and the winner of the worst borough ever contest is...

STATEN ISLAND

(insert wild applause here)

having never been to staten island except to cut through to jersey, i felt unqualified to judge the boroughs properly. until saturday. when i spent an afternoon there. and i can now give you the official rankings of the boroughs of new york city:

1. Brooklyn. 'natch.
2. Manhattan
3. Queens
4. Bronx
5. Staten Island

i had trouble with #s 3-5. i know many people (PG) will argue #s 1 and 2 and that's fine. that's really a "to each his/her own" kind of conversation. i don't know how anyone who lives in 3-5 could argue that they belong in the #s 1 or 2 spot though, really.

but 3-5 were a struggle until i saw staten island. then i could EASILY place it last.

now, if you're from there and you can argue this - please, for the love of g-d, do.

because i drove all over that little island looking for a nice area. and all i saw was views of barges and tanks, burned out houses, a nice building or two surrounded by abandoned cars, and wrought iron subdivisions. is there a self-contained historically relevant but not fire bombed and smelly area i missed? is there some culturally relevant place i didn't see?

here's how i picked queens over the bronx by the way:

queens: it has the scale model of the ctiy of new york. that, in itself, is enough to make it worthy of a visit. i also once got lost in forest hills and it is quite nice. additionally, they have tennis. AND not one but TWO targets. all this, and i have never been to what i have been told is "the best of queens" which would be astoria. i am taking two points off for the presence of shea stadium but adding two for the lemon ice king of corona.

bronx: first off. yankee stadium. next, bronx zoo. last, the botanical gardens. i had trouble with the bronx - architecturally, it outscores queens. but through no fault of its' own, the borough was fairly thoroughly decimated by the development of expressways. it is SO CLOSE to beating queens though. one argument in my head was that queens is attached to long island and the bronx is not but the bronx is attached to westchester which is just as bad, if not worse.

that said, they DO have city island. so maybe the bronx should move ahead of queens.

but i will tell you. the second that scale model leaves queens, they go to 4th place.

last is staten island, of course. because i found absolutely nothing of value there. nothing. zero. zilch. nada.

i did research too. tried to find out some things to do. or whatever. but there was nothing.

so i hereby proclaim it to be "WORST BOROUGH EVER".

Gingi just told me of the official new nickname of Staten Island - DILDO. "DIstrict Lower than DOwntown" I think it is fitting...

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