ALL PHOTOS: Gabriel Rodriguez-Nava

Some of the Folks Who Make Roosevelt Tick
By Gabriel Rodriguez-Nava

t's not difficult to find diversity in New York City. But while a subway train may at any time look and sound as a United Nations General Assembly meeting, contact and interaction in the city normally tends toward the fleeting. This is what makes Roosevelt Island's human diversity unique and challenging: people of all nationalities, races and faiths are not only forced to tolerate each other here, but they must learn to live with each other on tight public spaces. In doing so, an island subculture is emerging. These are but a few of Roosevelt Island's cultural players.

Jeremi Sudol: Mixing it up
Jeremi Sudol spells his first name with an "i" because that's how Jeremy is spelled in Polish.

"That still remains Polish," he said.

Jeremi is an example of what sociologists call the "1.5 Generation" of immigrants. He was raised in Poznan until he came to New York at age 1, and at 23, Jeremi's life is still not far from being precisely 50 percent Polish and 50 percent American. But more importantly, this mix of nationalities has given birth to an even greater mix of ideas, talents and concerns.

With two architects for parents, Jeremi started thinking about lines, form, color and meaning at an early age. Yet it was not until college that he became genuinely interested in art. While majoring in computer science and psychology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, he was also taken by the Dada ideas that came out of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.

Jeremi mixed his technical know-how and artistic awareness with an interest in the visual culture of the electronic music scene of the 1990s. The result: cyberpunkish projects like DJ iRobot, where he colaborated with Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Jonathan Girroir, and the drive to pursue a master's degree in computer science at New York University.

More recently, he has worked on Roosevelt Island with the RIVAA Gallery on projects such as Analogic Sensations, a festival of electronic media art, and Windows on Main, a set of vacant shop windows temporarily transformed into public art spaces. Or, as Jeremi likes to think of them, "little things like flowers in the entrance as you walk in."

He also muses on the cultural impact of new information technologies on sound. In compositions like Gucci My Cucci readings from T.S. Eliot get looped with muffled beats and ever-morphing sonic atmospheres.

Although Jeremi acknowledges that the art world generates an array of different hierarchies and types of audiences, he refuses to be limited to a particular kind of audience.

"I'm interested in exploring many ideas, so I just work with what keeps my interest," he said. "I like to experiment a lot."

Adolph Jhons and Sunderam Srinivasan:
Heartbeats on air
It is not uncommon to see young men in wheelchairs along Roosevelt Island's waterfront.

Many of them, like Adolph Jhons, came to Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility to receive rehabilitation therapy after suffering violent accidents. Jhons said he was shot at a friend's apartment in Philadelphia, where one of the neighbors broke in and ignited a heated argument. Moments later, Jhons said he had the intruder down in a headlock. "But when I let go of the alleged shooter, I heard firecracker pop," Jhons said. "Seconds later, my legs gave out on me. I felt my back and it was wet with cherry-red blood."

As a result, Jhons became a patient at Coler-Goldwater in 1997. He was discharged in 2000. He came back two years later, but this time as one of the hospital's 3,200 employees. After receiving a $25,000 grant from the United Hospital Fund, William Jones, a senior associate director at Coler-Goldwater, hired Jhons to manage a new hospital radio station. On Valentine's Day 2002, WCGH 88.1 FM aired their slogan for the first time, "Listen to the beat of the heart."

"We have many stories like this," said Sunderam Srinivasan, who has been a patient here for 13 years and is president of the hospital's Resident's Council, an internal advocacy group for patients. "People come here with life frustrations, but such opportunities provide a chance to turn their lives around."

Srinivasan is also the president of the hospital's auxiliary, a nonprofit body that has raised funds for the radio station. Additionally, he puts the journalistic experience he gained in India to good use during Searchlight, the radio talk show he hosts on WCGH.

With a soft voice and a lulling Indian accent, Srinivasan said that living in this institution "is not only about physical uplifting but also about mental and spiritual upliftment." This "upliftment," Srinvasan said, is the outcome of not only hospital services like the art and creative writing programs, but also the result of living here. "The island, with its natural environment apart from the hustle and bustle of the city — but not too far away either — provides balance and solace," he said. "Sitting on a summer day in front of the East River, which brings freshness and a sense of healing" is the type of thing which, according to Srinivasan, feeds the spirit.

But what really fed Jhon's spirit during his stay at Coler-Goldwater were the hospital's excursion to NBA games. "It's the type of thing that keeps you in touch and in tune with the community," he said. The games "gave me the motivation to get well and better and to get back to the community." Not surprisingly, he claims that the Sports Talk in the Hall is the radio station's number-one rated show at the hospital.

Jhons dreams of even higher ratings, however. "I want to get a [Federal Communications Commission] license for this radio station and help it become one of the top radio stations in the country."

Meanwhile, Srinivasan has more immediate goals. "My dream is to create a radio internship program with Columbia's School of Journalism, just like the creative writing program we have with NYU."

Dick Lutz: The man with the news
As the editor of The Main Street WIRE, the island's only journalistic enterprise, Dick Lutz stands as the product of a deep American tradition: the community newspaper. After working for several broadcasting companies including the Pennsylvania Public Television Network, NBC and the BBC, Lutz started editing the WIRE in 1996. He does it without a salary.

"I suppose I'm the first career journalist to run the WIRE," he said. The WIRE has been published for 23 years.

Lutz also voices another, very American tradition: "No Taxation without Representation." Since 1984, the island has been administered by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, a nine-member board of directors appointed by the governor (the state signed a 99-year lease on the island in 1969). However, after a series of confrontations between former RIOC President Jerome Blue and community organizations like the Roosevelt Island Resident's Association, the WIRE invited all islanders to a series of discussions and seminars exploring the possibilities of a more representative form of government. With the first meeting taking place under a maple tree in Blackwell House, one of the island's historical landmarks, the Maple Tree Group was born on July 7, 1997.

Along with other community organizations, the Maple Tree Group has been pushing for an RIOC board made up of locally elected directors. They haven't gotten very far, but they have managed to persuade Albany to guarantee that the majority of appointed directors will consist of island residents.

Despite the fact that in two separate referendum residents have voted at least 80 percent in favor of self-governance, some islanders pointed out that this is really the concern of a few.

But this has Lutz undisturbed. "On the outset, causes like this are advanced by only a small group of people," he said.

What does concern him, though, is the WIRE's financial health. In a place where mouth-to-mouth news travels fast and local business hardly needs to advertise, Lutz's only hope is to break even this year.

"The people who care about this island do something for it. So this is what I can do to help it," he said.

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