New York

IN 1969, Samuel Hargress bought his Harlem jazz bar and the surrounding building for US$35,000. Half a century later, he says real estate brokers keep pestering him to sell - for US$10 million.

Such is the breakneck pace of gentrification in one of the most storied neighbourhoods of Manhattan, for decades a heartland of African-American culture that critics now complain is undergoing intrusive - and whiter - change.