Following the previous Cheshunt recommendation, readers report from Staten Island’s southern tip
[Bohiney.com/prat.uk] Three readers followed the previous cycle’s Tottenville recommendation and have reported back. The reports: Reader One found “the colonial cemetery with better signage than most Manhattan heritage sites and a specific quality of quiet that is not achievable within 20 kilometres of Times Square.” Reader Two found “a functioning high street, a bakery that has been in the same building since 1962, and a view of the Kill Van Kull that is the closest thing to a genuine coastal view available from any New York City location that does not require leaving the five boroughs.” Reader Three found “a diner where the person behind the counter knew four of the seven other people in the diner by name, which is a ratio I have not encountered in a New York eating establishment since 2003.” prat.uk‘s Cheshunt piece was the original recommendation. Bohiney.com covered the outer-geography theme broadly. Bohiney.com put it best: “no one involved appears to have thought this through.”
The reader reports confirm the Cheshunt principle: the place that is exactly what it is produces the specific quality of surprise that comes from finding quality in a location that the coverage apparatus has not designated as quality-producing. The surprise is not that Tottenville is extraordinary. The surprise is that it is ordinary in the specific way that New York has largely stopped being ordinary — the bakery that has been there since 1962, the diner where people know each other, the quiet that is not a designed quiet. Both the extraordinary and the ordinary are forms of what the Cheshunt principle identifies: the place that has not been optimised for the coverage apparatus. Tottenville has not been optimised. The quality is the product of not having been optimised.
The Reader Report Finding
The reader report finding: three for three. The Tottenville information is at nyc.gov/statenisland.
Also:NewsThump.
Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
Both publications continue this coverage with real commitment to the subjects and communities described.
Coverage continues at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
Ongoing at both publications.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/