NEW YORK — From the Barclays Center and the ACC tournament it's about a 15-minute walk north, a little less than a mile up Fort Greene Place and across Lafayette and DeKalb Avenues, through the edge of Fort Greene Park and then, finally, a right on Auburn Place.
Gone are the places to shop or to eat, the comforts of cosmopolitan New York. Now, people walk down this street seeking hope, maybe another chance.
Their destination is a little ways down toward the corner: 39 Auburn Place. The gate is open on a gray and wet Wednesday afternoon. An old flag pole stands outside. A man walks out smoking a cigarette. Others slowly file in, where someone else is in line.
The man is wearing Air Jordan sneakers. A Jumpman silhouette graces the tongue.
Does he know the history of the place, that almost 60 years ago now Michael Jordan was born here?
"Oh yeah," he says casually, though he doesn't want to give his name. "He was born in New York, yeah?"
He was — right here in this exact building, back when it used to be Cumberland Hospital.
"Oh, really?" the man says, sounding incredulous. He doesn't know what to say, other than that he's a basketball fan — loves Jordan; loves his shoes.
The hospital where Michael Jordan entered the world 59 years ago is now a homeless shelter. A corroding metal sign hangs above the door outside the entrance:
"City of New York
Department of Homeless Services
Auburn Family Reception Center
39 Auburn Place"
There's no sign or historical marker, nothing to commemorate the past. The man hasn't considered that this is hallowed ground, the birthplace of one of the world's most recognizable figures. He reaches down and ties his sneakers. He waits to go inside. He's here to work, he says, but others walk in looking for a place to stay, nowhere else to go.
The doors swing open, and signs on the walls offer an indication of the conditions residents and employees face inside. The signs are next to the metal detectors, hanging near where people have to sign in. They offer warnings and rules.
No guns. No arrows. No swords. No scissors, incense or hammers. No ice picks. No daggers. No brass knuckles or ninja stars or screwdrivers. No raw meats, hairdryers, hot plates or metal hangers with hooks. No glass items. No candles. No skateboards. No cameras. No recording.
On it goes.
A well-dressed man appears from the other side of the metal detector. He offers a firm handshake. He has a distinguished look, glasses and flecks of gray in his beard. He speaks with the tone of wisdom. His name is Bert Lindsay and he helps run this place. He's worked here for 37 years, he says. He knows the history, and can detail the room where Jordan entered the world decades ago.
"Please, come with me," he says.
The Jumpman's roots
North Carolina claims Michael Jordan, and rightfully so given his roots there, but he was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 17, 1963, the fourth of Deloris and James' five children. The family moved to North Carolina when he was a young child and he grew up in Wilmington, where the popular version of his story often begins.
It has long been distilled into mythological snippets — the time Jordan didn't make the varsity at Laney High early in his high school years, and how he used that slight to fuel his unquenchable drive; his arrival at the University of North Carolina in 1981 and his true arrival in March of '82, when he hit the shot against Georgetown in the national title game; his NBA ascent in Chicago, where he became perhaps the greatest ever, an icon who still transcends sport.
Almost 20 years after his final NBA game, Jordan's influence remains everywhere. It was here this week at the ACC tournament in the Barclays Center, where seven of the conference's 15 teams showed up wearing Nike swooshes on their jerseys, and where his old college team, UNC, wears his silhouette on their uniforms and shoes.
The Barclays Center is eight-tenths of a mile from Jordan's place of birth. Almost directly between the two points is a store with Jordan's silhouette hanging above the entrance. It's the Jumpman logo, specific to Nike's Jordan Brand line of apparel, and on one recent afternoon people walk or bike or run past that store, unaware that the man who inspired the logo above and all of the merchandise inside first arrived on this Earth about a half-mile away.
"I knew he was born in Brooklyn," says Josh Core, who manages this store on Fulton Avenue, which is home to an outdoor mall. "I just didn't know where."
The store is all Jordan stuff, nothing else. Jordan shoes. Jordan socks. Jordan shirts. Jordan sweats.
Here, one could create an entire wardrobe of Jordan clothing. It would include a lot of the Jumpman.
The shoes, various models of Air Jordans, go for $130 or $140 or $150 or even $190. There are special Jordans, ones with rare color combinations, or tributes to his mom ("Dear Deloris" is sewn on the side of that one) or his college coach ("Dear Dean," it goes on the Carolina blue low-top).
The store carries close to 100 models of Air Jordans, Core says, and some of those models sell out very quickly — like a recent rare Carolina blue and white version of one particular type of Jordans. The store is only one of three like it still standing, Core says, and perhaps there's a deeper meaning that it's so close to his birthplace, some sort of cosmic significance.
Or, perhaps, it's simply a good location, along a trendy outdoor mall in a trendy part of New York. ACC basketball players have walked in this week, looking things over. Core says he has seen players from Syracuse. Louisville. He suspects others might make their way here, too, because the word is out that the store is a destination, what with the selection.
"Famous people come in all the time," Core says. "Spike Lee actually stops by. You have actors I can't name."
All to buy gear, or at least peruse it, with one of corporate America's most recognizable logos. In the store, Jordan is not a man as much as an idea, a representation of something — an image or a lifestyle or a mantra — that millions of people wish to associate with themselves. Some of them walk into this store and pay a lot of money to walk out with a Jordan logo they'll display with pride.
In the logo he's forever in flight. Ascending. Dunking. Winning.
"It's pretty fascinating to know that it's 15 minutes from here," Core says of Jordan's place of birth.
39 Auburn Place
Back in the shelter, Bert Lindsay is telling a story while he walks.
"Step in here," he says, while he enters an office and introduces the staffers sitting behind desks, keeping things going at the Auburn Family Reception Center. "This is the heartbeat of the shelter."
It's a facility that has had its share of problems. Public records online indicate that the elevators, especially, are a cause of frustration; that they break and often need repairs. Overall, the website lists 79 complaints, but only seven filed in the past couple of years. The shelter has at times been the focus of outcry.
One story in a local publication, the Brooklyn Ink, characterized the shelter as "one of the worst in New York," citing its critics. The story, published in 2011, reported the shelter had "become a legend of sorts," and that "neighborhood organizations, advocacy groups for the homeless and seven interviewed residents say that it is infamous as one of the worst shelters for homeless families in the city."
Lindsay acknowledges the meals aren't great.
"Basically airline food," he says. "People complain about it. But they're never hungry."
It has been a shelter for 37 years, as long as Lindsay has worked here. Before that it was a hospital. There are old public housing projects nearby and those, Lindsay says, were built to accommodate soldiers returning from World War II. There's a lot of history here, and Jordan isn't the only prominent person who was born inside Cumberland Hospital.
So was Mike Tyson, Lindsay says. And Bernard King, the longtime New York Knick.
"Spike Lee wasn't born here," Lindsay says, refuting a rumor that he was. "But he lived in the area. He lived actually a block from here. And he adopted this shelter, for a long time. Christmas parties. He donated Christmas toys. He brought other celebrities in to do shows."
There's no historical marker —"no, not at all," Lindsay says — and it feels odd that there's not, as though there should be something to mark who entered the world at Cumberland and give notice of the stories that began here. Everyone has a beginning, and before Jordan became a global icon, or even a young North Carolinian, his beginning came here, in a 10-story brick building near a park.
A living history
Lindsay sounds proud he knows the history, as if he's the caretaker of a secret.
"As soon as I get some clearance," he says, "I'll take you up to the fourth floor and actually see the room where Michael Jordan was" born. Not many people know what the room signifies, he says.
"Only people that have been here for a protracted period of time actually know the history," he says. "They know it by word of mouth. And sometimes during some of the (NBA) telecasts, (broadcaster) Mark Jackson will mention that Michael Jordan is not a North Carolinian by birth.
"That he's actually a Brooklynite by birth."
Lindsay smiles at that. Jordan is a North Carolinian, "a Tar Heel," as he says in the promotional video that sometimes plays during UNC basketball games inside the Smith Center. He's a lot of things to a lot of people.
An inspiration, perhaps, to the players competing less than a mile away in the ACC tournament. A status symbol, maybe, to the people walking into the Jordan Brand store nearby. A connection to the past, living history, for Lindsay and those at the shelter, if they know the story. There's no indication that anybody does, beyond the people that work there.
Lindsay sounds eager to share more, "if our PR department OKs it," he says.
"I'll show you the room," he says of Jordan's birthplace, "and I'll even show you some of the courts in the area where some of the guys that were playing in the ACC, played."
But then the lead goes cold. Lindsay stops returning messages. He doesn't have approval, apparently, to offer more of a look behind the closed doors of the Auburn Reception Center.
A little less than a mile away, a basketball tournament goes on, Jordan's old school wearing his likeness. And even closer to the shelter, people walk past the store with his image out front, hanging high. And here, where he was born, some of New York's most vulnerable arrive seeking help and a hand.
"We never close," Lindsay says. "We don't turn anybody away."
Outside, the gate remains open, like always. It's cold and rainy, a good day to be inside. The guards near the door wait for new arrivals.
Fifty-nine years ago the origin of flight began here, to use an expression of a Nike ad campaign. Jordan's parents carried him out of a hospital and into the world. Now the location of his birth is a place of hope and desperation, depending on one's perspective.
