A Tale of Two Ferries

One of the reasons for the lack of blogs is that I’ve spent a lot of time on ferries between Long Island City and Staten Island. One ferry takes me from LIC to Pier11 at Wall Street and after a short walk by the river, I get on to the Staten Island ferry. It’s maybe ninety or so minutes of ferry-sitting a day (never mind, in addition, various combinations of taxi, bus, waiting and walking) which mean that the blog loses out until the weekend.

I like travelling by ferry to work. It has a faintly romantic, even superior feeling, above the hubbub of cars, motorways, trains and buses. Not quite as self-righteous as cycling, but something different. In practice, of course, in Auckland at least, a ferry does have some similarity to being on a big bus that runs on water. I sit in the same seat (god forbid someone steals it); read my book; fail to notice the beautiful scenery; avoid most of the wonderful people of Devonport; get irritated by the dawdling queues; and, if the truth be known, am rarely interrupted by the passing orca or dolphin. 

And why would I behave too differently in New York. Once the excitement of passing by the UN, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler, the Statue of Liberty etc. etc. fades away, I’m sitting in the same seat reading my book, avoiding the scenery, getting irritated by New York dawdlers (who, much to my surprise, are even better at the art of dawdling than the Devonport commuter).

There is a difference, however, and that’s because a ferry is a great place to see people, and in New York, the sheer diversity of the population is on display. You won’t get too much insight into Auckland as the world’s premier Polynesian city sitting on the 8 o’clock Devonport ferry on a Monday morning but with the two ferries in New York I can see a lot. 

 The ferries – the East River Ferry and the Staten Island Ferry – are very different. The latter – which is free - claims to be the oldest, biggest, most important etc etc. Running for well over a century, it moves a million people a year; backwards and forwards to work; backwards and forwards so tourists can sail past and photograph the Statue of Liberty; backwards and forwards so you can say you have been on the Staten Island Ferry. It’s a colossal operation. As you walk into the huge terminal on the very end of Manhattan, it can be deceptive. The anti-terrorist dogs – beautiful Labradors – are likely to be asleep. The anti-terrorist police are setting up a reception desk, not I suppose to receive terrorists. The hall is empty because the boat I just missed has just left. In fifteen minutes time the place will be packed again. The hall holds, according to the notices, 3530 people (I like the 30). The ferries themselves are huge, ugly, very orange, rather basic, and travel in a very stately (or, less generously, very slow) manner. If you thought the Kea was slow, you haven’t seen anything. Yesterday – sitting on the Spirit of America - we were overtaken by a Spanish Galleon, a cruise liner and the various dredgers, ferries and cargo boats that dot the harbour. The people on the boat reflect the ethnic diversity and the age profile of the city, but not the socio-economic profile. The passengers are on their way to college, to work, or returning from a night shift.  They are dressed, politely, in a casual manner. These are not the city's suits. On this boat I am definitely the whitest. 

Many of the passengers are seemingly talking to themselves, though most are actually speaking into a microphone, rather than from some turbulent inner depth. The odd teenager is practising either their latest rap or their audition for Idol or the Voice. A young Hispanic woman, a college teacher, is telling her much older (and, I decide, pompous) colleague that young people (presumably anyone under 20 as she can't be much older than 20 something) don’t realise their brains are different – it’s scientifically proven – and they can no longer think in anything other than short bits and bytes. 'They’ll never understand Shakespeare' she says, to patronising smiles of approval from the much older colleague. 'How can they', she says, 'understand the human condition if they haven’t seen Shakespeare in a park on a summer’s day'. I feel inclined to point out that the vast majority of the world’s population for the vast majority of human history managed to avoid that experience, and would wish to tell her of my horrendous experience of open-air Shakespeare at the Takapuna Pumphouse, but I go on reading. The atmosphere is soporific, down time. Maybe that’s the principle attraction of the ferry.

The East River Ferry is quite different. It’s newer smaller, much faster. It runs between 34^th Street and Wall Street but is there to serve the new commuter communities that have grown rapidly and seemingly randomly on the other side of the East River – Long Island City, Greenpoint, North and South Williamsburg, DUMBO. The passengers themselves move more quickly. They are  in their 20s and 30s. They are mostly white or Asian. On this ferry, I am by far the greyest. Some of them  are on their (very cool and expensive) bikes, some have their kids and prams with them, heading off to the crèche. They are smartly dressed, and sharply aware of where they are going. They are already working when they get on the ferry, their electronic devices the centre of attention. The ferry picks this up and gets to where it and the passengers are going as quickly as possible.

These ferries also say something about the places they serve. In the 19th century Staten Island, one of the world's first suburbs, was thought to be one of the most desirable and beautiful places to live. The rich flocked there for residence and play. Long Island City, however, was known for its stench, the filthiest place in New York. The 21st century has brought them to the opposite position. Tell any Manhattan person that you are going regularly to Staten Island and they will sneer or show pity. They are wrong in this, but it is a place that has fallen from grace. Long Island City, however, has emerged, at least for a new generation, as a very desirable place to consume the wealth they are expecting to acquire. As I sit on the two ferries, I can see the story of the two 'cities'.