No man is an island, but New York basically is. Really. The Bronx is the only borough connected to mainland America. The four floating boroughs aren't alone amid NYC's waterways, howeverthey are joined by dozens of other land masses. The more substantive among them are definitely islands, and then there are the occasional outcroppings of rock, ripe for some new micronation, that can count, too. The islands are ranked in order of how easy they are to get to, but even those at the "top," like Rikers and Hart's Island, aren't a piece of cake to access. Fun fact: in the Long Island Sound alone there are 20 islands, once known as the Devil's Stepping Stones because of an Native American fable that claimed, as per the Times' archives, that "Indians were chasing the Devil across the sound, and every time he put his cloven hoof down, an island was formed." Below are 34 islands even slightly worth knowing. Quick, befriend someone with a boat, and try to visit them all before winter sets in.

Hannah Frishberg



· North Brother Island coverage [Curbed]

· Birds and Beaches in Brooklyn: A Canoe Trip to White Island [Curbed]