CHRISTMAS IN, ER, QUEENS…

 

 

You’ve decided this year to travel to New York City for the Christmas holidays. Good for you. You’re going to do all the stuff everyone else does and then some. Nothing wrong with that. The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. “The Nutcracker” ballet at Lincoln Center. Then maybe you’ll hit the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty or a museum or Broadway musical or peek in the fabulously decorated store windows along Fifth Avenue. 

 

Hey, you should have a blast. And you probably will. 

 

Except for a certain oversight. You’re limiting yourself to the rarified cocoon that is Manhattan. And New York City is more than Manhattan. In fact, the city has four whole other boroughs. You’ve got the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens. I should know a little about Queens because I lived there for 44 years. I married my wife in a Queens synagogue and our children were born in a Queens hospital and attended Queens public schools.

 

You’ve heard of Queens, no? It’s often referred to, condescendingly, as one of the “outer boroughs.” It’s somewhere near Long Island, right? Home to a neighborhood actually named Flushing, yes? Where the character of Archie Bunker in the “All In The Family” sitcom practiced serial bigotry, no? A handy punch line second in popularity only to New Jersey?

 

But have you ever considered visiting Queens? No? You mean all you plan to see of Queens are the airports? Too bad. Queens will then remain an unexplored frontier for you. 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll be missing a chance to take in what I consider the real New York City.  

 

You really should pop in. Here, for starters, are just a few basic reasons why.

 

Queens is massively populous, with 2.4 million residents, more than 14 US states. Its land mass covers 109 square miles — bigger than Boston and San Francisco combined. Yet thanks to all its cemeteries – Louis Armstrong, Harry Houdini and mobster John Gotti are buried here – dead people in Queens outnumber the living. 

 

Queens is old, too, at least by American standards. It was established in 1683. The United Nations was originally located there. That’s where the 1939-1940 and 1964-1965 World’s Fairs took place, and some structures, such as the towering New York State Pavilion, still stand. But Queens is also new. Most of its buildings sprang up in the last 50 years.

 

Here’s a little more miscellanea: Economically Queens contributed almost $134 billion to national GDP in 2023, more than either Memphis or New Orleans. The best tennis players in the world converge there every August for the U.S. Open. It’s the birthplace of singer Tony Bennett, actor Christopher Walken and comedian Don Rickles, not to mention Donald Trump.

 

But here’s the sweet spot for me. Queens contains multitudes. It’s the most ethnically diverse place on the planet, infinitely more representative of New York City – and for that matter, the United States – than any other locale. About 47 percent of its residents were born outside the U.S.

 

Those immigrants represent 130 countries and 120 languages. More than half of immigrants arriving in Queens speak a language other than English at home. Store signs along Queens Boulevard, from Long Island City and Sunnyside to Kew Gardens and Jamaica, appear in Russian and Greek and Korean. Corner delis display newspapers in dozens of languages. Ride the subway from Manhattan out to Queens and try to guess who will get off at which stop. Koreans may step off in Flushing and Colombians in Corona, while Afghans leave at Jackson Heights, and Bukharians in Rego Park.

 

As such, Queens is a civics lesson in multiculturalism, the global writ local, a one-of-a-kind preview of our country’s future. It’s what this country is supposed to be all about, a symbol of the great experiment in freedom and democracy that is America itself. 

 

Okay, so there’s that. 

 

But where do I recommend you go in Queens? After all, Queens has much to showcase, more than I can fit here. So let’s talk specifics. 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. If you’re going to eat at an Indian restaurant outside of India itself, it might as well be here, where the night air is perfumed with cumin. Afterwards, you could stop at the Lemon Ice King in Corona. You could then cross the street to William F. Moore Park, a triangular vest pocket space dubbed “Spaghetti Park,” where, under brightly lit colored lanterns, you can watch elderly Italian guys – and maybe a few young Spanish hotshots, too – play bocci and bust each other’s chops.

 

That would certainly qualify as a good night.

 

Make a beeline for the Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge, spanning Jamaica Bay. Park waterside to watch planes take off and land at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Drive through Broad Channel, with its rustic docks and piers, a maritime neighborhood so independent-minded it tried more than once to secede from New York City. Keep motoring along until you reach the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge and catch a whiff of tangy salt water in the air. All you can see ahead is the vaulting sky. That’s Rockaway Beach, right on the Atlantic Ocean. There, you can bliss out ambling along the sand as nearby surfers ride the somersaulting waves.

 

Let’s call that a more than worthwhile day trip.

 

Forest Hills, my home for decades, has plenty of charms to call its own. Amble along Austin Street, its version of Fifth Avenue. Venture through the cloistered enclave called Forest Hills Gardens, lined with Tudor mansions and stone gazebos festooned with ivy. Visit the landmark West Side Tennis Club, built in 1914 and fabled for hosting the U.S. Open until 1977 and now a summertime concert venue in its own right. 

 

I often strolled with family and friends through this idyllic landscape feeling as if I’d turned the clock back to its founding in 1909. I marveled at how no sooner would we enter its stone arches than the rest of the world ceased to be, suddenly hushed, as if we’d stepped into an empty cathedral at midnight.

 

Head out to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, too. Take an afternoon-long hike around Willow Lake. You can follow this circuit in spring and summer as families all around barbeque under the sun to blaring music. Tall reeds shiver in the breeze and the ducks at the shoreline yak away. Here adults and kids from all nations, speaking all languages, are at play, flying kites and smacking volleyballs.

 

The Olympic Games have nothing on this park for international scope. Over here Pakistanis dressed all in white swing a cricket bat, while over there Panamanians kick a soccer ball. Elsewhere, athletes from Russia, China and Tel Aviv pitch softballs and shoot basketballs.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and by all means go gawk at the Unisphere, a legacy of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. It’s the world’s largest globe, 140 feet high, 120 feet in diameter, and constructed of 350 tons of stainless steel, representing the world united at last.

 

I almost left out the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. The Kaufman Astoria Studios was one of the first major movie studios anywhere, turning out silent films and later talkies. Among the stars filmed there were Gloria Swanson, W.C. Fields and The Marx Brothers.

 

You can also indulge your palette in a wider range of cuisines than you might anywhere else. Go to Rego Park for blini and Corona for empanadas. And if you’re looking for Asian cuisine, you’ll never do better than Flushing, home to more Chinese people – and restaurants — than you’ll find in Manhattan’s Chinatown. 

 

 

 

 

 

As for Christmas festivities per se, drive over to Dyker Heights. Homeowners there go full-tilt decorating houses for Christmas to the nth degree. The spectacle is so popular that cars crawl in a procession past home after brilliantly illuminated home decked out with Santas, sleighs and plenty of snow. 

 

So take a side trip to Queens. Go ahead. It’s right across the East River from Manhattan and easy to reach. Drop in for a day or three. 

 

I’ll bet the next Christmas you go back. 

 

Bob Brody is author of the memoir Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post