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By Mark D, June 16, 2011 6:57 pm

Although I did go to a lot of different schools. I could never last more then 4 years at a school. So for clarity it’s the school I went through from 4th to 8th grade. Apparently the attendance had gotten so bad that they had merged some of the classes. I have almost nothing but horrible memories about the place. The teachers almost all hated me, and since I got there half way through, I never endeared myself to the people I went there with. I actually checked my facebook and there’s all of 2 people on it that I know from that school.

It was great seeing some of the teachers that really hated me crying in the pictures. When I joined the school there was 5 or 6 of us who joined it the same year from the same public school. We had a Sister the first year, who basically HATED everyone that had transferred in. Within two years there was only two of us left. That same Sister went on to become the Principal of the school. She was probably part of the reason the school went under, she was always so evil. From everything I heard from my friend who had a brother that went there after him and said it was even worse.

The funny thing is, I know people who are crying over this because their kids aren’t going to be able to go to that shithole of a school. Seriously, this one girl I graduated with it was like the family tradition to go to school there. It wasn’t just the people in her close family either, it was her aunts, uncles and cousins too. Considering she just had a kid, I really think she is crying that her kid can’t go to the school.

Some people just care too much. Does it really matter what school you send your kids to? At the point that your crying about a school closing, maybe you should take a good hard look at your life. Maybe it’s time to get up and move and try living somewhere else. I think moving away from Staten Island was the best idea I ever had. Too expensive to live there, nowhere to rent, traffic everywhere. It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t think I’ve understand the importance of staying in one area your whole life. At some point don’t you just wonder what’s out there in the rest of the world? Is spending a few years in college enough to make up for wanting to maybe live and see a few more places? People are weird.

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By Mark D, November 5, 2010 11:02 pm

So my favorite area Pizzeria ended up being bought out, and I’m not really a fan of the new people. It got me to thinking of growing up, and for a really Italian neighborhood in NYC we really didn’t have  that many Pizza places in the area. The main one, called Nunzio’s, had been around since the beginning of time. It looked like a relic of the 50′s surrounded by newer buildings. But it was good and popular. There was also LaRocca’s Italian Ices and Pizza.

You see the problem was that Nunzio’s was too popular. There was always a huge wait for anything. LaRocca’s was a bit better, but it was closed in the winter and tended to get long lines too. So there would always be one or two pizzerias that would come and go. That is until LaRocca’s decided to go year round. Between the two of them they put just about everyone in the area out of business. I never did like LaRocca’s though, the family that owned it were a bunch of douches to the Nth degree.

So it ended up that we were always trying to find new places to get pizza from as the old ones closed. The funniest thing growing up was that a Little Caesar’s actually opened up half a block away from Nunzio’s. Needless to say they got lucky because the first few months Nunzio’s was closed for repair, but as soon as Nunzio’s re-opened Little Caesar’s was a ghost town.

LaRocca’s saving grace was the Italian Ices. Otherwise it would have went down the same as everyone else in the area did. Although I am always surprised that more people didn’t add Italian Ices to their menu wit the success LaRocca’s had. It was so painful to wait in that line forever and then find out that the flavor you wanted. That happened far too often. Dam you people and your love of Mint Chocolate Chip!

There was also Goodfella’s Pizza, not in my area but close enough for pickup. They’ve won a whole bunch of awards, but I have no idea why. Their plain pizza was horrible. I hate when places use a ton of sauce and just put Islands of cheese in it. Supposedly their specialty pizzas won the awards, but if you can’t get a plain pizza right your a jerkoff. That and everyone I knew who actually had pizza there on a regular basis had horrible taste in pizza.

So every year or two there would be a place I liked, and eventually it would run out of business. It was funny because you could tell how desperate a place was by how much they loved you when you came in. Some of these places you could have mistaken me for the second coming of christ. I still say they had good pizza, just horrible location. A lot of independent places went out of business while I was growing up. It’s so annoying having to find another place with good food. So few places get it right.

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By Mark D, October 2, 2010 11:23 am

When I was younger I was a fan of “Life With Louie”, and I’ll always remember one episode in which lil’Louie takes a trip around America and learns that his neighborhood/town isn’t 1/3rd the size of America. That episode never really made sense to me, but I guess that comes from growing up in the shadow of Manhattan. I mean all you have to do is go to Todt Hill and you could see the Manhattan Skyline and how massive it was to understand how small you were. For that matter I remember never really seeing stars until I was 13 and went to football camp and went outside after dark. It felt like I was looking at eternity, since on Staten Island you could never see the stars or at least more then one of them.

So growing up on Staten Island you learn pretty quick that the place you live is completely inconsequential in the big picture. Even the local paper, the Staten Island Advance, tended to not have local stories on the front page. So whenever I hear about Staten Island in the news, I never expect it to be anything good. Actually I usually expect it to be that another Ferry crashed into the pier. To one day see my own neighborhood in the news, I would expect it to have to begin with “North Korea bombs Midland Beach”. Midland Beach is actually pretty small, not small enough that everyone knows each other, but it’s one of the smaller neighborhoods on the Island. Historically Midland Beach used to have one of the smallest Post Offices in the US until it was closed in the 80s.

Now of course Midland Beach wasn’t nuked by anyone, but they found an even worse way to get into national headlines. With all the headlines about the “Times Square Mosque” (and in that situation I’m doing the air quotes with my hands), Midland Beach managed to slip into the argument. An abandoned convent owned by the local diocese (St Margaret Mary’s [Class of 94 Representing]) was going to be sold to the Muslim-American Society so they could build a new Mosque and community center. Immediately all the wing nuts in the neighborhood suddenly found the internet and started claiming that MAS was tied to Islamic terrorists.  Of course they came up with other reasons such as traffic and parking concerns.

The fact of the matter though is that all of Midland Beach deserves to be ashamed of all their actions. For being a part of New York City you would think people would be a bit brighter. But no, and this is really just as bad as the half finished Mosque that got burnt down in the South. It is the right of all people to be able to practice their religion. The Mosques currently on Staten Island are overflowing and they are trying to alleviate that overflow. The idea that this Mosque would somehow become a terrorist training center is just insanity. Don’t take my word for it, here’s a quote from Representative Micheal MacMahon after speaking with the FBI

The FBI responded to my request for information and they gave me no indication whatsoever that the Muslim American Society is affiliated with any organization that threatens our national security

The claims about parking and traffic problems? They are absolutely preposterous. I haven’t lived in Midland Beach in over 10 years, so conditions have only gotten worse, but St Margaret Mary’s faces and feeds out to Lincoln Avenue a one way one lane road. Not only that, but the parking lot for SMM is not only usually overflowing onto the two streets next to it, but the traffic when mass gets out is just chaotic. The position of the old Convent would actually feed traffic onto Greely Avenue, a two way two lane road that could handle traffic far better then Lincoln. If another non-Islamic religion wanted to move into there not a single person would complain about the traffic before they started building.

The case is quite clear that even Staten Island can’t claim the high ground. Midland Beach is packed with white people with a complete misunderstanding of the Islamic religion who put Islamaphobia behind a facade to keep out people that were different. Shame on you residents of Midland Beach. You should realize that treating the moderate and even conservative members of Islam like this only strengthens the radical members overseas. It shows them that there is no middle ground, no common area that people of all religions can come together. So thank you Midland Beach for giving more power to the terrorists, for giving comfort to the terrorists, those same terrorists you were trying so hard to fight.

Ironically this almost reminds me of Wiemar Era Germany. The Socialists and Communists had more combined strength then the Nazis. But the unwillingness of the Communists (under direction from Stalin) to form a united front (they actually claimed the Socialists were the real fascists) meant doom for members of both parties as they were the first ones imprisoned in the concentration camps as enemies of the people. Today we could help stop terrorism by reaching out to moderate and conservative members of Islam who are out there around the world. But instead we seem to take every path possible to insult them and degrade them as second class citizens.

So Congrats Midland Beach on your victory over the Terrorists, you make me sick.

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By , January 31, 2009 5:44 pm

I was thinking back to my youth and the sports I played. I played Little League baseball for about seven or eight years. Those little league teams made the Detroit Lions look like a championship dynasty. I think over the course of 4 years my teams had 13 wins. Some of those years have some great stories too. But right now I want to remember my first and final second year with the Staten Island Warriors. They were a Pop Warner travelling team that played a bunch of New Jersey teams.

My first season with the Warriors was insane. We had one loss at the end of the season, and for the most part the team just ran over everyone.  I’ll always remember Joey Gneere being one of those outstanding QBs and leaders on a field. I’m surprised he never ended up playing anywhere in college. Along with him was Charlie Fraiser (and his dad defensive co-ordinator) who was just a beast. He was the fullback and he would blow open holes in the line that a freight truck could go through. To top it off he was also the Middle Linebacker / Noseguard depending on the formation. He would just dominate the line. He was so good that in our championship game the other team had two of their bad players purposely start a fight with him to get him thrown out of the game. Me, I was undersized and hadn’t played football before, I was just along for the ride. But one good thing did happen to me. Just by luck, my helmet had “No Fear” scribbled across it, and I grew into the title as the year went on. I think I became something of a mascot for the better older guys on the team.

I remember a practice one day where Charlie was supposed to come through the whole and block me. For whatever reason he felt bad and missed the block and I made the play. His dad shouted at him and they ran the play again. Charlie came through the hole and nailed me sending me about 5 yards back. I get up, something else went wrong and they have to run the play again. I get nailed again, go flying and start heading back to the line when Coach Fraiser called me over. “Son, how are you still standing after taking two hits like that from Charlie?” “No idea coach, I was having fun” he started laughing “Can I go back out there coach?” and he sent me back out laughing the whole time.

Our semi-final game was a classic. There was 4 divisons, and we were a divison four team and had just beaten a divison one team in the quarter finals at home. I believe we played on one of the Toms Rivers fields. We were facing a team that was either the Leprechauns or the Irish. Well on the hour trip down south on the Bus someone had the bright idea of playing “The Longest Yard” and to say the team was pumped going into the game would be an understatement. We kicked off to them, and on the first play from scrimmage Fraiser was lined up at nose guard and proceeded to hit the center so hard into the QB that the QB was injuried. The very next play was a handoff to their RB and Fraiser nailed him and the backup QB in the backfield, injuring both of them. To say the third string QB played the rest of the game with a look of fear in his face is an understatement. The final score of the game was 47-6.

It was just my luck though that it only lasted for one season. My second year we had almost none of the good players come back. Our new QB was a complete douche. We had no WRs, RBs, just a decent TE. Our defense was nothing that it had been. To top it off I believe we moved up to divison three, so we had more competition. There was one bright side for me, Freddy Styne, one of my best buddies joined the team. We were the Midget team, which was 11-13 at the time. Our Jr Midget (9-10?) team went undefeated that season and was always shit talking us. So at one of the last practices of the year someone must have noticed it and decided to play a scrimmage between the Midget and Jr Midget team. On the kickoff me and Freddy proceeded to hype ourselves up to no end. I came down the field and saw the ball bounce and someone pick it up. Just as they picked it up I leveled the kid and recovered the Fumble. We gave the ball back anyway, but for the rest of the time me and Freddy lined up as Defensive Ends. We’d both luck at each other, yell out Crush them and proceed to come around the corner and crush the QB in play after play.  On offense we were tearing them up so bad that we ran the Fumbolski and our Center scored a TD.  Unfortunately the JR Midgets didn’t want their qb getting hurt, and put in their coach and told us not to injure him. Which we ended up doing and having to run laps to no end. It was still worth it cause it stopped the shit talking.

This talk of the old times playing sports got the memory going. I’m going to have to give some of my little league stories. I played for the craziest and weirdest league.  Some of the bs that went down really soured my vision of baseball. Timed with the bad ending to my LL Career was the 94 strike, and I’ve never really watched or played much baseball since then.