young Kenneth Ellison opened his store on Hyde Park and Pierce Avenue where, as students at Gaskill, we would stop to buy candy and ice creams. Ellison services patrons of the park across the street, the residents of that community, and the customers of Sammy’s Pizzeria. When asked, “Why there?” he gave an answer that any good, conscientious businessman would give, saying that the neighborhood needed it, and that he want to help improve it. Of additional bonus, it’s his neighborhood, too.

Most businesspeople in the city generally move in an opposite direction of public policy makers. Perhaps, with Little Italy morphing into a more progressive, but reflective Niagara, perhaps policies will catch up. Like Italy itself, America grows browner. Tourist towns toast even quicker. Las Vegas is more than one-third minority, Atlantic City is three-fourths, and Miami is more than 80 percent.

With multi-culturals bringing their businesses, churches and children to Little Italy, maybe it is time to change Little Italy to Mediterranean Street — where Europe, Africa and Asia all meet. Joining area churches like St. Joseph’s, Mount Carmel and others are three African-American churches, an Orthodox church, and an Indian religious hall along Pine, we need to understand that in the generation of fine, young businesspeople, like Kenneth Ellisons, the Marcellus and Muhammads, our future lies. It is their generation that will elect as mayor a Satish Mohan and all meet at the Como for ravioli, ribs and corn bread.

Don’t “pine” about Niagara’s past — discover it on Mediterranean Street.

Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. His columns run Fridays in the Gazette. He welcomes feedback at Ken Hamilton930@aol.com.

        

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