King Of Queens

As a lot of you know, I have never been very fond of Queens, or at least i like pretending i dislike it. I have always had fun calling it Long Island slittle cousin or poking fun at my friends who lived there. I don't know where that attitude came from but I do have some great history in Queens. I used to work at Queensborough Community College out in Springfield and at an environmental campaign office on Bell Blvd. in Bayside.

I also lived for a few months in Long Island City. That's where i took a trip yesterday. I biked through the great Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, over the Pulaski Bridge (a draw bridge over Newton Creek, one of the most heavily traveled lesser waterways in the country), and onto Queens territory.

Hunters Point is a very interesting neighborhood. Luxury apartment buildings rise above very old 3 story brownstones and cast a shadow over it's reputation as a lost neighborhood. On the water are 3 very nice restaurants, a tennis club and newly built public piers looking over the Manhattan skyline. Next to the park are the historic PepsiCola neon sign and 2 large boat cranes at the old mooring docks. This is pictured above as evidence that Brooklyn and Queens inclusion as part of Long Island is more than just a technicality.

The one thing I noticed on these docks and in the surrounding 5 blocks or so of upscale housing was the amount of police on duty. It might be that across the river is the U.N, but i bet that there has been some social growing pains so to speak from the sudden infusion of gentrified development...after all, you don't want all the nice people to have to walk from the water taxi to their castle without a police escort, do you?

North of this is Long Island City, home of the lone skyscraper in queens. When i lived in LIC, we used to joke that the Citibank building was a symbol of queens giving Manhattan the finger.
Traveling along the waterfront in Queensbridge, Dutch Kills and Ravenswood, is a scattered bike ride along Vernon Blvd. You can travel under the Queensborough Bridge, check out a few small waterside parks, and look across to Roosevelt Island. Also along this route are two very giant power stations...key span and con edison.

The ride gets very interesting as we hit Astoria we pass the north end of Roosevelt Island. There is a great little artist camp called Socrates Sculpture Garden and Hallets Cove Park overlooking a ragged waterfront, north Manhattan and the lighthouse on RI. Rounding this little hook into Hell Gate, the two northern bridges come into view. The Triborough and Hellgate bridges connecting the Bronx to Queens via Ward Island and Randals Island. Astoria Park at the foot of the bridge is a great place to hang out, but if you want a little more seclusion, check out a sunset over the bridges from Ralph Demarco Park right north of Ditmars.

That is as far north as you can get without breaking into the massive Con Edison Complex...which if you do (be careful) you can get a glimpse of Rikers Island.

I will be back soon to visit some of the sites of these fine neighborhoods, as for now, check out some more pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/