Monday, January 3, 2011

It's Time to Say Goodbye to this Blog....



This day has been coming for a long time. It's been a long time since I have seriously been able to give this blog the time and energy it deserves. Things changed in my life and the blog unfortunately became another casualty.

I have had a lot of fun writing it. It may not have been the most newsworthy and certainly not always the most timely but I feel it added its presence for a time to the discussion and helped bring Roosevelt Island into the greater consciousness of the City.

I thank the folks over at the NY Times City Room and the NYT Blog Talk posting as well as the folks over the Village Voice Running Scared blog for noticing this blog from time to time and highlighting several stories. My favorites were the ones involving the FDR memorial, the red bus, our subway station, its escalators, the bike racks, the fire call boxes among several others. I loved writing about our playgrounds as I am a parent to young children and I always tried to write partially from the perspective of a parent/resident of the Island.

I enjoyed the rivalry I had in the beginning with Rick over the Roosevelt Islander when I had more time and it became fun to see which one of us got a story onto the blogs first. Rick usually had the more in depth story as he has been amazingly dedicated to bringing another daily news source to residents and nonresidents alike about this little island. I will miss that fun. I encourage everyone to follow the Roosevelt Islander as it's a great blog to keep up with what's going in between issues of the Main Street WIRE.

I also thank Matt Katz and Frank France for including me in all correspondence and meeting notices about RIRA issues that came up along the way. Also kudos to Steve Shane for always responding to my email inquiries even if at times he really thought my question was obvious. Judy Berdy gets a special thanks for sending pics and news stories my way and for being a good friend.

I started this blog to show friends and family members what life was like here via my 360 degree videos I used to shoot and then with the encouragement of the folks at Outside.In (a blog and news aggregator who told me to add text) I started writing in addition to shooting 60 second videos.

But now it feels right to officially wind the blog down. I don't intend to turn off the blog as I think there are some good pieces and videos still worth viewing but don't expect there to be any new posts. In a short time I also will be shutting off the ability to add any new comments so the ongoing discussion / gripe sessions regarding Eastwood and Ron Vass will need to find a new home.

Thanks for the fun to everyone and feel free to say hello as I am keeping the email address RooseveltIsland360@gmail.com for anyone that wants to write or kibitz.

Regards,

Eric S.