Long Island--For Those Long in $$, Time, and Patience!
Written: Aug 17 '00
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Pros: Beaches, Proximity to NYC
Cons: Traffic, Crowds, Taxes, Cost-of-Living--It's a Difficult Place to Live
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| frazzledspice's Full Review: Long Island |
This review is part of a "Hometown Writeoff" coordinated by IrishMa4, who found numerous participants eager to review their hometowns. Links to everyone's reviews can be accessed by clicking:
http://bookshelf.epinions.com/user-irishma4?template=members/profile.html&public =yes
Because I've lived in four states in the past eleven years, I had trouble picking out a "hometown." Finally, I settled on Long Island, New York, where I lived for the first forty years of my life....
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Several times a year, I go back home to Long Island, New York, where I was born, grew up, got married, and began raising my family. I usually arrive at night, and as we descend through the clouds over LaGuardia Airport, it's like the Disney Electric Light Parade and Christmas Eve all at once. So many lights--the beautiful New York City skyline to the right, and the homes of the families who live in the shadow of the Big Apple to the left. My eyes also mist over, no matter how often I visit, as I remember the dreams of my childhood and the golden promise of the greatest city in the world.
I am always rudely awakened from my dreams when the landing gear hits the kamikaze runway and the plane brakes more sharply than I've ever experienced anywhere else. Lack of space is one of New York's greatest problems, and the runway, maybe 1/4 inch longer than the required minimum, reminds me why I left. Walking through LaGuardia, which I long ago nicknamed "Thirty Elephants in a Volkswagen", brings me one step closer to a different world.
My Dad usually picks us up, and I hand him $5 for the short-term parking. $3.50 for the first half hour? Yikes! I remember another reason why I left New York.
By the time we get on Franklin Avenue, about a mile from the house I grew up in, everyone in the car is clamoring for "real pizza"--about the only thing I miss, other than people and the ocean.
My Childhood in New York
I was born in a small railroad-style apartment in South Brooklyn, and when I was four, my family moved to Franklin Square, selling my grandparents' summer home in Breezy Point to finance the downpayment. My parents bought a brick Cape Cod house with an unfinished attic on a 60 x 100 plot. For the first few months, six of us--my parents, my grandparents, my sister and I--lived in the first floor of this little house. By the time my brother was born, they had finished the attic, and my sister and I got our own room to share.
Franklin Square was a suburb in western Nassau County--far enough to be fairly quiet, but close enough to commute to "the city." Every day, my parents drove to the Long Island Railroad Station, took a 45-minute trip to "the city", rode the subway one or two stops from Penn Station, and went to work. They did this for almost thirty years, this exhausting, two-hour plus round trip each day, to give us a better way of life.
And when I was young, I do recall western Nassau County having a good quality of life. I went to Catholic School and had lots of friends. We were able to ride all over town on our bikes, and felt safe no matter where we went. We could walk to the grocery store, the dentist, the barber, and the candy store, where they made real egg creams and what they'd now call "Italian sodas"--at 1/10 the price. We played endless games of jump rope and potsy, shot baskets, skated, bowled, and swam.
We went to the beach about once a week, and I can still remember running out of the ocean, salty and sticky, and sitting down to a snack of sandy Oreos and Pepsi, my parents' favorites.
For about two weeks each summer, we'd rent a house on a lake in the Adirondacks. It was so vast, beautiful, and unspoiled. I could swim for hours without getting salty! And when I came home, the houses and streets all seemed very close together, and our home seemed so much smaller than it had when I'd left.
I married a New Yorker, and we both took jobs in "the city." It never occurred to us to leave, because when we bought our house in 1973, the promise of New York hadn't begun to wear thin. It was only as we got older and New York got bigger that we began to realize there were better places to live.
We lived in a colonial house in western Nassau County until our boys were 13 and 11 and our daughter was an infant. In many ways it was a good life. Our kids had the kind of childhood I did--they felt safe, could ride their bikes all over town, and could take a bus to the mall or the movies with friends. They participated in all sorts of activities, and so did we. I was a religion teacher, den mother, holder of every PTA office ever invented, and yearbook advisor. I did public relations for a school district about 10 miles from our home, and wrote articles for two newspaper chains. My husband was a soccer coach and president of the 700-member soccer league. Unlike my parents, he had a job just three miles from where we lived.
And yet, the charm of New York started wearing thin about five years before we moved in 1989.
Traffic
It is impossible to describe New York traffic to someone who hasn't experienced it firsthand. I remember driving through Atlanta in the early 1990's, during rush hour, on a highway with ten lanes running in each direction. "This is the kind of interstate Long Island needs," I told my husband. But, unfortunately, there is no room to retrofit Long Island with the kind of roads it needs to support its population.
We may have lived twenty miles from midtown Manhattan, but getting there was a nightmare. I remember going to a Broadway Show one night and nearing the 59th Street Bridge in Long Island City. Scores of traffic control personnel dressed in fluorescent orange vests struggled mightily to squeeze at least fifteen lanes of traffic into one. In the late afternoon, bridges and tunnels would be routed so that three lanes of traffic left "the city" and only one headed in. Despite allowing ourselves plenty of time, we barely made the opening curtain.
Traffic was an ever-present nightmare no matter where we went. My school public relations job was over at 3 in the afternoon, and I headed home, against the traffic, and well before the rush hour. A lighted sign would proclaim "normal traffic conditions." I got to know that sign very well as I sat underneath it daily in stop-and-go traffic, wondering what was "normal" about the situation.
Parking, whether in or out of parking lots, was a nightmare. Many times I'd have to circle the parking lot over and over, following people with carts, asking them, "Am I going in the right direction? Can I have your space?"
I remember trying to park near college once, finally, finding a space about eight blocks away. There was a garbage can in the space, and I got out of the car to move it. A lady brandishing a broom came running towards me with a threatening look on her face. "That space is reserved," she shouted. "Go away!"
Crowds
It's hard to remember the hours and hours I spent on lines while living in the New York City suburbs. Before ATM's came into existence, I'd often spend twenty minutes on a drive-in window line at the bank.
But ATM's didn't solve every problem. There was still the supermarket. I remember being nine months' pregnant standing on long supermarket lines, feeling like I was in the Soviet Union, and, by the time I was checked out, sitting on the little ledge for paper bags at the end of the counter, thinking I was going to collapse. NY didn't have many "bag it yourself" lines, but most people pitched in anyway, so tired of waiting that they would have "pre-bagged" if they could.
When my dad first visited us in St. Louis, and went to Dierberg's, a supermarket that's more like a "food boutique," he was very offended. "They asked me if I wanted help out," he complained. "What do they think I am? An old coot?"
"No, Dad," I told him. "That's just what life is like outside New York."
Roosevelt Field, the nearest mall to our home, had many more customers on a typical Saturday or Sunday than any other mall I've ever been to on Christmas Eve. Parking grew so difficult that they set up a "valet parking" service for the impatient and well-heeled.
We could leave a packed St. Louis Cardinals game at Busch Stadium and get back home, twenty-five miles away, in little more than a half hour. When we lived in New York, we could see the Mets, leave Shea Stadium and still be in the parking lot a half hour later.
Taxes
New York is the only place I've ever lived where there's been a special tax on every phone bill to help pay for the subways. I never quite figured out what phone service had to do with subways! AAA Magazine said, in an article, that every time a driver drove over a Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority Bridge, $3.15 of their toll went towards the subways and the other $.35 went towards bridge and road maintenance.
Sales taxes were 8.25%, although groceries and over-the-counter medications weren't taxed.
My Dad's property taxes in New York were usually twice what we paid in the houses we owned in the midwest, although our houses were at least twice as big and had at least three to four times as much land.
When I lived in New York, we all believed, in our naivete, that Long Island schools were the best in the nation, simply because Long Islanders spent more on education than any other area of the country did. My boys had a good education in their Long Island public schools, but taxes and per-pupil costs were very high, and all the schools had started cutting corners wherever they could.
When we moved to the St. Louis suburbs, they attended schools where the per-pupil costs were only half as much. The schools were shiny-new, air-conditioned, and well-supplied with computers and the latest equipment. They were surrounded by huge fields and beautiful playgrounds. Each high school had an Olympic size swimming pool, and dozens and dozens of activities and teams, from football to water polo.
The elementary schools offered afterschool care and summer care to working parents, something Long Island schools said they would never be able to afford. They had comprehensive preschool programs and a Parents As First Teachers program for families with infants and toddlers.
The St. Louis school day was longer. Physical Education was offered five days a week. Challenge courses were offered in middle and high schools, and my sons graduated, respectively, with 13 and 23 college credits each.
The St. Louis suburban school district my children attended provided the best education of any school system I've ever seen--at less than half the cost of my suburban New York school district. I realized that the New York costs had more to do with teacher seniority, unions, and small, decentralized school districts than they had to do with good education.
In similar fashion, I found that road repair, snow removal, and parks were all better in St. Louis, despite much lower taxes.
Cost of Living
When we lived in New York, our neighborhood was full of young adult children living at home with their parents. Apartments, even illegal basement apartments, were so expensive that it was very difficult for children in their twenties to get a head start in life without living at home until they got married. Many of these children eventually decided to leave Long Island and move to other states where they could afford to live on their own.
Home ownership was expensive, too. Although California home costs have since outpaced New York's, Long Island still has very high taxes and utility costs.
When we moved to St. Louis, our per kwh electricity cost was cut almost in half. Long Island, you see, was the site of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant fiasco. Shoreham was built by the Long Island Lighting Company, which paid millions of dollars in property taxes while it was being built (with the blessing of the local politicians.) The school district in which it was located offered its students a program with every conceivable perk, including polo ponies. When Shoreham was ready to go on line, the communities which had been financed on LILCO's back started to squawk that it was unsafe. Decommissioning the plant cost even more than building it. When LILCO fought to have the assessed valuation of its unuseable property reduced, the communities sued to keep the high tax rate they'd been getting for years. Long Island consumers were paying for the dishonest and unethical maneuverings of these Suffolk County politicians for years, until the Long Island Power Authority took over the plant. Now energy costs are still more expensive, just not as expensive.
Because small businesses had to make a living in this high-cost environment, most services and consumer goods were more expensive, too.
Goodbye, Home of My Childhood!
Leaving New York opened up a whole new world for us, one in which we were able to enjoy a more relaxed, comfortable, affluent lifestyle at a much lower cost.
It allowed us to explore more cultural opportunities without going through the hassle involved with getting in and out of New York City.
I know that New York City has been experiencing a Renaissance, and I know that Long Island has been trying to improve its roads, services and burdensome tax rate. I hope that one day it will recover the promise I saw when I was young.
Most of my family is still on "the island," along with many friends. I think that if they explored the world a little more that they, too, would decide there's a better way to live.
New York continues to hold sentimental value for me, and, yes, the people are friendly--that's a completely undeserved bad rap--but I will never move back.
My once beautiful hometown looks its best right before the plane lands--a beautiful array of lights, etched by rivers and harbors. But when I land, with a screech of brakes and a thud, I realize it's a nice place to visit--and an impossible place to live.
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