I have never been terribly involved in local politics or even community organizing. I think that stems from my personal history of being moved around so much in my early life. We never lived anywhere long enough to justify getting too deep into whatever community we were living in at the moment. When I was in my early adulthood, I was busy with other priorities and it always felt like local stuff was less important. I understood the adage “Think globally, but act locally”, but while I was comfortable with the first part, the second part never became a part of my drill. When you live in NYC, I think most people are more my way than not though some people do get imbedded in their block or neighborhoods. The closest I ever got to that was from 2015 – 2017 when we moved to Staten Island while I was trying to build the New York Wheel. Even though Staten Island is not a small town (there are 500,000 residents in the Borough), it is more “local” than any other part of NYC and the physical focal point of the community is clearly at the ferry terminal on the North Shore, right where we were building the Wheel and right where Kim and I chose to live, overlooking New York Harbor.
During those Staten Island years, the community outreach was a big part of the job because the project needed the support of the City and that started and ended at Borough Hall in St. George, Staten Island…a few blocks from our home and the Wheel site. The fabric of the community was made up of a political layer that was a tad confusing because it was largely Republican, but the North Shore was specifically Democratic on account of its more marginalized communities and older, more war-torn harbor-town status. The cultural layer of the community consisted of a number of institutions ranging from museums to educational institutions (mostly the College of Staten Island, for which our friend and neighbor Gary was the Provost), to parks of various sorts. There was an entire not-for-profit circuit of galas and fundraisers that were frequented by the Staten Island upper echelon (strangely enough, about 400 people of substance…both wealth and/or power). We were immediately included in that array and we attended more functions and were given more awards than I ever had been in my life. This included Kim in that she became a board member of the St. George Theater, and was equally in the thick of this community flow.
It was an interesting process and I must say that there were some aspects of it which I liked. It is always nice to be embraced by a community, regardless of their motivations. It established an immediate social and friend network for us which, if we didn’t think about it too much, was quite pleasant, I could pick up the phone to anyone who was anyone on Staten Island and they not only knew who I was, but they were willing to talk to me or meet with me. I was someone who everyone wanted to know. And since my project was generally, but not universally liked, I was also known and recognized by far more people than those who I formally knew. I would have people come up to me on the ferry crossing and talk to me like they knew me, and based on the local news coverage (newspaper and TV), they pretty much did know me and what I was about…at least as it concerned Staten Island.
I have owned this hilltop retreat for thirteen years now and lived here for more than 5 years at this point. The COVID era began the month after we moved here, so there was nothing normal about our early years here in terms of the social interaction. We pretty much knew the three homeowners on our block, right up until one of them up and died of COVID in the early days. The houses on either side of us have turned over to younger families with whom we are quite friendly. The older couple across the street (Winston and Kathleen) that has been here from the start and with whom we are equally friendly have the distinction of being historically engaged in the local community. Winston is a military veteran who worked for a while for the county and was those well-positioned to be the point man when we formed a PRD (Private Road Development) to have the county take care of our roads (this had been a private development when it began). Winston went around with his clipboard those ten or so years ago and got more or less all of the residents to sign up to have roadwork costs added to our tax assessments. The topic may not have been a happy one, but everyone seemed to appreciate the effort and what resulted was a community contact list and map showing who was who in the hood.
In the last five years, for reasons I cannot really explain, we have taken it upon ourselves to host two neighborhood parties. The first was for our neighbor Mary’s departure for Denver in 2021. The second was last year, just for general community spirit. Everyone (defined as a majority of perhaps 70% of the residents) seemed to chip in and appreciate and attend the effort. Given the amount of proselytizing it takes to gather together a community party (some love it and some not so much), there was a standing joke that I was becoming the mayor of High Vista Hilltop. That is the name I have given our enclave since High Vista Road runs pretty much through most of it. The name also has a ring like the Del Boca Vista development made famous in Seinfeld as the place where his parents retired to in Florida. This hilltop has become mostly a little Sun City all by itself. There are perhaps still 25% of the residents that aren’t retired, but mostly this is a retirement community that doesn’t happen to carry that label on it, has no gates, but has a decidedly aging population of residents.
Recently, one of the residents sent out an email to the old gang email list (some 40 names) asking for an updated contact list. I responded with the most recent one, but was somewhat embarrassed that what I had was not well organized or very complete and updated, That caused me to decide to take on the task of doing a proper update of the contact list and community map. For someone my age, I am reasonably proficient at spreadsheets and computer graphics (all those years of presentations). I figured out an approach to updating both items and set about gathering updated information once I had figured out the gaps. The gaps are basically homes that have been built or traded hands and email addresses and phone numbers that are out of date. To begin with, the “Home Phone” column should be altogether removed except older populations sometimes have vestigial land lines and want those included on such a list (10 out of the 60 homes….and I think one of those residents may have deceased). One of the unfortunate, but very real aspects of this update is the need to purge spouses that have died or moved on. By my count there are another five of those. There is what is known in the investment world as “survivorship bias” in that if some life-changing event does happen, the surviving spouse often just moves on and the change gets forgotten in the community stats.
This is still a growing community as in the last ten years there have been at least fifteen new homes built and there are another three or four in process. That has resulted in the email list doubling to about 85. I have finished the task and redone both map and contact list and sent both out. Immediately, five people have emailed back with corrections, additions and deletions. I will wait a few days to gather any added errata, and then resend an updated version. let’s put it this way from this boy in the hood, if I wanted to run for mayor of High Vista Hilltop, I think I might now be able to eek out a majority since I may be the only universally recognizable member of the community…and as I have said, at least I haven’t been sot at yet.