Fifth and Forgotten

The Forgotten 5th: Five Headlines. One Island.

S.I. kid wins Marquis matchup in Bronx

All his life, Jason Marquis, Staten Island product via Brooklyn, had waited for this experience — waited and wondered what it would be like for a kid from the boroughs, who grew up a Yankee fan, to start a game at Yankee Stadium.

Never did he dream what a maelstrom of emotions he would be feeling when the opportunity finally availed itself Wednesday night — a night in which he left nearly 50 tickets for his friends and family, including his wife, Debbie, herself a Staten Island product, and their 7-year-old daughter, Reese, who, a month earlier, had been given a “50-50” chance to live by doctors at the Staten Island University trauma center after suffering a serious injury in a bicycle accident.

Volunteers needed at Staten Island Ferry to woo tourists.

Does it frustrate you to see so many tourists hop off the Staten Island Ferry in St. George — and hop right back on without so much as pausing to give our borough a second thought?

Do you think you have the kind of passion, enthusiasm, and knowledge to sell visitors on staying for a while?

If you have some time on your hands this summer, now is your chance to help give the borough a boost: Borough President James P. Molinaro is seeking volunteers to staff the tourism information kiosk in the St. George Ferry Terminal.

There’s no driver like a Staten Island driver. 

My brother had just opened the car door and was barely out from behind the wheel, when, looking somewhat shell-shocked, he turned to me, and said, “How do you drive on this island? These people are crazy!”

Living in Manhattan lo these 30 years, most of them sans auto, and taking the express bus in whenever he came to the Island, he was unprepared for how much had changed on these mean streets since he was a young musician tooling around the Island to his gigs.

“People talk about Manhattan,” he went on, “but I’d rather drive there than here any day.” And this is a guy who has to get up every morning to move his car.

My sister-in-law agreed, still shaken from their having had a couple near misses en route from the Verrazano to Great Kills. Not one to suffer fools gladly, she’d let fly some well-chosen words in the errant drivers’ direction, but still hadn’t calmed down.

“What’s wrong with these people? They’re so rude. Everybody’s in a hurry and they have absolutely no concern for anyone else on the road!”

Welcome to Drive Staten Island, where the speed limit is just a suggestion, a STOP sign is nothing more than a pesky inconvenience, and a good percentage of the driving populace believes they don’t need to use no stinkin’ directional signals.

Staten Island, Hotbed of Pop Music

The band was called the New York Dolls, but only savvy fans knew that the lead singer of this pioneering punk group, David Johansen, was born and raised on Staten Island. So were most of the members of the influential hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan, and though few people may realize it, Joan Baez, Christina Aguilera and Ingrid Michaelson are also natives of Staten Island.

Now there’s a new exhibition meant to remind the rest of the world that a large number of artists have either been born in or chosen to work and make their homes on Staten Island, the city’s most overlooked borough. Called “Island Sounds: a 500 Year Music Mash-Up,” the show will open to the public on May 12 at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden and run through Dec. 20, 2013.

Coyote spotted in Staten Island near Fresh Kills landfill.

Proving yet again that it has every amenity as the rest of the city, a coyote was spotted at the site of the old Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, which recently caught on brush fire the other week. Nick Mirto was dropping off a load of soil at 7:45 a.m. on Thursday when something caught his eye. “I just looked to the left, and there he was, about 30 feet from the road we just drove down,” Mirto told the Staten Island Advance. ”He looks very healthy. There’s plenty of food in there for him to eat.”

Dr. Paul Curtis, the extension wildlife specialist at Cornell and the co-principal investigator for the New York Suburban Coyote Study told the paper that the city’s coyotes likely come from the populations in Westchester County. “It is just a matter of time before dispersing coyotes figure out how to cross the bridges at night and get onto [the Island].” But will they be able to manage Staten Island’s complicated dating scene?