Walking Is Transportation

WELCOME TO WIT.

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Dan Icolari
on the Bayonne Bridge,
Port Richmond/Elm Park, S.I.
in the background, 2009.
(Photo by Steve Nutt)

 

Greetings. My name is Dan Icolari, and I'm a writer living in St. George, on the north shore of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City.

To find out more about me and WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION (WIT), please hit the 'About' button, top left. To subscribe to WIT's feed, please hit the 'Subscribe' button, also top left.

WEEKEND ONLINE GALLERY: RAGNAR NAESS

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DECORATIVE . . . FUNCTIONAL . . . SCULPTURAL

The following Online Gallery selection shows not only the range of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn clay artist Ragnar Naess's work. It also makes evident his determination to be fully present in each piece he executes, whether it's purely decorative, straightforwardly functional, or unabashedly personal and whimsical. [Website, ragnarclay.com; e-mail, ragnae@earthlink.net.]

Magnolia

 

Four-legged bowl

Infatuation

 

 

Infatuation (two details)

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RANT-O-RAMA 4

 Don't get me started

THE MOST NEGLECTED
GREENSPACE
IN ST. GEORGE

To call the North Shore Esplanade a greenspace is to dishonor that term.

At its northwestern end, between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place, the North Shore Esplanade is little more than a long sitting area punctuated by london plane trees where hardly anyone ever sits.

Why would anyone bother--except those who have nowhere else to sleep?

The elegantly named esplanade's magnificent harbor views are obscured by stands of volunteer maple, polonia, and ailanthus, which are themselves being choked by the unchecked growth of porcelain-berry vines.

Though the strip is swept and its garbage cans emptied regularly, it is a derelict, deteriorating piece of waterfront real estate whose configuration assures that it will remain what it has been since my wife and I moved here in 1977: an otherwise unused route to and from the ferry--or to and from a parking space. And it's not hard to understand why.

NEAR ST. PETERS PLACE

There's nothing to do, nothing to see, and seemingly no official interest in moving beyond the dreary status quo. Why bother shoring up collapsed seating no one will ever sit on anyway, right? Just block it off with sawhorses and yellow tape for an 'indefinite' period.

 

NEAR NICHOLAS STREET

I do not exaggerate when I tell you that this section of collapsed sidewalk has been in this condition for a decade at least. The sidewalk widens at Nicholas Street, so pedestrians and joggers just go around it. And since the esplanade lacks a vocal constituency, the city's Parks and Recreation Department has little reason to devote funds to fix it.

(Photo above by Rachel Icolari)

BETWEEN NICHOLAS STREET
AND STUYVESANT PLACE

The deteriorated state of the esplanade's beautiful iron railings is another example of Parks and Recreation's minimal investment in upkeep. The department obviously is more concerned with avoiding lawsuits (those hideous highway buffers shown below) than with maintaining the original ironwork. Like Snug Harbor's, these iron railings can last indefinitely, given the proper maintenance (and replacement, where appropriate, with ironwork of the same design and density).

 

(Photo above and photo above, right, by Rachel Icolari)

DON'T 'REFURBISH' IT--
RECONFIGURE IT FOR ACTIVE USE

On the esplanade, at about the halfway point between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place, stands a concrete flagpole dedicated to local soldiers whose lives were lost in World War II, which is probably when the esplanade was designed and installed.

In terms of park design and use, it was the era of 'Keep Off the Grass' signs and genteel after-dinner strolls. That era is not coming back. So it's not just a matter of painting the benches once again and installing better lighting.

The model made for after-dinner strolling was retired long ago--as evidenced in the 1970s design of the nearby Lia Park, which includes sitting areas but also has sprinklers, swings, and provisions for active play. As anyone who lives near it can tell you, Lia Park a pretty popular place.

FRIENDS OF THE NORTH SHORE ESPLANADE?

I don't presume to know what mix of seating, play, performance, athletic facilities and other types of offerings might draw users to what amounts to an abandoned park. But especially now, with Cromwell Center shut down yet again, the community's lack of recreational space has become more severe. And it will only continue, as our area draws more young families to its affordable apartments, houses, condos and co-ops, if we don't demand additional park and recreational resources to accommodate them.

We need to begin the process of reclaiming this bit of St. George parkland now. Friends of the North Shore Esplanade, anyone?

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A FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER TAKES TO THE STREETS

Photo by Jenny Waterson

CPG CO-FOUNDER GEORGE ROOS, A FORMER ST. GEORGIAN,
SELF-PUBLISHES TWO NEW PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS

I lived around a couple of St. George corners from George Roos for more than 20 years and knew him as a neighborhood guy around my age with a pleasant manner and a ready smile. We'd acknowledge each other in a friendly way when our paths happened to cross, but nothing more.

What I didn't know then was that George Roos is an accomplished professional photographer-- accomplished enough to have worked as a photographer of fine art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Knoedler Gallery.

By the time I arrived in St. George, George Roos had already established himself as an independent, serving important artists, galleries, dealers and collectors in Manhattan while adding architectural photography and portraiture to the specialties he could offer them.

But for Roos, photography was always more than just a way to make a living. "I have constantly photographed for my own personal pleasure and fulfillment," he says.  Though he moved to New Jersey a few years ago, the co-founder of Staten Island's Creative Photographers Guild (the CPG Gallery, which opened earlier this year, is housed in Roos's former studio), he remains an active part of the local scene, working to raise standards and increase opportunities for local practitioners.

WHAT HE SAW

In Street Seen: New York in the 1960's & 70's, George Roos introduces the photos that follow with this comment:  "Anything said of New York City can be true . . . whatever you want or need it to be, or whatever you are afraid it might be."

The NYC native then proceeds to evoke his mostly-lifelong home, but not, for the most part, with familiar symbols, streetscapes or architecture. Instead, he tells us simply, "This is what I saw," then shows us the New York of two post-mid-century decades by observing New Yorkers being New Yorkers.

Included are beauty shots of Washington Square Park, the forbidding yet utterly beautiful Women's House of Detention, long gone from Greenwich Avenue near Sixth; and the oversize Westclox 'Big Ben' replica that used to dominate the south wall of the grimy, unrestored Grand Central Station concourse.

But then Roos moves on to the people, to the kind of working-class street life that could still be found in a few Manhattan neighborhoods like Little Italy, Chinatown, the Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen 30 and more years ago.  Though his subjects may be unlovely, or be shown doing unlovely things, Roos's lens is always respectful, never demeaning.

Street Seen also includes several sections devoted to New Yorkers participating in large public events, such as the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua (1969); the First Earth Day (1970); Chinese New Year, with not-yet-banned fireworks (pre-1997); an anti-Vietnam War march in 1968; and the funeral of then-Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the same year. These straightforward, unflashy, un-ironic  images don't need a lot of text to get their truth across.

HOW TO SEE

In his introduction to Exerceyese: Training Your Eyes to See Pictures Everywhere, Roos is quick to point out that the book "is not an instruction manual and presumes that readers are proficient in the use of their equipment."

What Roos is concerned with in this book is helping photographers see more fully and deeply--by being aware of the potentially startling images that, in Roos's view, are all around us, wherever we are, all the time.

As a group, the images Roos uses to make his case in Exerceyese are more abstract than those presented in Street Seen, less often concrete and reportorial. They're also mostly in color, whereas the photos in the earlier book were shot entirely in black and white.

There's another key difference Roos is quick to acknowledge. Digital photography, he writes, "has opened up a whole new world for photographers, allow[ing us] to shoot up a storm, knowing that anything that doesn't work can simply be deleted without [our] having to, literally, pay for our mistakes. Take lots of pictures," he advises,"shooting anything that catches your fancy." The images reproduced in Exerceyese show that Roos has followed his own advice about shooting digitally--often to startlingly beautiful effect.

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Street Seen, by George Roos. Copyright 2008. 80pp. Softcover, $24.95; hardcover with dust jacket, $35.95; hardcover with Imagewrap, $38.95. Order from Blurb.com. 

Exerceyese, by George Roos. Copyright 2009. 76 pp. Softcover, $30.95; hardcover with dust jacket, $41.95; hardcover with Imagewrap, $43.95. Order from Blurb.com.

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AN ISLANDER WITH "ST. GEORGE ROOTS OF SORTS" COMES HOME

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Meet the Neighbors

(Photo by Willie Chu)

SOUGHT AND FOUND:
A BEAUTIFUL OLD APARTMENT
NEAR THE FERRY

Professor, working poet and performance artist MARGUERITE MARIA RIVAS did her growing up in pre-Bridge Huguenot, in what Rivas calls The Lily Cup House, at a time when large tracts of land nearby were still densely wooded.

But before that, before becoming homeowners, Rivas's parents settled as newlyweds in an apartment in St. George Gardens (now Seaview Estates), a recently rehabilitated 1929 courtyard development that straddles the hill between St. Marks Place and Hamilton Avenue near Curtis High School--giving Rivas what she describes as "St. George roots of sorts."

Often referred to as Staten Island's Unofficial Poet Laureate, Marguerite Maria Rivas is an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She holds a Doctor of Arts and Letters from Drew University and a Masters in English from CUNY. Her work has appeared in The Americas Review, The Multicultural Review and Earth's Daughters, among others; and her chapbook, Poetry Cannot Save You, was published in 2003 and reprinted in 2005.

(continued below)

Sea Meets Land Dreams of Sky, ceramic art by Judith Eloise Hooper

A PLACE TO MAKE A FRESH START

A while ago, finding herself with two grown daughters on their own and a large apartment in a neighborhood she didn't much care for, Rivas determined it was time to make a very different sort of move from those she'd made earlier as a wife and mother and then as a single parent. "It seemed like a natural choice," Rivas told me recently, "for a single woman who loves the Island, and enjoys working and playing in the city as well, to move to St. George.

"I wanted to live in a beautiful old house again," she explained, "and St. George and Silver Lake were the two neighborhoods I most wanted to live in." So Rivas advertised herself as a prospective tenant on Craigslist and on the St. George Civic Association e-group and before long got a call from a St. George homeowner with a one-bedroom apartment for rent. "The minute I stepped in the door and saw those high ceilings, the many large windows and the garden views," she recalled, "I was hooked."

The apartment had another key selling point. Its two-rooms-and-kitchen layout, though quite large, simply would not accommodate the three truckloads of accumulated possessions, including many books, that Rivas had to divest herself of before she could move in. "That was what I needed, though," she admits, "as I was still mourning the loss of my second marriage and needed to move on.

"St. George was the place that I wanted to do that in, and as soon as I saw the apartment, I knew that I was truly coming home again and that I could make a fresh start here, as my parents had made their start some 60 years before."

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THE VERTICAL LIFE, OR, HILL-WALKING ON STATEN ISLAND'S NORTH SHORE, PART 8

_______________________________________________________

AS THE RETAINING WALL CRUMBLES

View of south side of Victory Boulevard between Cebra Avenue and Jersey Street, Ward Hill

[The following appeared in WIT in January, 2008.]

I HAD PASSED THE FORLORN STRETCH OF VICTORY BOULEVARD shown in the photo above countless times and each time wondered: Where does that double stairway lead?

I speculated that the stairway might provide seldom-used access to a secondary street at the top. Or that there might be a grand old house up there, or the remains of one. But this time, unlike those other times, I didn't have to speculate. I was prepared not only to look for and find the answer, but to document it. I had a digital camera in my pocket, walking shoes on my feet, and time to spare.

So, after I took the picture above, I crossed Victory Boulevard and made my way through the tangle of weeds and refuse to the stairway. Both the concrete stairs and the cast-iron stair-rail were in surprisingly good condition. I took very firm, deliberate steps, both to establish the stability of each stair-tread and to attach myself as firmly as I could to each one.

A DUMP WITH A HARBOR VIEW

What I found when I reached the top of those stairs was a concrete sidewalk that extends, where it survives, to several other, narrower stairways to the west. This modest attempt at neighborhood-building suggests that two or more dwellings were at least planned, if not built, here.

MOLDERING ON

Other remnants--construction debris and piles of young maples--indicate that this harbor-view lot on a Ward Hill hillside has also been used as a dump. But how? Other than the stairs up from Victory Boulevard, there's no street access. Maybe somebody did somebody a favor through somebody's back yard.

Until fairly recently, given Staten Island's plentiful supply of unimproved land, developers had little reason to pursue problem parcels such as this one, with its lack of vehicular street access. Once the current slump ends (and it will; I've lived through three since 1977), and given the increasing attractiveness of the St. George area as a safe, attractive and affordable place to live, it's likely developers will be more willing to seize whatever opportunities they can find, even if it means applying for a variance and meeting other requirements.

In the end, compromises will be reached. Variances will be granted. Profits will be made. In the meantime, these Staircases To Nowhere in Particular molder on.

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View of south side of Victory Boulevard between Cebra Avenue and Jersey Street, Ward Hill

[The following appeared in WIT in January, 2008.]

I HAD PASSED THE FORLORN STRETCH OF VICTORY BOULEVARD shown in the photo above countless times and each time wondered: Where does that double stairway lead?

I speculated that the stairway might provide seldom-used access to a secondary street at the top. Or that there might be a grand old house up there, or the remains of one. But this time, unlike those other times, I didn't have to speculate. I was prepared not only to look for and find the answer, but to document it. I had a digital camera in my pocket, walking shoes on my feet, and time to spare.

So, after I took the picture above, I crossed Victory Boulevard and made my way through the tangle of weeds and refuse to the stairway. Both the concrete stairs and the cast-iron stair-rail were in surprisingly good condition. I took very firm, deliberate steps, both to establish the stability of each stair-tread and to attach myself as firmly as I could to each one.

A DUMP WITH A HARBOR VIEW

What I found when I reached the top of those stairs was a concrete sidewalk that extends, where it survives, to several other, narrower stairways to the west. This modest attempt at neighborhood-building suggests that two or more dwellings were at least planned, if not built, here.

MOLDERING ON

Other remnants--construction debris and piles of young maples--indicate that this harbor-view lot on a Ward Hill hillside has also been used as a dump. But how? Other than the stairs up from Victory Boulevard, there's no street access. Maybe somebody did somebody a favor through somebody's back yard.

Until fairly recently, given Staten Island's plentiful supply of unimproved land, developers had little reason to pursue problem parcels such as this one, with its lack of vehicular street access. Once the current slump ends (and it will; I've lived through three since 1977), and given the increasing attractiveness of the St. George area as a safe, attractive and affordable place to live, it's likely developers will be more willing to seize whatever opportunities they can find, even if it means applying for a variance and meeting other requirements.

In the end, compromises will be reached. Variances will be granted. Profits will be made. In the meantime, these Staircases To Nowhere in Particular molder on.

#         #         #

View of south side of Victory Boulevard between Cebra Avenue and Jersey Street, Ward Hill

[The following appeared in WIT in January, 2008.]

I HAD PASSED THE FORLORN STRETCH OF VICTORY BOULEVARD shown in the photo above countless times and each time wondered: Where does that double stairway lead?

I speculated that the stairway might provide seldom-used access to a secondary street at the top. Or that there might be a grand old house up there, or the remains of one. But this time, unlike those other times, I didn't have to speculate. I was prepared not only to look for and find the answer, but to document it. I had a digital camera in my pocket, walking shoes on my feet, and time to spare.

So, after I took the picture above, I crossed Victory Boulevard and made my way through the tangle of weeds and refuse to the stairway. Both the concrete stairs and the cast-iron stair-rail were in surprisingly good condition. I took very firm, deliberate steps, both to establish the stability of each stair-tread and to attach myself as firmly as I could to each one.

A DUMP WITH A HARBOR VIEW

What I found when I reached the top of those stairs was a concrete sidewalk that extends, where it survives, to several other, narrower stairways to the west. This modest attempt at neighborhood-building suggests that two or more dwellings were at least planned, if not built, here.

MOLDERING ON

Other remnants--construction debris and piles of young maples--indicate that this harbor-view lot on a Ward Hill hillside has also been used as a dump. But how? Other than the stairs up from Victory Boulevard, there's no street access. Maybe somebody did somebody a favor through somebody's back yard.

Until fairly recently, given Staten Island's plentiful supply of unimproved land, developers had little reason to pursue problem parcels such as this one, with its lack of vehicular street access. Once the current slump ends (and it will; I've lived through three since 1977), and given the increasing attractiveness of the St. George area as a safe, attractive and affordable place to live, it's likely developers will be more willing to seize whatever opportunities they can find, even if it means applying for a variance and meeting other requirements.

In the end, compromises will be reached. Variances will be granted. Profits will be made. In the meantime, these Staircases To Nowhere in Particular molder on.

#         #         #

THE ROMANCE OF THE INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE

On the waterfront

On a clear day, you can see St. Peter's.                                                                     (Steve Nutt Photo)

THE VIEW FROM BAYONNE

When my friend Kevin lived two doors away on St. Marks Place in St. George--before he moved back to Boulder County, Colorado--he and I would sometimes head for the Kill van Kull, two short blocks down the hill, where he would hunt for beach glass and I would think about restoration of passenger rail on the north shore, the unused right-of-way only steps from the shoreline where we stood.

One beautiful, clear, sunny day, Kevin and I thrashed through the grasses to our accustomed spot.  I stopped, looked around me and felt utterly serene and content. Everything seemed beautiful. Even the gleaming white tanks on the opposite shore. Even the flotsam (or is it jetsam?) deposited on the narrow strip of sand along the water.

Steve Nutt Photo

I let out a deep, contented sigh. "God, aren't we lucky," I said, taking in the sweep of sky and water, watching a tug approach from the west.

Kevin looked up quizzically from the glass fragment he'd been turning over in his hand. I extended my arm in a sweeping gesture to show him what I meant, indicating the fairly narrow waterway in front of us and the shorelines on either side.

He just shook his head and smiled, not saying a word. He didn't have to.

I knew that to him, I was delusional. What I was going on about was not beauty, not to him; it was urban devastation. He was headed back to Boulder County, after all, to drink his morning coffee looking out at the front range of the Rocky Mountains.

Steve Nutt Photo

AN UNDERSTANDING NOD

My friend Steve Nutt, an artist from Ward Hill who works in clay and fiber, wouldn't have shaken his head. He'd have nodded in understanding and agreement. I know this because I've seen Steve's photos. The ones he took not long ago while biking through the industrial desolation of Bayonne, the part of it I can see from my office window. Not now, of course, but in January, when the trees are bare of leaf.

When I clicked through Steve's photos, I felt as though I was viewing something I wasn't supposed to. Unsanctioned views of Staten Island's north shoreline. Photos taken from questionable angles and locations. Pictures of a part of New Jersey that got away geologically but didn't go far. A kind of entering uninvited through a back door.

Weren't there snarling German Shepherds guarding the blinding whiteness of those storage tanks on the Bayonne shore? Didn't he need a pass to cross over into a particularly spooky industrial No Man's Land? Or at the very least, a note from the mayor? When I asked Steve what had prompted his solitary adventure, he sent me the following.

Steve Nutt dining al fresco outside
the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
March, 2009.

TALE OF A LONE BAYONNE BIKER
(Guest blogger:
Steve Nutt)

Having lived within a few blocks of the waters of north shore Staten Island for 28 years, my cameras have pointed away from the island towards New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn countless times.  And I have recorded the island's north shore many times as well. From Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Heights, lower Manhattan (yes, the top of the WTC) and most often from the decks of the Staten Island Ferry.  But only once from the shores of New Jersey, specifically from Bayonne.

On a hazy summer morning, probably a Sunday, I'd biked over the Bayonne Bridge and found my way to the shoreline park that starts just below the eastern side of the bridge.

My Canon Elph and I worked our way further east. Residential streets gave way to industrial ones. I did my best to stay close to the shore.

I was intent on creating a ribbon of long narrow images of everything from Port Richmond to St. George.

Large industrial blocks made it impossible to record the Staten Island waterfront as I would have liked. But in the end, I stood between the white petrol storage tanks and the Kill van Kull, facing and photographing the shoreline from which I had studied the Jersey side so many times before.

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PICTURING THE PAINTER

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WHAT THEY SAW IN EACH OTHER

Before he ever met Robert Civello, figurative artist Robert Bunkin--who describes himself as "a painter of people"-- knew he wanted to paint Civello's portrait. The idea suggested itself to Bunkin a few years ago, when he attended the first artist studio tour at Bay Street Landing, the waterfront condominium development in St. George where Robert Civello lives and works.

(continued below)
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St. George painter Robert Civello, as photographed by Dan Icolari, left; and as painted by Robert Bunkin, right (photo by Coco Martin).

                                                                  

When Bunkin entered Civello's living/workspace as part of the studio tour, he was struck by the Buddha-like figure seated in front of a wall of windows. The Buddha-like figure was Civello, of course, but what Bunkin saw was not simply a figure.

He also saw a composition in which the figure was at least partly in shadow yet framed in light. The composition, Bunkin explained to me, suggested a classical method that Goya, among others, used, called contre-jour, meaning, to paint against the day, against the light, almost to paint shades of darkness in light. 

Bunkin was intrigued by the possibilities and the challenge, and he proposed to Civello that they paint each other's portraits. There was a practical aspect to the arrangement as well. "Artists who paint portraits are always trying to avoid paying model's fees," said Bunkin, "so I was really glad when Robert agreed to the idea." He'd undertaken the same sort of collaboration twice before with little success. But with Civello, it worked.


A HUMAN LANDSCAPE

For Robert Civello, the details of form, physiognomy and setting are important to portrait-painting, but what the St. George artist seeks to create is not a faithful reproduction of his subject's appearance on canvas. What he's after, Civello told me, is an evocation of the personality of his subject through the details of complexion, features, dress, setting--and something else more felt than seen. Call it creative intuition.
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West Brighton painter Robert Bunkin, as photographed by Dan Icolari, left; and as painted by Robert Civello, right.

 

                                                                                                                                                        

 




The very quotable Mr. Civello told me it took him a lifetime to paint Robert Bunkin's portrait. By which he meant that it took a lifetime to develop his specialized kind of discernment.

Two of the things he's learned, Civello says, are that (a) "A portrait isn't forever; it's a painting, a moment in time"; and that (b) "Human beings aren't portraits; they're landscapes. My paintings are guides to those landscapes."


TWO PAINTERS,
TWO CONCEPTIONS OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING.

The difference between the two north shore artists is as pronounced in their workstyles as in their approach to portraits. Civello needed only two sittings with Robert Bunkin--the first, about 45 minutes; the second, about a half hour, followed by one day of studio work to, in Civello's words, "dense up" the canvas. Plus lots of time viewing and studying it.

Robert Bunkin's requirements, like Civello's portrait itself, were more complex: much more time, many more sittings--partly because Bunkin usually has several painting projects underway at once. But Robert Civello didn't mind taking the extra time. He found Bunkin stimulating to talk to--and instructive to observe at work.

Despite all the differences in their approaches and styles, the two formed a friendship during the course of their collaboration. And they produced two strong, distinctive portraits to add their bodies of work.
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ROBERT BUNKIN's work was most recently shown in the Staten Island Museum's Juried Exhibition, which closed on May 31. 

ROBERT CIVELLO's work will be on view throughout the summer in "Three Traditions of Painting," an exhibition at the Newhouse Gallery of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. The show closes on August 23.

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NEIGHBORHOOD IN WAITING

To Distant Shores, a photograph by Richard Capuozzo

DREAMS AND SCHEMES
ON HOLD. FOR NOW.

What's next for St. George? At the moment, the neighborhood's future appears as opaque as Dick Capuozzo's image, above. What's more certain are long-standing fundamentals.

1. The economic downturn is global, not St. George-specific. Whether or not there's a significant turnaround in the economy later than sooner, this will still be a good place to live, work, and conduct business.

2. St. George will continue to be a center for transportation and borough government.

3. And it will move, albeit very slowly at times, to solidify its emerging identity as a destination for tourists and locals offering art, dining and entertainment in a walkable waterfront setting.

Not the actual, generic,
pre-fab multi-story
parking behemoth
now being assembled
on St. Marks Place
near Victory Boulevard,
but close enough.
(Photo by Linda Brumbaugh)

And one thing more. St. George will also be the home of the Richmond County Courthouse, to be built on the site of the present municipal parking lot.

Criminal Court, now in Stapleton, will relocate to the new facility as will Family Court, now in a very overcrowded landmark building nearby on Richmond Terrace at Hamilton Avenue in St. George. Civil Court will remain in West Brighton.

A SLIGHT ADJUSTMENT

The fantasy future imagined for St. George--and not only among the developer and business crowd--used to be that hordes of Williamsburg wannabes were about to haul themselves and their shopping-and-dining lifestyles to our neighborhood, which, the developers predicted, would become The NEW (choose one) Park Slope, Fort Greene, Jersey City, Hoboken, Long Island City or Red Hook.

Or as the developer line would have it, 'Downtown Staten Island.'  A very clever name, actually. So lacking in specificity, you can attach it to the most forlorn (and for sale) back alley in Clifton or Concord, and who's to say you're wrong?

But even with Williamsburgers' trust funds drying up and and unemployed MBAs waiting tables, the fantasy hasn't gone away; it's made some facade alterations, that's all.

JUSTICE AND JURISPRUDENCE

The theme has changed from Shopping and Dining to Justice and Jurisprudence. The new theme was prompted by the only game in town at the moment, the new consolidated courthouse served by the sort of multi-story car-stack (not the actual one, but a generic twin) shown above, right.

This parking-lot-in-the-air is intended to compensate for and even add, as the borough president boasts, to the number of parking spaces "lost" to the forthcoming construction of a consolidated county courthouse upland toward Hyatt Street.

The fundamentals are in place and--barring a game-changing event no one can predict-- will remain so. And a new government facility is coming, bringing with it the sorts of demands (and not just for high-end restaurants) that the borough president, City Planning, the Chamber of Commerce and SIEDC ought to be preparing for now.

MEANWHILE,
THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAITS

Friends who own a modest one-family rowhouse-style building opposite the almost finished multi-level public parking behemoth have big plans.

Though they've lived in that house for decades, they say it's time to move on. Maybe to Florida, where it's warm and where they can own the car they say they can't own now because they don't have a driveway.

They're waiting for the right knock on the front door--the one that comes with the right number attached.

It's the same story on Victory Boulevard near Bay Street, where two storefronts with apartments upstairs sit vacant just down the block from a long-vacant (and long for sale) lot.

On an adjacent block, two attached brick eight-unit walk-up apartment buildings --that's 16 apartments--have also been emptied of their tenants and now have 'For Sale' signs in their windows, as do several smaller buildings converted from residences into law offices and now shuttered.

Another property owner nearby--this one, of a commercial property on Bay Street, said he doesn't anticipate receiving serious offers until the new court facility is built, open and running. So for now, he's just. . . waiting.

FOUNDATIONS POURED,
BUILDINGS UNBUILT

 
Richmond Terrace between
Stuyvesant Place and
Nicholas Street

In this case, the property's unbuilt status is a good thing. The developer who abandoned this project sought to maximize his profit by constructing a waterfront barracks of attached houses positioned as luxury housing.

Today's zoning would not support such a scheme.

Richmond Terrace between
Nicholas Street and
St. Peters Place

The Staten Islander who owns this squalid mess poured foundations nearly a decade ago, threw up some painted plywood and walked away, leaving his neighbors to live with the consequences.

LARGE, LONG-VACANT PARCELS:
A POTENTIAL WALL ON THE WATERFRONT

Recent zoning changes make it all but certain that large lots like the ones shown below will become apartment blocks of the generic sort already in place at Nicholas Street and Richmond Terrace, and at Bay Street and Victory Boulevard.

The two adjacent lots owned by the Muss Organization shown next are not an earthly paradise, but their condition demonstrates Muss's professionalism and its sense of civic responsibility. The lots are located east and west of Academy Place, a single-block-long street between Wall Street and Hamilton Avenue, parallel to Stuyvesant Place.

The first photo shows the west or uphill lot, a seldom-used parking lot now grassy and treed (and, it must be said, well maintained).

 

The second photo shows the downhill lot, an active parking lot. It's not a thing of beauty, but there's an obvious ongoing attempt to keep sidewalks litter-free and passable.

There are many other vacant, unbuilt parcels in the area, some of them owned by the relatively recently arrived Brooklyn developer Leib Puretz, who is said to have gone on a buying spree and, in the downturn, it's said, has had difficulty paying his bills.

Northwest corner, Hamilton Avenue and Stuyvesant Place

Considering the amount of land these vacant parcels add up to, their future could have a very big impact on the future of St. George.

We'll just have to, uh, wait and see.

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From The Archives: DISCOVERED WHILE WALKING

This granite curbstone and cast iron sewer plate in Tompkinsville were put in place after Staten Island became part of the five-borough consolidated City of New York in 1898. [The 'BR" on the plate stands for 'Borough of Richmond,' formerly the borough's official name.] I walked on this curbstone, over it and around it for 30 years before noticing it just the other day.

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JANUARY, 2008.]

AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME

After my friend Simon relocated to Santa Barbara from St. George several years ago, he came back for a visit and remarked how old and small everything about New York seemed after a year or two in the West.

Before I had a chance to be offended by the words 'old' and 'small,' he added, "I feel as though I never really saw the city when I lived here, maybe because I never really looked."

Simon's words came back to me the other day when I happened to see, as if for the first time, the curbstone I was stepping onto from the roadway, shown in the photo above. I saw it was made of granite, still serviceable, and beautiful, after many decades of service.

MOSTLY STILL HERE

Though I can only speculate as to what the numeral '2' chiseled into the curbstone refers to, I'm a lot more certain about the pair of paired letters--'TK' and 'AR'-- that precedes it. Here's why:

The caption of the undated, un-postmarked, hand-colored postcard above reads, "Public Square, Arrietta Street, Tompkinsville, S.I." The 'TK' incised into the curbstone shown in the photo at the top of this page stands for Tompkinsville; the 'AR' for Arrietta Street. The buildings clustered on the right side of the image are on the north side of today's Victory Boulevard, formerly Richmond Turnpike, between Central Avenue/Bay Street and today's St. Marks Place, formerly Arrietta Street.

HOW THEY GOT THEIR NAMES

Like the nearby Minthorne and Hannah streets, Arrietta Street was named after one of New York State Governor (and later, U.S. vice president) Daniel D. Tompkins's eight children. Hannah was the name of Tompkins's wife and one of his daughters; Minthorne was his wife's maiden name and the name of one of his sons. Tompkins named and developed the early Tompkinsville and named some of its streets as well.

The row of simple post-Civil War red brick commercial/residential structures shown in the postcard above, like the granite curbstone only steps away, owe their survival to disinvestment and decline that began after World War II and accelerated with the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Will they survive the visions of the developers, who see St. George/Tompkinsville and Stapleton not as neighborhoods but as a concept called 'Downtown Staten Island' ?

The granite curb shown at the top of this entry can be found at the northwest corner of St. Marks Place and Victory Boulevard, outside the Tompkinsville Pharmacy. Here's another postcard image of that corner, from a somewhat different perspective, postmarked 1918.

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AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME

After my friend Simon relocated to Santa Barbara from St. George several years ago, he came back for a visit and remarked how old and small everything about New York seemed after a year or two in the West.

Before I had a chance to be offended by the words 'old' and 'small,' he added, "I feel as though I never really saw the city when I lived here, maybe because I never really looked."

Simon's words came back to me the other day when I happened to see, as if for the first time, the curbstone I was stepping onto from the roadway, shown in the photo above. I saw it was made of granite, still serviceable, and beautiful, after many decades of service.

MOSTLY STILL HERE

Though I can only speculate as to what the numeral '2' chiseled into the curbstone refers to, I'm a lot more certain about the pair of paired letters--'TK' and 'AR'-- that precedes it. Here's why:

The caption of the undated, un-postmarked, hand-colored postcard above reads, "Public Square, Arrietta Street, Tompkinsville, S.I." The 'TK' incised into the curbstone shown in the photo at the top of this page stands for Tompkinsville; the 'AR' for Arrietta Street. The buildings clustered on the right side of the image are on the north side of today's Victory Boulevard, formerly Richmond Turnpike, between Central Avenue/Bay Street and today's St. Marks Place, formerly Arrietta Street.

HOW THEY GOT THEIR NAMES

Like the nearby Minthorne and Hannah streets, Arrietta Street was named after one of New York State Governor (and later, U.S. vice president) Daniel D. Tompkins's eight children. Hannah was the name of Tompkins's wife and one of his daughters; Minthorne was his wife's maiden name and the name of one of his sons. Tompkins named and developed the early Tompkinsville and named some of its streets as well.

The row of simple post-Civil War red brick commercial/residential structures shown in the postcard above, like the granite curbstone only steps away, owe their survival to disinvestment and decline that began after World War II and accelerated with the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Will they survive the visions of the developers, who see St. George/Tompkinsville and Stapleton not as neighborhoods but as a concept called 'Downtown Staten Island' ?

The granite curb shown at the top of this entry can be found at the northwest corner of St. Marks Place and Victory Boulevard, outside the Tompkinsville Pharmacy. Here's another postcard image of that corner, from a somewhat different perspective, postmarked 1918.

RECOMMENDATION FOR A NEIGHBOR'S SUMMER READING LIST

Short story writer John Cheever,
late 1950s/early 1960s.
(Photo courtesy of
Library of Congress)

AN ASTUTE OBSERVER OF PEOPLE
AND PLACE (AND WEATHER)

[Recently, on a social network site called My Staten Island Life (mystatenislandlife.com), a neighbor requested recommendations for a summer reading list. What follows was my response.]

I'm an excruciatingly slow reader, made even slower--if we're talking about printed materials--by the fact that I now do so much of my reading online. Even worse, probably, for the purposes of your list, I read very little fiction. And what fiction I read tends to take the form of the short story. Which brings me to the short story-related book I'm reading now and the one I read before that. I recommend both.

NOW: The Journals of John Cheever. BEFORE THAT: The recently published Cheever: A Life, a biography by Blake Bailey, the editor of the Library of America Cheever collection [publication details follow the text of this review].

Why Cheever? Because of his continually surprising and elegant use of language, principally; because of his acute powers of observation, and not only of people or place or human frailty more generally. Also surprising to me are his observations of weather, light and sky. More than stage-settings, these descriptions are intimate and deeply felt, evoking nature as a force in Cheever's life--something to be considered, recorded, remembered.

THE IMPERFECTIONS IN
SEEMINGLY PERFECT LIVES

Now, more than a quarter-century after his death, Cheever's representations of a certain class group in a certain place and time remain familiar territory to someone of my age. But because I grew up working class in the city, not upper middle-class in the suburbs, that territory will never lose its Otherness entirely.

Despite early critiques of corporate/suburban life (Sloan Wilson's rather sentimental "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," for example), Cheever was the first writer who revealed, at least to me, the imperfections in the lives lived by upper middle class white suburban families as they were broadly represented culturally at that time.

SOMETHING MORE
THAN MEANING

In his journals, which I'm reading now, we can see clearly the consciousness that yielded those astute and often sad insights into the lives of ordinary men and women. That consciousness was also a source of unremitting self-examination, of unsparing critical judgment and self-loathing that Cheever reserved for himself.

Despite his acute powers of discernment, Cheever seems to have been unable to acquit his wife of responsibility for their very difficult relationship until nearly the very end, when he quit drinking for good and indulged, sometimes very selfishly according to biographer Blake Bailey, the homosexual impulses he had anguished over for a lifetime.

For those with a taste for the salacious, neither the Bailey biography nor these journals disappoints. But in the end, it's Cheever's language and his keen powers of observation--not his anguish or excesses--that stop me in my tracks as a writer as well as a reader . . . as I look up from the page and repeat aloud a few words or a phrase I've just read, in a voice hardly above a whisper, extracting something more than meaning from the sound.

______________________________________________________________

Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey, 770pp. Epilogue. Acknowledgements. Notes. Index. Hardcover. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. $35.

The Journals of John Cheever, edited by Robert Gottlieb, 399pp. Editior's note. Softcover. Vintage International, 2008. $16.95.

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