Meet Jayson

Growing up on 120th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenue, Jayson, a lifelong Harlemite, has seen Harlem through many changes. He says, “My parents were immigrants from Costa Rica… And I've got... five brothers and sisters. So we all grew up in that house. Think Crooklyn. You know what I mean? Like, us all growing up in the area, and, man, I've been here to see all the changes. Like, I mean, New Jack City was for real at one point… From 120th and Fifth to 121st and Fifth. They used to call those ‘the ruins.’ …I remember when… they used to, instead of getting the buildings fixed up, they would put these things inside the window with pictures of flower pots to make the buildings look like they were lived in.” He has seen the buildings on and near his block go from that to now being worth millions.  

Jayson had a dynamic childhood experience, “We started in the seventies... I mean, it was a different time where… it was punishment… to be in the house… Your friends in school were also your friends in the neighborhood. You knew everybody. You didn't curse around older people. You could get beatings from your neighbors… We’d go to the pool in the summertimes… We'd cook outdoors a lot… The girls would jump rope… We played a lot of games outside… You'd eat watermelon outside. You did everything outside.” But unfortunately crime and drugs were also a part of Harlem. Jayson says, “I've seen people get shot, stabbed, murdered right in front of me. I've seen people get thrown out of windows. You grow up with people that turn to drugs. You have whole generations of people that were raised by their grandmothers…” His father was a “surrogate father” to people in the neighborhood and gave back in ways that he could, including giving meals to those experiencing homelessness to the extent that he received the key to the city about 20 years ago. On a smaller scale, their house had open doors for people to get settled, “You come from Costa Rica. You get to stay at his house till you get yourself together. So we lived like that. And that sort of vibe extended to the neighborhood as well, because my house was like the hub for everything that was going on. So it was normal for me to, like, wake up and see… my neighbors, just in the house talking to my mother, cooking.” Through it all, he had a happy childhood, “That's sort of… the Harlem I grew up in with the… good and the bad. Because we had relatively happy childhoods, in my opinion. We had everything we needed...”

“We started in the seventies... I mean, it was a different time where… it was punishment… to be in the house… We’d go to the pool in the summertimes… We’d cook outdoors a lot… The girls would jump rope… We played a lot of games outside… You’d eat watermelon outside. You did everything outside.”

In Harlem, you can meet anyone simply casually walking down the street. He recalls dancing with his friends and tap dancer Sandman Sims on 7th Avenue, watching Joe Hammond shoot threes in the park, watching basketball players at the Rucker or Kingdome, shockingly meeting Malcolm X’s daughter on the way to Malcolm X Boulevard from a “Slavery in New York” exhibit, and seeing Grandmaster Flash and Melly Mel at Harlem World when hip hop was still “underground.” Reminiscing on some of his favorite places that hold these memories he says, “There was a place on 123rd street called Grant's Tomb… So you would go to Grant's tomb, and then you'd walk up and down 125th street... And it was so many people. You would think the Yankee game had let out. Like people you hadn't seen in years, you would see them just walking. All five boroughs, just walking up and down 125th Street. It was like a car show. This is back when everybody started putting neon under the cars. People out there doing wheelies, we'd be out there. Sometimes people act stupid and violent stuff would happen, but more times than not, that wouldn't even happen.” Jayson has many memories in the vibrant and historic Harlem. 

He feels protective over Harlem and tries to stay in the know with what is going on in the community by attending community board meetings. He says, “Well, more important than anything else, I think it's important that it stays a village and it doesn't become so commercial… The romantic part of it, I would like to keep the same. Ideally, I'd like people that look like me to be able to afford to live in Harlem… Harlem is probably gonna always be the most revered African American community in the world… When you think Harlem, you think of a certain thing, and… there are always… forces at work to try to change that…” He says this from the perspective of a professional and brand specialist, “I always think along those lines… It's like little things that I know from a marketing standpoint, if that's the right word. So I'm always just conscious of what people are trying to do moving forward, not necessarily what's going on now [and am] trying to be mindful of that.” Jayson is an entrepreneur working as a partner in a branding agency called Luxe Dreams, “So what we do is we unlock people's dreams... People can bake bread, but they can't run a bakery. And so sometimes that's essentially what we do. Get you from whatever point you are [to where you want to be].” He feels he gained the “entrepreneurial spirit” from his father who owned businesses during his childhood, “I think people that come from these other places, it doesn't really occur to them necessarily. They get [to be a certain] age [and pick up] a trade. You just learned… My father said his mother dropped him off at a carpentry shop. That was it. That was like the right of passage... but I say all this to say, a lot of these things we take for granted here… My father told me where he grew up, people used to make clothes out of… [those] big [bags] of beans… There [are] certain things that we would probably take for granted that they wouldn't... You gotta hustle... But… I think I got the entrepreneurial spirit from him.”

“I think it’s important that it stays a village and it doesn’t become so commercial… The romantic part of it, I would like to keep the same. Ideally, I’d like people that look like me to be able to afford to live in Harlem… Harlem is probably gonna always be the most revered African American community in the world...”

Jayson has seen Harlem through the many changes and additions to the community. He says, “Having been here as long as I have and seen some of the changes… This building that [Sugar Hill Creamery is in], there was a man named Mr. M who owned all of these buildings. I think he had a grocery store here. And Mr. M was… weird, because he was the only person in the neighborhood who would charge, like, an extra ten cents for a bag of chips. And he'd always write everything out with a black magic marker... So I've been here long enough to go from that to this being an ice cream store… I mean, at this point, you don't even have to go downtown anymore… You can do everything in your own community…” He values when new residents and business owners come with the intention of being a part of the community and not changing the essence of Harlem, “We have restaurants now, and a lot of the restaurant owners are real receptive… You can actually build those relationships and those people… And it's not just a thing where… people are just taking their money and [leaving] the community, because that's what makes communities poor, right?” He wants “more” for other businesses in Harlem and Harlem as a whole. Jayson is excited for growth and more opportunities for businesses and residents alike, as well as the preservation of the Harlem community.