Knowing my luck, trekking up to the Apollo at 5:30 when the viewing was set to end at 8 was probably a bad idea. But I kinda figured the experience of hanging out in Harlem for the whole thing would be more interesting then the act of walking by a dead body in a casket for five seconds. I bought a large Dunkin Donuts coffee, a nip of Crown Royal whiskey, mixed 'em together and got on the A train. I walked up Fredrick Douglass Blvd. (the street to the west of the Apollo) and got to midway between 128th and 129th where I finally was able to get on line to go inside, about four blocks from the Apollo. I later heard from a cop that there was a line just as long on 7th Avenue (one block east of the Apollo) that went "quicker". Damn. Almost as soon as I got there the cops told the people all around me that they had to cut off the line at a spot in front of us and told us to go home.
People were mad so they changed up and said we could wait but they kept carrying this barricade and moving it up to the spot where they cut off the line, which was literally like 10 people in front of me (there had to be close to 5,000 people between the two lines, even at this late hour). The people all around me were mostly older black folks in their 50s and they definitely weren't buying what these white cops were saying, and saying Al Sharpton should come out and tell them himself since he organized it. One guy kept repeating how it was just like the lines when James used to play at the Apollo, and that most people got in.
When we got up to the last block before 125th Street, all these people in their apartments above were playing James Brown records out of their windows for the people on the street, which sounded and felt very surreal. Anyway that's the point where another cop on a megaphone showed up and basically said you ain't getting in. Getting in didn't seem 100% hopeless but at this point I didn't care, I had to pee so bad from three hours of whiskey and coffee drinking''I was glad to get off line and go find a bathroom. I saw Pete Rock on the corner, talking to a very deep street team for some rapper named Ragu or something like that. I asked Pete if I could take a flick with him and he said yeah, though he kept talking to this street team dude so I just snapped one of him real quick.
After I found a toilet I walked down the south side of 125th, across from the Apollo, where people were standing, waiting to see if they brought the casket back out the front. I saw Kool Herc standing all by himself! I said 'Yo Herc, can I get a flick with you?' and he said "No, man, it's not picture time." I was like "Well, it's an honor, just wanted to ask" and we shook hands. I bought a not particularly impressive photo of James someone printed off of a computer for $1 so I'd have something I could take home (it's pinned to the fabric in my cubicle). When I went into the train station to go home, these two drunk (or crazy) old guys with James Brown "I'm Black and I'm Proud" buttons were getting in the face of some random dude and saying that they saw the body in the Apollo, and it was a mannequin.