The Isle of Staaten
It’s been about a year since Kim and I moved back to Manhattan after a three-year stint living on Staten Island. I think about it often since it was an unusual place to move (there was a very particular reason for it) and an unusual place to live. I have an office that stares out to New York Harbor and watches the Staten Island Ferry go back and forth to Staten Island. We live in apartment directly across form the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. When I sit at dinner at our dining room table, I look directly out at the big blue signage that says STATEN ISLAND FERRY. I seem never to be far away from Staten Island in my mind and body.
This week I have two particular reasons to think about Staten Island. The first is that I bumped into a Staten Island friend at the Rubber Chicken Affair we attended on Tuesday night. He is a loyal Cornell alumnus, but an even more loyal Staten Islander, his family going back to the rock for some five generations I believe. He is famous in my eyes for having coined the phrase, “Staten Island never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” He probably didn’t invent it, but like most things in life, good application is the secret to greatness and this is a perfect descriptor of Staten Island.
Staten Island is a jumble of paradoxes. It is part of New York City, but not really connected (physically or emotionally) to the City. It is both urban and suburban (more so than any other Borough). It is modern in some weird ways like fiber optics, but stuck in the 1950’s in many other ways.
The second reason Staten Island is on my mind this week is that I have a dentist appointment out there today and will be driving across the Verazzano Bridge and to the center of the island for that check-up. I am no Dudley Do-Right when it comes to my teeth, but over three years there was a need to find a local dentist since my olg guy was into his eighties and all the way uptown. I did so by selecting a woman who is a bit of social butterfly on Staten Island, sits on all the charity boards and was in Kim’s inner circle of local friends. It’s a pain-in-the-butt to go out there every six months for my check-up, but I view it as a reason to dust off the car and get it washed (there are more casr washes per square mile on Staten Island than anywhere else in the free world.) I also like to see what is going on out there. Mostly life is going on as it has for years. In other words, things change very little.
That’s an interesting thought since what I was doing on Staten Island was trying to change it a lot. My project was mostly supported and quite strongly so since most Staten Islanders I interacted with (generally the more progressive ones I presume) wanted to see change for Staten Island. They felt that Staten Island had stayed in its little place for too long and needed an opportunity to shine and rise up.
I learned enough about Staten Island to know what most islanders like and don’t like. I attended one gathering on the subject of the waterfront of New York Harbor after the ravages of Super Storm Sandy (a very impactful event for the island that killed 23 residents and casued billions in damage). There was a woman who was some sort of disaster recovery maven who had come up to help from her last disaster, Hurrican Katrina in New Orleans. I can’t remember anything she said, but I do remember that she kept calling the place Staten. Not Staten Island, just Staten. The first time, all of the local residents in the audience (this was being held at a museum on Central Park) perked up and turned their heads like a dog does when he hears a high-pitched whistle. By the third time she used the name people started looking at each other and shifting in their chairs. By the tenth time, several people couldn’t take it any longer and walked out…or used it as an excuse to ealk out from an otherwise boring panel discussion.
Why would people dislike such a thing? There is the obvious attempt to make familiar that which is not. There is the lack of local knowledge that the Island is never left off of Staten Island. And there is the general distrust of anyone that is an outsider that comes to people who are self-concious about their local shortcomings. All of these are true and all of these are in play at all times on Staten Island. That is why those of us who are not truly locals, but purport to understand them fairly well, often refer to it as The Isle of Staten. This title lends an air of mock respect and highlights the excentricities of the place.
Staten Island is a unique place. It is the highest outcropping of land on the Eastern Seaboard at 410 feet. That hilltop is called Todt Hill and is the legendary home of the New York City mob. The actual house where Vito Corleone lived and gave away his daughter in marriage in on Todt Hill (at the house used as a set for the movie). There are vast beaches on the southeastern shore, but even Staten Islanders don’t swim there, generally preferring wither Jones Beach on Long Island or the Jersey Shore. Go figure. The northwestern shore of the Island borders the Kill van Kull, which is the waterway leading from New York Harbor to the container docks in the port of New Jersey like Bayonne and Elizabeth. That is where all the New York City tugboats sleep and they can be seen in vast numbers plying those waters either alone or in tow of some massive RORO (roll-on roll-off) or container ship. There are also lots and lots of maritime “garages” and junkyards that look like a scene from the Sargaso Sea of Despair.
Staten Island has a rich and textured story and life. The old sailors home that is now Snug Harbor Cultural Center is 83 acres of New York City with a music hall, botanical gardens, organic farms and the most tobale Asian water gardens you will see this side of Tokyo or Shanghai. I like driving around Staten Island and feeling like I know a bit about it. I am no local, I never really made it to local status. In fact, the very notion that I was a carpet-bagger got solidified by my move back to Manhattan after my project failed. Nonetheless, I am wiser and richer for knowing about the Isle of Staten (if you sense my tongue in my cheek, you might be right.)