Roosevelt Island is one of those places you don’t notice until you force yourself to see it. It is sandwiched between some of the most famous boroughs in the world and I didn’t know about it until I saw it featured in the video for Vampire Weekend’s ‘Step’ – visually, the video’s a love letter to Manhattan.
You can take the subway to Roosevelt Island, but I opted for the scenic route via the tram which also works out to be the same cost of the subway.
It is obvious that this place is different than my other favorite Roosevelt Island, version Teddy. I walked to southern tip of the island which includes a memorial to FDR and the ruins of a hospital that housed quarantined smallpox patients.
It was amazing how overlooked the island is. I assumed that it would be crowded on a holiday weekend, or difficult to get to. But it wasn’t. And it was hard for me not to daydream what it would be like to be a resident on the island — separated from Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn, but still in the center of it all.
