Staten, Manhattan’s Quiet Neighbor, More of an Oasis Than an Island

It’s an island of rolling hills and single-family homes, replete with pine barrens and horses, beaches and boardwalks, great horned owls and long-legged herons.

It could be off the coast of Maine; the natives have that New England-like mistrust of outsiders. It could be Anywhere, U.S.A.; the people shop at Kmart and high school marching bands practice in the street.

But it’s not. It’s Staten Island--one of New York City’s five boroughs. It’s not Manhattan, it’s the other island, the often-forgotten island.

Made up of 40 “towns” that not so long ago had such alluring names as Skunk’s Misery and Linoleumville, Staten Island is a place steeped in small-town traditions. There’s even a county fair complete with seed-spitting and diaper derby contests.

It’s easy to forget that it’s part of New York City. And people often do.

One city tabloid boasts in radio ads: “We cover the city: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.” The New York Times includes its New Jersey supplement in Sunday papers sold on Staten Island.

That kind of perceived slight has led to a collective island paranoia and constant cries by residents that they are “the forgotten borough.” It’s also led to talk of secession--an idea backed by The Staten Island Advance, the borough-based 76,000-circulation daily newspaper.

But Don Brown, a home repairman who has lived all of his 41 years on the island, just wants Staten Island to be left alone.

“If we’re forgotten,” he says, “I say good, forget us altogether. Just let us be.”

Brown emphatically says he’s from Staten Island, not “the city,” and adds: “The only time I go in there is for work. Otherwise, I stay away. I know what the city is like.”

The city, by which he means Manhattan, is everything Staten Island is not.

Skyscrapers? Staten Island’s tallest building is 15 stories high, small potatoes compared to the twin 110-story towers of the World Trade Center.

Apartment dwellers? In Manhattan, 70% of residents rent and 30% own their own homes. Those numbers are reversed in Staten Island.

Neon lights and Broadway? They’ve got a Broadway, but there’s not much glitter decorating Johnny’s Auto Body shop or the local YMCA.

Crime? Besides a couple of mob underlings dumped on roadways or stuffed in the basement of a local “sweet shoppe,” car thefts and deli holdups top the news.

Until recently, the local police precinct--a turn-of-the-century brick building--sported a screen door during summer months and home-grown tomatoes, picked fresh from the precinct garden.

Come on. Is this big, bad New York City or Mayberry, RFD?

Best known to some as the site of the Fresh Kills landfill--the world’s largest dump and the city’s only active landfill--there is more to the place than the bleak-looking oil tanks and dilapidated piers seen from the decks of a Staten Island ferry.

Covering 60 square miles, Staten Island is 2 1/2 times as large as Manhattan. It has nearly 19% of the city’s land area, but only 5% of the city’s population--about 379,000 people.

There are 35 miles of hiking trails, 2,500 acres of preserved wetland, a spiny column of rolling hills--including Todt Hill, at 409.2 feet the highest elevated point on the Eastern seaboard.

There also are abundant streams, lakes and ponds; a gun club (one that hunts pheasants not people); three public golf courses; and the city’s only Boy Scout camp; the only Kmarts (two of them), and the only private country club. To some residents, like 20-year-old Joe Lazzarotti, an assistant manager at one island Kmart, there also is boredom.

“Nothing exciting ever happens here,” he says. “I go into Manhattan if I want to have any fun.”

But boring is just fine with a lot of residents, including one of Lazzarotti’s customers, Frank Gambino, who moved his wife and two young sons to Staten Island from Brooklyn two years ago. He offers a convert’s view of the difference in the boroughs.

“I can get up on Sunday morning and go to a little bakery, take the kids to the pond to feed the ducks,” Gambino says. “You couldn’t do that in (Brooklyn’s) Prospect Park --at least not without a gun.”