france used elba

and new york uses roosevelt.

Being a lovely spring day today, I planned a bike trip up and over to Roosevelt Island. I was eyeing it during a lunchtime walk the other day and decided it needed some investigation. There's gotta be something interesting about every chunk of land in new york, right?

The bike ride was successful. Made it to Roosevelt Island, Astoria and back - all without getting killed (which I consider a victory whenever biking in Queens). What was disappointing, however, was Roosevelt Island. Let's just say it was a let down.

With a history of housing prisons, hospitals, and psychc wards*, the creepy nature of the place wasn't too surprising. Built up in the 1970's with an excess of cement and right angles, it has the feel of olympic park in montreal in the dead of winter.

I guess this is where the explanation of creepy comes in. It was quite. Too freakin' quiet. For anyone living in new york, at any given time you should hear a bus, a subway, a siren, people talking loudly... etc. I biked all the way around the island and only overheard a few words from the seemingly mute passersby. In addition, I'd like to add the intriguingly communist quality of the island. Now, of course all the residents need the basics - grocery store, pharmacy, hardware store.. etc, but with an island that is only 800ft at its' widest point, there isn't much room for competition. When you go down "main st" you see posted all the stores, the "hardware store," "video store," "flower shop".. and it goes on. The lack of competition in itself is just totally bizarre to one steeped in capitalism.



Go back? Hmm.. something tells me the "chinese restaurant" there doesn't really deserve a visit. That, and getting that close to the east river will probably give me cancer.

*The renegade female journalist Nellie Bly spent a few months there as a research project to see how the committed were treated. This is relevant only because I was in an original production of a play titled after her, where I graced the stage with a flashy metal grin. I'm sure it was sillier than I remember.