Tags: Staten Island

We had a great time co-hosting Tuesday night’s panel discussion on public art with the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI).  All of the panelists make exciting and engaging work, and they had a lot to say about the ways in which financing, permissions and public interaction have played into their work (or the work they curate). 

The New York City Department of Transportation has created a free Google map of the locations of almost all (over 6,000) of the outdoor bike racks in New York City, and some indoor and covered racks. 

On Staten Island, the bulk of these are along the Bay St/Richmond Rd and Victory Blvd/Richmond Ave corridors, the latter of which will eventually lead you into Freshkills Park. 

Yesterday we were treated to a tour of the Staten Island Transfer Station (SITS) by Tom Killeen, the Department of Sanitation’s Director of Fresh Kills.  SITS is a 79,000 sq ft complex opened in 2006 and is responsible for the processing ALL of Staten Island’s residential waste. 

Another volunteer opportunity on Staten Island, removing invasive weeds, watering and mulching at Ocean Breeze Park this weekend:

Natural Resources Group: Stewardship Day
Ocean Breeze Park
Saturday, May 30, 9 am-2 pm

Sign up is through the Million Trees website, along with more Million Trees volunteer events on Staten Island and throughout the city.

The 2009 Art by the Ferry Festival on Staten Island kicks off June 6th.  For the first two weekends in June, the Staten Island Creative Community will animate the Staten Island Museum, restaurants, and galleries in the St. George neighborhood with visual arts, crafts, spoken word and performing arts events.

We had a great turnout for last Saturday’s reading atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site, presented by grass-roots dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD.  Attendees read aloud and listened to a passage from ‘Days Afield on Staten Island’, a lyrical exploration of Staten Island’s landscape by 19th century naturalist William T.

This Saturday, Staten Island OutLOUD, a community dialogue and performance project, will be reading from the naturalist memoir Days Afield atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site.  Days Afield, written in 1892, is a poetic exploration of Staten Island’s natural resources by naturalist, historian and Staten Island native William T.

Here’s great find from our archives: a November 1951 proposal for development at Fresh Kills issued under legendary Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.  The City of New York began filling in Fresh Kills in 1948, initially with the idea of depositing “clean fill” there for three years to make the land developable. 

With the 8th anniversary of the closure of Fresh Kills Landfill coming up, the Staten Island Advance’s blog, The Staten Island Notebook, published this story reviewing the steps preceding the landfill’s closure.  The story singles out one man, former Fresh Kills crane operator John Leverock, as a possible progenitor of the idea to close Fresh Kills and to containerize and export the city’s waste, as the current Solid Waste Management Plan prescribes. 

In January, Forgotten NY took a tour of the St. George Theater and some of the gorgeous old houses in St. George, the neighborhood hugging the ferry terminal in Staten Island.  SI-based artist and author Cynthia Von Buhler (who, with her husband Russell Farhang, compile our favorite Staten Island blog, The Prodigal Borough) helped lead the tour and gave a guided tour of their own incredible home. 

As regular travelers on the R train to South Ferry, we’re excited about the new South Ferry 1 train terminus (which connects to the R-W station) and the artwork that will be on display there.