By MARC BEJA
Music blasted from the jukebox, and players waiting their turn could watch their favorite teams on televisions mounted to the walls.
³There¹s not much else to do, unless you¹re up to no good,² said 18-year-old James Marone of Island Park, when asked what else there is to entertain teenagers in the village. ³But that¹s anywhere. It¹s just more noticeable in Island Park because there¹s less to do.²
When it opened in 1992, Michael¹s featured billiards and indoor archery, but it has since added arcade games, and has expanded to a second location in Oceanside. ³I¹ve seen a lot more teenagers in the last five or six years,² said owner Michael Radonis. ³A lot of the kids are getting chased off the beach and the parks in the town and coming to me later in the evening.²
One afternoon out on Quebec Road, a group of high school boys played games of stoopball in front of Frank Florio¹s house. ³My dad taught me how to play,² the 18-year-old Florio said of the game, in which players try to catch a ball as it caroms off the stoop. ³We play a lot of stoopball and handball during the day. ... Maybe I¹ll play some hockey ‹ there¹s not much else to do here except just hang out.²
One explanation for Island Park¹s relative shortage of activities for teens is its small population. According to the 2000 Census, the village had 4,732 residents, while neighboring Oceanside and Long Beach each had well over 30,000. Island Park is also without a movie theater and has few retail stores, and aside from Michael¹s, no other business focuses on entertaining teens.
³Sometimes my friends and I walk to the shopping centers in Oceanside,² said Brian Jacobs, 17. ³There¹s no really big shopping center in Island Park.² Jacobs¹s 14-year-old sister, Ariel, said she usually goes to Oceanside or Rockville Centre for fun.
Island Park teens who drive often go to Long Beach or to Oceanside for entertainment or recreation. ³I hear my daughter and her friends saying, ŒI can¹t wait to have my driver¹s license so I can go out,¹² said Peggy Leone, an Island Park Little League softball coach. ³But now that she has it, she doesn¹t know where to go.²
Oceanside not only has a skate park in Oil City, but teens can walk from store to store at the Sands and TJ Maxx shopping centers and amuse themselves in the game room at Nathan¹s. The town also had a movie theater until 2005, when it burned down. Long Beach offers kids the beach, a skate park, an ice-skating rink and a theater.
Island Park did open Mason Beach for night basketball and handball a few years ago, but the sessions were not well attended, in part because kids didn¹t want to be supervised. And last summer, when the village revived its concerts series on the beach, organizers held one concert geared toward teens, but few attended.
Barbra Rubin, president of the Island Park Chamber of Commerce, is helping the village plan another teen night as part of this year¹s concert series, at which she hopes to showcase younger bands and draw larger crowds.
³We can bring these things to the beach, but the kids we can¹t bring,² said Mayor Jim Ruzicka. ³... The comments we have from a lot of teens was that if it were to be chaperoned, they didn¹t want to be there. But it has to be chaperoned.²
Sacred Heart Church holds its San Gennaro Feast one weekend each September, with rides, game booths and food. But like the concerts, the Feast is only a once-a-year event, leaving teens to fend for themselves for most of the year.
In order to stage an activity, an organization must be willing to host teens and, for insurance purposes, accept responsibility for them, Rubin explained. In addition, there must be proper security for an event, which can be costly, and even the most thorough preparation is no guarantee that people will show up.
Last year, a few teenage skateboard enthusiasts attended a village board meeting to ask the village to build a skate park. The board said no. ³There are issues of liability and staffing and finances that, for a small village like ours, just makes it too difficult to build,² Ruzicka said.
A few years ago, nightclub owner John Vitale proposed the creation of an amusement park near Bridgeview Yacht Club, with miniature golf, rides and arcade games. Neighbors worried about increased traffic and noise opposed the idea, however, and even though Vitale was granted permission to build, he recently told the Herald that at least for now, the project has been shelved.
Island Park kids can still look to their school district to provide entertainment. The district hosts a Friday Night Drop-In from October to February as well as a summer recreation program, but these are only for elementary and middle school students. Older teens attend West Hempstead High School.
Besides its Little League and CYO basketball teams, Island Park has no other athletic organizations. Some 425 boys and girls take part in Little League baseball or softball, and 125 play CYO basketball. Sacred Heart church offers CYO teams for high school students, but there weren¹t enough interested teens this year, said CYO basketball leader Chris Wilson.
³For kids in high school who go to West Hempstead or private schools, there are limited athletic opportunities for them in Island Park,² said Wilson, 35, who grew up in Island Park and remembers spending most of his time in other towns when he was a teen.
Many teens spend their afternoons playing handball and basketball at Shell Creek Park on Vanderbilt Avenue. ³We have to organize our own games here,² said Stephen Gonzalez, 17. ³There are no leagues for us aside for Little League, and some of us are too old to play. Since there isn¹t a lot to do here at night, a lot of kids will drink, smoke or gamble.²
With the school year coming to an end, teens who don¹t go to camp or have summer jobs are left with little to do on their own. Said Gonzalez, ³I don¹t know what I¹m going to do this summer.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
Photos by Marc Beja/Herald
