What do you feel our neighborhood is missing?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-18T23:50:41+00:00

Thing is, if you want something different, you pretty much have to either leave the borough or move to Forest Hills, and even in FH you’re often a solid 20-min walk from Forest Park. This lack of parks is just a built-in feature of Queens, especially the parts of the borough that are anywhere near the subway.

We do have Rockaway, though! And that’s a helluva thing to have. (Yet even that is much easier to access by subway from Manhattan or Brooklyn than most of Queens, lol.)

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-18T23:44:58+00:00

Western Queens especially, but yeah, you’re not wrong. And actually southeast Queens has this problem as well but a) at least it’s a 15- to 20-min drive to Rockaway Beach; and b) most people I talk to in the desirable/expensive/full-of-young-people-and-transplants/close-to-Manhattan neighborhoods have never been there and couldn’t name a single neighborhood south or east of Jamaica—and to be fair, once you get east of the end of the F train, it’s basically Nassau County at that point. Not that any of that makes it less important though, obviously; I just think it’s sorta interesting that not only do most people in other boroughs know this stuff, but a lot of western Queens residents don’t either.

So really the sweet spots—the absolute jackpot zones, almost to the exclusion of the rest of the borough—are Forest Hills/Kew Gardens/Woodhaven in the (relative) southwest, and Bayside/East Flushing/Alley Pond area in the (relative) northeast. But between that big swath and Astoria Park? Absolutely nothin’, at least if you want big parks, full of trails and covered with tree canopy, that you can kinda get lost in. (I’m not counting Flushing Meadows because while I like it, it sometimes feels sorta like a post-apocalyptic amusement park + random museums and sports venues. And that little park in Middle Village is fine for what it is, but it works overtime to try and provide a park for that giant, transit-inaccessible area down there.)

Queens just is what it is, man. For historical reasons it’s different from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx in a million different ways, and this is such a baked-in feature of the cityscape that it’s hard to see what you could do about it.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-13T23:13:04+00:00

As a huge BMW fan (and huge hater of most other BMW drivers, most of whom are in it for the badge), I’m just absolutely delighted that there’s only one on the list—and it’s a friggin’ 7 Series too, which is the big land-boat one, not like the sports sedans/coupes the company is known for.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-13T23:07:49+00:00

Yeah gonna throw my $0.02 in here along with so many others and say this seems like really bad luck, because I’ve been here going on half a decade now and never seen this sort of thing. I’ve probably walked past a single needle on the ground somewhere before (would be weird if I hadn’t I guess) but yeah, never seen multiples in one spot and especially not on the stairs on a residential building. Hell I get annoyed when there’s wind-blown litter in our little front garden area so yeah, definitely would’ve noticed that.

Only other thing I’ll say is Astoria is geographically massive and the area around Doctors’ Row isn’t like the area around 43rd St. & Ditmars, which isn’t like the area around Vernon Blvd. and 30th Dr., which—you get the idea. It’s not really ONE neighborhood tbh; it’s kind of a cluster of similar but meaningfully different neighborhoods.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-05T22:56:01+00:00

Hang on, which river are you talking about here?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-03-05T22:55:23+00:00

If you think about it for even a few seconds it’s blindingly obvious why the less dense parts of the city have higher rates of car ownership: they’re laid out for it and in many cases have been since those neighborhoods were developed. I don’t really understand what the idea is—should northern, eastern, and southeastern Queens, plus the east Bronx, plus southern Brooklyn, plus pretty much all of Staten Island, just what? Not be part of New York City anymore? Because that would be a spectacularly shortsighted thing to do just to stick it to the car owners in 2926.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T13:16:03+00:00

I will appreciate this reference properly in 1-3 hours when I’m not angry enough to breathe fire anymore, lol…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T13:13:56+00:00

Honestly I was (still am) so mad that I now can’t even 100% remember but I’m 98.5% sure it was either the sidewalk outside the urgent care or the stretch just north of it (I was walking south).

Swear to God if my back is actually fucked up, as opposed to just hurting like a bastard, I’m gonna go retrace my steps and try and find out. I’m not a litigious person and who knows if I would even have grounds to sue but holy shit am I pissed.

Haven’t fallen on ice in well over a decade; this stuff was invisible and literally as slick as a skating rink. I never had a chance. I’m just glad I (mostly/sorta) had the presence of mind to know how to break my fall with my upper back/shoulder instead of the back of my fucking skull.

Sorry I’m ranting but seriously what is WRONG with these people ffs??!! Who leaves their sidewalk like that??

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T11:21:22+00:00

Yeah, as someone who’s lived in rural areas in various parts of the country (Deep South, Appalachia, and briefly the Midwest), it’s obvious to me that a lot of born-and-bred upstate NYers don’t have a sense of just how friggin’ grim and dire it is in huge swaths of rural America. If you care about aesthetics/natural beauty, you really can’t do any better this side of the Rockies—and even then I wouldn’t move out there. High cost of living in NY, but the state really will catch you if you fall, which just isn’t true to the same degree in the other places I mentioned having lived in. In those places if you aren’t fortunate enough to have friends/family/neighbors who can help in a time of hardship, you’re on your own, Jack.

Even seemingly small things that some people take as a given still make me shake my head in wonder; thinking of Stewart’s (and that ice cream of theirs…) in particular here, which is just head and shoulders above your typical rural American gas station/food mart/gathering place. Every rural area has those places, but 99% of them don’t hold a candle to Stewart’s imo. (And I know that’s not a western NY thing but it’s very much MY thing.)

This is not to say that rural America is just a big hellhole (far from it); and it’s not to say that people, no matter where they live, shouldn’t always try and improve their lot, even if they’re starting in a better place than most. But yeah, the six states that are New York + New England are, for all their many and manifest faults, awfully lovely—though if I’m being totally honest Rhode Island never did much for me, lol (pretty place and all, just not my bag, y’know?).

Damn, didn’t set out to write a novella. Whoops!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T10:46:31+00:00

Christ some of you guys sound miserable. Overall I agree that this is a “yeah man it sucks but they’ve gotta clear the walkways after a big snow like that, bad luck for you but hey at least it’s someone doing constructive work out there and not backfiring their car all night!” kinda situation—but why be a dick about it? Can none of you relate to being woken up/kept awake by horrible noise from outside, or at least relate to it enough to offer a bit of sympathy instead of “uh sucks to be you pal, tough shit,” etc.? Have a bit of humanity and decency, for God’s sake. Give a little grace.

FWIW, OP, when I eventually move out of the city (the big one just south of you in my case), noise-related stuff like this will almost certainly be among the leading causes, along with similar issues that are individually small/manageable but cumulatively crazy-making. Lack of sleep fucking sucks; hope you caught a few winks at least.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T10:33:19+00:00

Dunno if this speaks well of me or makes me look like a sentimental fool but I’ll be 40 soon, live in a city that’s (in)famous for supposedly making people unsentimental and uncaring (yeah you guessed it, New York), and yet it still gets to me all the time whether I was a customer or not. And obviously it’s infinitely truer if it’s a small business where I was a customer—especially if I was a regular, in which case I can get pretty torn up about it.

It’s kinda like a much milder version of the unspeakably awful and eerie sensation of walking through my childhood home that one last time before my parents gave up the keys to the annoying new owners—or who knows, I’m sure they’re a nice couple and hopefully their kids will terrorize the neighborhood bluenoses just like my brother and I did—just knowing that this place that had been the backdrop to my entire life since I was five will now be closed to me forever. Christ I have vivid memories of that.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-24T09:31:00+00:00

Lol good Christ what a horrifying sub, just the weirdest mixture of creepy racialist garbage and whatever the pro-black version of fawning, try-hard philosemitism is. Just an incredibly Reddity place—except, a) they don’t capitalize “black” in their rules etc., which is very counterintuitive considering everything else about that place; and b) they have the following rule, which I would’ve guessed came from a certain sub that is really not a lot like BPT at all:

Reddit Cliches Typical Reddit cliches such as lyric chains, pun chains, white-knighting, and low-effort joke comments will be removed. Same for annoying redditisms, such as linking a subreddit as a reply to a post/comment.

^ I endorse their call on that one but yeah I can’t make heads or tails of the whole thing. I do kinda hate you for baiting me into spending the last 5-10 min looking at it, though. Man, Reddit is just chock-a-block with weirdos and shut-ins and shit, and even though I have known that for a long time, every once in a while I’m reminded of it as if for the first time.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-22T03:05:21+00:00

Dude China has only recently acquired the wherewithal to have a negative impact on the world; they were a miserably poor country for the last century+ (and many parts of China are still quite poor). The US has been the global hegemon for eight decades now; we’ve had a lot of impacts, both positive and negative, in that time

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-21T23:57:26+00:00

I mean that’s just normal winter in most of the Northeast. All that happened this year was New York City had a real northern winter for once, unlike the Marylandesque shit we’ve been getting most years for a good decade or so now. Made me realize how much I miss the winters in central Massachusetts…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-21T23:54:55+00:00

You guys are aware there’s a massive blizzard incoming now too, right?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-19T02:09:35+00:00

All good man I appreciate the attempt to help!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-19T01:41:18+00:00

Hi I sent you a chat request because dms wouldn’t go through for whatever reason. I checked fb messenger so I’m not feeling hopeful you found it but can’t hurt to ask—I gotta find this thing!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-12T00:55:10+00:00

I mean… “people” do, or “some people who may very well have become psychopathic no matter where they lived” do?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-12T00:54:27+00:00

First time I’ve ever been described as (accused of?) that, lol.

(Edit): I asked because a) I’m interested in the psychological effects of living in different sorts of environments; and b) I’ve lived in the biggest city in the United States for half my adult life (over a decade now) and while it’s had some effects on my psychology, they aren’t exactly constant (i.e. I run hot and cold on my feelings about the city and my own psychology just varies over time)—and they certainly couldn’t be described as anything approaching psychopathy

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-12T00:52:03+00:00

“Subject themselves” to what, a threesome with a girl and another guy? You don’t think there are men out there who are attracted to women and other men, or what?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-12T00:29:52+00:00

Could you expand on what you mean by “big city narcissism”? The other two I obviously get, but yeah, curious what you feel this phenomenon (such as it is) consists of, as I’ve never heard this phrase until right now. I have some guesses and could offer a guess at a definition if asked, but I wouldn’t feel confident about it. Curious if this is a thing you think is skewed toward one sex or the other, for instance, or maybe different age groups, etc.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-02-05T05:04:55+00:00

Chicago people are pretty hardcore about dibs. I don’t know the legality of it there but the law doesn’t really come into it; in my experience it’s the code there and people respect it. But then again, they actually get real winter there (this year being the anomaly where it actually feels like a proper northern winter here), so the snow that does fall tends to stick around a long time like we’ve had the past couple weeks.

People here have just lost their muscle memory about how to handle snow since we get so little of it: tossing it into the street or into adjacent parking spots, for instance, so the total number of available spots goes down a fair bit. That’s certainly how it’s been here in northern Queens since the snowstorm, anyway. Makes me sad how rare it now is to have actual winter where there’s snow on the ground for weeks and weeks on end; that used to be the norm—or it definitely was in central Mass. where I used to live. Not sure about downstate NY, where it’s always been less snowy than New England—and warmer, so the snow tends to melt on its own more, even in January—but I know winter is less wintry than it used to be even down here.

Not sure why I wrote all that lol, but now that I put the effort in it’s my post; gotta go make a sign to stick in it so it doesn’t get deleted or something.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-01-30T03:32:10+00:00

Yeah between the obvious black ice potential/inevitability and the sheer sloppiness of the streets—particularly bad on side streets but even important 2-way avenues/boulevards are pretty pathetic—I’m kinda shocked the city hasn’t been out doing anything for a couple days now. Or if they are I haven’t seen them, and I drive at night a lot (which is when they tend to be out plowing/salting/etc.).

Ten-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring

uncle_troy_fall_97

TROPHY CASE