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But if you hate it, why do you go there, and even pay a toll?
Joked quoted by Woody Allen in Annie Hall:
Old woman: I hated that resort. The food was awful.
Second old woman: Yes, the food was awful, and the portions were so small.
Because I was cutting across SI to head to NJ and south or as I said I had a great Volvo Mechanic there
I think it should be noted that the island was basically disconnected from New York until the Verrazano was finished in 1964. Let me repeat that date: 1964. For 400 years New Amsterdam had been growing, evolving and refining its identity as a metropolitan city. The other four boroughs were intricately connected by trains and bridges. SI only had ferry service. The character of many parts of SI was RURAL until just a few decades ago. The last time you could have said Manhattan was in any way rural was in the mid to late-1800s.
I take a geographic/ecological view of NYers antipathy for SI. If you were to take, say, a camel out of its normal habitat and transport it to the Canadian Arctic, it would have no idea what to do. It's much the same for the Manhattanite who has experienced nothing but concrete, glass and asphalt for 90% of their lives. They literally don't know what they are looking at. On some baseline cognitive level they might understand that the presence of the island's mature stands of trees make them feel different inside but it's so different from the visual effect of the cityscape. It's disconcerting in a way. It's also substantially quieter. Without the aural assault and subsequent mental carnage of traffic, jackhammers, screaming, poor grammar, and snippy speech patterns they just don't know what to do with themselves.
Wouldn't say SI was "disconnected" from NYC until the VNB was built. There were the three bridges to NJ, two of which (Bayonne and Goethals) connect Manhattan via NJT or whatever to the East River Tunnels or GWB. There was also a very extensive ferry system not only to Manhattan, but Brooklyn and parts of NJ.
Remember as well private automobile ownership in NYC as elsewhere boomed in post WWII NYC. Yes, there were cars and whatever on SI, but you can clearly see the difference between the older parts of SI (North Shore ring around to West Shore) where the density is tighter and you had more local choices for shopping (corner stores, Victory Blvd, Forest Avenue, Castleton Avenue, Richmond Avenue, etc...)
Even after the VZN was built in 1964, SI remained largely rural and pretty much as it had always been well into the 1980's. It was around the 1990's or so that local and other politicians along with the real estate lobby *discovered* SI as the "last place for affordable homes in NYC), and began building on every bit of land they could find. That development has created the monster of congestion, traffic and density which destroyed much of old SI in the past twenty years than in the previous twenty after the VNB was opened.
While it supposedly had benefits for SI, (that fact is up for debate), the real purpose of the VNB was to connect NYC/SI with a portion of the Interstate highway system via the three New Jersey bridges.
Large amount of traffic going over the VNB is commercial and other traffic either coming from or going towards the Belt Parkway or Gowanus Expressway. Large trucks in particular cannot use the East River Tunnels so to get "across" Manhattan would have to either head points north (GWB or further) and go across to reach NYC and points east.
Prior to 1960's most of such freight would have been hauled about via rail, but Robert Moses and others had it in for RR companies and saw trucking as the future.
The reason a lot of Italians live in SI because in the 80 and 90s, it was dirt cheap to buy a home there and be away from the immigrants and criminals in Brooklyn. Most of the Italians that lived in Brooklyn started leaving the area in the 90s and moved over to SI and kept a very segregated community. Very similar to Howard Beach, a non-white walking around would get stared at or even followed by Italian kids those days.
Today, it's much different so many immigrants have flocked to SI.
I would never live in SI because it used to be a dump site and the traffic is horrible getting in/out of there.
SI is the equivalent of a big dead-end street in Brooklyn not much roads to drive around before you hit a dead end.
And the road conditions are awful.
Grew up on SI and am here to tell you that the Rock had a large Italian, Sicilian, Napledon population going back years, long before the VZB was even built (1964). Many parts of SI on the North Shore persons associate with minorities such as West Brighton, New Brighton, Rosebank, Westerleigh, Grasmere, South Beach, etc... had large Italian populations. Indeed at least one or two Catholic (Italian) churches were moved to build the SI Expressway/approaches to VNB.
Just look at the obituary section of the SI Advance and you'll see plenty of Italians on the Rock who are passing on at 75 or older that have lived on the place since childhood and or were born.
The latest wave of Italian-Americans to hit SI came in the late 1980's through now lured like everyone else for the "affordable" housing being churned out by developers (all those god awful cheap townhouses and Guido MacMansions). Most if not all of these recent arrivals are from Brooklyn and crossed the guinea gangplank to be with their own kind as Bayridge, Bensonhurst and other parts of their own hoods started to get a little bit too dark.
Meanwhile back on the ranch starting back in the 1980's Staten Island Italians saw what was coming and began to move down to New Jersey (Middletown, Manalapan, Marlboro and other south NJ townships). This trend has increased as more and more Staten Islanders cannot stand what has become of their Island. Funny thing is the natives in New Jersey bitterly complain that the Staten Islanders have ruined those areas of NJ. So guess everything goes around in circles. On any major given holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and or Day, etc..) the traffic coming and going from two bridges tells the story; the Outerbridge (south NJ), and VNB (to the Belt and south Brooklyn).
^ some sicilians are very black. what's up with that?
Word in your shell like ear; you value your life very cheaply by pointing out that fact to many a Siciliano. Especially of the American variety. It's like you were calling them a moulinyan or something.
^ I guess but don't make me laugh. Black is black, whether they like it
or not. Their skin got brown somehow, and they shouldn't be ashamed
of it. All blacks are not as dark as some of them anyway and many blacks
are lighter than some italians even.
^ I guess but don't make me laugh. Black is black, whether they like it
or not. Their skin got brown somehow, and they shouldn't be ashamed
of it. All blacks are not as dark as some of them anyway and many blacks
are lighter than some italians even.
My wife is Sicilian. Never thought of her as being black. Don't think that gives her the right to check that box on an application or something.
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