Idlewild was also the former name of JFK before it was renamed for Mr. Kennedy. (I discovered this hearing the lyrics of the theme of the classic NYC sitcom "Car 54, Where Are You?", which originally aired before the name change.)
I was super curious what “wonders” would be found in the sketchy museum you photographed; apparently it’s Curley’s Cowboy Center! There’s very little info about them online, but it seems like they’re affiliated with the Federation of Black Cowboys who call The Hole their home. Super weird link between two super weird neighborhoods!
Yes! That part of the Hole where the FBC stables were located is actually city owned and when their lease ran out a few years ago, they were outbid. So, they moved to Springfield Gardens. The museum keeps unusual hours (it's never open) but there were some horses around back.
When my folks moved from Flushing where I'd grown up along with my sister to Springfield Gardens they lived across a tiny wooded and streamed street from Alley Pond Park. Which Springfield Gardens map presence would that quadrant be in?
Also close proximity to a stretch of Springfield Blvd. Approximately the far side of Alley Pond Park's Creedmoor Hospital and Sanitarium that figures so largely in the Nora Guthrie family Archives and folk singing\recording artist brother Arlo Guthrie's memoirs of family visits to his Dad who was confined first in the hospital system at the Greystone Manor Hospital in Morris Plains, New Jersey and then at Creedmoor Hospital and Psychiatric Center nearer to the Guthrie's Howard Beach home in a low-income housing development of Trump infamy where Brooklyn and Queens flirt over the wetlands together on Long Island.
Much was learned about the then recently diagnosed Huntington's Chorea that ran in and so plagued and shaped Woody Guthrie's family on his maternal side from way back in their Oklahoma early his\herstory:
Thank you so much, Rob Stephenson, for this excellent piece of photojournalism and bio-regional, cultural melange essay writing. I have deeply loved each of your Substack entries. Also, very engaged with your wrangling of the early Dutch settlers penchant for literalism. It is likely shared by many cartographers and exploratory, if tiny ethnic groups who became the rarely credited primary namers of mapped territory.
Especially those pluralistic inter-ethnic communities like the borough\county of Queens (along with Brooklyn\Kings County and suburban to municipal NYC the Long Island communities of Nassau and Suffolk counties et al) founded with high concentrations of fishy trader activities.
Lamentably, racial pluralism came so much later. Barely begun as late as the World's Fair cum Archie Bunker and the All In The Family broadcast era of my well-spent yoot sprouting in ethnic\racial pioneering depictions of life in working class and industrially concentrated Queens. Even if much of the racial segregation on either side of Hillside Ave across Jamaica and skirting Flushing and Jamaica Bays didn't really integrate in pockets like Laurelton and Corona until as late as the Shea Stadium and Idlewild into JFK air fields turned Air Ports and then global metro transit hub ongoing era of sprawl. Thomas Pynchon's more recent novels of island life skirt the cartography and territory as well. See especially under INHERENT VICE.
From your descriptions of my memory-cultivating well-spent yoot in all of your photo-journalism essays to date via Substack, I get a better sense of the sub-conscious decisions my often day-dreaming and vacationing mind must've made leading me, along with the spiraling rent and attendant half century of working class Wage Stag-Nation to the very northwestern most tip of the continent here in Washington County, Oregon on the Columbia River Gorge-line with Clark County on the Washington State side some property owner's no doubt "neighborly" borderlands.
From high desert to wet lands all mushed together even more in contrast than Springfield Gardens must've appeared to the early Dutch settler colonies. Keep non-toxic mosquito repellent like citronella handy as Global Warming will be steering this ship from here through the barely foreseeable future.
I enjoyed your piece. I have a NYC neighborhoods project of my own, and yes, figuring out boundaries (and even which neighborhoods to include) is difficult. The southeast portion of Queens is especially difficult.
Thanks Larry! Borders are always changing and nobody can agree on them so I'm not too worried about accuracy, that's why I like the diffuse borders of the NYT map the best.
I tried to find aerial photos of the resort to see how much territory it covered but came up empty. That's quite a catchy theme song!
Idlewild was also the former name of JFK before it was renamed for Mr. Kennedy. (I discovered this hearing the lyrics of the theme of the classic NYC sitcom "Car 54, Where Are You?", which originally aired before the name change.)
I LOVE your dog bosco and I know he loves your daughter the most because she’s the best
I was super curious what “wonders” would be found in the sketchy museum you photographed; apparently it’s Curley’s Cowboy Center! There’s very little info about them online, but it seems like they’re affiliated with the Federation of Black Cowboys who call The Hole their home. Super weird link between two super weird neighborhoods!
Yes! That part of the Hole where the FBC stables were located is actually city owned and when their lease ran out a few years ago, they were outbid. So, they moved to Springfield Gardens. The museum keeps unusual hours (it's never open) but there were some horses around back.
Lived near the northern end of Springfield Blvd for most of my life, so cool to know where the name originated from!
I had no idea Springfield Boulevard was so long! Did you live in Bayside?
Yes! It ends just at Northern Blvd!
Why does the Google map say “KFC classic and spicy?”
I thought the Dunkin' would have drawn you in first!
What kind of casserole?
Foil?
Lol at the horse horse photo!
And the sunflowers photo is so great!
And I googled! Looks the 152-50 Rockaway Blvd (the museum) is the home of the famous Federation of Black Cowboys! I wonder if that’s still a thing?
Yes, they had to make the move from Springfield Gardens to the HOLE™ when their city lease expired and someone outbid them for the property.
Sniff. The HOLE™ was fun until the NYT discovered it.
Thanks!🌻
When my folks moved from Flushing where I'd grown up along with my sister to Springfield Gardens they lived across a tiny wooded and streamed street from Alley Pond Park. Which Springfield Gardens map presence would that quadrant be in?
Also close proximity to a stretch of Springfield Blvd. Approximately the far side of Alley Pond Park's Creedmoor Hospital and Sanitarium that figures so largely in the Nora Guthrie family Archives and folk singing\recording artist brother Arlo Guthrie's memoirs of family visits to his Dad who was confined first in the hospital system at the Greystone Manor Hospital in Morris Plains, New Jersey and then at Creedmoor Hospital and Psychiatric Center nearer to the Guthrie's Howard Beach home in a low-income housing development of Trump infamy where Brooklyn and Queens flirt over the wetlands together on Long Island.
Much was learned about the then recently diagnosed Huntington's Chorea that ran in and so plagued and shaped Woody Guthrie's family on his maternal side from way back in their Oklahoma early his\herstory:
https://theconversation.com/woody-guthrie-old-man-trump-and-a-real-estate-empires-racist-foundations-53026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creedmoor_Psychiatric_Center
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%27s_disease
https://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/woody-guthrie-s-last-birthday-party/article_0818be67-3403-567f-936f-6427826034d9.html
https://curehd.blogspot.com/2014/04/woody-guthrie-huntingtons-disease-and.html
https://www.nodepression.com/nora-guthrie-on-woody-guthries-wardy-forty-greystone-park-hospital-revisited/
https://www.undertheradarmag.com/interviews/arlo_guthrie_on_his_dad_protesting_and_alices_restaurant/
Thank you so much, Rob Stephenson, for this excellent piece of photojournalism and bio-regional, cultural melange essay writing. I have deeply loved each of your Substack entries. Also, very engaged with your wrangling of the early Dutch settlers penchant for literalism. It is likely shared by many cartographers and exploratory, if tiny ethnic groups who became the rarely credited primary namers of mapped territory.
Especially those pluralistic inter-ethnic communities like the borough\county of Queens (along with Brooklyn\Kings County and suburban to municipal NYC the Long Island communities of Nassau and Suffolk counties et al) founded with high concentrations of fishy trader activities.
Lamentably, racial pluralism came so much later. Barely begun as late as the World's Fair cum Archie Bunker and the All In The Family broadcast era of my well-spent yoot sprouting in ethnic\racial pioneering depictions of life in working class and industrially concentrated Queens. Even if much of the racial segregation on either side of Hillside Ave across Jamaica and skirting Flushing and Jamaica Bays didn't really integrate in pockets like Laurelton and Corona until as late as the Shea Stadium and Idlewild into JFK air fields turned Air Ports and then global metro transit hub ongoing era of sprawl. Thomas Pynchon's more recent novels of island life skirt the cartography and territory as well. See especially under INHERENT VICE.
From your descriptions of my memory-cultivating well-spent yoot in all of your photo-journalism essays to date via Substack, I get a better sense of the sub-conscious decisions my often day-dreaming and vacationing mind must've made leading me, along with the spiraling rent and attendant half century of working class Wage Stag-Nation to the very northwestern most tip of the continent here in Washington County, Oregon on the Columbia River Gorge-line with Clark County on the Washington State side some property owner's no doubt "neighborly" borderlands.
From high desert to wet lands all mushed together even more in contrast than Springfield Gardens must've appeared to the early Dutch settler colonies. Keep non-toxic mosquito repellent like citronella handy as Global Warming will be steering this ship from here through the barely foreseeable future.
Keep on doing!
Health and balance,
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
off to buy some Citronella candles. Thanks Mitch!
I enjoyed your piece. I have a NYC neighborhoods project of my own, and yes, figuring out boundaries (and even which neighborhoods to include) is difficult. The southeast portion of Queens is especially difficult.
Thanks Larry! Borders are always changing and nobody can agree on them so I'm not too worried about accuracy, that's why I like the diffuse borders of the NYT map the best.
Fascinating as always, but I think it’s the goose turd buffet that’s going to stick in my mind.
Eww, sorry about that! At least you didn't have to get any post buffet dog kisses?
Blessed, the Hacienda, Soul saving station, cricket counts! ....
You like the text based images! me too
Great article and great pictures!
Thanks Ana!
love the photo of the satellite dishes stretching up like flowers looking for the sun. 🌻
Satellite dish garden may be the only one I could keep alive...
More Bosco pictures!
That's a slippery slope!
BoeIng ... Bosco Is a nIce doggo !
Fixed. Thanks!