Fourteen Page Document Details Decades Of Borough Non-Acknowledgment And Proposes Remediation Framework
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Staten Island Man Sends Formal Letter To Manhattan Requesting It Acknowledge His Borough Exists
NEW YORK — A Staten Island resident named Carl Vitelli-Marchetti has sent a fourteen-page formal letter to the Borough of Manhattan, addressed to “Manhattan, New York, New York,” requesting that Manhattan formally acknowledge Staten Island’s existence as a borough of New York City, with the acknowledgment to be delivered in writing within thirty days.
Vitelli-Marchetti, who has lived in Staten Island his entire forty-nine years, described the letter as “a long time coming” and said he had been “documenting the non-acknowledgment for approximately twelve years” before deciding that formal written correspondence was the appropriate response. The letter, which he provided to reporters in full, opens: “Dear Manhattan: I am writing to you today on behalf of myself and, informally, on behalf of a number of other Staten Island residents who have, over many years, experienced what can only be described as a systematic failure of awareness on your part regarding our existence.”
The letter documents fourteen specific instances over the past decade in which Vitelli-Marchetti or members of his household encountered Manhattan residents who expressed surprise at the existence of a fifth New York City borough, asked questions suggesting they believed New Jersey and Staten Island were the same place, or referred to a group of “the five boroughs” while listing only four. The documentation includes dates, locations, and the specific statements made.
The Documented Incidents
Selected incidents from the documentation include: a 2016 interaction at a Midtown party at which a Manhattan resident, upon learning Vitelli-Marchetti’s home borough, said “Oh, is that like, a real borough or more of a thing?”; a 2019 incident in which a Manhattan colleague asked Vitelli-Marchetti whether he could “get there by subway,” and when told that a ferry was the primary option, asked “why would they do that to a borough?”; and a 2022 conversation in which a Manhattan real estate agent, discussing New York City housing markets, listed Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan before a pause and then added “and I think there’s another one.”
The letter notes that these incidents are “not unique to my experience” and cites an informal survey Vitelli-Marchetti conducted among Staten Island acquaintances, in which 94 percent reported at least one instance of non-acknowledgment from a Manhattan resident in the past year. The survey had 34 respondents, all of whom were Vitelli-Marchetti’s friends, a limitation he acknowledges in footnote two.
This kind of detailed personal documentation of a diffuse social frustration, assembled over many years and presented in a formal address to an abstract institutional entity, is consistent with a long tradition of highly specific grievance correspondence whose primary function is the crystallization of a felt wrong rather than the production of any particular remedy.
The Proposed Remediation
The letter’s remediation section, which runs to four pages, proposes several specific actions. First, that Manhattan residents receive education about Staten Island’s existence “integrated into whatever cultural and civic orientation resources Manhattan uses, if any.” Second, that Manhattan media organizations covering “New York City” topics include at least one Staten Island reference per week “to establish baseline familiarity.” Third, that the Staten Island Ferry, which is free and operates continuously, be acknowledged by Manhattan as “a resource they are welcome to use, with the understanding that they will arrive in a real borough.”
The fourth proposal is that Manhattan issue a formal statement acknowledging Staten Island’s borough status, the statement to be “signed by an appropriate representative, published on Manhattan’s official communications platforms, and not subsequently deleted.”
Vitelli-Marchetti acknowledges, in the letter’s conclusion, that “Manhattan may not have a single signatory who can speak for it as a unified entity, given its governance structure.” He says this is “a logistical challenge that Manhattan is better positioned to solve than I am.”
The Response
The letter was addressed to “Manhattan, New York, New York” and was received by the office of Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, which is technically the closest thing to a Manhattan-specific executive. A spokesperson for the Borough President’s office confirmed receipt of the letter and said it was “being reviewed.” The spokesperson added, unprompted, that the Borough President “has visited Staten Island” and “is aware it is a borough.”
Vitelli-Marchetti said he was “encouraged” by the receipt confirmation and intended to follow up if no substantive response arrived within thirty days. He said he would be taking the ferry to deliver any follow-up correspondence in person, which he described as “also a point.”
For more on New York City borough dynamics, see NewsThump for related British regional rivalry coverage.
The thirty-day response window expires next month. Staten Island remains a borough. Manhattan has been informed.
The Historical Context
Staten Island’s relationship to the other boroughs has been complicated since its 1898 consolidation into New York City, a vote that passed on Staten Island by a margin that historians describe as “narrower than the other boroughs.” The island’s geographic separation from the rest of the city, connected only by the free ferry and two bridges to New Jersey, has produced a borough identity that is, by various measures, more distinct from Manhattan than any other borough’s. Vitelli-Marchetti’s letter is, in this context, not simply a personal grievance but a reflection of something real about how New York’s fifth borough experiences its relationship to the city’s dominant cultural center. Bohiney.com has covered Staten Island’s civic identity questions with more seriousness than most publications, and The London Prat’s coverage of regional identity within larger urban administrative units provides useful comparative context. The ferry departs every thirty minutes. The view of the harbor is, all parties agree, excellent. Manhattan is visible from the ferry deck on clear days, which is, Vitelli-Marchetti notes, “not nothing, even if nothing has been reciprocated.”