On That Strange And Isolated Island, The Natives Have Developed A Language All Their Own, Little Understood By Outsiders

Voo-da-la:

Sometimes after a long day off-island, you just want to catch the boat back to the Rock and head for Town, maybe do a little train crawl along the way.

Translation: Upon returning to Staten Island by ferry from a long day elsewhere, a person might want to stop at a few of the bars that flank the stations of the Staten Island Railway, en route to an evening in downtown Great Kills.

As befits a place that can take pride in its otherness and even in its relative isolation, Staten Island has evolved, if not exactly its own language, then certainly a lexicon of words and phrases that require explanation to off-islanders.

And a linguistic journey into the heart of Staten Island leads inexorably to the Talk of the Town Tavern, a train-station bar on Great Kills’s very smalltowny main street, where Statenisms flow nearly as freely as the $2 draft mugs.

. . .

Eugene Machules, a locksmith who was feeding dollars into the Talk of the Town’s jukebox, offered one more local neologism: “Voo-da-la.”

“You say that like when you make a great shot in basketball,” Mr. Machules said. “When you hit the home run, the best shot — the top of the pinnacle, that’s it. Or if you toast someone who’s passed away, you say ‘Voo-da-la.'”

Voo-da-la, Mr. Machules said, was the signature phrase of Monte Vandenburg, a longtime bartender at another Great Kills watering hole, the Swiss Chalet.

“He’d just turn and say ‘Voo-da-la,’ and nobody knew what the hell it meant,” Mr. Machules said.

Mr. Vandenburg died suddenly in September at the age of 46. It is not clear how long Voo-da-la will survive him.

Location Scout: Talk of the Town.