Staten Island is one of those places you just don’t go. My brother once took the ferry there and I do recall going with my father to check out a potential job in some projects with a lot of cockroaches and large black ladies running around, but other than that I’ve never actually gotten off the highway, well I did once. Last year on Chol Hamoid succos, on the way to New Jersey to see the Miami Boys Choir I go off the highway and drove around Staten Island for a few hours, satisfied that there was nothing to see I crossed the Bayonne Bridge and wandered around those strange parts of New Jersey that no one ever goes to.
So what’s up Staten Island, the best editor I have ever had edit this site lives in Staten Island, I have a friend who lives in the Bay Area who went to school there, my friends wife is from there and I think one of my rebbes from high school taught in the yeshiva there for a year – but besides those connections I believe Staten Island to be one of those forgotten places on the Jewish geographic map.
Staten Island is one of those places that you pass through a lot, yet never stop, when I was dating someone in Baltimore I used to drive through Staten Island all the time, do you know what a pain it is to pay $11 for a bridge to a place you are just passing through? I can imagine that the singles on Staten Island are some of the few in the New York area that have the unsatisfactory label of GU – Geographically Undesirable – you might as well be 30 if you maintain a status of GU in the shidduch world.
So does this mean that the Jewish community of Staten Island is considered “out of town”? I would be interested if any Staten Islanders had thoughts on this. Do people from Staten Island read frum satire? I am sure that folks who live there will defend it’s beauty and quality of life to the fullest, I should say that being a big fsan of Wu Tang, I know quite a bit about street life in SI, but I know nothing of the Jewish life, save for the fact that one of Rav Moshes son’s is the Rosh Yeshiva there and that Camp Yeshiva Staten Island has really good rye bread.