Community Corner
🚛 Get The Trucks Out Of Queens + Roadway Redesign in Rockaway
The quickest way to get caught up on the most important things happening today in Queens.
Good morning, Queens! ☕️
🍁 It's Wednesday, it's raining, and fall is well on it's way... Quick!🍂 Before it arrives, check out today's headlines:
- 🛍 Residents of Southeast Queens are paying the price for NYC's online shopping obsession.
- 🚛 A dangerous roadway in Far Rockaway in finally getting a safety redesign.
- ❄️ Snow days are canceled. Forever. I'm almost too distraught to type this newsletter today...
🌥 Mostly cloudy, showers around. High: 73 Low: 66.
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Here are the top stories today in Queens:
1. Residents of Springfield Gardens and Brookville, Queens are paying the price for the people of New York's penchant for online shopping. When goods are shipped into New York City, they often end up at or around John F. Kennedy International Airport in Southeast Queens, where the metropolitan region's air cargo industry is concentrated. From there, this cargo is loaded up onto large trucks, which transport the goods both locally and nationally. During the pandemic, demand for internet shopping and overnight delivery grew drastically, meaning the amount of trucks needed to transport these goods also grew. Trucks deliver 90% of our goods in New York City. Now, Southeast Queens is overrun with hoards of 53-foot long, 18-wheeler tractor-trailers at all hours of the night, which not only damage property, but also disturb entire residential blocks, and present safety hazards. JFK is currently redeveloping its inefficient cargo area, and as this happens, Queens residents implore the airport to implement infrastructure that addresses the aforementioned issues.
To read more about this issue from the point of view of the truck companies: Transport Topics
2. Last week, the city announced that a dangerous roadway in Far Rockaway is finally getting a safety redesign after years of it being passed over. A majority 84 percent of residents said they supported this plan. Over the coming weeks, the Department of Transportation will make substantive changes to a roughly one-mile stretch of Seagirt Boulevard from Rockaway Freeway to Beach Ninth Street. Since 2019, there have been 222 crashes along this stretch, according to Crash Mapper. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said that for the residents of the neighborhood, the majority of whom are people of color, these changes have been a long time coming.
3. On Tuesday, the New York City Council passed a nonbinding resolution calling on Mayor Adams to use unspent federal stimulus money to reverse $469 million in cuts to school budgets. "The Council is making it clear today with this resolution that school budgets should be fully restored," said Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), who authored the legislation. "Our students, teachers and school communities deserve more supports from the DOE [Department of Education] and it's clear that much more oversight and accountability is required." Despite this, Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks have argued that it would be unqise to use the federal stimulus money to prop up school budgets.
4. Glen Oaks resident Robert Dillon, an 83-year-old man, loves clowning around -- especially when it's for a good cause. For almost the past twenty years, Dillon, whose stage name is Otto the Clown, has visited patients at the St. Mary's Healthcare System for Children in Bayside. In addition to St. Mary's in Queens, Dillon has visited 20 other hospitals around the country as Otto.
5. Queens College alumnus Jerry Seinfeld is lending his starpower to Kith's fall advertising campaign in which CUNY, or the City University of New York system, is highlighted. Kith founder Ronie Fieg was raised in Queens, and is championing his hometown through the CUNY collection, which features Queens College and Brooklyn College apparel. The CUNY partnership began through Kith's nonprofit organization, The Kinnect Foundation, which has awarded grants to both colleges to help fund future scholarships.
I've got an extra story today, but be careful. ❤️🩹 This one's not for the faint of heart:
⚰️ R.I.P. Snow Days ⚰️
On Tuesday, School Chancellor David C. Banks announced that the snow day tradition for New York City public schools is over. During an interview, Banks said that instead of having a day off from school, instruction would shift online during inclement winter weather or public emergencies.
"There are technically no more snow days," Chancellor Banks said. "With the new technology that we have – that's one of the good things that came out of COVID – if a snow day comes around, we want to make sure that our kids continue to learn. So, sorry kids! No more snow days, but it's gonna be good for you!" 😔
🗞 Hungry for more news? 🍴Snack on these headlines:
- Queens native Action Bronson makes professional wrestling debut (HipHopDX)
- Industrial investments in outer boroughs undaunted by slowing economy (Commercial Observer)
- MILPA Collective released "Truth Telling and Palabra: A Project at Riker's Island" (PR Newswire)
- Elmhurst Hospital's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Laura Iavicoli honored (NYC Health + Hospitals)
- 6 people hurt in apartment building fire in Astoria (ABC7 NY)
👀 Looking for some to do today in Queens? 🔭 Look no further:
- Kids in Motion (10:30 a.m.)
- Art Lab for Kids: Make Your Own Emoji (10:30 a.m.)
- Takumen Night Market & Matsuri Festival (4 p.m.)
- Yoga for Surfers at the 9th Annual Women's Surf Film Festival (4:30 p.m.)
- Shut Up and Write (6:15 p.m.)
- Sunset Yoga in Southeast Queens! (6:30 p.m.)
- Free Comedy Show in Astoria Park (7 p.m.)
🗣 Queens Chatter:
- Backpacks in time for school on Thursday!: "The rain couldn't keep us from partnering with @UrbanUpboundNY at Queensbridge Houses to distribute backpacks for our kids and families as the new school year approaches. Thank you to all the community members who stopped by and helped spread the word!" (Queens Borough President Donovan Richards via Twitter)
- Noguchi Museum celebrates Labor Day: "Isamu Noguchi's unrealized Labor Pavilion sculpture for the 1939–40 New York World's Fair, in honor of #LaborDay.
Interested in vividly depicting the objectives of organized labor and advancing a pro-labor collectivist spirit to American audiences, the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians envisioned a labor exhibition for the 1939 World's Fair and solicited artistic designs. Noguchi proposed a sculpture for the exterior of the pavilion depicting an Olympian-like worker emanating from the building's structure. Noguchi's proposal was unanimously praised as "excellent symbolically," and the best sculptural articulation of union solidarity on an architectural scale. Members of the jury declared the piece as being in "organic kinship" with the building design for the World's Fair Labor Pavilion conceived by Percival Goodman. The gargantuan figure's spine was to be rooted to the building, while its two muscled arms uplift the roof, conveying the symbiotic relationship between worker and institution. Amy Lyford, author of 'Isamu Noguchi's Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, 1930–50', emphasizes the piece's demonstration of this saying: "echoing the integration of man and machine, his labor exhibit sculpture integrated the worker's body in the architectural "home" of unionized labor at the World's Fair." Unfortunately, neither Noguchi's sculpture nor the Labor Pavilion was realized. __ Images: Isamu Noguchi, Model for a sculpture on the exterior of the World's Fair Labor Pavilion, c. 1938–39. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 01531. Quotes: Amy Lyford, 'Isamu Noguchi's Modernism: Negotiating Race, Labor, and Nation, 1930–50,' (University of California Press, 2018), pp 58–61 #laborday #worldsfair #newyorkworldsfair #isamunoguchi #noguchi #noguchimuseum #amylyford #percivalgoodman" (The Noguchi Museum via Facebook) - Check out this incredible corn maze!: "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment." — Georgia O'Keeffe
Experience the world of artist Georgia O'Keeffe like never before when you step up to the Amazing Maize Maze, our 3-acre corn maze inspired by O'Keeffe's iconic painting Ram's Head, Blue Morning Glory – opening this weekend at the Queens County Fair! Be the first to find your way through and get tickets today at https://bit.ly/3rPr3RL(The Queens County Farm Museum via Facebook)
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Now you're in the loop and ready to head out the door on this Wednesday! See you all tomorrow for your next update.
— Emma Radu Fighera
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