In April of 2015, the New York Times published an article entitled “Staten Island’s Turning Point?”. This piece was written by C.J. Hughes who believes Staten Island is turning into more of a gentrified area. However, this gentrification is only happening wherever builders will allow it. The builders are mostly focusing on the Northern Shore where water front homes can be made. This includes areas such as Stapleton, Clifton, St.George and Tompkinsville. Not only do these neighborhoods have views of Manhattan, they are also right near the Staten Island Ferry.
Before I came to Wagner my Dad told me that Staten Island was a semi-trashy area, and believed I would get mugged with in my first week of being here. Now the thing was is he hasn’t been to Staten Island since the early 2000s. He use spend most of his childhood here as well because some of his family lives here. So when I told him about the mansions I saw on the ride to the ferry or how safe I felt on campus he was shocked. And I pretty sure he thinks I am lying to try to make him feel better. My mom who has visited the campus however knows just what I am talking about however. But even so my Dad can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that Staten Island is changing into a gentrified area of prime real estate.
is not just a one day and done type of thing it takes days. First the grapes are delivered to my grandparents house in portions on the first day 20 cases of white and red grapes are crushed through the machines to start to get all the juice out of the grapes then it sits overnigh
t until the other 20 cases of grapes get delivered and crushed. Once both sets of grapes are crushed, they have to sit for three days. After the three days are over we squeeze the grapes. This is when everyone comes to my grandparents house and spend the whole day squeezing grapes. My family usually starts doing this around 10:00 in the morning and it does not stop until midnight depending how fast everyone works. For the past couple my grandma has been getting shirts made for everyone which just makes getting messy more fun.
er most of the stems need to be removed. Once the stems are removed the juice in the big pastic barrel with the crushed grapes is taken out little by little and put into barrels. The reaming grapes in the big barrel get put into the sqeezer for the rest of the jucie to come out of the grapes. The squeezer is a manual machine that the grapes are put in to with a piece of metal on top of the that pus
it is done. This past year we squeezed over 80 gallons of grapes and got 3 barrels of wine. Once all the juice is put into the barrels the juice needs to sit for 40 days until it can become wine. When the grape juice is fermenting into wine the barrels do not get closed because when the juice is feremnting it bubbles and if enough pressure stays in the barrels they can break or brust since they are wooden.
would have been delivered warm milk in the mornings and the afternoon as well. Brought around by a man in white, like this picture. He would bring milk to all of the kids that were lined up each day. There was something that stuck out in Donald Robert’s mind about this ritual. He was a Welsh immigrant who arrived in 1925 and in his interview, this is what he said stuck out as his most prevalent memory