Nearly 10 minutes had been eliminated from the ride into Kew Gardens since the last time I rode the Q10. Brooklyn and Queens busses now arrive and depart in front of Terminal 4 at JFK rather than stopping in front of each building. While it would have been faster to take the train at Howard Beach via AirTrain, I thought it would be nice to have a walk through the “old neighborhood” and take the train in from Union Turnpike, instead.
As the bus left Ozone Park, there was standing-room-only. Twenty minutes later, I was in the heart of Kew. Thirty minutes in all, to get from the airport to a great neighborhood that hasn’t changed all that much since my last visit. The corner grocery had been replaced something with a more modern interior.
Within a block of my old apartment, and really, within a couple blocks of everyone in Kew Gardens, most everything is available. A couple banks, a couple bars, a couple deli’s, the Chinese take out, the pizza place, the diner, the dry-cleaner, the bakery, a movie theater, Dunkin Donuts, the nail place, a barber, the Jewish market, a non-Jewish super-market, the synagogue and adjoining school, a Laundromat, a 7-11, a liquor store and a newsstand, which now boasts, in Russian, that it carries Russian magazines. It’s also possible to book a Baltic cruise from this place.
Despite all of this (and more) fitting into a narrow retail strip not more than two blocks long, Kew Gardens has never seemed cramped. Main arteries such as Lefferts and Metropolitan Boulevard are lined with mid-rise apartment buildings from the 20’s and 30’s. Behind, single-family homes, sometimes duplex’s, are nestled onto tiny lots, also from the same era.
Adjacent to the Long Island railroad station, larger homes, considerably larger, comprise a few blocks that offer the feeling of an English village. Within three-blocks of the corner of Lefferts and Metro, virtually every type of housing option is available. I could live here again.
Coffee and a donut at Dunkin Donuts gave me a chance to take off my hat and gloves for a few bit. I was hoping to see “Viktor”. Every morning I used to come here, and most every morning, I’d see a tall young man hanging around out front. Levi’s and a leather jacket, his black hair was slicked back and sideburns down to his jaw line framed his face. He wore cowboy boots and drove a baby-blue Chevy El Camino, which he managed to park right in front all the time. The El Camino, that was his baby.
The kicker here was that this American icon, who I’d suspected was from Brooklyn, only spoke Russian. He’d come to chat up the Russian girls working here. He may have lived in Brooklyn. A slightly mismatched scene from the Lords of Flatbush that I enjoyed watching whenever it was present, I’d hoped to catch another episode.
It was time to head into the city. Five blocks to the subway station on Queens Boulevard, the E train, an express, had me into Manhattan within another thirty minutes. The entire afternoon’s travel cost $2.00 using the Metro Card, where bus and train transfers are offered within two hours of the initial fare purchase. The temptations of the holiday windows along 5th Avenue got the best of me, so there, I headed up to the street. Cool and crisp, the evening was perfect for walking. I managed to catch a glimpse of the tree at Rockefeller Center, and then decided to head over to 8th Avenue, where the pedestrian traffic was faster moving.
What a delight to be car-free again.
In a few hours, I’ll have to pay to get it out of the parking lot at Port Columbus. Parking at Port Columbus will cost more than my combined ground-transportation costs here.
