You are currently browsing the stories about the “Staten Island” neighborhood.
From 2022 to 2025, before I moved to Brooklyn, I saw Dahlia on the SIM3C express bus from Staten Island to Manhattan seventeen times.1. Oh my god. 2. Oh my god! Again! 3. I’m so happy we have this. 4. Still good, yes, everyone’s good, thanks. 5. Only a few people still from high school, like, I don’t know, do [...]
In the summer of 1980, Rob Curatola and I played on the same team at Tiger Basketball Camp. I was a spaghetti-limbed, prepubescent 12-year-old. Rob, a formidable ten-year old, was still encased in baby fat. We made up the team’s front court, with me leaping incessantly around under the basket, doing my frantic best, and Rob expertly racking up points [...]
During break time, I approached my classmate Andy Saperstein and asked if I could see the four-inch stack of baseball cards he had brought to school that day. It probably had one hundred and fifty cards in it, all new, the corners sharp and crisp. Andy, well-recognized as the best student in Mr. G’s fifth grade class at P.S. 30, [...]
The Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood, missed a field goal on the last play of Super Bowl XXV, clinching the 20-19 victory for the NY Giants. The door to Cherry Lane opens with the barely perceptible “beep-beep” of the unarmed alarm, which makes the bartender look up as a man in his sixties, hair cropped against his balding scalp, walks [...]
Moran Early in the pandemic, I started posting photographs from my wanderings in Staten Island. Old storefronts, tugboats on the Kill, old signs from long extinct businesses…whatever caught my eye. In response to one post, I got a DM from a guy called Richie. He said he liked my posts, recognized a lot of the buildings, and wondered if I’d [...]
My Covid-19 project has been to drive to one of the many Staten Island parks that I haven’t previously visited and walk around, usually alone, and take pictures on my phone. I try not to think about the future too much. A few months ago, I drove to Graniteville Quarry Park—not to be confused with the nearby Graniteville Swamp Park, [...]
Lately I’ve been working the elliptical hard, pumping the pedals like I have something to prove. As a cancer survivor, maybe I do. Staying strong could help protect me against COVID-19. Because of my condition, I make it my priority. Sometimes during my workout an old memory drifts up, of a time I had even more to prove. It’s November [...]
I am a New York City booster. And I travel its streets with all its positives and negatives crammed into my head, coloring everything I do, everything I see, everything I feel. I am very familiar with the city. And I love the sheer unpredictability of it, the Mad-Hatter kinetic energy. The zany atmosphere, the zany people, the zany sense [...]
When the ramp to the Staten Island Ferry was razed, I happened to be passing, and stopped to watch, feeling a sense of loss as the crane took out the span that dangling across from Borough Hall, repeatedly smashing it, and sending large sections crumbling to the ground below. Hurrying to catch a boat on my way to work, where [...]
May and the city rejoices in spring, in light and color, in the sheer goodness of life and its improvements. Spring shows us that things do indeed get better; it’s not all decline — old buildings sparkle, trees quiver in green, mundane streets are remade as pageants. However, let’s not get carried away. Sure, it’s encouraging to see the tulips [...]
The strip of Bay Street that runs through Stapleton is an example of conspicuous gentrification. There's a Spanish tapas bar, and a Japanese Bistro, and a Sri Lankan clay pots restaurant, all opened in the last few years. In counterpoint, the old Paramount Theater has failed at numerous incarnations, and a White Castle sits stripped of any franchise signage, leaving [...]
In the summer of ’77, I met Mark Roth in Pathmark on Hylan Boulevard. Heading home from a Sunday drive, my parents stopped to pick up groceries for dinner, and waiting in the Express Lane, he got behind us with a bottle of Mott’s Apple Juice. I was sure it was him, but then, what would the Number One ranked [...]
Hurricane Irene bared down on the East Coast, while my mother was in the Vent Unit of Staten Island University Hospital, on a respirator and recovering from her second abdominal surgery. Located in South Beach, designated Zone A, the hospital faced mandatory evacuation. A team of medical personnel, including her surgeon, the Director of the Vent Unit, and the Vent [...]
My apartment building, across from the ferry, in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, fared well against Sandy. From my window, I saw the water rise above the seawall, and swallow the municipal parking lot, but situated on the hill, I never felt threatened. When the power went out, I was watching a DVD of Martin Scorsese's "New York, [...]
Wild turkeys roam the grounds of Staten Island University Hospital. When my mother was hospitalized in April 2011 with a respiratory infection, I had the opportunity to observe them in detail. Turkeys stand around a lot, sort of like escaped mental patients who suddenly find themselves free, but then what. One day, they might be inside a fence, another day [...]
New Dorp Lane, even in 1976, was a traffic jam of cars in search of parking for the shops and restaurants up and down the strip. On the corner of Clawson Street, was Lane Music, its window drawn with a transparent yellow shade. Inside, guitars hung on one wall, while, opposite, were the doors to two practice studios, inevitably, emanating [...]
This week I had dinner at my parents' house. Afterwards, my father shuffled off to the couch to lie down. My mother and I watched him go. He looked old and tired. By no coincidence my mother began to talk about how they’ve started to look at burial plots. My father was born on Staten Island and he wants to [...]
Walking toward the Staten Island Ferry on my way to work, I noticed a boat departing, when it should have been arriving. Being in the exact spot it would normally be, but headed in the wrong direction, it was, at first, disorienting. I checked my watch: 2:53. “This is not good,” I thought. Making my way down the ramp, I [...]
Those given to make art are probably the least well equipped to handle what is demanded of the artist. The criticism. The egos. The business – because when it comes right down to it, the artist is a salesman, and his art is the product. It’s enough to push a borderline personality over the edge. I expound on this theory [...]
In the mid 1960’s it wasn’t easy for multi-sibling families like mine to get along well financially, but somehow my Mom and Dad made it work on the salary of my Dad, which wasn’t much. But there were times where budget cutting ideas may have went a little too far, like the "Save money on haircuts by doing it ourselves"initiative [...]
Although I moved to New York in 1994 with Manhattan in mind, I quickly became fascinated with the city’s boroughs. On weekends I'd take the subway to Coney Island, Brooklyn, Astoria, Queens, or the Bronx Zoo to see the other parts of my new home. Staten Island, however, remained elusive. In my early days, I often took the Staten Island [...]
Ever since my first wooshing ride down a log flume, I’ve been enamored of water. From sprinklers to swimming pools to lakes and the Atlantic,water soothes me like no other substance. Except beer. So when I heard the Staten Island ferry served cold brew on its cross-bay excursions, I knew I’d found my manna. A Friday night was chosen. That [...]
It was with a sense of being robbed that I watched, from a television set on Staten Island, the events that unfolded on September 11th. The smoke emanating from the two buildings as if they'd been sliced by some reckless cosmic lawnmower gone berserk, and the camera angle that made the bodies falling look like drifting pieces of paper, large [...]
