NYC & Co. touts our borough

C M BTS page 19 Y K Oh, the places you should go!

by Peter C. Mastrosimone

Editor-in-Chief

There’s an old cliche that says New Yorkers skip the sights in their own backyards — that many have never been to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the American Museum of Natural History.

Regardless of whether there’s much truth to that, and whether it applies to Queens, NYC & Co., the city’s “official destination marketing organization,” is promoting our borough’s landmarks and other notable spots in a new campaign called “Queens Like a New Yorker.”

The initiative is part of NYC & Co.’s “Get Local NYC” campaign. It highlights places that have been famous for decades, as well as smaller and more recent spots worth visiting, and can be found at online at nycgo.com/boroughs-neighborhoods/queens.

Whether you’re a social butterfly looking for a new spot to land or a homebody who wants to get out more and needs ideas, the initiative offers plenty of ideas Queenswide.

“Plan a trip around tickets to see worldfamous tennis stars at the U.S. Open or a Mets game at Citi Field,” NYC & Co. says in an announcement of the campaign. “Pack a bathing suit and hit the beach in the Rockaways. Hop the subway to Jackson Heights or Flushing and enjoy food from around the world. Queens is also home to several major museums and arts venues, including the Museum of the Moving Image, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Noguchi Museum, MoMA PS1 and more.”

“Queens holds the Guinness Book World Record as the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world, with at least 138 languages spoken,” NYC & Co. President and CEO Fred Dixon points out. “For visitors, it’s a great place to experience New York City’s diversity, including authentic cuisine from cultures around the world. It’s also a great place to watch tennis legends play at the U.S. Open, travel back in time to the 1964 World’s Fair, or take a beach day at the Rockaways. Whether you want to visit the home of jazz great Louis Armstrong, see contemporary art at MoMA PS1 or enjoy a night out at a bar or brewery, Queens is the ultimate destination.”

On the web page for Queens, NYC & Co. starts with a “What’s Happening” section, which is actually a mix of event notices and feature stories, sometimes about a neighborhood, such as Ridgewood or the Little Guyana section of Richmond Hill and Ozone Park; sometimes about one aspect of an area, such as “Asian culture in Long Island City”; sometimes more specific, such as an interview with Regina Bain, executive director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

Below “What’s Happening,” the page outlines a selection of neighborhoods, each with its own detailed web page. Nine are

listed, from Long Island City to Forest Hills to the Rockaways (notably absent is northeastern Queens; surely Bayside at least should be included). The neighborhood pages each give a brief summary of the area and then go into detail on everything from landmarks to restaurants and hotels, along with showing an interactive map. The page for Jamaica, for example, says it is best-known as a transportation hub but that it is home to a patchwork of cultures with a variety of cuisine, as well as a manor house that was lived in by a signer of the U.S. Constitution. Corona’s page makes note of some famous residents, touts both Latino and Italian heritages and advises those who eat there to “walk For tourists and off your feast in nearby Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where you’ll find the Queens residents alike Zoo, Queens Museum and New York Hall of Science.” Forest Hills is dubbed “your friendly neighborhood Tudor home” while Rockaway is called “Surf City, NYC.” “Queens can satisfy nearly every taste,” NYC & Co. says. “Foodies covet the Greek cuisine of Astoria and the authentic Asian food in Flushing; others admire the inventive art at Socrates Sculpture Park and the stunning flora at the Queens Botanical Garden. In the borough’s southern extremes, the surf is always up at Rockaway Beach.” Q

The Lemon Ice King of Corona is a landmark business billed as “universally loved” by the tourism marketing organization NYC & Co.

PHOTO BY MATTHEW PENROD

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