//features//
Spring 2017
Mussel Sucker for a Day
A Trip to City Island
Aaron Fisher
At the beginning of Raymond De Felitta’s 2009 movie, City Island, Vince Rizzo—played by Andy Garcia—explains the distinction between a “mussel sucker” and a “clam digger”: a mussel sucker is someone from elsewhere who has come to City Island, whereas a clam digger is someone who was born on the island. In other words, according to Vince, clam diggers are “those who stay,” and mussel suckers are “those who wander.”
The morning of Super Bowl Sunday, a friend and I—two mussel suckers—left campus to explore this Island. We rode the 4 Train to the end of the line, and then got on a city bus that took us over the only bridge that connects City Island to the rest of New York. Despite the hour-and-a-half-long journey to get there, it only took us about a half hour to walk the entire length of the island, down City Island Avenue. At points, the island is so skinny that we could see the water from both sides of the main street.
City Island, a tiny fishing village with a population of 4,500 in the middle of the Long Island Sound, is technically part of the Bronx and, therefore, part of New York City, but its honest tranquility contradicts New York. A New England fishing town that inexplicably found itself just beyond the reach of Manhattan’s skyline, while walking through the area it seemed that everyone on the island knew each other. On one side street, a man addressed his neighbor’s golden retriever: “Hey there! You ready for the game tonight?”
The side streets of City Island are lined with single-family homes, some of which are Victorian-style mansions left over from when the island was part of the independent City of Pelham, between 1819 and 1895. The island was first inhabited by American Indians, and later by Europeans in the 17th century. Today, it is beautiful, yet unassuming, and proudly middle class.
Water is ubiquitous on City Island. There are a number of seafood restaurants, mostly at the southern end of City Island Avenue. Pelham Cemetery looks out onto the Sound, so its eternal inhabitants can watch fishing boats leave the docks. Some of the headstones date back more than one hundred years, but each of them has been meticulously cared for; it is clear many of the dead’s families still live nearby.
At Dan’s Parents’ House, a small store on City Island Avenue that specializes in “vintage toys, knick knacks, and objects of interest,” my friend and I met Reina Mia Brill and Dan Treiber, a married couple who own the store. Brill—a mussel sucker—is originally from New Jersey and moved to City Island when she married Treiber—a clam digger—who was born and raised on the island.
When Treiber’s parents’ died, they left Treiber and Brill with a house full of objects and accessories that had accumulated over the course of decades. Treiber and Brill cleaned the house and moved in, but not before they began to sell the knick-knacks at the Brooklyn Flea Market. After a few years of running their business at the market, Brill and Treiber opened their store on City Island, blocks away from Treiber’s parents’ home, where the couple now lives with their five-year-old twins.
Brill and Treiber are in love with City Island. Since Treiber was a kid, though, they’ve noticed economic downturn on the island. Brill, an independent artist dressed in flared 1950s turquoise eyeglasses and a pink sweater, told me she hopes their store, which attracts mostly tourists, will help revitalize the island. She explained that she is not surprised most of their customers do not live in town. “They mostly stay inside,” she said of the clam diggers.
After twenty minutes at Dan’s Parents’ House, I left with a purple trucker hat from the 1990s commemorating Donald Trump’s failed Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, two unopened sets of Topps baseball cards from 1989—each complete with a stick of bubble gum—and a poster advertising the original Pac-Man arcade game. My friend and I took our loot and walked back to the bus, and in ten minutes, we were back on the familiar, bustling subway.
“City Island. The two words stand in stark relief to one another. City. So short and abrupt and definite. And island. Exotic, unknown,” Vince’s friend Molly tells him in the movie, when Vince first describes his town.
In the movie, each character has a secret. Yet each secret plays out when the characters leave City Island: Vince takes acting classes in Manhattan; his daughter, Vivian, works as a stripper in the city; and Vince’s wife, Joyce, seduces another character at a park in the Bronx.
City Island begins and ends with a montage of the island, a beacon of serenity in the middle of the city. As Vince explains, “Every busy city needs an island of peace, just like every busy soul needs a place of repose.”
Indeed, at the end of the movie, in a hilarious scene in the middle of a quiet City Island street, each character finally tells each other the truth. The Rizzos find peace; each character is home. After all, these are clam diggers, and they each decide to stay on City Island, as clam diggers tend to do.
Molly, played by Emily Mortimer, also has a secret. She confesses to Vince near the end of the movie that she is not actually an actress with a vaguely European accent, but a mother from upstate who left her three children to start over in the city. Throughout the film, Molly tells Vince it is not yet the right time to reveal her secret. But the first time Vince takes her to City Island, Molly tells the truth, and in the last scene, she, too, returns home to her family; evidently, City Island’s magic works on mussel suckers, too.
The morning of Super Bowl Sunday, a friend and I—two mussel suckers—left campus to explore this Island. We rode the 4 Train to the end of the line, and then got on a city bus that took us over the only bridge that connects City Island to the rest of New York. Despite the hour-and-a-half-long journey to get there, it only took us about a half hour to walk the entire length of the island, down City Island Avenue. At points, the island is so skinny that we could see the water from both sides of the main street.
City Island, a tiny fishing village with a population of 4,500 in the middle of the Long Island Sound, is technically part of the Bronx and, therefore, part of New York City, but its honest tranquility contradicts New York. A New England fishing town that inexplicably found itself just beyond the reach of Manhattan’s skyline, while walking through the area it seemed that everyone on the island knew each other. On one side street, a man addressed his neighbor’s golden retriever: “Hey there! You ready for the game tonight?”
The side streets of City Island are lined with single-family homes, some of which are Victorian-style mansions left over from when the island was part of the independent City of Pelham, between 1819 and 1895. The island was first inhabited by American Indians, and later by Europeans in the 17th century. Today, it is beautiful, yet unassuming, and proudly middle class.
Water is ubiquitous on City Island. There are a number of seafood restaurants, mostly at the southern end of City Island Avenue. Pelham Cemetery looks out onto the Sound, so its eternal inhabitants can watch fishing boats leave the docks. Some of the headstones date back more than one hundred years, but each of them has been meticulously cared for; it is clear many of the dead’s families still live nearby.
At Dan’s Parents’ House, a small store on City Island Avenue that specializes in “vintage toys, knick knacks, and objects of interest,” my friend and I met Reina Mia Brill and Dan Treiber, a married couple who own the store. Brill—a mussel sucker—is originally from New Jersey and moved to City Island when she married Treiber—a clam digger—who was born and raised on the island.
When Treiber’s parents’ died, they left Treiber and Brill with a house full of objects and accessories that had accumulated over the course of decades. Treiber and Brill cleaned the house and moved in, but not before they began to sell the knick-knacks at the Brooklyn Flea Market. After a few years of running their business at the market, Brill and Treiber opened their store on City Island, blocks away from Treiber’s parents’ home, where the couple now lives with their five-year-old twins.
Brill and Treiber are in love with City Island. Since Treiber was a kid, though, they’ve noticed economic downturn on the island. Brill, an independent artist dressed in flared 1950s turquoise eyeglasses and a pink sweater, told me she hopes their store, which attracts mostly tourists, will help revitalize the island. She explained that she is not surprised most of their customers do not live in town. “They mostly stay inside,” she said of the clam diggers.
After twenty minutes at Dan’s Parents’ House, I left with a purple trucker hat from the 1990s commemorating Donald Trump’s failed Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, two unopened sets of Topps baseball cards from 1989—each complete with a stick of bubble gum—and a poster advertising the original Pac-Man arcade game. My friend and I took our loot and walked back to the bus, and in ten minutes, we were back on the familiar, bustling subway.
“City Island. The two words stand in stark relief to one another. City. So short and abrupt and definite. And island. Exotic, unknown,” Vince’s friend Molly tells him in the movie, when Vince first describes his town.
In the movie, each character has a secret. Yet each secret plays out when the characters leave City Island: Vince takes acting classes in Manhattan; his daughter, Vivian, works as a stripper in the city; and Vince’s wife, Joyce, seduces another character at a park in the Bronx.
City Island begins and ends with a montage of the island, a beacon of serenity in the middle of the city. As Vince explains, “Every busy city needs an island of peace, just like every busy soul needs a place of repose.”
Indeed, at the end of the movie, in a hilarious scene in the middle of a quiet City Island street, each character finally tells each other the truth. The Rizzos find peace; each character is home. After all, these are clam diggers, and they each decide to stay on City Island, as clam diggers tend to do.
Molly, played by Emily Mortimer, also has a secret. She confesses to Vince near the end of the movie that she is not actually an actress with a vaguely European accent, but a mother from upstate who left her three children to start over in the city. Throughout the film, Molly tells Vince it is not yet the right time to reveal her secret. But the first time Vince takes her to City Island, Molly tells the truth, and in the last scene, she, too, returns home to her family; evidently, City Island’s magic works on mussel suckers, too.
//AARON FISHER is a junior in Columbia College. He can be reached at [email protected].