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

[Anonymous]

I'll give you that.

[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.

+1

[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.


I would NOT feel comfortable doing what you wrote so will never ever live on Long Island

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Immigrants and those in the first and sometimes second generation like to show off a bit and the houses can get a little out of hand, remember the house in my big fat Greek wedding that looked like the Parthenon in the front but it was clearly a high ranch in the back? Drive around Howard Beach and you’ll see a lot of gold plated fu dogs on front steps even though the occupants are 100% Sicilian.

They didn’t call the north shore the gold coast for nothing, from great neck to Lloyd Harbor there were something like 600 mansions constructed in the early 1900s, most of them have been demolished and subdivided but there is still some deep old pockets there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Immigrants and those in the first and sometimes second generation like to show off a bit and the houses can get a little out of hand, remember the house in my big fat Greek wedding that looked like the Parthenon in the front but it was clearly a high ranch in the back? Drive around Howard Beach and you’ll see a lot of gold plated fu dogs on front steps even though the occupants are 100% Sicilian.

They didn’t call the north shore the gold coast for nothing, from great neck to Lloyd Harbor there were something like 600 mansions constructed in the early 1900s, most of them have been demolished and subdivided but there is still some deep old pockets there.

That’s very specific to cultural background. A house like that might belong to an Italian or Greek family. An Irish family would never have an ostentatious front of the house or decor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

in the 1930s!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

in the 1930s!

Plus Gatsby was new money and so was Daisy

[Anonymous]

I grew up on the north shore of Suffolk County too. Where I lived was a mix of historic houses (we had a revolutionary war battle!) and post-WWII development, and is where SUNY Stony Brook is located so many people worked there or at Brookhaven National Lab. My classmates' parents were a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers. Some commuted to NYC but not most, since we lived about 60 miles away and there were cheaper places closer to the city for folks who commuted every day. It was very car dependent. The bagels and pizza were good and I agree about a lot of mom & pop stores and services. Property taxes were high but uneven--older homes were rarely reassessed so they had low taxes while new builds were expensive. Schools were pretty good--there were honors classes, science research, lots of sports (lacrosse was big), school art and music--so a smart kid could certainly challenge themselves.

Since I moved away, Long Island in general has become more diverse with more immigrants but also more conservative and especially a lot more Blue Lives Matter and similar pro law-enforcement sentiment. There is some new transit-oriented development and a lot of assisted/independent living for seniors. The houses built in the 50s and 60s look more run-down.

In terms of what parts of the DC area remind me of Long Island, I'd say Great Neck is kind of like Bethesda though it's not a perfect comparison. Where I grew up is more like Olney or Sandy Spring. There are parts of LI that are more like Wheaton, Arcola, or Langley Park. One thing that really isn't comparable is proximity to the beach. I used to go to north shore beaches (rocky) all the time, including on school trips, and south shore (sandy) multiple times each summer.

[Anonymous]

grew up on the south shore of staten island in the 70's. It was wide open back then could always find trees to climb and adventures away from home. Each town had there own pizza shop that was awesome. My brother still lives there and its gotten much more crowded over the last 50 years. I enjoyed growing up there but happy I left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I grew up in Plainview!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Immigrants and those in the first and sometimes second generation like to show off a bit and the houses can get a little out of hand, remember the house in my big fat Greek wedding that looked like the Parthenon in the front but it was clearly a high ranch in the back? Drive around Howard Beach and you’ll see a lot of gold plated fu dogs on front steps even though the occupants are 100% Sicilian.

They didn’t call the north shore the gold coast for nothing, from great neck to Lloyd Harbor there were something like 600 mansions constructed in the early 1900s, most of them have been demolished and subdivided but there is still some deep old pockets there.

That’s very specific to cultural background. A house like that might belong to an Italian or Greek family. An Irish family would never have an ostentatious front of the house or decor.

Did you see the Howard Beach reference? It was sort of a joke because I’ll admit Italians (my people) get out of hand with their decorations but the demographic has shifted and its probably more than 30% Asian now, 40 years ago it was nothing but Italians, Portuguese and a little Irish.
Flushing has gone from a pretty healthy mix of everyone from everywhere but now the majority of the storefront signs along northern Boulevard don’t even have an English subtitle, it’s all Korean.

Since New York is so compact the island is like a wealth conveyor belt. It’s really cool to see the progression towards the suburbs and it’s been especially interesting to see how different cultures do it. The American experience for Asians and Europeans is really similar, you can watch the Asians do it now in real time, the grandparents came over and sometimes lived in squalor, worked their asses off in some cramped place in Brooklyn, made a little money and moved a little east to get some breathing room, their kids work their asses off in school/work then move a little further east to get even more breathing room, over and over again as their family moves up the ladder they move further away from the city. So many of my friends still had grandparents that lived in fourth floor walk ups in Brooklyn but they grow up 50 miles away in the suburbs of Long Island.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Lol, your people do it too! Every Jewish kid I went to school with claimed to have a great uncle that was in Murder Inc, or their dad’s uncle was Arthur Flegenheimer!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I grew up in Old Brookville. It's a real mix of old and new money.

LI is hard to generalize because it's pretty diverse, particularly socio economically. I grew up going to school with kids who needed free lunch and girls who wore mom's Manolos and Birkin bags in 7th grade.

[Anonymous]

I am from LI and have lived in NOVA for 13 years. When we got married, on LI, I told my husband that I worked out a deal with the restaurant that if his parents wanted to pay cash for the rehearsal dinner we would not have to pay tax. That didn't go over well!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up on the north shore of Suffolk County too. Where I lived was a mix of historic houses (we had a revolutionary war battle!) and post-WWII development, and is where SUNY Stony Brook is located so many people worked there or at Brookhaven National Lab. My classmates' parents were a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers. Some commuted to NYC but not most, since we lived about 60 miles away and there were cheaper places closer to the city for folks who commuted every day. It was very car dependent. The bagels and pizza were good and I agree about a lot of mom & pop stores and services. Property taxes were high but uneven--older homes were rarely reassessed so they had low taxes while new builds were expensive. Schools were pretty good--there were honors classes, science research, lots of sports (lacrosse was big), school art and music--so a smart kid could certainly challenge themselves.

Since I moved away, Long Island in general has become more diverse with more immigrants but also more conservative and especially a lot more Blue Lives Matter and similar pro law-enforcement sentiment. There is some new transit-oriented development and a lot of assisted/independent living for seniors. The houses built in the 50s and 60s look more run-down.

In terms of what parts of the DC area remind me of Long Island, I'd say Great Neck is kind of like Bethesda though it's not a perfect comparison. Where I grew up is more like Olney or Sandy Spring. There are parts of LI that are more like Wheaton, Arcola, or Langley Park. One thing that really isn't comparable is proximity to the beach. I used to go to north shore beaches (rocky) all the time, including on school trips, and south shore (sandy) multiple times each summer.

I'm 99% sure we went to the same school. The towns on the north shore of Long Island, especially the further out you get into Suffolk County start to resemble New England.