Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Geography Lesson



Remember that scene from Spider Man where the dastardly Green Goblin separates a tram car from its wires and leaves a bunch of kids hanging until Spider Man saves them?

No?

Then perhaps you recall the news features last spring when a tram car was stranded over the East River and the people inside had to be rescued mid-air.

That's the tram that connects the east side of Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, a small stretch of land between Manhattan and Queens.

Jonathan and I took an exploratory tram ride over to Roosevelt Island yesterday. Roosevelt Island is interesting...in the late 1800's and early 1900's it was mainly a site for prisons and insane asylums (leading to the name previous name, "Welfare Island"), but the city's unquenchable thirst for residential housing spilled over to the island, morphing it into a small community of high rise apartment complexes. A single Main Street runs up the middle of the island; there is one school, one post office, one grocery store--NYC's version of Mayberry?

Hmmm...I wonder if Roosevelt Island could use a church?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that island looks sweet. I would like to buy the whole island and rename it Fig's Island. We could have the church, a pharmacy of course, a sportings good store, a lake to fish in, and a woods to hunt in. Everyone would like to come to visit. I would need a gun to protect it from the Steath Bombers. Back to basics. Boy am I shallow.

Michelle said...

like I said D, time to start the super secret blog...then no more comments the way he fig-gers it. :0