When I get really really bored at work, I tend to do a couple of things: Read about people in historical groups on Wikipedia (like all the kings of England or civil war generals or prime ministers of Canada or whatever), and use google earth to look at the places that I’m reading about.
You read that King Philo the 3rd once killed a rabbit at Bugs Woods, Kent, Ireland, and you look it up on google earth and see if you can get a street level view, etc. Makes sense, right?
So the group I’ve been reading about for the last few weeks is, of course, The Mafia. Always been sort of a Roy DeMeo fan, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, so I was reading about Carlo Gambino last week and saw that he had a house at 2230 Ocean Blvd in Brooklyn so I flipped over to Google to see what the house looks like today.
After doing one of these virtual drive-bys, I generally tend to scale back so I can get a better feel for where things are (Paul Castellano, for example, lived nowhere near the ocean, but Roy DeMeo was right there on it – in a house near one of Carlo Cambino’s other houses…and that girl who was murdered in NY a couple of years ago was found in basically the same place where a bunch of mafia hits were also dumped….but none of that is anywhere near where the Islanders play hockey. You see how my mind works here?).
So I’m pulling back on Gambino’s house and just sort of scoot over to the eastern end of Long Island because it looks cool and I wonder what it’s like over there and the satellite images always look neato. And I see Block Island Sound, which makes me immediately think of Billy Joel’s “Alexa,” but that has nothing to do with this story.
I also see Oyster Bay (more Billy Joel stuff and even less to do with this story because it’s not even near the end of the island. It’s actually closer to the Mafia guys).
Then I notice that, right near Block Island Sound, there’s an island – catchily named “Block Island.”
I don’t know why I never thought of that before, but I didn’t. And even though it’s right off the tip of Long Island, it’s part of Rhode Island (which isn’t an island at all, as far as anyone knows). And the satellite pictures of Block Island are just toooooo cool. So I decide to learn interesting stuff about it.
Like, “Can I camp there this summer?” And,”If I can’t, can I get a job there?” And, “If neither of the above, what CAN I do there?”
Turns out I can hike and eat and ride bikes and get a job on a lobster boat: http://www.blockislandinfo.com/
So I’m all jonesing to like move to this island (which would be sweet anyway, but this one’s got a HUGE ocean inlet and an active nature conservancy that aggressively keeps the whole place rural); and then I find out that the entire island is actually a single town…and that it’s the smallest town in Rhode Island…which is the smallest state in the US….which is the smallest country in North America (if you don’t count Mexico).
And the name of the town?
New Shoreham.
I am SO moving there.