Roosevelt Island Blogs Profiled in Main Street Wire

This week's issue of the Main Street Wire has an article profiling several Roosevelt Island blogs that have started up recently including this one, Roosevelt Island 360, a My Space blog , RIRA as well as Island Cats. A list of Roosevelt Island links is on the right side of page.

It is always interesting seeing how a reporter and editor of a newspaper choose to condense the contents of an hour long interview into the space of a half page. While the article is generally correct, some of the context in regard to the article's opening sentence describing me as:

hating virtually every minute

of living on Roosevelt Island was missing.

First of all the interview took place at the end of July so my memory of the precise words I used is not exact, though I rarely use expressions such as I "hate" this or that. I cannot say that I definitely did not say this but I doubt it. Also, the word "hating" is not in quotes in the article so it appears that this is the authors impression of what I said.

What I recall saying is that I did not like living in the Manhattan Park area of Roosevelt Island but prefaced that statement by saying that I understood and appreciated why others would like living there. An earlier post, recounting a conversation I had with two residents of the Octagon building summarizes my thoughts on Roosevelt Island living prior to the move to Southtown and the differences between the North and South sections of the Island. From the earlier post:

They told me that they did not like Roosevelt Island and were looking to move as quickly as they could, even considering Hoboken, New Jersey. They explained that they lived in the Octagon building and could not stand the distance, time and effort involved in going back and forth to Manhattan. They spoke of the difficulties with the Red Bus transportation system but most of all were disappointed by the sense of isolation and disconnectedness from the City (Manhattan).

...I told them that I understood their feelings and felt much the same way when I lived in Manhattan Park but since moving to the Riverwalk buildings in Southtown my view of living on Roosevelt Island has changed completely.

...There are many attractive benefits to living at either Manhattan Park or the Octagon on Roosevelt Island. Both have gorgeous waterfront locations with great views of Manhattan and beautiful green park grounds each with adjacent swimming pools as well as an outdoor tennis court facility and ball fields. However close proximity to Manhattan with access to any city life amenity is not one of those benefits. At Manhattan Park there is at least a significant Roosevelt Island discount, as compared to Manhattan, on rent but that is not the case at the Octagon.

The moral of this story is that if living within 15-20 minute walk of a movie theater, bookstore, museum, good restaurant, bar, nightlife and the buzz of the city is very important to you then perhaps the Octagon and Manhattan Park are not the right place for you to live, but Riverwalk may be. If the benefits of tranquility and recreational activities described above are more important and/or you have small children, then Manhattan Park and Octagon would be great places to live.

That is what is missing from portions of the article, context and completeness.

I do appreciate the generous description of myself as a "younger" William Hurt. Must have been sitting in a good light.

For the record, despite sharing the same first name with the reader who comments under the name Roosevelt Island Rick, I am neither him nor do I know who he is.

Image is from Amazon.com