Safest neighborhood in New York City
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/crime-safety-report/ranking
According to DNAinfo.com, the winner for safest neighborhood is “Great Kills & Tottenville” which is the southernmost part of Staten Island. This is also the whitest part of New York City (except for isolated Breezy Point which is too small of a neighborhood to get grouped here by itself, or maybe a few select blocks in Brooklyn that are 100% ultra-Orthodox Jews). And the most pro-Trump. Last summer, you could find a Trump lawn sign on every block.
None of the elites who live in Manhattan would ever choose to live in this part of Staten Island, a cultural wasteland that’s a ridiculously long trip by public transportation to any of the worthwhile areas of the city. The whites who live here speak with a low-class Staten Island accent and tend to have local blue-collar oriented jobs.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
The whites who live here speak with a low-class Staten Island accent and tend to have local blue-collar oriented jobs.”
….and yet they manage to have the safest neighborhood in NYC.
Poor Lion! He hates to say anything positive about Staten Island for fear it will make Italians look good. He was probably hoping to report that SI was becoming increasingly unsafe due to the opioid problem and blame the growing “cultural wasteland” effect on guidos.
Maryk
June 29, 2017 at 9:49 AM
It does raise the question of why, if these people are so looked down on by elite whites, the government hasn’t loaded them up with subsidized housing and ruined their neighborhood.
Magnavox
June 29, 2017 at 3:44 PM
I want everyone to notice how leftists like magnavox think. “White prole neighborhood? Let’s flood it with housing projects!” But you’d never live in a neighborhood where your own kids were subjected to it would you worthless piece of shit.
destructure
June 29, 2017 at 8:44 PM
“But you’d never live in a neighborhood where your own kids were subjected to it would you worthless piece of shit.” i don’t know what magna’s political views are, but as a democrat, i love the thought of trumpturds getting beaten and assaulted by nams who move into their neighborhood via subsidized housing. if you’re a democrat/liberal and you want anything else, then you’re a cuck.
gm
June 30, 2017 at 3:41 PM
gm — Well, you’re a spiteful little shit aren’t you. The last election must have really hit you hard.
destructure
June 30, 2017 at 7:13 PM
destructure
June 30, 2017 at 7:34 PM
I don’t want that at all. I’ve never said anything to indicate I thought that. I just posed the question of why the elite whites in Manhattan have to deal with the crime caused by subsidized housing but the prole whites in staten island are allowed to be isolated from it. Although I think that the reality is that, even if elite neighborhoods like the upper east side have more crime than certain staten island neighborhoods, the actual elite whites living in those neighborhoods experience less crime than the prole whites in the ostensibly safer ones.
Magnavox
July 1, 2017 at 1:28 AM
Amazon is opening a huge distribution center on Staten Island.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
June 30, 2017 at 12:01 AM
Staten Island = Cultural Wasteland
Manhattan = Cultural Wastedland with amenities
“Hey Pauly, want to live in Mannuttin?
No, I luv it out hear!”
JS
June 29, 2017 at 10:20 AM
JS I’ve lived in Montreal as well and I can tell you that asides from a thin veneer of cultural cache, that city is also a cultural wasteland. Like it or not, the interplay of different cultures in NYC generally and Manhattan in particular with ghetto black youth rubbing shoulders with (and sometimes assaulting) billionaires is what gives the city its very dynamic edge. In Montreal salaries and property prices are on par with what you’d find in medium-city mid-west USA, nothing to write home about and as such not the kind of place worthy of sustaining a sophisticated culture. I currently live in Vancouver, a city known for its beautiful skyline set against a stunning natural setting but a place that a person like you would denigrate as being full of uncultured and money obsessed Anglos and immigrants. Truth is that Vancouver is far more economically dynamic than Montreal and all the international money flowing into this city is adding to the cosmopolitan buzz of the city. From what I’ve seen in your comments, you seem to have a hard-on for Spain and Spanish culture, well it might help to remember that Barcelona–Spain’s uber hip city–was built on the back of international trade and commerce.
Roli
June 29, 2017 at 2:15 PM
Vancouver used to be called the Vegas of the North. A place where, within a short walk, you could see a girl take a shower on stage and within minutes be eating roast duck in Chinatown. Nowadays I suppose you can buy pot on every street corner?
Curle
June 29, 2017 at 5:03 PM
I think Lion should stop approving JS’s one-note comments. Sheesh, talk about a job that could be done robots. You could create a bot to post some variation of “the Anglosphere is prole” as a comment on every post, set it and forget it.
Hermes
June 29, 2017 at 6:03 PM
You must be kidding right? If Mont-Rael is a cultural wasteland, then the entire New World is a cultural wasteland. Let’s import more 3rd world citizens into America and it becomes more vibrant and dynamic. While we’re at it, let’s build a few public housing units inside Central Park as if it was a zoo so the wealthy can view them from their windows.
What culture does Manhattan have? Most of the independent bookstores are gone — the same cannot be said of Mont-Rael, and no, let’s not compare it to Ann Arbor or Chicago in the Midwest. You know what I’m talking about.
And Vancouver — Soulless East Asians are always a net negative to any Western city.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 6:32 PM
East Asians are always a negative only if you don’t have a penis. Best girls in the world, hands down.
sfd@asf.com
June 30, 2017 at 5:12 AM
How is Manhattan a cultural wasteland? Everybody can’t be a scholar and hang out at a café discussing music, art, and philosophy. There is more culture in Manhattan than just about anywhere on earth. This is why so many people want to live there or near there. As for Staten Island, most of its residents are not what you’d call “cultured: (heck even “Maryk” is not “cultured by JS’s standards!) but at least the peace and stability of the area would enable a person to create culture or live there and enjoy the cultural amenities of Manhattan. I have a relative in S.I. who works as a hairdresser in an upscale salon in Manhattan. She has cut the hair of several famous people. What she does in her spare time I don’t know. But there’s no doubt that working in Manhattan gives her many opportunities to expand her horizons, which is a good thing since according to JS guidos and guidettes need all the cultural horizon expanding they can get!
And personally I would NOT want to live in Manhattan – or Staten Island. Manhattan is too congested and doesn’t contain enough “ordinary people” for me. Staten Island has a lot of Italians but no feeling of a “neighborhood” since no one walks around.
Maryk
June 29, 2017 at 2:35 PM
Mary K is correct. Manhattan is too congested, you can’t walk around there (an exaggeration, but try walking around Midtown during business hours). But you can’t walk around in Staten Island either, for different reasons.
Ed
June 29, 2017 at 4:45 PM
Manhattan has no real bookstores. In essence this signifies an urban cultural void. The French Speaking Canadian city has countless bookshops, including those representative of certain ethnic/religious groups.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 6:36 PM
There are definitely non-chain bookstores in Manhattan.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 29, 2017 at 6:51 PM
Very few notable ones like the Strand, which sells a lot of old books, but most of the time, their selection is not good.
There’s Rizzoli in Midtown, but they no longer sell new books that come out of Italy. They used to have an Italian staff who work there, now it’s just a bunch of White Americans in their 20s managing the store.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 7:33 PM
why is staten island a borough? from everything ive heard its just seems like a suburb.
james n.s.w
June 29, 2017 at 10:33 AM
I think intact families with a work ethic is a big factor. Harlem used to be that way.
rob
June 29, 2017 at 11:38 AM
I’d love to visit Brooklyn. Near my work there is an ashkenazim baker and I saw she organizes “Yiddish Brunch” on sunday. I asked her in Yiddish if people were speaking yiddish there. She told me she didn’t speak it neither 99% of the people attending. They say Yiddish has never been strong in France where jewish were assimilasionist and now, most are sefardim since Jewish from Algeria, Tunis and Morocco came back to France after the loss of colonies (75K jews out of 300 were killed during WWII, almost all ashkenazim, but now it is said that only 20% of the 500K are askenazim. That is sad because they have been a great asset for french arts, sciences and economy. I learned with this site : http://yiddish.biz/lowerintermediate.htm .
Waiting further lessons in advanced level to be created.
Bruno from Paris
June 29, 2017 at 12:05 PM
Great asset? Then French Ashkenazim must be a lot better than American Ashkenazim. American Ashkenazim are Globalist trash.
Otis the Sweaty
June 30, 2017 at 9:40 AM
There is no bridge there, but if you were to take Amboy Avenue across the river you know end up in Perth Amboy, which is probably the shittiest small town in New Jersey.
Great Kills and Tottenville are represented on the NYC Council by Joe Borelli, which tells you all you need to know about Great Kills and Tottenville.
ScarletNumber
June 29, 2017 at 12:27 PM
Great Kills sounds like a wonderful place to swim with the fishes. The place was once a notorious Soprano hangout.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 6:51 PM
I am not aware of any mafiosos living in Great Kills. “Kill” is Dutch for a creek or stream.
The north shore has much more of a mafia vibe.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 29, 2017 at 6:56 PM
With a majority of 4,000 over Liberal candidate Bernard Financialscullduggery (Mrs.), Great Kills & Tottenville rereturns Sir Hilary Softwoodflooring III, MP (Conservative) at the hustings. Great sport!
snorlaxwp
June 29, 2017 at 1:03 PM
For some perspective, as noted above Tottenville is next to Perth Amboy in New Jersey.
Tottenville is 32.8 miles from Manhattan according to Google. Its about 16 miles from New Brunswick, NJ, and 47 miles from the New Jersey state capitol of Trenton.
If you lived in Tottenville and wanted to go to Manhattan and couldn’t or wouldn’t drive, you could take Staten Island’s one subway line to the Staten Island Ferry, then take the Ferry to lower Manhattan, then a subway to where you wanted to go. This would take at least two hours, maybe three one way. Or you could take a taxi the 11 miles to the nearest New Jersey Transit Station in Metuchen, New Jersey, and take New Jersey Transit commuter rail into Manhattan, somewhat more expensive but a lot quicker. And if you did drive, going through New Jersey makes a lot more sense.
Pretty much anyplace in New Jersey is more accessible from southern Staten Island than the other four boroughs, so you get the idea.
The deal with Staten Island is that both geographically and culturally is the northernmost part of the Jersey Shore, but the politics of colonial America put it in New York, not New Jersey. Its pretty much the place you live if you really, really want the suburban New Jersey or even Jersey shore lifestyle, but you have a job that requires you to live within the New York city limits.
I’m honestly not sure if there is any other reason to live in Staten Island. You are better off just living in New Jersey if you like that sort of thing. A lot of places in New Jersey are much more accessible to Manhattan too.
This is a historical landmark in Tottenville, the sight of a last ditch attempt at a peace settlement before the American War of Independence started in earnest. I considered visiting it when I lived in New York, but the trip was just too long and too much of a pain to be worth it.
Ed
June 29, 2017 at 1:21 PM
You also get low property taxes. NYC schools in SI aren’t that bad, probably because few NAMS attend.
Jimi
June 29, 2017 at 1:41 PM
John BonJovi was from Perth Amboy in the days when there were a lot of white proles there. Now it is mostly Hispanic.
Maryk
June 29, 2017 at 2:37 PM
If you were to look at a map without the state boundaries, you would place Staten Island with New Jersey, not New York. The first bridge from Staten Island to New Jersey opened in 1928, while the first bridge to Long Island opened in 1964.
The Staten Island Ferry is free because of Giuliani. Of course, it wasn’t free to the 11 people killed in 2003.
ScarletNumber
June 29, 2017 at 7:38 PM
In S2 ep6 of the HBO show Girls, Ray and Adam end up travelling to Staten Island together to return a lost dog to it’s rightful owner, and from the way SI is depicted you can tell Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow must really despise the place.
Roli
June 29, 2017 at 2:43 PM
Don’t all New Yorkers look down their big noses at all Bridge & Tunnel Trash, New Jersey and Staten Island?
I went to school in Jersey and it’ll always have a special place in my heart because it was so much the underdog.
Snobs.
I did know so many of the kids who ended up moving to that City and they’d always brag about how awesome it was… the culture, the shopping, the dining… I’d ask what kinds of shows they’ve been seeing… Invariably I’d been to more concerts, opera etc than they had. Shopping? They were just starting out in Finance or Big Law so they were exposed to all the temptations but could hardly afford any of it.
Depressing and frustrating…
All you New Yorkers, I’ve read some crazy legends that it’s practically unheard of to have your own washer & dryer in the apartment because of plumbing limitations in old buildings. Or crazy stories about parking on the streets…
Perhaps you could share some of the most outrageous unbelievable hardships, nuisances and pleasures of living in NY.
From my priorities in life, it doesn’t look like it could be worth it. But I imagine for certain career or personal or social reasons some are willing to pay the price. Others are probably seduced by a crazy dream or peer pressure and they’re always rationalizing to themselves that it’s worth it.
Thin-Skinned Masta-Beta
June 30, 2017 at 3:28 PM
Hi,
True, many of us don’t have washers and dryers IN our pre-war apartments, but most of us simply send our laundry out. Laundromats will pickup and deliver from/to your doorman. Other residents I know have maids come in to do their laundry. I don’t bother with that because I’m a stay at home mother. I have two young children and do take advantage of laundry service though.
As for the commenters who said Manhattan is too congested, it certainly is in many areas but don’t confuse central midtown with the rest of Manhattan. I live in Sutton Place, which is very residential and very quiet from second avenue eastward but most people from outside of the area never set foot in this little neighborhood.
Why do we live here? The schools are amazing, you can walk everywhere, including to work (or a quick citibike or taxi/Uber, if you prefer), cars are unnecessary, yes, the culture and restaurants are fantastic……I really could go on all day. As someone who was raised in the outer boroughs (Brooklyn/SI) and has lived in Manhattan now for the last 19 years (I’m 38) there is absolutely no comparison with Manhattan and the rest of the boroughs. At least here in Sutton Place. There are sections of Manhattan that I wouldn’t live in if you paid me! (The crowded areas of midtown and basically anywhere below that. Too many….bohos….is that what you guys call them?)
It might also be of interest that my parents live in great kills. It’s mind-numbing talking to the locals there.
Jaclyn
June 30, 2017 at 6:59 PM
Oops, I’m trying to add an “edit” to my comment. After perusing your archives (it’s about time, as I’m a fan of this blog and am enjoying the archives very much) I now realize that the term “bobos” was not what I meant in my previous comment. I was referring to tourist/transplant wannabe cool strivers(?) Basically, the typical “downtown” types. Euro trash, flyover state and west coast Sex and the City tourist/transplant wannabe’s, whatever they’re called.
On a related note…..regarding your use of the term bobo from reading your archives…..I might be a bobo! Oh well, we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m enjoying going through the archives as I have time today. It’s a bit scary how similar your thoughts/opionions are to my own.
Jaclyn
July 1, 2017 at 4:19 PM
When did SI get its reputation for being so low-class? I rarely agree with Lion about these issues but I do agree with this one. On the NYC scale of prestige, SI is even lower than Queens. Here is the boro ranking in terms of prestige. (NOT, hipster/cool, prestige).
1. Manhattan (exceptions are Brooklyn Heights)
2. Brooklyn (see above)
3. Bronx (has some prestige due to toughness factor
4. Queens (no prestige, no toughness)
5. Staten Island
Yet many famous people have lived some of their lives there.
gothamette
June 29, 2017 at 3:24 PM
SI is blue collar and disproportionately white ethnic. This made it inevitable that it would be looked down upon by the elites of the city. At this point though, a lot of people who look down on SI do this even though they have no experience of the place and don’t know anyone who lives there. They are responding to the stereotype of SI rather than the reality.
Maryk
June 29, 2017 at 5:26 PM
In October 2001 I took a trip to visit a college friend who was living in Staten Island. It wasn’t my first visit to NYC, but it was the first time I had ever been to Staten Island.
My friend lived just a short walk from the Castellano house in Todt Hill. Apparently it is one of the best neighborhoods in Staten Island, although I found the people there to be fairly crude and crass. At times I felt as though I had stepped foot onto the set of the movie Goodfellas. My friend was renting a basement apartment, and his landlords in the house above were a middle aged Italian American couple who were always yelling and fighting. At one point the woman threw the man’s car keys out of the front door and into some bushes.
I am IA, but I grew up in NorCal, and my IA classmates in Catholic school were usually from families that owned wineries or upscale restaurants. My trip to Staten Island was my first exposure to guidos, and it was quite jarring at the time. We also drove through the bad area (Park Hill/Stapelton), and it seemed to be worse than more famous bad areas like Bed-Stuy.
One nice thing about Staten Island is the proliferation of excellent Italian delis and home-style restaurants. It can be difficult to find a good Italian deli out west, probably because many of them are not staffed or even owned by IAs.
Lothar of the Hill People
June 29, 2017 at 7:35 PM
> They are responding to the stereotype of SI rather than the reality.
The stereotype is the reality
ScarletNumber
June 29, 2017 at 9:24 PM
I’m not a New Yorker, but my sense is Queens (or at least some neighbourhoods within it) are rising up the food-chain very quickly.
Roli
June 29, 2017 at 7:27 PM
I don’t think the rank will ever change. Parts of Queens are gorgeous, but it doesn’t matter. John McEnroe grew up in a mansion, and he moved to the UWS. For that matter, there’s Trump….if he’d stayed in Jamaica Estates, he wouldn’t be president.
gothamette
June 30, 2017 at 12:21 PM
PS, this is another example of how stupid journalists are. I just mentioned John McEnroe. That made me think of Vitas Gerulaitis. Does anyone here remember him? They always referred to him as a “scrappy Queens street kid.” Bullshit. He grew up in Howard Beach, a middle-class (but prestige-less in Fussell terms) neighborhood. He was about as street as…Obama.
gothamette
June 30, 2017 at 12:24 PM
Queens is why Trump got elected. Tons of “diversity” and “undocumented” immigrants.
Lewis Medlock
June 30, 2017 at 1:17 PM
Staten Island is too far off from Manhattan, not very accessible and the demographics…you get the picture now!
JS
June 30, 2017 at 12:02 AM
OT: I just read on the internet that an 11 year old black boy invented a device to help prevent children from dying in cars due to overheating if their parents leave them there accidentally. He is the son of an engineer, so automatically we know the parents can’t be low IQ, and of course, he has a father in his life, which makes him atypical for a black child in America. I’d post a link to the story, but I don’t know how to.
I guess between this kid showing that blacks can aspire to SWPL status and with guidos making Tottenville Staten Island the safest place in NYC this just isn’t Lion’s day! Sorry, Lion. Don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m getting a kick out of this. All that would be needed to make this day complete is if Snooki from the Jersey Shore decided to go to college and major in Western European history and culture and use her earnings from the TV series to open up a book store in Seaside Heights. (And yes, I know what you’ll say Lion: “No one in Seaside Heights reads for pleasure. The store would never do any business and close in no time.”)
Maryk
June 29, 2017 at 4:04 PM
No one in the modern age cares about safe neighborhoods if they’re not dynamic.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 11:50 PM
Lion will get a kick from this:
http://abc7ny.com/news/bayonne-bridge-demolition-suspended-after-debris-rains-down-on-neighborhood/2152325/
A mulatto/guido by the name of Ronald Puzzo who lives in Staten Island, is wearing a t-shirt with the Superman S logo, struggles with his speech pattern that sounds like a combination of ebonics and guidtalian. Judging by his phenotype he might be part mulatto Hispanic (perhaps a Dominican) with a surname of Puzo.
How lovelee!
JS
June 29, 2017 at 6:48 PM
Where is the nice place to live in Staten Islamd?
RSF
June 29, 2017 at 7:23 PM
Lighthouse Hill?
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 29, 2017 at 7:25 PM
Given that gentrification is spreading like wildfire, it’s only a matter of time that guido areas will see their demise. Long Island City, Queens is now beginning to take hold what was Brooklyn 20 years ago. Staten Island will be the last bastion of old NYC, because NYC’s expensive real estate emanates like a hot radiating sun starting from Manhattan. Furthermore, this goes to show that guidos and proles in general do things against their own interest and their general lack of ambition/innovation and desire for worldliness — they fall victims to this new world order of globalists. It’s very different if Staten Island politicians encourage billionaire tycoons like Jeff Bezos to invest in Staten Island, where it brings jobs and social uplifting to its native prole populace than Amazon invading its space and installing outside people where its displaces the native population who came before them.
Comparing Italian Americans to Greek Americans, who are another group of Southern Europeans and wealthier, it quite obvious that Greeks are more successful when it comes to attracting SWPLs in the outer boroughs. Astoria is basically a prole neighborhood with an old world flair that attracts young professionals, where as Italian neighborhoods do not (with the exception of Little Italy which is in Manhattan). Part of the reason has to do with the fact that Greeks are more dynamic/exotic/foreign than Italians. They run the full gambit of restaurants, cafes, markets, and their gastronomy is more interesting than Italian food. Greeks are also more inviting of outsiders, and they also hire pretty and polite Eastern European girls.
JS
June 29, 2017 at 10:15 PM
“None of the elites who live in Manhattan would ever choose to live in this part of Staten Island, a cultural wasteland that’s a ridiculously long trip by public transportation to any of the worthwhile areas of the city”
Wouldn’t a true elite have a driver like Zucker of CNN I saw him leaving his building getting into his car and being driven to work. The doorman held the car door for him.
I wouldn’t mind living in a building like that and having a driver. Is there a need to live on Staten Island when you can live like Zucker on Manhattan?
Staten Island isn’t like living in Westchester County or CT. where you can get a bigger house on a large lot.
ttgy
June 29, 2017 at 10:20 PM
Staten Island makes a great campus/tech hub for Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. They can build swathes of employee dormitories for cheap and they can do this by buying out all the guidos/NAMs on the island.
Now, let’s call it Silicon Island!
Who knows, maybe one of their own is reading LoftB to make this suggestion to their CEO.
JS
June 30, 2017 at 10:00 AM
Staten Island is one of three areas of New York City where housing prices went down during the the hyper-gentrification period.
The other two areas are parts of Brooklyn and Queens where its pretty much the same deal of Staten Island, they are far from and not very accessible to Manhattan, and kind of like the suburbs, but if you live in the actual suburbs its less expensive and you often get better accessibility to Manhattan. The Brooklyn neighborhood is the one right across the bridge from Staten Island.
Staten Island is pretty immune from gentrification, for the reasons discussed here. If you look at a map, you will see its quite far from Manhattan. If you really wanted to, you might get something on the North Shore, which is now a slum, with better/ more policing and faster and more frequent ferry service, but that is it.
Arguably even the suburbanization of Staten Island was not a good idea, as opposed to the alternative of more development of northern New Jersey, and it largely happened due to the accident of the place legally being part of New York City. It would have been interesting if the bridge had never been built and it had been left fairly undeveloped, the southern part probably would have turned into a beach community.
Ed
June 30, 2017 at 9:20 AM