Vigil for victim of bias attack

Kudos to the Advance for putting together this video.


Unfortunately, the hatred runs deep on this Island.

Wow, (some) Staten Islanders are racist

So back in November, Staten Island elected their first black politician to public office -- which is nice. It's just the kind of thing that could bring the boro up 1980s-era equality.

Her tenure in the city council has been brief, and her policies, so far, have not been clear. But one thing about Debi Rose has become undeniable and unavoidable: she has shown that Staten Island is full of racists.

Now, we can argue about how prevalent these racists are, and if it's fair to use them as a sampling of Staten Island opinion. But the fact is, racist Staten Islanders are using every opportunity to voice their hatred and ignorance on the comment threads of SILive every time her name comes up in the news.

(On a side note: we are almost positive these people don't live in her district of the North Shore, which is pretty diverse -- so their opinions are really meaningless.)

Before we dive into the minutiae, we need to ask: why is the local paper's website letting this nonsense go on? Is the ad revenue they get from these racists diatribes really worth making Staten Island look like 1950s Alabama?

Notice how the commenter conflates a Staten Island city councilwoman with the President of the United States. They're both black and, according to this guy, part of some Communist conspiracy to give lazy people free handouts. One thing we have to give this guy credit for: at least he does admits to being a racist (sort of).

Another:

Wait, the rest of NYC is a cesspool?

A common theme in these threads is that minorities are "lazy" and get all sorts of "handouts" from the government -- handouts that us "white people" fund through our tax dollars. And Councilwoman Rose, I guess because she is black, by default feeds this paranoid theory of theirs.

The comments go on, and on. There are 102 of them. Not all are racist but the majority against Debi Rose contain a vitriol which is uncalled for and display a seething hatred that exists on Staten Island but only rears its ugly head in people's living rooms.

Just awful:

There's no point in arguing with these people. A hatred that runs this deep can not be negotiated with. But an observation is warranted.

What does this tell us about Staten Island, if anything? And what could be done about it?

(update: here is the offending article as per PB's request.)

L'douchebag comes to Staten Island

This is a story about a man named Nathan Miller. Ivy League student, Mid-Western transplant and avid bowler.

Nathan writes a blog called L’histoire de sa vie where he muses on subjects such as Shake Shack burgers, the melting snow, and the tedium of grading papers as a Teacher's Assistant.

Recently, Nathan wanted to see the Statue of Liberty so he rode the ferry, like every other jerkoff tourist who comes to this city.

Then, Nathan decided to write a blog titled "Staten Island Smells Like Garbage," which basically describes the borough as a vapid wasteland.

"Upon reaching the island, I was amazed that the stories of Staten Island being basically just a landfill ... were true."

OK, well Nathan, maybe you could have walked over to St. George, ate at some Sri Lankan restaurants, or traverse the grounds of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Maybe you'd like to visit a Tibetan Museum, didn't think we had one of those, did you?

You could have went over to the Park Hill projects, which houses one of the biggest Liberian refugee communities in the U.S. Or, you could take the bus and see the historic home of America's first female documentary photographer. There is even a few bowling alleys, if that's your bag.

We could go on. You didn't do any of this. You sat in the ferry terminal to reinforce your preconceived judgmental views of Staten Island. Then you wrote a blog about it.

Nathan ends by saying:

"Hopefully those thirty minutes will be the only time in my life I have to visit Staten Island."

Great. Don't come back. We don't want you here. This is exactly the kind of close-minded Manhattan-ite elitism we despise.

So get back on the ferry, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Bloggers attack Staten Island

It's hard to believe that anyone could not like Staten Island. It's literally one of the greatest boroughs in NYC.

Recently, a 'blogger' wrote something on the interweb site Slate.com that called Staten Island 'Planet of the Guidos' -- and they meant that in a bad way.

Anyways, this set off a firestorm of comments from other a-hole bloggers who wanted to 'feed off the Staten Island hype.'

We tried to read the Slate blog, but it's hard to understand, so we went to a place called Gothamist, which is like a BrooklynVegan for Manhattanite transplants. This is what we found:

"Staten Island was always full of douchebags,"

What the effe?

"keep SI'ers confined to their island."

effe you! Somebody needs to tell these people off. What makes them the standard-bearers for high culture in NYC?