NATIVE AMERICAN-BASED POP

GREETINGS FROM THE ISLE OF THE MANHATTOES:
Today I rode my bike from the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side of the Isle of the Manhattoes to the arguably less-beautiful and more-mysterious Minnehanonk aka Randall's Island, former home of the New York Cosmos.

It's a weird island (not as weird as Roosevelt Island, though, which we should talk about one day). Actually, it's an amalgamation of three islands artificially connected through paved-over landfills. It's a transportation hub as well, propitiously located between the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens. On this particular Sunday, I saw lots of barbecues, chill-out sessions and amateur league sports.


Moving between the islands of New York City on a bike, I was struck by the physical geography in a way I never feel when I take the subway from one hood to another hood; Manhattan is an island! Even when I stare at the New Jersey homeland from Riverside Park, I am so bound by cultural and personal geography that I forget that, like the Maharishi Yogi or Dave Longstreth's Don Henley, I simply live on a ridge overlooking a river.

This is not to say that like the oft-ridiculed cheerleader of Glen Ridge High School who was publicly amazed to learn that the Lincoln Tunnel is underneath water, I am a geography dumbass. (I think??) I am talking about the multi-layered understanding of geography which I am exploring in my own mind. If this is not clear to you, it's probably because you are not me, but even this point is debatable.