Roosevelt Island

We needed some way to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., right? So we met up at Bloomingdale's. Luckily, someone had the foresight to make a reservation at Serendipity. We ate awkward sandwiches and went into sugar shock over a frozen hot chocolate and some absurd ice cream sundae. Our waiter was wearing green contact lenses. They deceived me, and I thought I had witnessed the eighth wonder - the world's greenest eyes.

Once again, I failed to take the picture until after the food was eaten. I need to get with it. This is getting gross.

It was a blustery, cold day, so why not hop on the tram over to Roosevelt Island? I'm always in the mood to check something off my list of northeastern adventures, so I tagged along for a glide across the East River.

Over the years, Roosevelt Island's residents have called it Minnehanonck, Varkens Eylandt, Blackwell's Island, and Welfare Island. It has been home to a New York Penitentiary, Penitentiary Hospital, and the New York City Lunatic Asylum. The penitentiary has jailed, at various times, Emma Goldman, Mae West, Boss Tweed, and Billie Holiday. The Asylum, in one of the city's less-proud moments, housed 1,700 patients - twice its designed capacity.

Before our excursion, my only knowledge of Roosevelt Island came from the movie Dark Water, so I was expecting our trip to be replete with creepy little girl ghosts. The experience was, unfortunately, little-girl-ghost-free, but there are still plenty of otherworldly things on the island. The first is the Queensboro Bridge, which passes directly over the island.

I wonder what it's like living with the imposing specter of the bridge looming over you all the time.

There's a lovely esplanade down both sides of the lower part of the island, so you get a nice view of Manhattan on one side, and a bunch of what appear to be abandoned hospital buildings on the other.

The hospital is pretty otherworldly as well. They've spray-painted the letters for the buildings on their sides. It looks as if Roosevelt Island underwent the apocalypse before the rest of us, and the abandoned buildings have been overtaken by some kind of futuristic gang.

One building of particular interest, fenced off from the rest, and which I believe the city is turning into a memorial of some kind, appears to have been bombed at some point. Check out the video below.

What's strange about the bombed-out building is its close proximity to the FDR Memorial at the bottom of the island, which is fairly grand and sweeping.

It was brisk. It was time to go home. It was time to get Liz to give me back my coat.