On the heels of a Starbucks-like uptown blanketing by Aphrodite, another Harlem cleaners opened this past weekend. Marcel, on the corner of 115th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, is up and running and offering 50 percent off.

At this rate, I will know the summer of 2006 as the summer I never paid full price for dry cleaning.

And speaking of openings, UPTOWNflavor today produces a CNNMoney article delving into moves like Chuck E. Cheese's into Harlem.

As UPTOWNflavor writes, "the article offers some statistics that might be a little surprising to some. As the cost of living rises and wages decrease for the middle class 'research shows that inner-city residents with lower per capita income tend to spend a higher percentage of that income on retail purchases.' Harlem is used as the model of what is defined as 'inner-city penetration.'"