Last weekend, I continued on my tour of NYC islands and visited Roosevelt Island. It felt like a big suburb in Queens, or like an offshoot of Jersey City's Newport residential area.
There's something about islands in the rivers surrounding this one big island of Manhattan--a sense of defying the impossibilities of their own existences, maybe. Roosevelt Island is so narrow--you can almost see the other side as you stand on the opposite shore. It feels like a little getaway, and at other times its history as a prison island seeps up from the soil (anarchist Emma Goldman was in prison here, and so was Billie Holiday--for prostitution!).
Before we'd even circumnavigated the entire island, we felt like we had to leave. It felt claustrophobic. Maybe the ghosts of prisoners were tapping on our shoulders, shuddering a collective, "Escape while you can!" That was a weird sensation.
The thing that struck me most was the rich juxtopositions present in the skyline: the stacks of plants visible from a grassy ballfield, for example. Industry looming in the distance, everpresent and unavoidable.
Even getting there was strange: there was a cloistered entrance that felt like a labyrinth you had to walk through to get to the bridge.
And once you arrive, you "land" in a parking garage that houses a dusty, defunct escalator.
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