For TV tour guides David Hartman and Barry Lewis, Staten Island is last, but definitely not least.
It is the final borough out of five to get the “walk around” treatment from Hartman and Lewis, who have now “walked” through 11 of their self-styled specials for Ch. 13, including this week’s new one, “A Walk Around Staten Island.”
It should be stated flat-out that this series of local tours are the nicest, most pleasant TV shows currently being produced and aired around here. And once again, Hartman and Lewis have teamed up for a show that is long on charm and trivia.
Staten Island is the least-populated of the city’s five boroughs and, possibly, the one known least by most of us.
For this one-hour travelogue, Hartman and Lewis criss-cross Staten Island for stops at historic houses, forts and pizza joints.
From their efforts, we learn that Staten Island is 37.4 percent Italian. And to bolster that factoid, we get to visit Denino’s Pizza, operated by the same family since 1937, and Ralph’s Ices, in business since 1928 – both in Port Richmond.
We also learn that the name of the famous bridge linking Brooklyn with Staten Island – a name chosen to honor the first European explorer to enter what would someday be named New York Harbor – is spelled wrong, with two r’s and only one z – “Verrazano” – precisely the opposite way Giovanni Da Verazzano spelled his name.
Whatever its spelling, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 and changed the way of life of Staten Island so significantly that natives identify portions of their personal history as “BB” (before the bridge) and “AB” (after the bridge).
The borough’s bucolic, agricultural past – BB – is illustrated again and again as Lewis and Hartman encounter some of the oldest houses and farm buildings in New York City, including the 1809 Decker Farm, where a Mexican immigrant named Floriberto Neri grows tomatillos, squash and beans and describes in Spanish how he and his co-workers are preserving “los tradiciones de los tiempos pasados” of Staten Island.
Like New York’s other boroughs, immigration plays a leading role in the history of Staten Island, beginning with the Dutch and continuing to the present day with, according to this show, the largest influx of Sri Lankans and Liberians in New York City.
We’re even told that the Sri Lankans have a name for Staten Island. Because it is the only part of the United States they’ve ever known, they call Staten Island “America.”
A WALK AROUND STATEN ISLAND
Monday, 9:30 p.m., PBS