Men in Black

Parallel universe parking

Periodically, I ditch the Staten Island Expressway early and take the slow route to work. Winding and bumping along Richmond Terrace, with the water to your right, it's easy to imagine yourself in an earlier century. A time when this would have been a bustling waterfront. I shouldn't have been so surprised, then, when I came around one curve in the road to find a Model T puttering down Port Richmond Avenue. A quick look up the avenue revealed half a dozen more, plus all the personnel and equipment for a film shoot. The HBO show Boardwalk Empire had taken over this part of the old Port Richmond downtown. Good call. It's been trapped in time for decades. One upside of utter urban despair is that nobody bothered to tear down these great early twentieth century buildings.

With the filming of Damsels in Distress on the grounds of Snug Harbor and Boardwalk Empire in Port Richmond, could Staten Island become Hollywood on the Kill Van Kull?