ALL PHOTOS: Gabriel Rodriguez Nava

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

Kaie Razaghi: In the eye of a quiet storm
Michael Hammer, the 8-year-old son of a regular at Trellis, felt comfortable enough in the restaurant to volunteer his help. He went around asking tables, "Are you fine? Do you need something?"

After he finished a round, Kaie Razaghi, who has owned Trellis for the last six years, rewarded the boy with a toy. And when a reporter asked Michael if he was also getting a share of the tips, Razaghi stepped in and said jokingly, "Don't give him any ideas, otherwise you know what the waiters will do to your food."

Aside from a couple of fast food places, Trellis is Roosevelt Island's only sit-down restaurant. This is where local politics, business deals, dates, neighborly conversations and gossip are discussed over coffee and omelets in the morning or steak and beer in the evening. Many customers here call the waiters by their first name and Razaghi goes out of his way to make them feel at home.

Originally from Athens, Greece, Razaghi said he likes working at Trellis. "Everybody knows me and that makes me feel good," he said. "In the city, where I worked in other restaurants, you don't get to know your clients. It's 'Get your food and get out of here.'"

He also feels good about doing business in a community where many senior citizens can live affordably under the threatened Mitchell-Lama housing program. Theoretically, his business would benefit from Mitchell-Lama being axed, because richer residents would then move in, but he has different priorities.

"In this country, we neglect older people, and I guess Mitchell-Lama helps them that way," he said. "But don't take me wrong, I like money as much as the next guy, but we all have to chip in."

Judith Berdy: In tune with the purrs of history
Judith Berdy's easygoing nature is that of a favorite aunt — the kind of aunt who likes to spoil kids with treats and games. When she arrives home from work each day, three cats await her in a soberly decorated living room. They want their share of attention and their afternoon snacks. "I let them have it directly on the bed," she murmured. "But don't tell anyone!" But while Speedy, Tatiana and Valentine bring purring idleness to Berdy's life, the walls bearing copies of old maps and pencil renderings of buildings now in ruins remind her that history is all about working hard in the present.

As president of Roosevelt Island's Historical Society, Berdy is the custodian of carefully organized bookshelves filled with crumbling papers, photographs and other historical goodies that document the island's unique past. Pointing to a stack of papers several inches tall, a stack she calls "the mañana papers," she explains that some documents stubbornly resist classification. So she lets them sit for a while longer - but not much longer. On May 15, Arcadia Publishing is expecting some of Berdy's goodies for a 120-page book on the history of Roosevelt Island.

The daughter of a Brooklyn textile businessman who grew up in Venezuela, Berdy came to Roosevelt Island a year after the historical society was founded in 1976. It was a time when urban renewal policies advocated the demolishing of old crumbling structures and their replacement with high-rise residential buildings. Since then, Berdy has been more preoccupied with fixing rather than with changing things around the island.

For example, she's concerned about the Octagon Tower, the main architectural feature of the now-abandoned 19th-century Pauper Lunatic Asylum. And while a Connecticut-based architectural firm has presented a $120 million project to restore the site and build affordable housing complete with offices and sports facilities there, Preservation Online has reported that consensus among residents, politicians and the National Park Service has been hard to come by.

In the meantime, Berdy continues to give walking tours of the island's six historical landmarks, where she tries to put the past into context. She finds the early 20th century to be one of the most interesting chapters in Roosevelt Island's history.

"It had a lot of good stories, interesting people and many interesting things written about the institutions," she said. "But what I'm always trying to get across to 21st-century people is the fact that in those days, the standards were different. In those days, people were lucky to have asylums and hospitals to go to. It was better than running sick on the streets."

Arline Jacobi: On a mission
Arline Jacobi is optimistic about Roosevelt Island's cultural future. "We're trying to make Roosevelt Island the island of the arts," she said.

Jacobi is the president of RIVAA, the Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association; the RIVAA Gallery is on Main Street. On the walls, the island's diversity is represented through works by artists from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania and, of course, New York.

With 25 members and a lot of volunteer work, RIVAA transformed a derelict, 1,000 square-foot pharmacy into a space where painting, sculpture, digital and new media art, installations, lectures and poetry readings are frequent and expected occurrences. The light-flooded space was officially opened on March 8, 2002.

"The town loves us because we've raised the bar with this beautiful gallery," said Jacobi, who was key in securing permission to use the space from the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

Jacobi said that RIVAA members were spurred on to build an exhibition space of their own after helping a group of Queens museums organize a successful arts festival on the grounds of Public School 217.

The gallery opened with Vernissage, an exhibition featuring artists connected with the island, and continued with Let's Face It, "a simulacrum of spirit in the face and the body" and Analogic Sensations, "a festival for Expanded Media" curated with the help of students and faculty from MIT, NYU, RPI and Columbia University.

"We're not only a self-gratification group," said Jacobi. "In the future, we intend to have classes for children, seniors and disabled persons." To do this, RIVAA is seeking RIOC's authorization to use a building on the island's Sports Park. However, since the request was presented to RIOC President Robert H. Ryan, who's on a leave of absence following an internal controversy, it may take a while before RIVAA can further develop its "island for the arts" mission.

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