I moved to Roosevelt Island in 1994,at the suggestion of an enterprising realtor. I was fed up with Queens (too blue-collar ethnic) but couldn't afford Manhattan, and this seemed like a good compromise.Roosevelt Island lies on the East River, between the two boroughs. At the time,it was New York City's best kept secret, with gorgeous river views, roomy apartments and state-controlled rents. There are green spaces everywhere, a riverwalk lined with cherry blossoms, open air markets on weekends. Its previous incarnations as the site of a prison and an insane asylum must have left their essence behind; the modern inhabitants were quirky and colorful. It was sort of a colony for artists, weirdos, and people from the United Nations, which is close by. In the 1970's,developers had repackaged Roosevelt Island as a utopian experiment, where people from different income levels would
live happily side by side.
To that end, they furnished it with a public assistance building,two buildings for seniors, several middle-class buildings and one co-op. The mix worked, and still does. Roosevelt Island
is considered one of the safest neighborhoods in NYC.
There is no friction among neighbors; everybody knows, or knows of, everybody else. The races coexist with no glitches. Muggings are unheard of; vandalism,
rare. In the summers,I'm never afraid to walk past the groups of juveniles hanging out on street corners because I've seen them grow up.Entertainment is always at hand, with concerts, receptions and free movies on offer. Or you can head for the local diner to greet others and catch up on gossip. This is home, and I love it. But alas, it was only a matter of time before gentrification reared its ugly head and brought the class struggle that is wrecking America to our doorstep. Almost overnight,million-dollar condos and $4,000 rentals sprang up in the 'hood.The older buildings have wriggled out of government rent control and are trying to price their middle income tenants off the premises. With the new housing has come a new population: yuppies with attitude. They're now entrenched on either end of the island and they never set foot in the middle, where we original settlers
live. On one end, these oligarchs are clustered near our transportation hub and they zip back and forth
to Manhattan without ever visiting the rest of the island. On the other end,they board
a special bus that sweeps them past us peasants and straight to the train, ferry, or aerial tramway. It's apartheid by design.It's also happening in Queens, in the neighborhoods that border Manhattan: the new yuppy enclaves have their own buses that take them shopping or to the ferry, to avoid contact with old-time
residents.
You can ignore this kind of bullshit until it smacks you in the face. One day,we decided to try a new restaurant near the yuppy colony by the train station. Although the place was only half full, the hostess seated us
all the way in the back, where we couldn't be seen from outside. As if to confirm my suspicions,across the aisle from us,also hidden from public view, was a table full of Arabs. White yuppies were seated all along the front and middle of the restaurant, fully visible through the glass windows. To boot, the food was mediocre and the servers petulant, like they were doing us paying customers a favor. I couldn't believe it. I have NEVER in my life experienced such a blatant show of contempt and prejudice, particularly not in New York, specifically not on Roosevelt Island,and certainly not at
a place that's little more than a glorified diner.Fine restaurants don't mistreat their customers.If this dump plans on surviving exclusively on the local yuppy clientele, I wish them luck. Those people prefer restaurants across the river, in Manhattan. But in case anyone's wondering, and just for identification's sake, the place is called Grannie Annie's Bar and Kitchen. Apparently, there's an establishment by the same name in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a region with its own history of intolerance and discrimination. If it's the same ownership, that might explain a lot.
