a future immigrant home?

So yesterday being Easter Sunday - not one of my favorite holidays as it celebrates a psychotic fantasy, and I don't think such things should be encouraged - but a really pretty day in New York, me and the kid decided to go to the Botanical Gardens to soak up some rays and take some pics and generally just relax and enjoy the return of Spring to the Bronx. So we loaded up on Allegra (thanks Chris-ta-pha - don't you miss Ade's inimitable intonation? - for the plug) and other assorted allergy meds, read the rules (apparently thought to be necessary since the BG is in a somewhat sketchy nabe), and off we went. But as we drove down the forgettably renamed Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff Boulevard - Southern Boulevard to old locals like me - we remembered the hundreds of goyim who take their mothers to see the flowers and realized with a sinking feeling that we'd never get in the parking lot, let alone have ANY tranquility. So we abandoned the plan and drove instead to City Island - "A little bit of New England in the Bronx" - old stomping grounds of my 60s high school youth.

It's a mile-long narrow strip of an island jutting out into Pelham Bay, adjacent to the Long Island Sound, connected to the mainland by a scenic bridge, and full of old slightly run-down but authentic Victorian houses, seafood restaurants, yachting supply stores, The Black Whale I remember so well, antique shops, barely paved lanes and lots of charm with a reggaeton flavor. Latino Cape Cod. Pasty fell in love. "This is it, Mom," she said. "Gonna get me a car..." (yeah, because it's like a three-fare zone to get to civilization) "...and I'm gonna live here." Okay. After she graduates. (Better than Brooklyn, anyway, where I know I'll get lost, and when I get lost I'm like lost in Brooklyn, which is totally intimidating and I'm liable to never be heard from again. Listen up, Swivel.)

So we drive around these quaint dead end streets, sneered at a bit by the locals, but that's good too - I figure they don't like outsiders so that keeps it safe, and she won't be an outsider if she lives there. I'm encouraged. We look at the well-kept little yards, the scenic old waterside cemetery (the only one in New York City) and the totally cool-looking apartments over the shops, thoroughly enjoying the funky weathervanes and nautical nicknacks and the incredible views of the water that's never more than a very short block's walk. "What a great place to chill!" she says, on seeing a stone wall at the water's edge. Bring a few friends along to live with and hey, this could work. It's New York, but it sure feels more relaxed.

We happily meander down one of the few non-dead ends, a little street called Fordham Street that intersects a couple of the even smaller east-west streets, and we're somehow bothered by the sign we see on a fence leading to a pier up ahead at the end: PRISON.

Oh shit.

Restricted area.
Trespassing punishable
by a fine of $600 and
a year in prison.

What. The. Fuck.

"Milly," says I, using an ancient motherly nickname in my distress, "Where is Riker's Island?"

Like she'd know.

This sign, perhaps understandably, put a bit of a pall on the rest of our explorations. But we're talking 2009, so we said we'd look into it and research City Island a bit more. And I did.

Unfortunately. .

So what did I find? Well.....

1. it's not Riker's, it's Hart's - across a VERY NARROW waterway from City Island

2. Hart's Island used to be a prison island

3. some sources say it still is, housing 100 "quality of life" Giuliani-style criminals (wait, this is where they send the squeegee men??) but maybe not, hard to tell (wiki ain't all it's cracked up to be)

4. at one time or another Hart's was:
a Civil War prisoner-of-war camp
a tuberculosis sanitarium
an insane asylum
a poorhouse (yeah, that's what they called it)
a charity hospital for women
a missile base (what?? yeah, an Army NIKE missile base from 1955-61)
a barracks where 3 Germans were held when their U-Boat surfaced off of Long Island in WWII
a reformatory for "misdemeanants"- a k a bad boys
an old men's home
a Phoenix House rehab center
a house for male derelicts

and, since 1869 and still today, with over 800,000 buried bodies: the city’s "Potter’s Field"

which brings me to:
5. that's what the sign is all about - seems they bring prisoners from Riker's over on a bus to City Island's Fordham Street pier, put them on a ferry, and send them to Hart's Island to be gravediggers for the indigent, nameless folk who die and have to be buried by the city, and the inmates get paid between 25 and 35 cents an hour (isn't that illegal? what about minimum wage?) so you know how absolutely happy these inmate gravediggers must be after digging graves, sometimes digging up bodies for newly found families who want to claim them, through a long hot day in the hot beating sun with 25 cents an hour in their pockets... so like what, you don't think it's possible they'll try to overpower their guards and bolt, through the lovely little streets of City Island, easily breaking into the flimsy old bungalows where my baby wants to live?????

And that's not all.

I also uncovered that there may be a serious health problem from the nearby Pelham landfill ... and there are major traffic issues... and developers are snapping up property in hopes of gentrification and consequent soaring prices.

But the worst thing of all may be the deal breaker. Not unlike the horrifying and, yes, revolting revelation that Carmela voted for Bush comes this quote:

''We're a Republican stronghold in a heavily Democratic city.''

Oh no!

City Island has a little time to redeem itself - and it definitely has its positives - but I have to say, Williamsburg is starting to look better, even to this Yankee fan.