Tags: Staten Island

As part of its annual SummerFest, the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI) joins artist Tattfoo Tan in hosting a mobile garden expo and parade this Saturday, June 5th in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island. 

The fifth annual Staten Island Film Festival starts tomorrow and features a slate of dozens of intriguing short and feature-length films, many of them about or featuring New York City’s outer boroughs.  Participating filmmakers include 15 from Staten Island (including Wu-Tang Clan leader the RZA) as well as many more from throughout New York City and as far afield as Las Vegas and Australia. 

This coming Tuesday, we’re happy to have photographer Nathan Kensinger joining us for a Staten-Island-centered follow-up to his March talk and slideshow on New York’s post-industrial waterfront.   Nathan will be presenting photos from around Staten Island, including an abandoned chewing gum factory, a partially demolished color works, rotting train stations, empty hospitals and boat graveyards.

The Spring/Summer issue of the Freshkills Park newsletter, Fresh Perspectives, is up on the official Parks homepage for Freshkills Park.  In this issue are a review of the past year’s expanded tour programs at the Freshkills Park site and a profile of the Department of Sanitation’s compost facility, located just beside the former landfill, in addition to the cover story, which offers a history of the Fresh Kills area before landfilling began in 1948 and an annotated map of historic activities onsite.

Tomorrow evening, Dr. Judith S. Weis, Professor of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University will be talking about and signing copies of her book Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island.  The book is first a history of American salt marshes, their ecological functions, gradual destruction and several profiles of contemporary restoration projects. 

Gothamist discovers the Witte Marine Salvage Yard, one of the largest marine scrapyards on the East Coast, along the shore of the Arthur Kill just south of the Freshkills Park site’s West Mound.  It’s a pretty spectacular and much photographed sight to see these rusted heaps—mostly tugboats and cargo ships—half sunken in the Arthur Kill, and the various plant and marine life that has made its home there. 

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/9859255]

The Staten Island Borough President’s office has put together this fun video quiz about Staten Island parks, all viewed from the air.  So much beautiful landscape!  Borough of Parks, indeed.

Last month’s professional photographers’ tour of the Freshkills Park site yielded some beautiful results.  We’ve posted a selection of photos by Linda Jaquez, Vincent Verdi and Michael Bonanno in our flickr stream; photographs by Jarred Sutton are posted on his website.

Currently on view at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor in Staten Island is Hope-A-Holic, a group exhibition of 21 artists exploring Utopian ideas in contemporary work. The show features installation, drawing, painting, video, performance and interactive works.

A recent New York Times piece features a valuable piece of NYC Parks property: the Alice Austen House, a National Historic Monument located in the Rosebank section of Staten Island.  Accompanying the story is an audio slide show narrated by caretaker and curator Paul Moakley, a freelance photo editor and photographer who maintains the house, museum and grounds in exchange for free accommodation in the house’s upstairs apartment.  

The Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), on Victory Boulevard on Staten Island, sits on the site of what was once the Mollenhoff Family Farm.  From 1911 to 1992, the Molenhoffs operated a 32-acre vegetable farm that was well-renowned among small growers for its innovations in farming methods, including a mechanical watering system and steam-heated greenhouses.

Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! presents another Staten Island group walk tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th, roaming 15 miles of the island’s south shore.  Lots of beach walking and some rock scrambling involved; dress for the temperature and wear sturdy shoes. Participation is free, and Saturday’s walk will start with a meetup underneath the first S in the Staten Island Ferry sign outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan at 8:45 am.

The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Staten Island Compost Project will be co-hosting a recycling and home composting workshop this Saturday afternoon at the St. George Library on Staten Island.  Tin can tricks and live worm bins, fun for all ages.  

A volunteer coordinator from Transportation Alternatives and Staten Island bike advocates will be leading a ride around the borough tomorrow morning, October 10th, ending at Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills.  The group will be “discussing the current challenges facing cyclist, pedestrian and mass transit users in Staten Island, and developing some advocacy plans for the future.” 

This Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 11th, is Open House New York weekend.  OHNY’s 7th annual offerings include building tours and site visits of unique locations across the five boroughs.  Staten Island is represented by its array of historic buildings as well as two Parks-related listings: Freshkills Park and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC). 

Last week’s Dining Section of the Times printed a great review and slide show of delicious and affordable restaurants emerging from new immigrant populations on Staten Island.  We vouch for the Sri Lankan offerings at Sanrasa on Bay Street–very good food. 

Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! is a series of long group walks exploring various parts of the five boroughs.  Tomorrow’s 20-mile exploration of Staten Island will be the group’s 41st walk and its fifth on the Island.  Their flickr stream of photos from previous walks is pretty excellent. 

[vimeo vimeo.com/2802531]

Before PBS Thirteen’s online series The City Concealed featured Freshkills Park, it featured another unusual Staten Island park happening, at Mt. Loretto Unique Area, a state preserve on the island’s southern tip.  Artist Doug  Schwartz has been building pyramids of thousands of rocks, spanning nearly half a mile of beach at Mt.

An event this Saturday on Staten Island invites artists to bring leftover ideas and pieces of work to an afternoon of collaborative dada production.  Day de Dada is August 1st from 1:00 to 4:00 on Van Duzer Street between Wright and Beach Streets, Staten Island. 

For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills.  He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.