The Forgotten Borough

“Staten Island is like… another state.”

“You basically live in New Jersey.”

Every day I board the bus at 6:24 A.M. which takes me to Bowling Green where I transfer to the 4 train that takes me to Bedford Park Boulevard in the Bronx. I arrive at school at 7:55, five minutes before the bell rings. Whenever anyone at Bronx Science discovers I live in Staten Island, the first question they ask is always “Do you take the ferry to school?!?” as if the Verrazano Bridge didn’t exist.

I’ve lived in Manhattan, in a tiny apartment at the edge of Chinatown, for most of my life. I used to be one of the many people who thought Staten Island was a distant land unworthy of being explored. Moving here during my freshman year provided me with a new perspective.

In the three years I’ve lived here, I’ve had the chance to see that it isn’t the “trash dump of New York” that every half-jokes it is.

There is Fort Wadsworth, a military base on the North shore of the island. From the top, you can see Brooklyn, with its short quaint buildings, and the towering Manhattan skyline just a bit farther in the distance. The fort is a monument of the island’s history, having been an important station in the colonists’ fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. Every time I visit, I see both tourists and runners stopping to admire the view.

There is South Beach which stretches for about two miles along the east coast of the island. While incomparable to Coney Island with its loud rides and crowded beach, it contains its own little wonders: the single stand that sells hot dogs and fries, the super soft sand and scattered seashells, the families with small children chasing one another all over, the myriad of senior citizens lying on their towels tanning for hours on end, and a spectacular view of the Verrazano Bridge rising high into the cloudless sky.

There is the Staten Island Mall. Manhattan has Broadway and Times Square as its shopping centers, but the Mall is Staten Island’s shopping center. Filled with numerous shops and a large food court, families and groups of teenagers alike spend hours roaming the brightly lit and impeccably designed building looking for fashionable treasures or home goods and toys.

There are many more magnificent aspects of Staten Island that simply cannot be covered here lest this turn into a tourist guidebook, but the island is definitely a far cry from the irrelevant uninteresting borough that everyone seems to think it is. I am fortunate to live here and although it means a four hour commute to and from school, it has given me an opportunity to truly get to know an overlooked part of the city that I’ve called my home for fourteen years of my life.

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