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

[Anonymous]

I spend time in the Hamptons and near Nickerson Beach. It is hard to imagine more different places that are on the water in close physical proximity. Hamptons is very new money. Nickerson is very blue lives matter. There is no interaction whatsoever.

[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.

What you've written is pretty accurate. LI has a broad range of "types" and really does vary depending on what direction you point to.

[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.

Well there is the Hickey carting family (Irish) who caused quite a stir with the gold painted garbage cans on their driveway entry piers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I spend time in the Hamptons and near Nickerson Beach. It is hard to imagine more different places that are on the water in close physical proximity. Hamptons is very new money. Nickerson is very blue lives matter. There is no interaction whatsoever.

Nickerson Beach is Lido Beach? Nassau County & the east end are worlds apart. The south fork of LI was up until its Hamptonization an agricultural economy, with seasonal tourism & seasonal homes thrown in. Now it's awash in flashy money and gigantic homes cover virtually all the old farm fields. It's still exceptionally beautiful in a way that all those deep pockets, and committed locals have been able to protect with restrictions & regulations.

[Anonymous]

South shore Nassau here. Everyone at my school was white and either Irish Catholic, Italian Catholic, or Jewish. The 2-3 minority kids were mercilessly made to feel "other" by the vast majority of the student body. Vast majority of families were Republican and it's super Trumpy there now. Towns were very segregated and wealthier, whiter towns had better-funded schools. Super common for someone to call out "lock your doors!" as soon as you drove into a "black" area. The entire surrounding area to my town was Sunrise Highway - the LIRR train tracks, strip malls, car dealerships. Most people I went to school with never left and it shows. The pizza, bagels, and Italian bakeries are amazing. It was fun to grow up next to the beach. Most everything else sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I spend time in the Hamptons and near Nickerson Beach. It is hard to imagine more different places that are on the water in close physical proximity. Hamptons is very new money. Nickerson is very blue lives matter. There is no interaction whatsoever.

Nickerson Beach is Lido Beach? Nassau County & the east end are worlds apart. The south fork of LI was up until its Hamptonization an agricultural economy, with seasonal tourism & seasonal homes thrown in. Now it's awash in flashy money and gigantic homes cover virtually all the old farm fields. It's still exceptionally beautiful in a way that all those deep pockets, and committed locals have been able to protect with restrictions & regulations.

It is so sad what has become of the North Fork on the eastern end of the island. Vineyards have replaced charming farms. But then again, the chemicals used on those farms have caused a lot of health issues for those who grew up around them.
Long Island has so many different flavors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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!

I was born in plainview!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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!

I grew up in Huntington! Shocked to find that makes me a dirtbag!?

Very hard to generalize about LI, each town has it's own identity and history. It's changed a lot but there's so much I remain nostalgic for, so many characters and stories.

[Anonymous]

Shelter Island and North Fork are a a world away from the rest of Long Island. Shelter Island is very old old old money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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!

I was born in plainview!

I dated a guy from Plainview!

[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.......

I grew up in the suburbs of NYC but my Dad (Brooklyn born and bred) was a straight arrow so we never got the benefits of having an “in” but I always wanted them! I miss the strong NY accents, all the parents who were so proud to give us kids a suburban life, the FOOD! I’ll say, though, when I was in HS one of my friend’s Dad was sent to prison. Total mob boss. So taking it too far def had consequences. I miss NY!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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!

Why?!?? Sounds like a great deal!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Well there is the Hickey carting family (Irish) who caused quite a stir with the gold painted garbage cans on their driveway entry piers.

They had to be an outlier. ZERO of the Irish families I knew who “made good” had the lions at the end at the end driveway etc.

What I loved/hates about growing up in NY was we were all a generation or two away from a history in which people took serious risks to come to the US. That has major downstream effects…good & bad

[Anonymous]

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

The people are hard working but also very tacky and in your face on SI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

The people are hard working but also very tacky and in your face on SI

The Vanderbilt family is from Staten Island. They built a lot of stately homes. The grand family mausoleum is still on SI, Gloria Vanderbilt was recently buried there.