Empowering West Harlem: The Mission of WHDC and Zead Ramadan

In this conversation, Ziad Ramadan, the executive director of the West Harlem Development Corporation, discusses the organization's mission to uplift the West Harlem community through various programs focused on housing, economic development, social services, and education. He shares insights into the impact of community initiatives, particularly for seniors and youth, and highlights the importance of collaboration with local organizations and Columbia University. Ziad also reflects on his personal journey growing up in Washington Heights and the legacy of his family's bakery, which inspired his commitment to community service. In this conversation, Zead Ramadan shares his experiences and insights on community investment, cultural diversity, and the importance of uplifting local neighborhoods. He discusses his family's background, the significance of cultural connections, and the lessons learned from his upbringing. Zead emphasizes the need for community pride and economic development through cultural initiatives, highlighting his role in various community projects and organizations, including the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. In this conversation, Ziad Ramadan discusses the founding of NOMA, its impact on the community, and the importance of advocacy for Northern Manhattan. He shares insights on leadership, the significance of historical context in community development, and his thoughts on the future of WHDC and community events. The dialogue emphasizes the need for collaboration and understanding within the community to foster growth and cultural appreciation.

Takeaways

• The West Harlem Development Corporation was created as part of a Community Benefits Agreement with Columbia University.
• Ziad Ramadan has been involved with WHDC for over six years, focusing on community upliftment.
• The mission of WHDC includes housing, economic development, and social services.
• WHDC has created programs like the West Harlem Arts Alliance to support local artists.
• Seniors in the community are engaged through various cultural and educational programs.
• Youth programs include financial literacy and sports initiatives to promote health and teamwork.
• Ziad emphasizes the importance of investing in community beautification and development.
• WHDC provides grants to non-profits serving the West Harlem area.
• Collaboration with Columbia University allows WHDC to offer in-kind support to local organizations.
• Ziad's personal experiences growing up in Washington Heights shape his community-focused approach.  Investing in the community fosters pride and connection.
• Cultural backgrounds can open doors and create acceptance.
• Diversity enriches human interactions and relationships.
• Lessons from childhood shape our perspectives on humanity.
• Cultural influences can enhance skills in various fields.
• Screening out negative influences is essential for growth.
• Community leadership is vital for local development.
• Economic growth can stem from cultural initiatives.
• Supporting local businesses keeps money within the community.
• Founding organizations like NOMA can uplift the arts in neighborhoods. NOMA provided $75,000 in grants to local artists.
• Artists are like seeds that need nurturing to grow.
• Advocacy is crucial for community visibility and support.
• Community engagement requires understanding historical context.
• Leadership is about collaboration and mutual benefit.
• Political insights can guide future community leaders.
• Cultural events enrich the community and promote tourism.
• Historical awareness prevents the repetition of past mistakes.
• Community development should prioritize inclusivity and fairness.
• The future of WHDC includes exciting community events.

Sound bites

"Investing into your own community is the key."

"Artists are like seeds."

"We need more Z-Ads."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ziad Ramadan and WHDC

02:54 Mission and Impact of the West Harlem Development Corporation

06:01 Community Programs and Initiatives for Seniors

09:00 Youth Engagement and Educational Programs

11:52 Empowerment Zones vs. WHDC's Approach

15:06 Economic Development and Community Investments

17:58 In-Kind Support and Collaboration with Columbia University

20:54 Ziad's Personal Journey and Community Roots

23:54 The X Cafe: A Community Legacy

31:45 Investing in Community Pride

32:41 Cultural Connections and Acceptance

33:39 Diversity and Human Connection

35:56 Lessons from Childhood

38:32 Cultural Influences in Sports

39:32 Screening Cultural Influences

41:46 The Drive to Uplift Community

44:05 Community Leadership and Development

48:11 Economic Growth through Cultural Development

52:17 Community-Centric Development Projects

56:22 Founding the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance

59:42 The Birth of NOMA and Community Impact

01:02:05 Advocacy for Northern Manhattan

01:06:48 Leadership and Community Engagement

01:10:10 The Importance of Historical Context

01:14:14 Ziad Ramadan's Political Insights

01:20:31 Future Plans for WHDC and Community Events

Creators and Guests

Host

Led Black

Host

Octavio Blanco

What is Uptown Voices?

A podcast focused on the Uptown neighborhoods of Inwood, Washington Heights and Harlem. Our neighborhoods have a voice and we want to be heard and felt. We love Uptown.

Each episode will elevate the people here who are making a difference in the life of this community. We’re also committed to “real talk” that seeks solutions that improve the quality of life in our beautiful Uptown neighborhoods.

Led Black (00:00)
What up everyone, it's Led Black of the Uptown Collective. It's another Uptown Voices podcast with my brother Octavio Blanco and we have my good friend, the executive director of the West Harlem Development Corporation, a serial entrepreneur, just an all around community person that has been involved with so much, means so much to Uptown, Washington Heights, OG, my brother Ziad Ramadan. Ziad, how you doing brother?

Zead Ramadan (00:26)
Excellent man. Good to be with you guys.

Led Black (00:28)
I forgot to say that you're Palestinian, but you're also honorary Dominican too. You know what mean? Like, you know what saying? You're as Dominican as I am. You know what I'm saying? That's right. That's right. That's right, brother. That's right. That's right. So see you. What's up, brother? How you doing, man?

Zead Ramadan (00:35)
A Dominican as I Like Dominican

Pretty good, man, you know, good to be alive, good to be here with you guys.

Led Black (00:49)
Gotcha, you know, and we started, we'll start with the West Harlem Development Corporation and then we'll go back. Tell us about what the West Harlem Development Corporation, what it does, what it brings to the community.

Zead Ramadan (00:59)
⁓ Well, the West Harlem Development Corporation is, it's important to understand that it was created by the CBA, the Community Benefits Agreement, or the agreement between Columbia University and the community, especially the West Harlem District Community Board 9, because when Columbia University, you know, grabbed 17 acres of land in order to build this 21st century campus, they wanted to do a give back to the community, and that was the compromise where they kind of, ⁓

They invested about $150 million, $74 million of it was like hard-coded. $76 was in cash under the control of a board of directors. And that board of directors was going to create all sorts of programs to help the community. I was on the board for eight years, and I've been an executive director for six years. pretty much, know, creating programs, non-for-profit organizations to serve the West Harlem community primary.

Led Black (02:01)
to me.

Octavio Blanco (02:02)
That's really, that's really interesting. So what is like, what is the WHDC's mission? Can you tell us what the, your mission is?

Zead Ramadan (02:11)
Isn't that the one that always catches people like, uh-oh, I don't know my own mission. No, the mission, know, really in a nutshell, you I could read it out for you, but I mean, the really, the mission is a nutshell is to think of creative ways to help the community in the fields of like housing, economic development, social services, the youth education. It really is, we can...

Octavio Blanco (02:16)
Ahaha

Zead Ramadan (02:37)
You know, the board of directors can decide to do and invest in programs in any way that we feel, they, you the board of directors feels, could enhance, educate and uplift the community. And that's something that, you know, we take very seriously. And I always say we, because I was on the board for eight years and we were kind of all a mind together when we work.

Octavio Blanco (02:50)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (03:01)
And you know, we've done things like, you say like, okay, well, have you done that? I think that's a really important question. Well, we discovered that, you know, West Harlem for community board nine area, which goes from one 10th street to one 55th street from St. Nicholas Avenue, know, Morningside St. Nick, all the way to the Hudson river that they never had an arts organization serve the artists and art organization. it like NOMAA, which I helped found in.

Led Black (03:30)
time.

Zead Ramadan (03:31)
the nights. Well, we created something called the West Harlem Arts Alliance and the West Harlem Arts Alliance now serves all the artists and art groups in West Harlem. It's a resource. It's like a one-stop shop to help you to bring technical assistance to artists to create or discover or look for gallery space and bring West Harlem artists out into the light, you know, because in every community there's like

brilliant artists, brilliant ideas, brilliant art groups. And a lot of times they can't find the venue, the resources. Well, this organization, just like NOMA, just like Harlem Arts Alliance, produces resources for the local community. One other thing we're really proud of that we did is we started another organization called the West Harlem Older Adults Association. Now, basically again, historically,

Octavio Blanco (04:14)
That's awesome.

Zead Ramadan (04:26)
There's a lot of senior centers, they call senior centers, older adult centers, and they were never kind of linked. They never kind of worked together really well and everything, and we thought it would be a good idea to create kind of like a council, like a round table of all the executive directors and the leaders of those things so they can start working together, figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and then WHDC would also offer programs like

opportunities for seniors in those centers to go to things like a Broadway play, to go to a museum, you know, to go have a barbecue on Randall's Island with a jazz band and a real barbecue set up and serve 400 people at a time, know, with buses and everything. ⁓ So does everyone. I want to go there too. But, you know, these things are incredible.

Octavio Blanco (05:10)
Wow. I wanna go there.

Zead Ramadan (05:19)
You my mom is 90 and my mom is like, listen, just get me out of the house and I'm good. Right. And what you realize is when you ask older people, like, you know, what's the thing? It's like, look, I just want to sit inside and play checkers all the time. you guys throw a palette in front of me and I have to paint or, know, we want to do something more active. We want to do things that everybody else does, you know, but we kind of stick. So we create opportunities. You know, we took them to a Met game this year. We took them to a Yankee game this year.

Octavio Blanco (05:24)
Ha ha ha ha!

Led Black (05:25)
Right.

Zead Ramadan (05:47)
They went to the Jackie Robinson Museum and they came back and some of were gone, you know, we thought it was just a baseball player. We didn't know he was like a civil rights leader. You know, it's like, so that, you know, the, the educational component. And one thing that WHCC loves doing is investing into the community. Right. So there was a program that I loved. We sent 500 seniors to go see Mama I Wanna Sing. Written.

Led Black (06:14)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (06:15)
by a Harlemite performed at El Museo del Barrio. So the money was going to benefit Museo del Barrio, mama I wanna sing from the community, in the community, and we love that. We love that all the funding, like we love it the most when the funding is, so one time the senior council said, listen, is it all right if we were to get together, you know, mass and listen to jazz somewhere or Afro-Latino beats?

Led Black (06:20)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (06:44)
We said, yeah. And we said, they said, where do think we should do it? I said, Harlem School of the Arts. That way Harlem School of the Arts gets this big rental. They have 200 people come in. They have a live jazz or a live Afro-Latino group. And the people were jamming and dancing. You know, we had some food there for them and they just had the time of their lives. But the thing is, that's the thing. We want to create a really healthy, enriching, educational

experience for the seniors of our community. And we do the same thing for the youth. Youth, just pummel them with program after program, whether it be educational, whether it be artistic. know, if you're into like, know, if you're into like, had like Goldman Sachs people come in to let you know, give them information about what the finance world is like. We had them do food security.

Octavio Blanco (07:39)
Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (07:41)
like knowledge, like why is it better to purchase natural food and cook it yourself? And what's the math behind that? How to spend intelligently as opposed to, you so financial literacy for teenagers, you know, and these things. And then we give them a stipend, like if they come to our summer program at Boys and Girls Club of Harlem. So, you know, what we try to do is

and we work with the Riverside Hawks, they open up their gyms, six gyms, and then kids in the community who don't have a chance like during the cold weather to go anywhere to get exercise, they can go there and we pay the Riverside Hawks to open up their gyms, use their coaches to lecture them. We even had the New York Liberty go and do basketball, what are they called? Yeah, yeah, we had them do.

Octavio Blanco (08:31)
A scrimmage?

Zead Ramadan (08:34)
basketball teachings, you know, with girls teams and boys teams in high schools and junior high schools in West Harlem. You know, we had personnel come there. They gave them t-shirts, water bottles, and they train them, you know. And these are things that are done for their mental health, for teamwork, for their physical health, and to train and to understand that ⁓

Octavio Blanco (08:44)
That's awesome.

Led Black (08:44)
It's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (09:01)
you know with all this education and hard work you know we want our youth to grow up to be you know constructive and brilliant parts of our society and so we do whatever we can to invest in those kinds of programs to help them. So those are some of the things that we do.

Octavio Blanco (09:13)
So it's more,

it's awesome. It's more than just, ⁓ well, it's different from what you might think traditional economic empowerment is, right? It's much, I think it sounds like you have a looser.

I hate to use this word, but a looser leash in terms of like how you direct your monies that I think that maybe an empowerment zone might have. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between what you're doing and an empowerment zone? Because I know that you were also really involved with UMES and that gave you a great sort of view of the district and you really understand the nuts and bolts, but how does your current position sort of differ from what you were doing with UMES?

Zead Ramadan (09:53)
Yeah, I was on the UMass board for 10 years and I once headed the human capital, you know, the human capital sounds so weird to me, but I thought it was like job creation, right? So UMass was created by Bill Clinton and Charlie Rangel and they basically offered urban areas in America, different cities.

Octavio Blanco (10:02)
I know, it's a weird word. Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (10:16)
an opportunity and they said, look, we can give you a hundred million dollars or $50 million or so, you know, so much money, but your state has to match that and your city has to match that. So New York city said, we'll take a hundred because New York city will give you a hundred and then New York state will give you a hundred. So now we just got $300 million and this was supposed to be invested in a grid.

that was specifically socioeconomic, you know, it was for people who were in need. It was like poverty line to like low socioeconomic, you know, financial status. So that way the money went into rehabbing the community, creating businesses, giving loans to businesses in order to start off. So if you look at Frederick Douglass Boulevard, for instance,

I remember growing up Frederick Douglass Boulevard was a hard place, man. It was tough. Now look at Frederick Douglass Boulevard. It's got all these beautiful spots because we had a program where we created, look, if you have a dream to start a business, you put in 50%, we'll give you a loan for the other 50 % and you pay us back at a reasonable rate over time. And a lot of these people couldn't live out those dreams because they couldn't get loans from a bank.

Led Black (11:18)
blooming.

Zead Ramadan (11:38)
They didn't qualify, but we invested into the people and into their businesses. Next thing you know, you have a sushi place, you have a coffee place, you have a burger place, you have a pizza place, have a Melba's place. So we invested into all these little businesses and all of a sudden we had 50 businesses pop up and it turned it around into like, hey, that's my hood, this is Harlem and it's a beautiful community. But at one time it was really dark. A lot of times people didn't go down those streets.

Octavio Blanco (11:38)
Yeah.

Led Black (11:47)
Melba's is there, yeah.

Zead Ramadan (12:08)
But, but, you know, and look, look at like one 25th street, sort of like the Renaissance post 2000, it's changed. And a lot of that came through the investment of the empowerment zone. And it wasn't just investing, right? It was kind of like leveraging the money. So it was kind of, you know, foundations, other parts of the government would say, Hey, we like what you're doing there. And we have a job creation program. Could we chip in?

you $50 million into that $100 million program, we want to be, you guys are very successful and we want to tag along with you so people can understand that we're invested into that as well and we want that kind of positive PR. So we were able to leverage with the $300 million and they're still going, right? They leveraged over a billion dollars of other money. So when you think about, you just go, ⁓ $300 million, did all that to Harlem?

Octavio Blanco (12:41)
you

Zead Ramadan (13:06)
No, and Washingtonites and inward in some areas, right? You go, no, we leveraged government, know, elected officials, you know, chipped in, foundations, philanthropies, and all of them chipped in because we would like sell them on these beautiful projects and say Magic Johnson Theater, for instance, right? That came through some U-Mes support from the very beginning.

know, Matt, we brought a celebrity in, we got a theater group, you know, because we don't have that many recreational areas in Northern Manhattan when you really think about it. And I mean like North or Central Park, right? I grew up in Washington Heights, right? And I played baseball in college, but I couldn't tell you when I played baseball on a field. I played baseball on concrete most of my life. They started, like they built the field. In fact, I cut the ribbon as a community board chair.

Octavio Blanco (13:41)
Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Led Black (13:52)
Yeah

Octavio Blanco (13:52)
Mmm.

Zead Ramadan (13:57)
for the High Bridge Park when we renovated, when we created that AstroTurf field, the Little League field, and we created the one beside Jayhood Wright Park, north of Jayhood Wright Park, where Manny Ramirez famously practiced, right? So that happened, like, you know, we used to play wherever we could find a patch of dirt, you know, that's where we played ball. And so, like, think about Washington Heights and a movie theater. Where is there a movie theater in Washington Heights and Inwood? To go see a movie.

Octavio Blanco (14:11)
yeah.

Zead Ramadan (14:25)
I used to go to the San Juan Theater, which was where the Malcolm X Museum was in the 70s to go watch movies. It doesn't exist anymore. If you want to go to the movies in Washington Heights, you have to wait for the United Palace to do something special or leave the district. If you to play baseball, think about it, right? We live in the urban area. If you want to play baseball, you have to go all the way down a Riverside Drive.

Octavio Blanco (14:42)
Yeah, you have to go over the bridge, go downtown.

Zead Ramadan (14:52)
And if you're a kid and you're a young teenager, your family wants you to cross the highway and go on the weird, weird roads and you're so far away from home and anything can happen. And so that wasn't a very easy thing for us, right? In Brooklyn and Staten Island and Queens, there's like a hundred baseball fields. Those little leagues are so good, you know, because they have access. We didn't have access. So the Magic Johnson Theater was a really important thing to create.

And by the way, the seniors once said, we want to see the new Whitney Houston movie. And I said, got it. We rented the whole theater and we sent 500 people, made sure that each one of them get popcorn and a beverage, you know, and, they were like, we saw the Whitney Houston movie before anybody, you know, and they loved it, you know, but so we do things that are culturally, you know, relevant and that people want to do. And, also you, as you know, helped develop that.

Led Black (15:29)
Beautiful. Wow.

Zead Ramadan (15:53)
West Town Development Corporation can do a lot of other things. We don't have that kind of money to build giant structures, a Cadillac dealership at the end of 125th Street like UMass did, they financed that. We don't have like a small loan program to all the businesses, so businesses can thrive, but we try to figure out ways to create economic development and jobs. So, you know, one of the...

Keyways was really, know, the CBG is our flagship project which is a community-based grant. The last, I would say the last five years we averaged giving out approximately $2 million a year to over 100 non-for-profits, to over 100 non-for-profits in West Harlem and non-profits who serve West Harlem. So if you're, for example, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

Octavio Blanco (16:35)
Bruh.

Led Black (16:35)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (16:47)
right, or Adam Clayton, and you have a non-for-profit that does work with artists or you have something that can educate the community. We say, if you come to our community in West Harlem and you get 50 people, 100 people, we'll give you a grant to do that. If you do yoga at senior centers, okay, good. We'll give you $10,000 to do yoga.

at these 14 senior centers. Now we just put you in touch with the executive directors and you take it from there and then you send us your schedule to make sure that we know that you're doing the work with the money that we're giving you. So that's just an example, but we do that. so our grants go to not-for-profits. could be several people run. There's some not-for-profits that have like four people are running the not-for-profit and they'll get 250 people.

Octavio Blanco (17:20)
Awesome.

Zead Ramadan (17:38)
to come to an educational seminar at a place in West Harlem. And that's wonderful because that creates opportunities, it creates knowledge, it creates other ideas, and that snowballs into other things. And we also really try to inspire collaboration. Our motto is solution through collaboration.

Octavio Blanco (17:59)
Yeah, yeah, that's...

Led Black (18:00)
And it's true because you also make space

available through the Columbia, right? There's an in-kind space available, which is really amazing. So you can have a world-class place to do your event through you guys, which is...

Zead Ramadan (18:10)
Right. So

one of the programs that, you know, as we have an in-kind program, Columbia University committed $20 million worth of like credit. You know, it's not real dollars, right? It's kind of like, Hey, there's this like number 20 million and you could use, it in-kind means like it's not cash, but it's intellectual or it's usage of space or usage of equipment. So for example,

Columbia has all these new theaters and rooms and boardrooms and conference rooms. And you could use these spaces. Let's say you're a theater group and you want to do a performance in front of 200 people. Well, there's about three or four theaters you can choose from. We always try to couple you with the one that meets your capacity needs. Like if you say, I'm doing 50, can I use the one for 400? We go, no, you could use the one for 100.

Led Black (19:01)
Right.

Zead Ramadan (19:02)
You know, because,

Led Black (19:02)
Right.

Zead Ramadan (19:03)
you know, what are you going to do? You're going be floating around in there. So we want to make sure that people get what they want, right? Use it and it has to be for the betterment of the community. And you can't charge people. So if we're going to let you use these spaces, now Columbia will turn around and charge us for the space. So they might say, hey, you want that 200 person theater? Well, the rental fee is let's say 5,000, then usage of this other equipment is a thousand.

Octavio Blanco (19:16)
Hmm.

Zead Ramadan (19:29)
and then usage of personnel that are required is another thing. So it might be a $7,000 rental for the day for that theater, but that's 20 million minus 7,000. Now we do this on a monthly basis and you could apply at our website, West Harlem DC.org or Columbia universities. All you have to do is go to Columbia university and look for in kind program with WHDC and their page will come up and you can apply to that. If you're a not for profit.

Led Black (19:38)
Right.

Zead Ramadan (20:00)
have to be from West Harlem, resident or this, but there's a program for the betterment of the West Harlem community. And then you can apply. Go there and you'll see the criteria. I'm not covering it all, but you can go there and you could rent spaces. So if you're a not-for-profit, you could rent space. If you're not from West Harlem, you have to collaborate with a not-for-profit from...

West Harlem to be able to use that space and or say this program is specifically for West Harlem groups or invite them in and they have to be the majority. But you'll see the criteria on our website. But that's a very important program.

Octavio Blanco (20:41)
Mm-mm-mm.

Led Black (20:46)
Hey.

Octavio Blanco (20:46)
⁓

go ahead, go ahead.

Led Black (20:48)
No, and I wanted to go back to Washington Heights, because like, you know, we've got to establish, you know, your OG status. What block you from, Zia? You know, let people know, let people know.

Octavio Blanco (20:57)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (20:59)
You know, in 71, I lived on, that's when I came to the country when I was five years old. I lived just for a minute, like a hot minute. lived on 173rd and Fort Wash, right across the street from the entrance of J.H. Wright Park. And then for another two years, we lived on 173rd and St. Nick, right behind Riviera Funeral Home. In fact, the little house behind Riviera wasn't there. It was an alley where they would

back up the hearses and bring out the bodies. And I was on the third floor. So when I was like eight years old, I used to look out the window and see the bodies coming in like at night. It used to be very, very creepy. Yeah, very, very creepy. But and so we lived there. Then we moved up to 66 Post Avenue. You know, a lot of people in northern Manhattan don't know Post Avenue. It's only like a four blocks long from Dyckman to 207. That makes it seven blocks long. But

Led Black (21:35)
my God.

Octavio Blanco (21:39)
⁓ creepy.

Led Black (21:53)
You

Zead Ramadan (21:58)
And I lived on Post Avenue and I went there for elementary school to PS 98. And then we moved where we stayed for the majority of my life, which was 177th and Pinehurst right there in the Cornell, you know, two North Pinehurst, which is 177th and Pinehurst Avenue. And that put me a block away from J. Hood Wright Park. I'm back in the hood, right? And that's where I learned how to play baseball, football, basketball, everything. That's where I got into trouble. That's where, you know, me and my friends have run down like

you know, down to Riverside Drive and I mean Riverside Park and I eventually went to Junior High School 52. I went to Kennedy and then I went to City College when I was 16 years old. Yeah, I skipped a grade. I went from seventh to ninth grade. was in this program called Special Progress. I went from seventh to ninth grade and my birthday was late. So when I got in in September, my birthday was in October. I was still 16.

Led Black (22:39)
it's young.

Octavio Blanco (22:40)
Wow, young.

Zead Ramadan (22:54)
And so I was 16 years old and I was tiny. was, I graduated in Kennedy. was the graduating class was 1,049 and I was fifth online as like one of the shortest, one of the shortest guys. Yeah. of the shortest guys in the school.

Led Black (23:09)
Hahaha

Octavio Blanco (23:11)
WHA-

Led Black (23:12)
That's funny.

Octavio Blanco (23:14)
One of the longest

graduation ceremonies I'm sure you have to wait for all those people.

Zead Ramadan (23:16)
Oh my lord, man.

Our graduation ceremony was at Carnegie Hall. Yeah, it was huge. And then the junior high school, 52, we had it at Riverside Church, and that holds thousands of people as well. But I loved it, man. I grew up, and it's funny, was an Arab. When I came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English. Within two years, I spoke better than most Americans.

Led Black (23:23)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (23:46)
rambling, but a very funny thing. So I have sort of a real uptown sway to my talk. And my son says to me, hey, Dad, man, why do you talk like that? And I said, you know what's funny? You know who reminds me of me when I talk is Adriano, Adriano Espeyat, because he has this real uptown, yeah, man, so the other day. And I said, that's how I talk.

Led Black (24:07)
Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (24:13)
Why? Because I grew up right near the Dyckman houses, Post is right on the block from the Dyckman houses and all my best friends were black. So the people who taught me English were really my black friends because after school my Irish friends lived in Isham Street in that area, right? And my Latino friends, new Puerto, you know, the Puerto Ricans who were there, you know.

Octavio Blanco (24:18)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (24:37)
And my new Dominican friends, forget it, we were hustling English at the same time. You know, we were trying to figure out the language at the same time. So the only people who knew it really well that lived around us, because we lived in the part that was of color, was our black friends. All my friends, Derek Stewart, Claude Elmer, Adrian Adams, they all, and all my sisters, the same thing, you know. It was really funny. So I had that thing. And we also were into music. Let me tell you, if there's one thing that can like...

Octavio Blanco (24:43)
⁓ huh

Zead Ramadan (25:02)
tell you the timeline of my life and how I understand America and everything absolutely through music and it started out with Soul Train and Motown. I was one of seven so we had our own Soul Train line in my house you know it's like we were all there.

Octavio Blanco (25:09)
Interesting.

I was gonna ask

you about that. You're one of seven, or you're one of eight. You're one of eight. Living in Manhattan. How do you do that? Manhattan is not known for having, I mean, look, know that Washington Heights and Inwood, they do have some big apartments, but still, one of eight, what was that like? I can't imagine.

Zead Ramadan (25:20)
Wanna be? Wanna be? ⁓

Led Black (25:22)
One of a, wow.

Zead Ramadan (25:38)
bro, looked like

army barracks, bro. We had double bunk beds everywhere. It looked like an army barrack. was like double bunk, double bunk, double bunk. And someone had to sleep on the, my brothers got older, they had to sleep in the living room, pull out. Yo man, we hustled like immigrants did. And my father had three jobs. He was a baker, he was a master, a baker. He could make like,

Led Black (25:43)
Hahaha

Zead Ramadan (26:05)
And he was, you know, in Washington Heights, it was kind of new. People were making like, six-tier wedding cakes at the time. And it's really funny. He started working for a Dominican baker named Sucrati. And I never put it in my head that Sucrati meant Socrates. So, you know, Sucrati, and eventually Sucrati retired and my father purchased the bakery and never changed the name of it. It was on 164th and Broadway, and it was called La Mano De Oro.

Led Black (26:18)
Socrates, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Zead Ramadan (26:34)
It was called La Mano de Yorta Bakery. And some people come up to me and they go, that's your dad with the silver hair? man, he's the lean over the counter and give me a cake every time after church. I said, yeah, yeah, you every time after church I get out of school, my mom bought bread there and you your father introduced kippe to the community because we were Arab and my mom made kippe. And so it was really, really incredible, you know? And the irony is we ended up opening up a cafe.

Octavio Blanco (27:00)
You know, I was, I was...

Zead Ramadan (27:04)
Half, you know, in the next, very next block, you know, my father said, whatever you do, I don't want you to be bakers, because I got to wake up in the middle of the night. I never see my kids. I go home at 10 o'clock and da da. And so we all got into our different professions, but ended up opening up the ex-cafe halfway up the block from him. I mean, that was the real ironies of our lives. You know, my dad came to the country as a baker on 164th street, you know, right next to where Presidente is, with that pizza shop next to it. That's exactly where.

Led Black (27:23)
That's amazing.

Yeah,

the end is gone, right? end is not there no more.

Zead Ramadan (27:34)
Yeah, that's right. said Presidente. ⁓ That's old school stuff that people don't know about.

Led Black (27:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's,

what is it? It's Fort Washington. I like that place too though. Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (27:44)
Yeah, yeah.

So I said my wife said it's good. I had a chance myself. so my father cafe there, we ended up owning the X Cafe from 97 till 2020. Well, yeah, but we all came from like different trades, like, you know, college graduates or working with cars and stuff. And we ended up opening up like what New York one called the first downtown style cafe uptown.

Led Black (27:48)
Yeah, it's pretty good.

Wow.

Zead Ramadan (28:13)
So it's really funny, whenever I see, whenever I see Anika Pergamon on New York One, she's been like, you know, one of the, one of the anchors forever. I was like, she came to my cafe in about 2000 when she, when she was like 20 something years old and she was just cutting her teeth. And they sent her up to Washington Heights and she was looking around and said, why did you open this up here? And I said, what do you mean? And she said,

Octavio Blanco (28:13)
Hahaha.

when she was a kid. ⁓

Zead Ramadan (28:38)
This is really fancy with the red curtains and the velvet this and the stained glass tables and the fancy food. And I said to her, you know, remember I grew up in the community, right? And I said, ⁓ where do you think this should be? And she goes downtown. And I said, well, why do people downtown deserve all this luxury and my community doesn't? And by the way, I, know, I whispered in her ear like, look, I open up a garbage joint.

Led Black (28:59)
Bye.

Zead Ramadan (29:04)
They're going to connect that to my name and all these people know us here. It's like, you know, there's eight of us, you know, so at some point in some generation, everybody passing through the street knows one of our Ramadan's. And so I can't open up a place and slurry my dad's good name, you know, so we had to we had to keep it real. And so she goes, and I'm here in the first downtown style cafe uptown. It's called the X Cafe and. Opened up in 97.

Led Black (29:07)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Octavio Blanco (29:08)
Yeah.

Led Black (29:27)
That's amazing. year was that that it opened up, Ziyad?

So you were, so that's funny then when you think about it, that really was ahead of the curve, right? Like it really does belong there with ARCA and all those people that were really kind of, really fun. Yeah, you were before them, which is amazing.

Zead Ramadan (29:42)
before them.

In fact, when I became the chair of the community board, and I became the chair of the economic development committee first, which approved all of the licenses, I would always like I might have like 15 application people, you know, applying for license, and I would welcome them to the committee. And I would say, ladies and gentlemen, we live in this community, I would give them a speech all the time. I really drilled it home. I said,

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in this community. We need to beautify this community because our parents live here. Our grandparents came here. Our children live here. So if you're trying to decide whether you should nickel and dime on the design of your place, my advice to you is invest that extra thousand dollars into the design. Make it get that better fabric, make it more beautiful because you're going to be proud of it. And you're not going to say, I regret not doing that back then. Right?

because now people say, this place is all right. You don't want it to be all right. You want to say, this is my place. My name is Rodriguez and I opened up this place and people love it. People like the way it looks. And thank God I spent that extra thousand dollars because I made that back in two weeks or whatever it is, right? But I made that back. And so I always told them to invest a little bit more into the community in order for you to be proud of it, for the community to be proud of your place and to make this place better for our community.

Octavio Blanco (31:09)
Well, know, it's not, can I just ask, because it sounds like your dad, your dad being a baker, that's like in almost like an essential job in a neighborhood. you know, and so I wonder if his being a baker and his own connection with, you know, the moms and the grandmas and the people coming into the bakery, did that open doors for you and your family? Because

Led Black (31:09)
And well, yeah, God, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (31:36)
The question that I have is whether or not you experienced prejudice because of being Arab in the neighborhood or how did you acclimate? Because let's face it, is, I just wanna know because to me it sounds like you and your family were welcomed with open arms by the community and I'm just curious to hear about how your culture kind of played a part.

in your standing in the community.

Zead Ramadan (32:09)
⁓

Well, you could look at the screens and you and I could be relatives. You could be my brother, right? And I have a brother who looks like lead, right? In fact, my Dominican employee, I had the Dominican employee, they'd be like, yes, it will model a moreno. No, they kept up and I'd be like, that's the same.

Octavio Blanco (32:16)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Led Black (32:29)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (32:30)
And they'd be like, is

your darker brother, You got a different dad? And I go, no, no, same guy, same guy. But we grew up in Kuwait. And Kuwait was very diverse.

And my parents are Muslim. And in our faith, they really like, and they weren't like, you know, ⁓ scholars, they were refugees. They're Palestinian born. They were born in 30 and 36, I believe. And they had to emigrate from their towns and forcibly. And my dad was on the West Bank. My mom was in a town called Jimzo that

kind of no longer exists and from 48 and. ⁓

Well, in our culture, first of all, we have all different colors. I have cousins with Afros, I had one with dreads down in his butt, you know, and then I have really blonde cousins because if you really think about that land that was Palestine, everybody stepped on it. The Europeans, the Africans, the Asians, the Mongols. And so you had this mix of communities over the millennia. So we never looked...

I never looked at a black guy and thought he was funny. In fact, a black friend of mine, he said to me, hey Zee, I want to ask you something. Yeah. He goes, when I said hello to your kids, they came and they gave me a hug and this, that he goes, I don't get that from white people. And I said, well, you just called me white. I said, of all, have an issue. I said, but, but, the issue is, yeah, cause you know, we don't teach our kids to like look at that.

Led Black (34:03)
Hahaha!

Zead Ramadan (34:12)
We teach kids to look at the content of a human interactions and that's it. And that's what we do. Hopefully that's what most people do. But, so we never looked at my mom. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you this one story that kind of will define the issue. I'm about seven years old. We're fresh in America. My mom's in the subway and we're on 168th Street. I remember the.

majestic tiles and I'm looking around and crowds going by and a short man, what we called a midget back then, walked by and I like bugged out. I don't know if I ever saw him. So I said, mom, look at that.

Look at that, you know, a small guy. And my mom yanked my hand and got really close to my face. And she said, this is exactly what she said, I'll never forget it, because I never forgot it. And it became sort of my mantra. She said, he is a creation of God like you are. You are no better than him. No matter whether he be tall or big or black or white or small or green or yellow or blue.

You are no better than anybody else here and the only thing that defines you is the work that you do and if you're a good human being. And I was just like, damn. And that was it. And that stuck with me the rest of my life. And I became very affable in college and I got along, it was really funny. I was like one of the few people in college that would get invited to the white frats, the black frats.

the Jewish frat, you know, the Spanish frat, I was asked to pledge, I was asked to pledge every black flat frat at Stony Brook, except Alpha Phi Alpha. Every Latino frat, every white frat. People thought I was in a frat and I was never in any frats. They said to me, why don't you join the frat? And I said, because I get along with everybody.

I spoke Spanish to my Latino guys, I played baseball with them, my black friends, I was very comfortable, I went to reggae parties, my best friend from college till this day is from Brooklyn and he's Jamaican, and he became a Colonel and a eye doctor. We came through similar backgrounds, rough and tumble immigrant communities, but we made it out, we made it out. So as far as like my...

the, it would look, when I was growing up on the baseball, I told you, I was like really, really small, right? That was the biggest prejudice I ever got. Oh, you get chicken thing. And I was like, it was made to bat last. They me chicken thing, right? And they were like, this guy can be good, right? Cause he's too small. Instead, you know, I'm like 130 pounds, 16 years old, throwing 85 miles per hour in college.

Led Black (36:48)
Chiquitin. Chiquitin is hilarious.

Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (37:04)
But you wouldn't think that, but the only way I got good is playing with my Dominican friends. And to me, I used to emulate Dominican short stops, how smooth they were. And I was just like, I copied them. I copied them exactly. I looked at where their head was when they caught the ball. And so that Dominican culture really helped me understand the game and help propel me. look, in every culture we have good and bad, right?

So my mom used to always tell me, like I said, my parents weren't educated at all, but they had really deep philosophies. You my mom would say, look, you have to be like a screen. If there's something bad that you see doing, screen that out. But if there's something in their culture that's really good, take it in. And she goes and do that with everything in life. And I used to be like, wow, that's really clever. So in every culture, if there's something, yo, let's go do this, let's go do that. I'd be like, maybe not.

Octavio Blanco (37:48)
Mmm.

Zead Ramadan (38:00)
But it's like, ⁓ teach me, ⁓ how do you swing again? But some parts of the culture that were really helpful, I tried to take in. So, and I love the Dominican culture, I love Dominican history, I love the Dominican country, and it's part of my life. My son thinks he's Dominican. He was born in Washington Heights at Columbia. We have a little place in DR, and we go there since he was born.

Led Black (38:19)
Hahaha

Zead Ramadan (38:27)
And he has Dominican shorts on Dominican day parade. He has the flag. He has the hat, the bandana. He had braids, everything. It's really funny. But yeah, I swear to God, he thinks he's more Dominican than he is Palestinian.

Octavio Blanco (38:27)
wow.

Led Black (38:34)
That's funny.

That's hilarious. But there's also...

Octavio Blanco (38:40)
You familiar with

Mo- Are you familiar with Mo-Amer?

Zead Ramadan (38:43)
Of course, yeah, he's a riot. I met him before.

Octavio Blanco (38:44)
Yeah, he's great.

You guys have like a very similar story there where he's from Houston and all the cholo's are like, yo, why are you not, why don't you come into an art gang? Such a great, have you seen his stand up? His stand up is awesome. His stand up is awesome. love.

Led Black (38:55)
I love that show. I love that show.

Zead Ramadan (38:56)
Yeah, it's...

Led Black (38:59)
It's hilarious.

Zead Ramadan (39:00)
I did. I went to see him live last

May, actually. He was pretty tight. He's funny as hell. But you know, it's like he has that, Mexican connection through Houston, right? I have the Dominican connection through Washington Heights. When I went to college, it was funny. I'd have some friends from Mexico and around there like, they're like, yeah, what the, listen to way this guy talks. He talks like a Dominican. You like, you know, I would say, you know, they teach me some stuff and like,

Octavio Blanco (39:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Led Black (39:23)
That's funny.

Zead Ramadan (39:27)
a Mexican dialect like how to say raccoon, they would say mapache and that's like an Aztec word, right? But like people don't use that normally, but they would, you know, I would know how to talk colloquial like they did, you know? And then my Spanish friends, I learned from Spain from that. It takes me about three days when I go to a different Latin country to acclimate to their accents, you know? Then after that, then after that, I'm like, yeah, say see you.

Led Black (39:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (39:51)
on.

Led Black (39:54)
But you know, Ziyad, I wanna ask like, you know, everything you've been involved in is always about like uplifting community. You know, why is that? Where does that come from, you think? And why does that matter to you so much?

Zead Ramadan (40:07)
Very few people know this story. I got into college when I was 16. I took a career exploration course. you know, it's almost like psychoanalyzing you to try to figure out what you want to do. You take a whole semester. This is a class in college. A whole semester trying to figure out what your essence is and what you're all about so you can figure out what direction you want to go to. If you like sciences, if you like...

you know, soft sciences, if you like, art, if you what direction am I going to go to by finding the sectors of anything? And at the end of the semester, they gave us an 800 question questionnaire. And then they gave us a 1,000. It took us a week to fill out the 1,000 questionnaire. You have to add 1,000 questions.

Read the question, answer like, do you like working in cubicles? Do you like working with people? Do you like working with five or more people? And this just went on forever. Do you like science? Do you like math? What was your best math grade? So they took these questionnaires and they sent them to two computers. I believe the social science spots in the country at the time were University of Michigan and I think University of Minnesota. And they sent them to the two social science departments there.

Octavio Blanco (41:01)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (41:30)
who was conducting a study and then they would gurgitate, you the computers would gurgitate all your answers and bing! It spat out an answer of what your future should be. What your perfect occupation was. Mine, both computers spat out the same thing.

Led Black (41:50)
And what was it?

Zead Ramadan (41:53)
priest.

Led Black (41:55)
What?

Zead Ramadan (41:58)
Clergy

it said one said clergy social worker. The other one said priest clergy And so I've always been it's like my nature my wife says why are you stopping like somebody asked me a question? I said she goes why are you stopping and telling him the history of the answer? It's kind of I was like I know I can't help myself, you know, it's like so

Led Black (42:06)
Wow, that's interesting.

Octavio Blanco (42:18)
Hahaha!

Zead Ramadan (42:23)
you know, why should I walk in this direction? Well, you're going to see this, this, this, and this, and this, and people are like, you know, I just need to get there, But I can't help, but it's really, I've, you know, I spent, since I got on the community board in 98 and I discovered how to help.

Octavio Blanco (42:30)
That's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (42:41)
sort of people. Within two years, I was the chair of the community board. I think I'm one of the youngest chairs they've ever had, if not the youngest chair they ever had. And I was, I actually, you know, and then I knew our community and what it needed because I grew up in it, right? So I remember I gave the first cabaret license in 30 years to Umbrella.

Led Black (43:04)
Wow, that's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (43:05)
Yeah.

And it was a real fight in the community, especially with the older generation. They're like, we don't want these clubs and this noise and this, that. And I said to them, you know, I went clubbing in the 80s and I was taking the iron horse home at three and four in the morning, getting home at, it was horrible for us. You know, it's like for young people, it's just dreadful to, you know, have a good time. Like,

Led Black (43:12)
Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (43:32)
We're going to do it anyway, you did it. You know, I remember asking an elected official who was, you know, powerful and very much against it. I said to him, didn't you tell me that you danced with Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom once? He goes, yeah, we used to go dancing there all the time. I said, aha, gotcha. You went dancing all the time. This is a Dominican community. How could you deprive the young Dominican people from dancing?

Octavio Blanco (43:51)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (43:59)
And they were like, he was like, yeah, I said, bro, it's part of the culture. You can't tell you first of all, it's part of our youth and it's part of our culture. as a community board chair, I made the argument. I didn't make it on just like we want to dance and party thing. I made it on the economic development angle. I said. Each one of these young people, 25 year old, whatever it is, when they go downtown, they're spending at least 50 to $100, at least.

Led Black (44:29)
At least.

Zead Ramadan (44:30)
And if they're spending at least that much and there's this many teenagers in our community that leave the district to spend the money, that accounts for over a million dollars on a Friday night that they're spending downtown. I would rather them spend it in our businesses uptown. We're convincing people at the community board to open up beautiful businesses. They're opening up beautiful businesses, but every time somebody wants to celebrate a birthday, sweet 16, you know,

anything, a wedding, leave the district. So all of our money is leaving the district, being spent, and you come home to sleep. And at that time, if you remember, a lot of the Dominican restaurants were cafeterias, right? They're just like, you sit on a rolling seat, you know, they open up the silver thing and they go, Ipaguery, Arroz, Arguella, know, guisada, oye, que te quinoa, what do want? But now,

Led Black (45:21)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (45:27)
I started convincing people to open up sit down restaurants so we can compete with South of 96th Street. And we started getting things like Guadalupe, ⁓ Juana, Guadalupe, have Mamawana.

Led Black (45:36)
2007, yep.

Octavio Blanco (45:38)
yeah, remember Guadalupe.

Zead Ramadan (45:41)
I gave them, I supported their license against a big backlash against them. And I basically said, listen, I grew up not too far from, we also lived on two fourth and post. I know inward like the back of my hand. said, look, and if anybody remembers, there's drug dealing happening on that block pretty extensively. I said, either you can have the drug dealers hold up that block for another decade, right? Or we can have some.

Octavio Blanco (46:01)
Hahaha

Zead Ramadan (46:10)
or we can have some economic development restaurant, effervescence scene. I know there's a problem potentially with both. I prefer the one that has less crime. That was my...

Led Black (46:13)
you

You know what,

I'm blown away by this, because you know, the fact that you were instrumental in Mama Juana, right? Like when you think about what Mama Juana did to Dyckman, right? It was the pioneer on that block and everything. And opened up that whole strip. You know what I mean? And it's funny because, you know, I grew up on Wadsworth. I grew up up the hill, right? But I didn't go down to Dyckman because as you know, we used to have those stupid petty beefs, right? That I couldn't go down the hill.

Zead Ramadan (46:34)
Open up the rest of that.

Yeah.

Led Black (46:49)
But to me, Dyckman was a backwater, right? But that mama Juana opened it up. The Dyckman strip is the center of, you know, really like the center of, when it used to be one of the first, now it's Dyckman. And you had a hand in that, that's amazing, man.

Zead Ramadan (46:58)
Yes. You know.

Octavio Blanco (47:03)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (47:05)
I went to wash my car right on Dyckman Street, right down the block, and I stopped and I looked at the stores. I'm really bummed out that the Parkview Diner closed, by the way. I was shocked. I stood in front of it I was like, it looks dark in there. What's going on? The door's closed. I went in. I said, what? I just saw it open a couple of months ago. But I stopped there and I looked.

Octavio Blanco (47:17)
Yeah.

Led Black (47:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (47:27)
They were having a

problem with their sewage, think. There was like an issue there. Something.

Zead Ramadan (47:33)
I don't know, but I thought they had some of the best brunches in uptown. The Go Green Omelet was one of my favorites, But I just looked at that block. You know, had Mama Sushi, but that was big for us. And the marina, we lobbied the park department to stop fussing and do something with the marina. And the marina went through its trials and tribulations. It went through its like...

Octavio Blanco (47:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (47:58)
La Marina on a yacht, know, Jay-Z days, you know, to where it was like super hype, but some bad things happened. And now it's kind of stabilized into more of a community thing. But, you know, we got that up and running, you know, and, you know, just a lot of the first bike dirt bike riding trail behind Washington. I ribbon cut that, you know, ribbon cut the Manny Ramirez field. These were all things that

Octavio Blanco (48:17)
Yeah.

Led Black (48:21)
That's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (48:26)
you know, in the early 2000s, we really advocated for and it, and you know, it was really important because I think that Washington Heights and our district was one of the few, if not the only district in the year 2000 to 2010 that experienced a 10 % economic development growth in the state of New York. I remember seeing a stat, Marty Collins showed it to me, I think. And the funny thing is in that period, it was either

Me or Marty Collins, and maybe one other person for a couple years, that was the Economic Development Chair of Community Board 12. But that's because we really wanted to help bring our community along in a responsible way, right? So it's kind of like, hey, why is the money leaving the district? because we don't have the facilities for weddings. Well, hey, somebody build it and we'll support you.

Octavio Blanco (49:09)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (49:18)
You know, we don't have these nice restaurants where could take my daughter on her Sweet 16 with her friends. Well, you know, start opening it up and we'll start supporting it. You know, and that was really, really vital for us. And to me, I know that investing into your own community is the key and having the money go here. You know, when ADC said they wanted to build a parking lot on 108, we lobbied for a parking lot because all the schools were there.

because people were going around like vultures looking for a parking spot all night long. We said, listen, we want a six story parking lot on 184th and Broadway. EDC said, okay. And we said, we want a developer from our community that looks like us. Don't have somebody parachute in from another community that doesn't look like us and you give them and they make the money off of our community. want to, so Jose Espinall got the deal, you know, with ET management. And so we got

a Dominican developer from our community to develop the six floor parking lot. And he goes, man, I need an anchor tenant. And we, know, it was, I'll never forget me and Marty Collins sat and said, what could be a big tenant that could pay a big rent, but we don't want to hurt the local merchants. We don't want a home Depot because they would kill every ferreteria right? We don't want a CVS because they can kill, you know, all the little mom and pops say Hesu pharmacy on 177th street, right?

Led Black (50:36)
Right, right.

Zead Ramadan (50:42)
We wanted our people to keep the money in their pocket. Staples. Nobody does office equipment in Washington Heights. It was literally like that. go, Marty, call Staples. Marty came back to me that day and said, yo, they're going to send the rep down this week. I was like, what? It really happened? And so next thing you know, Staples has been there for all this time.

Led Black (50:48)
right.

Yeah, and Staples is an asset too for the businesses of the community, right, which is great. For shipping, for all those things, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (51:03)
It's a great staples. Yeah. Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (51:06)
All the schools,

all the schools, office equipment. And so we were able to connect them to all the yeshivas and the schools in the area. And now everybody can get their office equipment from there. now, but we wanted them to be healthy so they could pay rent to this developer who's doing the parking lots for the community. Now people are getting home at home to eat dinner with their family instead of sitting in the car waiting for a parking that's never going to happen till 10 o'clock at night and then get a ticket because they

Octavio Blanco (51:34)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (51:36)
got sick of it and parked on a hydrant anyway. That was my life. That was my life, man. I remember it well. I remember it well.

Octavio Blanco (51:38)
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I moved to the neighborhood in 1998. I lived on Cooper Street between Academy and 204. And I remember Dyckman. was like, you know, I was always bummed out because it was quiet. Yeah, it was quiet. But those, it was wide.

Zead Ramadan (51:48)
well.

Octavio Blanco (52:01)
there was a wide sidewalk and I was just like, I also grew up in Europe for many, years as a kid, as a kid. And so I had this affinity for eating outside and having sidewalks. And I was always amazed at what a waste that whole block was all the way down to Payson because it was like.

wow, you know, like you could have some really nice things and the park is right here and it's beautiful. And so yeah, I think it's a great thing that that happened.

Zead Ramadan (52:33)
I had traveled to Europe and what

you just said I used in my argument for the outdoor cafes, especially the one in Moana. said, and I actually, is anybody listening to this? I actually fabricated a fact because I wanted to win the argument. And I said, well folks, if you look at Europe, are people committing crimes around outdoor cafes? In fact,

Led Black (52:40)
Wow.

Octavio Blanco (52:40)
Yeah.

Led Black (52:46)
Hehehehehe

Zead Ramadan (52:59)
95 % of all outdoor cafes around his immediate vicinity doesn't have any crime. And right now that block has a lot of crime. Put an outdoor cafe, the crime will have to go away because you have witnesses everywhere. And they were like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, we're voting for the outdoor cafe. And so the Mamahuata Outdoor Cafe and all those outdoor cafes kind of came through that argument. But I said, we want to replicate a European scene. Whether you're in France or you're in Italy or in Spain, you're in anywhere in England, when there's an outdoor cafe, people are jovial.

Octavio Blanco (53:14)
You

Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (53:28)
You know, people are happy, you know, and it's fun, you know, and so no matter where you travel, to us Americans or us New Yorkers, we're like, wow, look at those like 200 people scrunched in together into this little space in the Outdoor Cafe. But I pushed for it because I really believed that it tempered crime and it brought stability to economic development. And that's what was happening. And we also supported 809. That, know, let me take it back.

Octavio Blanco (53:29)
Yeah.

Led Black (53:30)
Mm.

It does.

Octavio Blanco (53:47)
I think you're right. I think you're right.

Led Black (53:50)
Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (53:54)
yeah, yeah, I remember 809.

Zead Ramadan (53:58)
before 809.

Led Black (54:00)
That's right. Yeah. And it's wild because know, Qiskaya Plaza has become such an important, like it is the heart of the community now in so many ways. They do so many activations there and that's all because of the work you did. So thank you for that, man. And also tell us about you were at the beginning of NOMAA as well, the Northern Mahan Arts Alliance. What was that about?

Zead Ramadan (54:02)
before 8 on 9 and the former were there.

culture, music.

Octavio Blanco (54:19)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (54:25)
Well, actually, NOMAA awarded me on the 20th anniversary of the Art Stroll for being one of the founders of the Art Stroll. And it was at the United Palace, and I said, you know, I accepted the award, and I said, thank you for recognizing that I'm one of the founders of the Art Stroll. Or they wrote like he's the founder of the Art Stroll, and I said, let me make that correction for everybody right here, right now.

I accept this award on behalf of the people who started the Art Stroll and I will not take full credit for it. It was myself, Luis Miranda, Martin Collins, and Michael Fittleson. And without us four, who brought some element to the beginning of the Art Stroll, it probably would have had a hard time working out, right? As the chair of the community board, I was able to use the...

Led Black (55:12)
Right.

Zead Ramadan (55:17)
Bully Pulpit or the microphone or the podium to push the art scene. Luis Miranda agreed to put arts on the cover of the Manhattan Times 52 weeks a year. Michael was the editor, promised to cover art and put art in the local newspaper all the time. And Marty Collins, who I gave a pair of shoes to every other Christmas because he runs through his shoes, puts holes in them, my plastering and posting all the information and going to all these businesses and talking to them.

Led Black (55:40)
Hehehehehe

Zead Ramadan (55:46)
you know, with the one who is able to enroll all these local businesses and pass all this information out to all these. So all of us had a role and we always pushed, was really funny, I ended my talk and I said, I said, I remember when we would get artists together and tell them that we wanted to do this Arts Economic Development Partnership and we wanted to call it the Arts stroll

And sometimes they would be pessimistic and they'd be like, ah, I don't know if this thing's really going to come off the ground. What are these guys doing? And I remember telling them, Hey guys, let's do this. Let's stick with this and just imagine if we could be back in 20 years and say, look what we've done. Well, look what we've done. And so 20 years, it's been now, now it's like 22, 24 years. And after the

Octavio Blanco (56:33)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (56:40)
we started the art stroll, we needed to create an entity to kind of take it over because there was too much for the community board and the Manhattan Times to take on anymore. what happened is Luis and I were on the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Board and we received that the Empowerment Zone Board is supposed to help the arts as well. And they gave a $1 million contribution to Harlem Arts Alliance, a $1 million contribution to Association of Hispanic Artists in East Harlem.

So we started pounding the pavement, hey, we need a million dollars in Washington Heights as well to start the organization. And then they finally agreed and we created the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. And I was asked to be the first chair of the board. And I was there for the first seven years. And now NOMAA is in its going into his 20th year as well. Yeah. And so to me, you know, I take great

Led Black (57:28)
Amazing.

Octavio Blanco (57:29)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (57:33)
I but I don't stop and look back and just keep rolling with the, you know, so we started NOMAA and Luis, Luis and I, you know, I was the, I'll never forget, it Sandra's interview. We were interviewing Sandra Garcia Betancourt and I started, yeah, and Luis and I were interviewing her and somebody else and I started speaking in Spanish and she goes, I'll never forget, I'm looking at this guy saying,

Led Black (57:47)
I love her, she's awesome.

Zead Ramadan (58:00)
He kinda looks Latino, but he has this weird ass name, and he's speaking like a Dominican. I can't figure him out.

Octavio Blanco (58:06)
Yeah

Led Black (58:08)
You sound just like her. did a good impression too, by the way. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (58:10)
Now we're very close, we're very close. love Sandra. She's amazing, right.

And so she was a phenomenal ED for seven years. so we built this organization, we gave out $75,000 in grants, unheard of for a brand new not-for-profit in the arts. $75,000 to local artists, to complete projects, to give them the tools to work on their beautiful projects. And then Washington Heights, and it was like...

Octavio Blanco (58:26)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (58:36)
Boom! Because, artilikes seeds that dream beneath the snow.

Led Black (58:41)
Love that. That's a poem right there. That's a haiku. That's beautiful.

Zead Ramadan (58:43)
I'm not going to take credit from that. was what Khalil Gibran said, like

seeds dreaming beneath the snow, our hearts yearn for the spring. And so the thing is artists are like seeds and all you needed to do was water those seeds and the flowers were going to grow and our community was going to look more beautiful. We just didn't have that. We didn't have that mechanism.

And NOMA became the umbrella arts organization for the whole district. And so we knew that if we help the arts, things are to get more beautiful. I'll never forget. You know, so that was really important. And then it was to bring people uptown, right? And let me tell you something, because I have to mention this because you said to me, there anything you want to mention that people don't know? The first resolution I ever passed as the chairman of Community Board 12.

was the city of New York could not use our tax dollars to create maps of Manhattan that cut off at 96th Street or 125th or 145th because those maps and I you know it resolved. Hey I said you know I it was the Giuliani administration and I said

Led Black (59:49)
Wow.

Octavio Blanco (59:53)
They literally are erasing our community.

Zead Ramadan (1:00:01)
you're using our money to undermine us. You're using our money to erase us, to undermine our economic development, to undermine our historical, you know, sites and tourism sites. Well, you're basically forcing everybody to go to Central Park and South, like we're dangerous or we're scary. And people used to say, where you from? That's the Bronx, right? And we're like, no, it's part of Manhattan.

Led Black (1:00:28)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:00:30)
but they didn't know that because every map that they remember the stickers in the back of the taxis stopped at 96th Street or 110th Street or the City Guide. I remember negotiating with Christine Nichols who was Giuliani's girlfriend at the time and she was in charge of City Guide magazine and she said, we don't have room that the thing is not so big. I said to her, then do a fold out page with our tax dollars but don't you dare do a tax...

Octavio Blanco (1:00:35)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:00:57)
don't you dare do a map that cuts our community out or else you're undermining us literally. And so we were able to ensure that the city stopped producing those maps and travel, tourism, everything started really doubling and tripling from then on. But we had to promote it with good arts and we had to tell our cultural centers, get ready, the wave is coming.

Octavio Blanco (1:01:03)
⁓

Zead Ramadan (1:01:25)
And I think that that's something that we really, really help. But I take pride in that a lot because...

Octavio Blanco (1:01:30)
You

Led Black (1:01:30)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm blown away.

Octavio Blanco (1:01:30)
should. That's an incredible story. That's really amazing. And I had no idea. mean, think that's like, it's always baffled me why they did that. But I commend you for,

Zead Ramadan (1:01:35)
like you.

Led Black (1:01:42)
Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (1:01:43)
They weren't proud of us. Look, they weren't proud of us. And

we said to them, you're under the impression that tourists want this like packaged New York City, know, Broadway, tall buildings. You're under the impression that they don't want Latino food. You're under the impression that they don't want soul food. You're in front of that they don't want, you know, to go see Grant's Tomb, Riverside Church, the Apollo.

You know, all the different iconic places in Spanish Harlem and Central Harlem, and they don't want to see the Marshmallow Mansion or the Cloisters. Or, know, when they went to the Cloisters because it was part of the Met, they just took the train right up to 190th, got into the Cloisters at Fort Ryan Park, then came right back. And then they jumped on the train and hop-skipped over our community again. wow, this is really beautiful. What is that up there? It's the Palisades.

Led Black (1:02:23)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (1:02:28)
or experience an actual immigrant

community. Experience what an actual immigrant community feels like that's thriving instead of like a little, I mean, look, I love little Italy, nothing against little Italy, but there's no Italians really living in little Italy anymore. It's just not a thing anymore. I mean, I hate to say it, but. ⁓

Zead Ramadan (1:02:36)
Listen to it.

Exactly.

Led Black (1:02:45)
It's just restaurants, yeah, you're right.

Zead Ramadan (1:02:48)
Right, but that was essential, I thought,

to promote economic development, to promote our tourism sites, and to really just fairness. know, when I chaired the community board, you know what I discovered was the way to get to the city commissioners was I just said, they go, well, we're going to build this children's playground with this surface here. And I said, you know, I'd say, excuse me, yeah. Is that the same surface that you're using?

in the Charles Street renovation of that playground. I walked by it the other day and I took a picture for myself to make, know, to, I realized we're building a children's playground and I walked by two other children's playground, one in Chelsea and one in the West Village and I noticed the surfaces are different. And they're like, and I go, we want the same surface. Don't treat us, don't treat us any worse than you treat the other Manhattanites.

Octavio Blanco (1:03:34)
Hahaha.

Yeah, yeah.

Led Black (1:03:42)
You know what's so funny about that

Z-Ad? That what I realized is the fact that you're in the room makes the difference, right? And sometimes it's not even malicious, right? It's just they don't think about us. And the fact that, that's why we need more Z-Ads, right? But it's interesting, right? Because, you know, I began broadcasting Uptown Collective in 2010, right? And what I, the phrase that I came up with,

based off the Harlem Renaissance was the Uptown Renaissance, right? But what I realize it right now as I talk to you, a lot of what I was talking about, you personally had a hand in making, right? NOMAA, know, Dyckman Strip, you know.

Octavio Blanco (1:04:21)
You

Led Black (1:04:28)
the Shabazz Center, right? You had so much hands in what became the Uptown Renaissance. So was like, I've always been proud to know you. I've always been like, you know, a friend and a fan of yours. But now it's like, as I'm talking to you, I'm like, damn, this man is instrumental in so much of what makes Uptown now. Like, you know what mean? Like Uptown is the center of Manhattan in a lot of ways, center of New York City in a lot of ways. And it's amazing that, you know, my friend,

that also put me on several times is behind it all. So I'm just kind of like, wow, that's amazing.

Octavio Blanco (1:05:04)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:05:04)
You know,

it's, know, I never did anything alone, obviously. I always had a team. I always had people I trusted around me. You know, you wish you have people that you trust around you that you could work with and team up with on good projects. A lot of time, people don't understand the system and how to manipulate it to convince them to do the right thing. You know, I never thought I was advocating. I thought I was, hey, I'm going to lead you for you to do the right thing.

because by doing this to us, you're stabbing us in the back and that's not cool. But we're going to call it out in public so you could go and fix the path that you're taking, which is like, really the city was screwing Northern Manhattan. I don't care how you take it. That's how it was. Maybe they thought they were protecting tourists. Maybe they thought they couldn't handle culture, you know? But the thing was, is we're saying, no, we're good people.

Octavio Blanco (1:05:54)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:06:03)
We're hardworking people and we have a lot to see and a lot to learn from. And we want to learn from you and we want to benefit. We want a mutual benefit just like everybody else is getting one. And so it's really kind of, but we're working with people, you know, like my executive committee and the people that I work with on the community boards were phenomenal. You the people that that my staff at WHDCs are phenomenal. You know, it's like, I always try to put, I always try to be around good people.

And you know, what I tell my staff at WHDC is I say, guys, the coolest thing is to put your head on the pillow at night and smile, knowing that you're like Santa Claus 365 days of the year, not just one day, 365. And you guys have to think and we have to think collectively of ways and how we can benefit our community. And I think that also

Listen, I took leadership courses and stuff like that. I'm not here trying to take credit. If I don't do it, a bad leader is a person like Trump. He wants to take all the credit when something's good and he wants to defray all the credit when it's not good, right? No. It's like you have to say, I'm going to work with great people and we're in this together.

Led Black (1:07:13)
Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (1:07:13)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:07:20)
And that's what I told the artist. That's what I told the artist 20 years ago. That's what I tell my staff today. And by the way, if you don't nurture good leadership too, right? It's not about do what I tell you to do. It's let's do this together, learn from it, and then you're going to take over at some part. So a lot of the people that we work with are leaders in the community in a variety of different sectors, right?

Octavio Blanco (1:07:20)
And you're cl-

Zead Ramadan (1:07:47)
because we learned, we learned together and we grew together. And you know, it's funny that you say that because you know, what you said, led earlier, is that I was in a, like I sat in for somebody at a meeting today in Washington Heights. And I didn't know three fourths of the room, but I know the old G's, right? I know the Maria Lunas, I know the Steve Simons, you know, I know the Marty Engels, you know, I know the, you know, I know those people.

And I saw the Helen Morrick, was like, whoa, she's an OG to me, I OG, right? And so we were in a meeting and they were talking about developing new buildings, this org was talking about building, and they were like, we want to the community in this way and this way. And I was kind of stupefied because I was going, we've been here, we've done that. There are documents that list, like, so we think we can help the community in this way. was like, hey,

I once signed off on something with a 25 point kind of demand letter, but it turned out to be an agreement, right? With an institution that talked about how you could help the community. Why don't you look at that as a menu and say, oh, we can take 15 of these things and work the other ones. They might slow down the project. They cost too much, whatever it is to you. But at least you could go back to history. And then Maria Luna said, grab me at the end of the meeting. And she said, Zia,

The thing that worries me is a lot of people who are not aware of what, you know, the wheel that we created a long time ago, like they're trying to recreate it one at a time. When we already have a really good working wheel, they just have to go back and reference it. Right? And that's something that's really important because a lot of new people probably like I did when I was young, right? Is I probably thought, here's a brilliant idea. But of course somebody did it 30 years earlier. You know I mean? And nowadays,

Led Black (1:09:20)
Crying.

Zead Ramadan (1:09:33)
It's the same thing. You know, there's a lot of work that we did a long time ago and I find myself at meetings with people who are oblivious to a lot of the work we did, right? They got us to where we were and and.

But it's important for leadership to know like what happened before you like if somebody's building a building I'd be like Did anybody build an as of right building in this community before could somebody look into that? yeah, you know, Wayne Benjamin will be like, of course we did, you know and so and so forth, right and I actually if you ask Wayne Benjamin who say he'll say this guy stalked me for a month until he forced me knocked on my door in my house with a pen and was like sign this you're coming on the community board whether you like it or not, you know

Led Black (1:09:53)
down.

Yeah

Yeah

Zead Ramadan (1:10:19)
When

I realized he was an MIT planner and architect and he lived in our district, I was like, we have nobody with your knowledge on our community board and we need that. And I appointed him, I broke a rule actually, an unspoken rule and appointed him as the chair of the land use committee, the most powerful committee in his first year. You didn't give a first year person a chair. But my argument was when Wayne Benjamin opens up his eyes in the morning, he has more knowledge about.

He was the Harlem CDC executive director at the time. has more knowledge about zoning, land use, ULURPS, everything than all of us put together. Would anybody like to?

Led Black (1:10:53)
Zia,

you're the ultimate dot connector, man. I'm kind of blown away by that, Before we let you go, I got to ask you, we got to bring this up. How you feel about Zoran, man? What's your thoughts? What does he bring to the table? Because we're super excited. I'm super excited. Over the moon.

Octavio Blanco (1:10:57)
Yeah, man.

Zead Ramadan (1:11:10)
How

many people listen to this?

Led Black (1:11:13)
Well, we get about 20k now a month, right? Something like that.

Zead Ramadan (1:11:15)
Okay.

I didn't say this. He did.

Led Black (1:11:21)
Okay.

Zead Ramadan (1:11:21)
I

was standing with Robert Jackson at an event.

and queens. they said, assemblyman Zahra Madani, and he goes on the stage and he says, about 10 years ago, I sat down with this Muslim dude running for office. And I said to him, I'm trying to decide whether I should go into politics or not. And he said to me, absolutely. I think you got what it takes. And I remember what I said to him. I said,

Led Black (1:11:47)
That was you? Wow, that's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (1:11:49)
He said, and the dude inspired me to get into politics. I was in college and I was trying to decide what direction to go in. And he basically inspired me to get into politics and that was Ziyad Ramadan. And I was like, what? And he walked over and shook my hand. I said, hey man, pull down your mask. And he pulled down his mask and he had this beard, right? Cause of COVID. I was like, you're that skinny kid. I said, you're that skinny kid that asked me.

Should you run for office? And I said, I remember what I said to you exactly. I said to him, you have a weird name.

Octavio Blanco (1:12:22)
Hahaha

Zead Ramadan (1:12:24)
But so do I. And in post 9-11, New York City with a weird name and being a Muslim is a challenge. That's what I'm, I was going through that in my 2013 campaign at that time. I thought I was very qualified, but people with my name, no matter what, all the things that I did for the community, I wasn't going to be, now that's to your first question, Octavio. When you said,

Led Black (1:12:26)
Bye.

Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (1:12:51)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:12:53)
have you ever felt any kind of thing? Well, I thought my credentials spoke for themselves and a lot of people knew that or else Bill Lynch would not have accepted me as a client, the great Bill Lynch. And yeah, I didn't fare well in that election because I had this weird name in post 9-11 America. And I said to him, but you have to transcend that. You have to...

Be a reflection of your hard work and your sincerity for the community. Join every organization in your community, but run in a place where there's a lot of people who are similar to you, not like me. I ran in a community with no Arabs, you So that was a dumb thing. If I ran in Bay Ridge, it might've been a different story, right? With all the Arab community there, or a story around Steinway. You know, there's a lot of Arabs there. It could've been different, because my name would've been familiar, not unfamiliar. And so I said to him,

Led Black (1:13:45)
Right. Right.

Zead Ramadan (1:13:48)
But one thing that I said I remember was that your ability, your eloquence and your ability to explain highly complex situations to the lay person is off the charts.

Led Black (1:14:02)
He's the greatest communicator the Democratic parties ever have. Ever. He's a-

Octavio Blanco (1:14:03)
is ⁓ excellent.

Zead Ramadan (1:14:05)
Somebody said Obama

and they said no this guy's better somebody's better and I was like that's crazy so I said to him bro you're in college and you're talking to me like this I said I got at the politics into my 30s I'm running for office in my mid 40s and you're better than me right now so I plead with you stay in it because

Led Black (1:14:09)
Better, better, better, he's better.

Octavio Blanco (1:14:09)
Yeah, better.

Led Black (1:14:31)
That's amazing.

Zead Ramadan (1:14:32)
ability to talk about

very difficult situations and you're going to handle, I said remember, you're Muslim in New York City, you're going to be attacked. But I don't know anybody at your age that can do what you do right now. So stick with it and God willing you'll do good work for the community. That's really what I said. By the way, don't change because you're going to be hyped out but don't let greed, lust, money, power, any of that thing change you.

Octavio Blanco (1:14:34)
Wow.

Zead Ramadan (1:15:01)
And if you change, you're going to lose. And he called me up before he ran. says, know, Z, I want to, I'm thinking about running for mayor. And I said to him, bro, if you talk about those hard issues and you talk about the hard issues that New Yorkers care about, and you tell the truth that New York is goddamn expensive, that nobody could afford anything. In our decade, 20,000 people moved to the Western Bronx from Washington Heights and it was.

to try to get cheaper rent. I saw that. Idanis was the assembly, was the council member at the time, and he and I, and his district was gonna have to go into West Harlem, Western Bronx, because part of the Dominican community was like migrating to the Western Bronx because of the cost of living. So we knew that that was happening. And so I said to him, you have to talk about the hard things. If you cover those issues that really mean things to...

hardworking New Yorkers and don't be scared of that, right? And challenge them, be a man. And I said, you're gonna be, it's gonna be, and I don't mean be a man like being mad, I just mean like have a stiff chin because people are gonna be punching at you all day long. Stand your ground, stick up for the people, the working class and the people who make New York, New York. And I said, and no matter whether you win or lose, you put those conversations at the table.

then you're worth every penny that I invest in here or anybody else invests into you because the goal is to put those conversations on the table to support the issues of justice of hardworking New Yorkers who are suffering and fleeing New York, know, dime a dozen. You do that, you got my vote. And so that's how I feel about them.

Octavio Blanco (1:16:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

That's incredible. That's incredible.

Led Black (1:16:44)
Dude, you never cease to amaze me. You never cease to amaze me. Like what? That's amazing.

Octavio Blanco (1:16:49)
Well, listen, look, we've been on for an hour, 20 minutes, but I don't wanna let you go yet. I don't wanna let you go yet. I wanna ask you, first of all, I wanna see if I can maybe break some news here. mean, first I wanna ask you, what does 2026 look like for WHDC? That's my first question. And part of that question is, and Let agrees with me, know, Uptown.

is gonna be missing the night market. And I know that you had a lot to do with bringing that night market and making it what it was. mean, there's a team and you worked with the... ⁓

Zead Ramadan (1:17:32)
Thank

Octavio Blanco (1:17:33)
Yeah, Marco. But we want something like that coming back. What do have to give to us for 2026? What can you tell us?

Led Black (1:17:33)
Margo.

Zead Ramadan (1:17:44)
So, yeah, I was proud to have, you know, gone to the Bronx night market, met him and said to him, how'd you like to do this, but 10 times bigger in a cooler neighborhood? And he goes, are you crazy? I can't get any politics done. Their community board is this now. I was like, we can get it done. I just need to get people out of their houses during COVID. And, you know, we'll help you out. We'll partner together to make sure that...

Led Black (1:17:56)
Hahaha.

Zead Ramadan (1:18:12)
partner together, meaning like, I'll help in any way that I can. Obviously the business model and everything is all him. And we were just going to be sponsors and we were gonna get the word out and we're gonna tell all these organizations and tell the community and convince the community board. I remember telling community board nine, if you don't approve this guy really quickly, Brooklyn is trying, is pulling him by the hair.

And I said, so please, please let's support this initiative. And then like, was wildly beyond our expectations. The first day, 5,000 people, the second day, 10,000 people. And it's been like, you know, I don't think they've ever dropped under 5,000 people for the past five years. So he said that he wants to end it. So we're in, we're in conversation about trying to do something for 2026 that, know, we love it.

When our community and people who look like us from our, you know, our community get out and have a great time, you know, I took a walk with the judge in Vosa Rivers. Vosa Rivers, people don't know, you know, besides being like the arts and posario and the guru of Northern Manhattan, was a retired cop.

And when we walked through the Bronx night market, Boza with his very soft voice in front of me and the judge turns to Marco and says, I don't see police here. There's a lot of people, hundreds of people here. I don't see one cop. says, we like the vibe better when they're not, you it's like, you ever see bar fly? Okay. You have to see bar fly. It's a great movie. Mickey Rourke should have won an Oscar for it. Bar fly. But there was a line that he said,

Octavio Blanco (1:19:47)
No.

Zead Ramadan (1:19:55)
They said something about cops, or they said something about government, or they said something about authority. He goes, it's about Blutowski, the writer, how they discovered him, right? So he goes, well, I don't mind that much, but I like it better when they're not around. So basically, it's not that we don't like cops or we don't like support and they're defending our community. It just made sense that they'd be at the

Octavio Blanco (1:20:04)
⁓ okay.

Hahaha!

Zead Ramadan (1:20:22)
perimeter of the thing, making sure that everybody comes in is cool and that they're at the ends in case of anything happens. But if not, walking through the thing, kind of like, it's like, are walking through? are we here? Why are you making us look feel? I went to Chicago and I went to Detroit. I went to Greetown and I went to another place and let me tell you, they had like, you know how the ice guys look?

Led Black (1:20:36)
messes up the vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:20:49)
but they had armor. mean like bulletproof vest, big ass gun and they're walking through thinking that they're making people feel safe. And let me tell you something, I felt unsafe. I'm like, you got a machine gun walking through a crowd. Let's say somebody does something. What are you gonna do? Shoot up the crowd? So I was like, I don't want this dude around. Please stay on the perimeter. You know, and intimidate bad people from walking in at all.

or intimidate bad people who want to, who have a plan to do something bad by just being a deterrent. And in five years, I don't think they've had one serious incident, not one. And I think that's fantastic. And we're to do something in 2026, hopefully to continue to figure out ways to get the community out, to be enriched, to be educated, to enjoy Northern Manhattan because the coolest place in the world.

Led Black (1:21:23)
Right.

Not one.

That's right, that's right. Number one in the entire world. And Zia, you have a lot to do with it, man. So thank you so much, brother. Thank you for being on the show. I think you were so good, you're gonna have to do a part two at some point, brother, because I don't think we covered it all.

Octavio Blanco (1:21:42)
Yeah, that's right.

And now we certainly didn't.

Zead Ramadan (1:21:56)
My pleasure, my

pleasure being with you guys.

Led Black (1:21:58)
Thank you, Ziad. Thank you so much, brother.

Octavio Blanco (1:21:59)
Yeah, thank

you. Thank you so much. Before we let you go, please audience, subscribe. Subscribe to this show. And we didn't mention it today. Subscribe to the show. No, this is great. what you always say is like, this what we're doing right here is historic.

Led Black (1:22:06)
yes, right. We didn't mention it today. Please subscribe to the show, y'all.

Zead Ramadan (1:22:09)
You know, you guys are getting the real right here, man. This is where it's at, you know.

Led Black (1:22:12)
That's right.

Octavio Blanco (1:22:19)
We're preserving the history of our community. And Z-Admin, like, I'm just happy that I can be a part of bringing your story to our community because, you you moved here at five, you grew up here, you're from here, you're born or raised, maybe not born, but raised, you know, like, it's incredible.

Led Black (1:22:22)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Zead Ramadan (1:22:35)
Listen, real quickly, I tell people

Led Black (1:22:37)
Yeah.

Zead Ramadan (1:22:39)
I'm a Palestinian, I'm a Muslim, I'm an Arab, was born in Kuwait, Jordanian citizenship, I'm American, but my essence is I'm a New Yorker from Washington Heights. That's what I am.

Octavio Blanco (1:22:49)
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Led Black (1:22:49)
That's that's right,

that's right. That's hustle squared right there, love it.

Zead Ramadan (1:22:54)
who

comes through all the time. ⁓

Led Black (1:22:56)
That's

right. Zia, thank you so much, brother.