A thousand reasons to love Long Island City. Tips: Editor@LICtalk.com
SUMMER came to a crashing halt yesterday, when the NYC DOE ordered kids back to school (BTS). In addition, diplomats and their hangers-on will converge on NYC next week for the opening of the 77th Session of the UN General Assembly, to prep for all the world leaders coming here the following week (Putin?). Now you know in advance why there will be an armada of police boats anchored in the East River: to protect LIC.
[Read more…] about Bazooka’s! Fall 2022 Hits Long Island City
You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
It’s crystal ball time here at LICtalk, as we take a look at what can be expected here in Long Island City come 2023.
Packed subway cars will be the least of the mass-transit problems our logistics experts anticipate. More worrisome will be [Read more…] about LIC IN 2023
Gonna leave this brokedown palace
On my hands and my knees, I will roll, roll, roll
A half block north of the Queensbridge Houses, where Ravenswood abruptly turns into a warehouse and industrial zone, sits Paretti Hall. As pictured above, it’s appearance is considerably more august than that of it’s neighbors, and it has a history to match. Who exactly was James J. Paretti and what was his “Association” are lost to the sands of time. In fact the building’s precise history is not fully verifiable. So we’ll take some artistic license and piece together the snippets of others to paint a tale of intrigue in what is otherwise a non-descript area.1 [Read more…] about THE LEGEND OF PARETTI HALL
Recently, an old friend who grew up in Queens, shared with me her main recollection of coming to Long Island City back in her youth. It centered around subway rides to Queens Plaza to shop at a crowded flea market called QP’s Market Place, in order to purchase the 80’s teenage equivalent of Snapchat: black concert t-shirts.
Hmm, I thought, given the retailing magnet that this place was for someone living all the way on the other side of Queens, and the nostalgia people of a certain era have for physical locations that sold highly discounted and possibly semi-illicit merchandise, maybe the venue deserved a short profile?
Instead, a quick google turned up a historical treasure trove about the site that the market was located on. And previous chroniclers have already performed extensive spadework and risked limbs for cool photos. So to entice you to read their fantastic posts on it, I’ll share some interesting tidbits.
First though, to put things in perspective, the area we’re talking about is [Read more…] about QP’s MARKETPLACE, CUE THE MEMORIES OF 80’S LIC
Given the void of local news, now is a good opportunity to get out the time machine and take a look back at the recent past of LIC. In lieu of a time machine, we’re going to use another contraption called Google. It has unearthed a gem of an article from New York Magazine written back in August of 1980, titled “The Next Neighborhood: Long Island City.”
It didn’t quite work according to plan, and the timing was off by over 20 years, but the two constants throughout all the fits and starts and hopes and dreams, were [Read more…] about LOOKING BACK ON: LONG ISLAND CITY IN 1980