What’s the best way you could describe growing up on Staten Island or Long Island to me?

[Anonymous]

It seems to be two very closely knitted communities but also very distinct and different experiences?

Did you feel like everyone knew each other? Safe? Unsafe? There’s a documentary out about growing up with a mobster father, I believe they lived in Staten Island but I forgot the name but I find all of this intriguing.

I was born and raised here in DC. I would love to know what’s the best neighborhood comparison or experience? Probably nothing here is similar but I’d like to hear your experiences.

[Anonymous]

Staten Island is a borough of NYC with something like 400k people. It's something like 10 miles in diameter. I'm not super familiar with what it's like to actually live there, but others may be able to give a perspective on that.

Long Island on the other hand (even assuming you're not talking about Brooklyn and Queens, two other boroughs of NYC that generally aren't included when people talk about Long Island, even though they're technically on the Island) includes two whole counties and something like three million people. It has everything from close in, city adjacent suburbs, to rural farmlands. It's 120 miles long. There is no single experience of growing up there.

I grew up on the north shore of Suffolk county. It is rich, white, and pretty racist, IMHO. It's far from the city, boring, spread-out suburban, somewhat like Agrestic from Weeds. But that's one small part of the Island. I'm sure people who grew up in other places have very, very different experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Staten Island is a borough of NYC with something like 400k people. It's something like 10 miles in diameter. I'm not super familiar with what it's like to actually live there, but others may be able to give a perspective on that.

Long Island on the other hand (even assuming you're not talking about Brooklyn and Queens, two other boroughs of NYC that generally aren't included when people talk about Long Island, even though they're technically on the Island) includes two whole counties and something like three million people. It has everything from close in, city adjacent suburbs, to rural farmlands. It's 120 miles long. There is no single experience of growing up there.

I grew up on the north shore of Suffolk county. It is rich, white, and pretty racist, IMHO. It's far from the city, boring, spread-out suburban, somewhat like Agrestic from Weeds. But that's one small part of the Island. I'm sure people who grew up in other places have very, very different experiences.

PP here just to directly follow up on some of your questions - LI is def not close knit, nor would I say my community was. Where I grew up, it's very safe. It's generally accepted that the mob owns a lot in the garbage and construction industries, but it doesn't actually impact your life or anything.

[Anonymous]

Long Island - new money, tacky people
Staten Island - no money, hard working people.

[Anonymous]

I grew up on Long Island and I would move back there if I could.
I grew up 35 miles from Manhattan on the North Shore, they were connected guys and organized crime was clearly involved in organizing refuse, concrete, liquor, provisions, restaurant supply etc. A kid I went to school with was a member of a family whose name was on the side of pretty much every dumpster from Queens out to Suffolk County, they never seem to be anything more than a hard-working family business but looking back there’s no possible way they weren’t operating alongside organized crime.

The way zoning worked all low income housing was in one specific area, here at least in Virginia section 8 and subsidized housing is lightly mixed in everywhere except the most expensive ZIP Codes. Schools were and still are fabulous in my town, taxes are around $24k a year for a 1/4 acre lot and those high taxes suppress sale prices for single-family homes. A house that would cost you 1.6 million in Alexandria will cost you 650,000 in my old town but your payment will be the same because the taxes are astronomical. A huge number of my friends from my high school still live within a few miles of their childhood homes, almost everyone I knew was a second or third generation American so some of that “not going too far from home” thing is likely a byproduct of that.

My high school had a graduating class of 143, mostly Irish and Italian kids whose parents had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn or Queens, all my friends parents had really heavy New York accents, diversity meant that there might’ve been a few kids that were Dutch because there were like seven black kids in the whole school. I remember some of the Latino kids anglicized the pronunciation of their last names- think Martin..ez instead of Marrteenez.
My neighborhood which was only a few square miles was once a vacation community for rich people from the city, mostly two and three bedroom bungalows, some had been remodeled and enlarged over the years but for the most part they looked just like they did in 1946. You could have a bank executive living next to a lobstermen and they both had the same view of the sound. Most of my friends dad’s were union construction workers in NYC who were making $130,000 a year in the early 90s; they’d leave the house at 4:30 AM and be back at the train station by 5 PM with a tall boy beer in a bag.
The great part about my town’s proximity to Manhattan was that even if you didn’t find your people in our little community you could find exactly who and what you were looking for in the city which was only 40 minutes by train. I don’t remember exactly what it was called but I had a friend that went some sort of punk goth direction, he was the only one that dressed the way he did but every single Friday night after school he was jumping on the train to head to a club full of people just like him, same for gay or lesbian kids; you’re a $10 train ride from people who understand you versus being some poor kid stuck in the middle of Indiana on a farm.

The other thing I really miss is the curating of connections that everyone in my neighborhood seemed to do, whether it was a nightclub doorman, a guy who could get your free cable, someone who could fix a parking ticket, somebody that knew a cop and could ask him to not show up in court, I used to buy all my cigarettes from a union electrician who lived three doors down from me, he’d sell for 10 bucks a carton when they normally ran for 30, I don’t know where he got them but none of the packs had a tax stamp on them.
What seems to be missing most here is the hustle and mild corner cutting that everyone seemed to do back home, it made life fun and made you feel like less of a sheep; maybe it’s because of the proximity to government here and since they have a lock on corruption nobody else even thinks of competing.

I realize this is probably none of what you wanted to know but it was fun to think about.

[Anonymous]

Cheesy, but some parts of long island are very nice. For example, garden city/Manhasset/plandome are very catholic and like Bethesda/Chevy chase. They don’t have the terrible accents

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Garden-City/84-Kilburn-Rd-11530/home/20459614

https://www.redfin.com/NY/Manhasset/12-Westgate-Blvd-11030/home/20576456

I’m not as familiar with the Jewish towns, but I have a friend from Great Neck and she’s quite fashionable and not blue collar at all like the Ronkonkama part of Long Island.

Obviously the Hamptons are nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up on Long Island and I would move back there if I could.
I grew up 35 miles from Manhattan on the North Shore, they were connected guys and organized crime was clearly involved in organizing refuse, concrete, liquor, provisions, restaurant supply etc. A kid I went to school with was a member of a family whose name was on the side of pretty much every dumpster from Queens out to Suffolk County, they never seem to be anything more than a hard-working family business but looking back there’s no possible way they weren’t operating alongside organized crime.

The way zoning worked all low income housing was in one specific area, here at least in Virginia section 8 and subsidized housing is lightly mixed in everywhere except the most expensive ZIP Codes. Schools were and still are fabulous in my town, taxes are around $24k a year for a 1/4 acre lot and those high taxes suppress sale prices for single-family homes. A house that would cost you 1.6 million in Alexandria will cost you 650,000 in my old town but your payment will be the same because the taxes are astronomical. A huge number of my friends from my high school still live within a few miles of their childhood homes, almost everyone I knew was a second or third generation American so some of that “not going too far from home” thing is likely a byproduct of that.

My high school had a graduating class of 143, mostly Irish and Italian kids whose parents had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn or Queens, all my friends parents had really heavy New York accents, diversity meant that there might’ve been a few kids that were Dutch because there were like seven black kids in the whole school. I remember some of the Latino kids anglicized the pronunciation of their last names- think Martin..ez instead of Marrteenez.
My neighborhood which was only a few square miles was once a vacation community for rich people from the city, mostly two and three bedroom bungalows, some had been remodeled and enlarged over the years but for the most part they looked just like they did in 1946. You could have a bank executive living next to a lobstermen and they both had the same view of the sound. Most of my friends dad’s were union construction workers in NYC who were making $130,000 a year in the early 90s; they’d leave the house at 4:30 AM and be back at the train station by 5 PM with a tall boy beer in a bag.
The great part about my town’s proximity to Manhattan was that even if you didn’t find your people in our little community you could find exactly who and what you were looking for in the city which was only 40 minutes by train. I don’t remember exactly what it was called but I had a friend that went some sort of punk goth direction, he was the only one that dressed the way he did but every single Friday night after school he was jumping on the train to head to a club full of people just like him, same for gay or lesbian kids; you’re a $10 train ride from people who understand you versus being some poor kid stuck in the middle of Indiana on a farm.

The other thing I really miss is the curating of connections that everyone in my neighborhood seemed to do, whether it was a nightclub doorman, a guy who could get your free cable, someone who could fix a parking ticket, somebody that knew a cop and could ask him to not show up in court, I used to buy all my cigarettes from a union electrician who lived three doors down from me, he’d sell for 10 bucks a carton when they normally ran for 30, I don’t know where he got them but none of the packs had a tax stamp on them.
What seems to be missing most here is the hustle and mild corner cutting that everyone seemed to do back home, it made life fun and made you feel like less of a sheep; maybe it’s because of the proximity to government here and since they have a lock on corruption nobody else even thinks of competing.

I realize this is probably none of what you wanted to know but it was fun to think about.

This hit home with me! We always had a guy for whatever we needed back home. I have found myself casually mentioning a corner cutting norm in NYC and have gotten a few weird looks and raised eyebrows here.
NYC (especially the boroughs) is somehow a big city and a small town tight knit community.
I live a totally different life here than the one I grew up with.

Man I miss NYC.......

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up on Long Island and I would move back there if I could.
I grew up 35 miles from Manhattan on the North Shore, they were connected guys and organized crime was clearly involved in organizing refuse, concrete, liquor, provisions, restaurant supply etc. A kid I went to school with was a member of a family whose name was on the side of pretty much every dumpster from Queens out to Suffolk County, they never seem to be anything more than a hard-working family business but looking back there’s no possible way they weren’t operating alongside organized crime.

The way zoning worked all low income housing was in one specific area, here at least in Virginia section 8 and subsidized housing is lightly mixed in everywhere except the most expensive ZIP Codes. Schools were and still are fabulous in my town, taxes are around $24k a year for a 1/4 acre lot and those high taxes suppress sale prices for single-family homes. A house that would cost you 1.6 million in Alexandria will cost you 650,000 in my old town but your payment will be the same because the taxes are astronomical. A huge number of my friends from my high school still live within a few miles of their childhood homes, almost everyone I knew was a second or third generation American so some of that “not going too far from home” thing is likely a byproduct of that.

My high school had a graduating class of 143, mostly Irish and Italian kids whose parents had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn or Queens, all my friends parents had really heavy New York accents, diversity meant that there might’ve been a few kids that were Dutch because there were like seven black kids in the whole school. I remember some of the Latino kids anglicized the pronunciation of their last names- think Martin..ez instead of Marrteenez.
My neighborhood which was only a few square miles was once a vacation community for rich people from the city, mostly two and three bedroom bungalows, some had been remodeled and enlarged over the years but for the most part they looked just like they did in 1946. You could have a bank executive living next to a lobstermen and they both had the same view of the sound. Most of my friends dad’s were union construction workers in NYC who were making $130,000 a year in the early 90s; they’d leave the house at 4:30 AM and be back at the train station by 5 PM with a tall boy beer in a bag.
The great part about my town’s proximity to Manhattan was that even if you didn’t find your people in our little community you could find exactly who and what you were looking for in the city which was only 40 minutes by train. I don’t remember exactly what it was called but I had a friend that went some sort of punk goth direction, he was the only one that dressed the way he did but every single Friday night after school he was jumping on the train to head to a club full of people just like him, same for gay or lesbian kids; you’re a $10 train ride from people who understand you versus being some poor kid stuck in the middle of Indiana on a farm.

The other thing I really miss is the curating of connections that everyone in my neighborhood seemed to do, whether it was a nightclub doorman, a guy who could get your free cable, someone who could fix a parking ticket, somebody that knew a cop and could ask him to not show up in court, I used to buy all my cigarettes from a union electrician who lived three doors down from me, he’d sell for 10 bucks a carton when they normally ran for 30, I don’t know where he got them but none of the packs had a tax stamp on them.
What seems to be missing most here is the hustle and mild corner cutting that everyone seemed to do back home, it made life fun and made you feel like less of a sheep; maybe it’s because of the proximity to government here and since they have a lock on corruption nobody else even thinks of competing.

I realize this is probably none of what you wanted to know but it was fun to think about.

This hit home with me! We always had a guy for whatever we needed back home. I have found myself casually mentioning a corner cutting norm in NYC and have gotten a few weird looks and raised eyebrows here.
NYC (especially the boroughs) is somehow a big city and a small town tight knit community.
I live a totally different life here than the one I grew up with.

Man I miss NYC.......

Yes! DH is from a close in nyc suburb, and I always joke with him that his dad has a “guy” for everything. It’s nearly impossible here to find anyone to help around the house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up on Long Island and I would move back there if I could.
I grew up 35 miles from Manhattan on the North Shore, they were connected guys and organized crime was clearly involved in organizing refuse, concrete, liquor, provisions, restaurant supply etc. A kid I went to school with was a member of a family whose name was on the side of pretty much every dumpster from Queens out to Suffolk County, they never seem to be anything more than a hard-working family business but looking back there’s no possible way they weren’t operating alongside organized crime.

The way zoning worked all low income housing was in one specific area, here at least in Virginia section 8 and subsidized housing is lightly mixed in everywhere except the most expensive ZIP Codes. Schools were and still are fabulous in my town, taxes are around $24k a year for a 1/4 acre lot and those high taxes suppress sale prices for single-family homes. A house that would cost you 1.6 million in Alexandria will cost you 650,000 in my old town but your payment will be the same because the taxes are astronomical. A huge number of my friends from my high school still live within a few miles of their childhood homes, almost everyone I knew was a second or third generation American so some of that “not going too far from home” thing is likely a byproduct of that.

My high school had a graduating class of 143, mostly Irish and Italian kids whose parents had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn or Queens, all my friends parents had really heavy New York accents, diversity meant that there might’ve been a few kids that were Dutch because there were like seven black kids in the whole school. I remember some of the Latino kids anglicized the pronunciation of their last names- think Martin..ez instead of Marrteenez.
My neighborhood which was only a few square miles was once a vacation community for rich people from the city, mostly two and three bedroom bungalows, some had been remodeled and enlarged over the years but for the most part they looked just like they did in 1946. You could have a bank executive living next to a lobstermen and they both had the same view of the sound. Most of my friends dad’s were union construction workers in NYC who were making $130,000 a year in the early 90s; they’d leave the house at 4:30 AM and be back at the train station by 5 PM with a tall boy beer in a bag.
The great part about my town’s proximity to Manhattan was that even if you didn’t find your people in our little community you could find exactly who and what you were looking for in the city which was only 40 minutes by train. I don’t remember exactly what it was called but I had a friend that went some sort of punk goth direction, he was the only one that dressed the way he did but every single Friday night after school he was jumping on the train to head to a club full of people just like him, same for gay or lesbian kids; you’re a $10 train ride from people who understand you versus being some poor kid stuck in the middle of Indiana on a farm.

The other thing I really miss is the curating of connections that everyone in my neighborhood seemed to do, whether it was a nightclub doorman, a guy who could get your free cable, someone who could fix a parking ticket, somebody that knew a cop and could ask him to not show up in court, I used to buy all my cigarettes from a union electrician who lived three doors down from me, he’d sell for 10 bucks a carton when they normally ran for 30, I don’t know where he got them but none of the packs had a tax stamp on them.
What seems to be missing most here is the hustle and mild corner cutting that everyone seemed to do back home, it made life fun and made you feel like less of a sheep; maybe it’s because of the proximity to government here and since they have a lock on corruption nobody else even thinks of competing.

I realize this is probably none of what you wanted to know but it was fun to think about.

NP. Thanks for sharing. I agree…there is something to be said for a little ingenuity and neighbors helping neighbors…in whatever way they can 😉 I do think some places are still like this!

[Anonymous]

Everyone who has the tiniest bit of Italian in them claims to have mob connections. My dad worked for the mob for a few years, and the rules were, ask no questions, accept nothing, take zero pictures. We are jewish. We played jewish geography, but overall, certain towns kind of stuck together. For example, if you lived in Old Bethpage and Plainview (same school district) then you knew people in Syosset and Woodbury, but rarely knew anyone in Bethpage. And if you were a dirtbag, you knew people in Huntington.

My high school had about 1500 kids. I didn't know everyone, but probably recognized a little over 1000 of them as "yeah, s/he goes here". We absolutely didn't know everyone on Long Island.

Staten Island was the smelly place nobody wanted to drive through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up on Long Island and I would move back there if I could.
I grew up 35 miles from Manhattan on the North Shore, they were connected guys and organized crime was clearly involved in organizing refuse, concrete, liquor, provisions, restaurant supply etc. A kid I went to school with was a member of a family whose name was on the side of pretty much every dumpster from Queens out to Suffolk County, they never seem to be anything more than a hard-working family business but looking back there’s no possible way they weren’t operating alongside organized crime.

The way zoning worked all low income housing was in one specific area, here at least in Virginia section 8 and subsidized housing is lightly mixed in everywhere except the most expensive ZIP Codes. Schools were and still are fabulous in my town, taxes are around $24k a year for a 1/4 acre lot and those high taxes suppress sale prices for single-family homes. A house that would cost you 1.6 million in Alexandria will cost you 650,000 in my old town but your payment will be the same because the taxes are astronomical. A huge number of my friends from my high school still live within a few miles of their childhood homes, almost everyone I knew was a second or third generation American so some of that “not going too far from home” thing is likely a byproduct of that.

My high school had a graduating class of 143, mostly Irish and Italian kids whose parents had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn or Queens, all my friends parents had really heavy New York accents, diversity meant that there might’ve been a few kids that were Dutch because there were like seven black kids in the whole school. I remember some of the Latino kids anglicized the pronunciation of their last names- think Martin..ez instead of Marrteenez.
My neighborhood which was only a few square miles was once a vacation community for rich people from the city, mostly two and three bedroom bungalows, some had been remodeled and enlarged over the years but for the most part they looked just like they did in 1946. You could have a bank executive living next to a lobstermen and they both had the same view of the sound. Most of my friends dad’s were union construction workers in NYC who were making $130,000 a year in the early 90s; they’d leave the house at 4:30 AM and be back at the train station by 5 PM with a tall boy beer in a bag.
The great part about my town’s proximity to Manhattan was that even if you didn’t find your people in our little community you could find exactly who and what you were looking for in the city which was only 40 minutes by train. I don’t remember exactly what it was called but I had a friend that went some sort of punk goth direction, he was the only one that dressed the way he did but every single Friday night after school he was jumping on the train to head to a club full of people just like him, same for gay or lesbian kids; you’re a $10 train ride from people who understand you versus being some poor kid stuck in the middle of Indiana on a farm.

The other thing I really miss is the curating of connections that everyone in my neighborhood seemed to do, whether it was a nightclub doorman, a guy who could get your free cable, someone who could fix a parking ticket, somebody that knew a cop and could ask him to not show up in court, I used to buy all my cigarettes from a union electrician who lived three doors down from me, he’d sell for 10 bucks a carton when they normally ran for 30, I don’t know where he got them but none of the packs had a tax stamp on them.
What seems to be missing most here is the hustle and mild corner cutting that everyone seemed to do back home, it made life fun and made you feel like less of a sheep; maybe it’s because of the proximity to government here and since they have a lock on corruption nobody else even thinks of competing.

I realize this is probably none of what you wanted to know but it was fun to think about.

This hit home with me! We always had a guy for whatever we needed back home. I have found myself casually mentioning a corner cutting norm in NYC and have gotten a few weird looks and raised eyebrows here.
NYC (especially the boroughs) is somehow a big city and a small town tight knit community.
I live a totally different life here than the one I grew up with.

Man I miss NYC.......

Yes! DH is from a close in nyc suburb, and I always joke with him that his dad has a “guy” for everything. It’s nearly impossible here to find anyone to help around the house.

PPP here- that’s exactly how I used to describe where I grew up- it was a small town in a big place. When I would be out in other parts of the island and people would ask where I lived most didn’t know where it was until I mentioned the larger town nearby.
The other thing I really miss is pretty much every store and restaurant was a mom and Pop operation, the chain stores were relegated out near the shopping mall and car dealerships, almost every business you went to was operated by someone whose entire stake was invested in that, boutique, card shop, bar, deli, bagel store, restaurant etc.

I’ve lived in bland nova for almost 25 years now, but I like old town and being close to DC and museums. This has been fun, I’ll be thinking about home all week!

[Anonymous]

Op here. Thank you all, this thread is so descriptive and it is interesting to read your stories!

We had something similar in the neighborhood I grew up in as there was always a guy who did the legal and illegal things you needed done. Everyone always knew someone who could fix it, rather than calling the big companies. We had corner stores but not too many small businesses. The ones around were well known. Outside of carry outs and the like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Long Island - new money, tacky people
Staten Island - no money, hard working people.

Not applicable to all parts of Long Island. Remember The Great Gatsby took place on Long Island.

[Anonymous]

Gatsby was new money.

And there is some money on SI. New money, living in gaudy AF houses. It's mostly blue collar though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gatsby was new money.

And there is some money on SI. New money, living in gaudy AF houses. It's mostly blue collar though.

My point is that at this point, the people that book was based on are old money.