Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Over the next few months, a group of seven bloggers will be sharing their workspaces, their homes, towns and more!

Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Julia at When the Girls Rule
Lisa at Midlife in Bloom

This month’s theme: Mixed. Ha. We all went rogue this month. Some of us are doing our “region,” some of us our state, some our workplaces…I think there’s even one about “animals we live with.” I’m as curious to see it all as you are! Enjoy!

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I live on Long Island. I’ve been here for 50 years, since I was nine years old. Long Island is a funny place in that it’s not really A Place. It’s not a county or borough, town, city or hamlet. It’s just an island. Nothing gets addressed “123 Any Street, Long Island, NY.”

Most people, when you say “New York” to them, envision New York City (Manhattan). NYC is a VERY small part of NY. Long Island is larger than the island of Manhattan…and it is, indeed, an island. Surrounded by water on all sides, check. You must take a bridge, tunnel, ferry, or airplane to get off it, check. Yep, it’s an island.

It’s about 20 miles wide at the widest point and 118 miles long, so, no matter where you are, there’s a beach or water pretty close by. The Long Island Sound separates the island from Connecticut and the Atlantic Ocean is on the south and east. The East End of the island is made up of two forks. The North Fork is approximately 28 miles long, the South Fork, ending at Montauk Point, is about 44 miles. Sometimes people say Long Island looks like a fish: Brookly/Queens are the head and eyes, Nassau County and most of Suffolk County make up the body, and the North and South Forks are the tail. You can kinda see it in the map below.

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Technically, Queens and Brooklyn are on Long Island, though most residents of those two boroughs will argue that they are not. Yes, they are two of the five boroughs of New York City (Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, and Bronx), but they are ON Long Island. Sorry, just a little pet peeve of mine.

When you hear of the Hamptons (West, East, South, and Bridge) they are all on the South Fork…with the pretty ocean beaches. The North Fork (and shore) has the rockier, cliff-backed beaches with no waves because they’re just on the Long Island Sound.

There are a ton of facts about Long Island: population (just under 8 million), geography, weather, history (oh gosh lots of history), etc., but I’m going to focus more on Long Island from my perspective, and the pros and cons as I see them.

As my mother used to say, on Long Island you’ve got everything close-by: the beaches, the city, the mountains (upstate and western NY), the culture, the country. Not that she ever went to any of these places, but it made her feel good to know they were within reach if she wanted to.

So for me as an adult, one of the best things about living on Long Island is its proximity to the city and even Queens and Brooklyn. NYC is not like anywhere else and there is so much to see and do there, it is always alive and interesting. And I’m fortunate that I can get there a couple times a month if I want.

From me, it’s about 45 miles into the city – but NY miles are not like other places’ miles. The joke is always, “with no traffic, it’ll take ___ long to get there.” There is NEVER “no traffic.” So it’s roughly 90 minutes to drive into the city, on average. A lot of people take the Long Island Railroad into Penn Station but I think that’s a pain in the butt.

Long Island, for all its eight-million people and the buildings they live in (mostly private houses vs the city which is mostly apartment buildings), has a lot of preserved natural scenery. As I’ve said, there is water within 15 minutes of almost anywhere you are on the Island. Out east (Suffolk County) is still a lot of farmland, vineyards, and protected forest areas. There are charming farmstands and horse farms and little villages with quaint main streets. The north shore is hilly and woodsy even in populated areas and there’s just something about the way the late afternoon light comes through the trees as I’m driving on winding roads that just takes my breath away.

BUT, there’s a lot of area, especially in Nassau County (closer towards the city), that is crammed with uninteresting, repetitive suburbs. Builder developments with cookie-cutter homes built from the 1960s til now. I try to stay out of these types of areas.  They’re great for families with their convenient shopping and good school districts, but I’m past that stage of my life.

Which leads me to Con #2. Long Island is for FAMILIES. There are TONS of great resources for families with children. But unless you want to sit in a bar, there are NOT a lot of interesting activities for single adults. When I lived in Brooklyn I NEVER felt a shortage of things to do or places to go as a single person, alone. Even if it was just sitting out on the stoop watching people walking by, as they were 24/7. I can go on and on about THAT, but I’ll spare you for now.

We have all four seasons, and Long Island does seasons beautifully. In winter we have cold and snow with average daily temps right around freezing. But not like arctic cold. Manageable cold. Then spring is beautiful with so many blooming flowers, trees, and shrubs everywhere. Summer is hot and humid. Long Island is very humid. But I love nothing better than spending a day on the beach and in the ocean on those hot, hot days. Then fall is so gorgeous with the trees changing colors. It is really breathtaking.

In spite of all the people and houses (and stores! guh) there are endless places to walk and hike and just be in nature, from beaches to parks, preserves, and arboretums.

Again, for being such a populated area, we have a lot of wildlife. Besides the usual squirrels, rabbits, sea- and song-birds, we have TONS of deer, several areas with Bald Eagles, and back again are whales, dolphins and seals. And a 20′ tall duck.

The best thing about Long Island to me is that my friends are here.

People from other places often poke fun at the “Lawn Guyland” accent. When I first moved here at age 9 I heard it and hated it and have really made an effort all my life to not pick it up. I can hear it a little bit sometimes, but for the most part I think I managed pretty well and when I go other places people frequently tell me that I don’t sound like a New Yorker.

The Long Island accent

So, I’ve been here most of my life because my family then my husband then my child and then my work all tethered me to it. I did make a brief escape, but…I got dragged back in. I love the scenery and natural elements…I hate that there’s not more interesting things to do here. For me. As a single person. Alone.

The End. Ha.

Photos by me of some favorite spots on Long Island.