B.B., A.B.

Today I spent most of the day inside, but I saw a great show on PBS - "A Walk Around Staten Island," with generic announcer man David Hartman and soft-spoken historian Barry Lewis. The historian is always in "let-me-bubble-over-with-nifty-factoids" mode, a state I often find myself in and to which I can relate. 

The show's very scenic, with comforting, soft synthesizer music and violin plucks. The relaxed, even-paced tone of the show reminds me of when Mr. Rogers would receive a videotape which he would watch, and it explained how pencils were made in a factory or something. Or you expect to see Big Bird appear from behind a tree and sing about touching your toes, or Bert to appear in Fresh Kills and sing about pigeons... and rats. But it is a concise explanation of Staten Island history, geography, neighborhoods, and local lore.

Watch the show's parts, or read below.

The show begins with the Staten Island Ferry, which was originally run by "The Commodore" Vanderbilt and which built up his fortune before he invested in railroads. Then they cover:

ST. GEORGE: the Staten Island Museum, Borough Hall, St. George Theater, Snug Harbor's Chinese Garden, the WTC Memorial, and the Staten Island Yankee Stadium - home of the "Baby Bombers" (yuk, yuk).

ROSEBANK: Alice Austin House, Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, Our Lady of Carmel Grotto.

THE NARROWS: Fort Wadsworth, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

SOUTH BEACH: Old Dorp, FDR Boardwalk.

GREAT KILLS: Monarch butterfly migration stop (not bad for a former landfill).

PORT RICHMOND: Denino's Pizza (est. 1937), Ralph's Ices (est. 1928), Bayonne Bridge, the Mexicans of Port Richmond Avenue.

TODT HILL: Seaview Hospital, Farm Colony, Moravian Cemetery, Moravian Pond.

RICHMONDTOWN: Historical Richmondtown, S.I.'s blacksmith (!), Voorlezer's House (built 1695).

GREENBELT: "Mt. Moses" (read below) and soon-to-be-a-park-in-a-couple-of-decades Fresh Kills.

EGBERTVILLE: Jacques Marchais Tibetan Museum.

NEW SPRINGVILLE: Decker Farm (NYC's last working farm). 

PRINCE'S BAY: Seguine House.

SANDY GROUND: Sandy Ground Historical Society.

TOTTENVILLE: Conference House (site of crucial British-Colonial peace talks on 9/11/1776, when Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge told General Howe to shove it, and that the Continental Army would keep fighting - and the two sides would not meet again until 1783's Treaty of Paris).

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Unexpected residents of Staten Island: Robert E. Lee, Garibaldi, the early Vanderbilts, the USA's largest communities of Liberians and Sri Lankans, and one of the nation's oldest contiguous African-American communities. 

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In covering the various neighborhoods, they give a nice, precise history of Staten Island. The Dutch first settled on the South Shore (now on most maps, the right shore), then the English move the government to Richmondtown (to honor, remember, the Bastard Duke), which was at the center of the Island's main two roads. The Industrial Revolution and the infusion of Italian immigrant business brings the commerce to Port Richmond (the Island's "flat top") which had easy ferry access to Dirty Jerz. The Consolidation of NYC in 1898 dealt the death blow to Richmondtown, when the Manhattanites moved the borough government to St. George, for easy access and as little S.I. face time as possible. 

But what really changed the Island from being a land of farms and stately Victorian houses was the VERRAZANO-NARROWS BRIDGE. Locals apparently use the terminology "B.B." and "A.B." (before the bridge/after the bridge) to talk about the Island. The insular community became a veritable suburb. The center of the island picked up again - malls, housing developments. It was a *little* harder for the Mafia to hide. Population has boomed to more than a half-million, those people brought cars, and the borough's official game changed from bocce to gridlock.

And yet, a constant theme of Staten Island's history has been resistance to change. Like many vestigial limbs, the Island hangs on to so many remembrances of its past. The blacksmith in Richmondtown. The Victorian neighborhoods of St. George and New Brighton. And so many areas' reverting to overgrowth. Along with the Verrazano Bridge, über-urban planner Robert Moses had wanted a huge parkway to be built through the middle of Staten Island. It may have helped out with the traffic, but in its place is 3,000 acres of untouched, scraggly forest - hence the mocking name of one of the tree-topped hills, "Mount Moses." And apparently by 2030 or 2040, the former municipal landfill Fresh Kills, despite being the final resting ground for many World Trade Center victims, will be dolled up to become a park and will bring the Greenbelt's size to 5,200 acres of uninterrupted forest.

This was a very informative film. Watch it online, or see it this Saturday or Sunday afternoon at the S.I. Yankee Stadium as part of the SINY Film Festival!

That was the Week that was

We have reached the end of "Staten Island's Hidden Treasures Week" on NY1, an admirable attempt to promote little-known aspects of the borough.

Unfortunately, their attempt to battle anti-Statenism was overshadowed by the Island's more recent turmoil. When NY1 ran a promo, "Learn about Staten Island's best-kept secrets!" people in the newsroom joked, "You mean Vito Fossella's love child?"

Oh well. Let's take a quick look at the stories of "Staten Island's Hidden Treasures Week."

On Monday, they profiled the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, a premier Orientalist art collection and an incongruous taste of a Lhasa Buddhist temple in the middle of a Staten Island neighborhood. Can't wait to visit this one.

On Tuesday, they profiled an interesting neighborhood shrine, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto in Rosebank. In 100 years, generations of Italian-Americans have contributed to the site.

On Wednesday, they profiled a big glacial rock - old river sediment in Dongan Hills from millions of years ago. This probably would have made a better print story than TV segment (there's only so many seconds you can look at a gray rocky loaf on the TV screen), but I admire the series for not just profiling consumable traits of the borough.

Thursday's story, arguably the most interesting, profiled View Recording Studios in my neighborhood, St. George, which started out as the office of Remedy of Wu-Tang Clan fame, and now offers cheap recording space for budding hip-hop artists. No doubt about it - ARTISTS NEED LOW RENTS FOR THEIR CREATIVE SPACES!

Friday's story was not as dynamic, although the subject matter is arguably the most dynamic - human migration! which is studied at the St. Charles Mission Center in Dongan Hills.

More dire stories grabbed people's attention in this bloodstained week of city neighborhood shootings and a crane collapse. A shooting in Tompkinsville (2 miles from my house!) injured two teens, and the party endorsements of professional rich guy and Republican Frank Powers and Democratic City Councilman Michael McMahon as candidates for congressman, and the fact that not everyone's happy with those decisions.

Lastly, I stayed up way too late last night watching "Häxan" (1922), an extremely bizarre Scandinavian documentary on medieval and Renaissance witchcraft trials. It combines the grimy lyricism of "The Passion of St. Joan of Arc" with the delirious theatricality of Georges Melies's cardboard circus films. An old woman births carnivalesque chimera of felt and feathers! Old crones kiss a papier-mache demon's rump! Satan bleeds and cooks a jiggling rubber unchristened baby! (Startling images, like the Russian baby "burned" alive by medieval German Catholics in Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky.") The director used an eldery mental patient to play the part of an accused goodwife, to knock us over the head with the fact that mental institutions = the Inquisition's torture rooms!

Watch the film on YouTube - it's divided into 11 parts, and the first part is here. It gets weirder as you go on.

Witchcraft trials have very little to do with Staten Island (the Dutch weren't witch-crazy like the English and their Puritans), but P. T. Barnum exhibited a tableau of the "Witch of Staten Island," and earlier this year, some Staten Islanders showed a severe fear of Wiccans.

"Welcome to the Staten Island Ferry"

Finally, something to write about beyond navel-contemplation! My previous attempt on more Biblical matters may still be maintained... but the building of the Holy Tabernacle is hard to get through.

I have lived on Staten Island since the beginning of this month, and I am in the middle of a rosy honeymoon with "The Forgotten Borough," "The Other White Borough," "Staten Italy," "Lacosanostralia," ... "Shaolin," if you're a Wu-Tang fan. You got any more nicknames?

Personally, I prefer "Staaten Eylandt," the first European name given to the Island by Henry Hudson in 1609, in honor of the Dutch Republic's parliament. Take that, "sweet land of liberty" - Staten Island's got you beat by 150 years. Then along came the imperialist English, who renamed the county for the Duke of Richmond, bastard son of the King's and not of the Queen's, and nephew of the Duke of York (who as King was deposed by a constitutional Dutch monarch... so the Dutch got their revenge).

As for the Bronck's, that honors a Dutch plantation owner, and Breukelen is a Dutch town (which according Wikipedia's OGG pronunciation almost sounds Scottish - 'Brrrrrooklin"). And Manahatta - "Place of [Indigenous] Drunkenness?" C'mon...

Now, enough of nomenclature. 

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I love the Staten Island Ferry - the lumbering, even-keeled Janus who intakes and spews innumerable commuters and tourists through its dual cloacae. 

The best seat on the ferry is the upper balcony facing towards the departing shore (they won't let you sit on the balcony facing the approaching shore). Not all nine ferries have this feature - the late-night tiny ferry "John A. Noble" has no outdoor seating. By the time it's 2 a.m., 99% of the passengers are tired commuters in various levels of sobriety who could give a $#!† about the Statue of Liberty.

But, oh, when you have that seat on the upper balcony, like I did tonight... you have a 180˚ view of New York Harbor unfolding before you. The heated, jeweled diadem that is Manhattan, with lit pearl strands topping the bridges extending to Brooklyn, the sleeping, dull masses of Ellis Island and Governor's Island, the spotlighted, looming Statue of Liberty all recede behind wrinkled night waters.

So far, the ferry rides have been very gentle and steady, but seeing the bright orange railing slightly wobble before me at the jiggling butt end of the ferry while I ate plantain chips made me think of a cheap virtual ride, shaking you to simulate a space launch.

I love riding outdoors. I prefer the constant splatter of sideways rain, the common anxiety of fifty tourists taking pictures of the same green statue, and my jiggling leg and fingernail-gnawing hands steadied by the loud belch of the ferry siren and the dull vibrations of the engines' "magic fingers." Cheap hotel bed massages are here for free - no quarter necessary!

And then finally the engines shut off,  leaving that last smooth glide into the harbors, when the ferry sometimes crunches into the wooden sides of the ferry dock. It's like a pissed-off toddler parked the boat. Everyone anxiously gathers in front of the cloaca, just as they gather in front of the terminal doors, despite guaranteed seats for even the slowpokes. The vast steel ramps screech down to the ferry's lower balcony and release a rusty sigh as the riders burst forth.

This blog will contain my reactions to Staten Island. I intend to get to know most of it. Stay tuned.