Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area

It is not the Queens of my youth, not at all. It was the tree lined borough, small 2 story apartments blended with single owner homes, everyone had a backyard, sections were crowded, Jackson Heights, Jamaica, all started going downhill at the start of the seventies. You could take the subway to the beach (Rockaway Beach). I could ride my bike to Belmont Park and watch the horses excercise, there were still farms on Long Island, and single owner stores were walking distance for a kid to get a newspaper for her granny. Candy stores is what we called the small places that had a counter and comics and candy, or stationary. I was always glad I was raised in NY, but it is not the same, not at all. We all seemed to co exist without any of this diversity nonsense, the Chinese laundry yes, did have Chinese people, the kids went to my public school, there were a lot of Catholics, and a lot of Jews, there were colored neighborhoods, but they were not ghettos. Queens was the place to go and aspire to if you were a poor kid growing up in the "city", as my father had done, to finally own your own home. I am old enough to remember the milkman coming rattling bottles before sunrise. There was a big commercial bakery about 10 blocks away, they delivered too, Krugs bakery, the sweet smell of their bread making would waft through the neighborhoods. President Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, which we considered the "rich area", every Christmas time my parents would drive around looking at the lights everyone put on their houses, and Jamaica Estates were known for having the :"fanciest" lighting. It was safe! No helicopter parenting, we were taught to not talk to strangers and to look both ways when crossing, and then left on our own to play and explore the neighborhoods, just be home when the street lights came on, or all hell would break loose.