Queens Free Press (http://www.queensfreepress.com/category/queens/page/2/)
With all of the warnings about Zika virus, and helpful tips on how to prevent the spread of this virus, it is completely unacceptable to have the puddles of stagnant warm water (ample habitats for mosquito eggs to live and hatch) constantly around Elmhurst.
Picture your perfect, family-based neighborhood, filled with barbecues, children playing, and people jogging. Most people would first think of bright colors and clean, spotless streets, certainly not garbage-covered sidewalks with a side-order of doggy “presents” left behind by uncaring pet owners. Unfortunately this is what my childhood neighborhood has come to. The cause of this growing epidemic is mostly blamed on younger generations, including those who move in lacking a connection to a community's history. At one level, we see this with the controversial issue of "gentrification," where people "improve" neighborhoods to their liking without considering what came before. Over time generations get more and more careless, slowly losing respect for the environment and organisms living in it.
I live only blocks away from the Pomonok Houses, or the Pomonok "Projects," in Queens, in the more private, safe community known as Elechester, and the difference between the two neighborhoods, which are so close together in the larger neighborhood also known as Pomonok, is striking.
If you’ve ever visited the Chinatown neighborhoods of New York, you would know that their streets are no joke. The questionable stains on the concrete as well as the pungent aroma of rotting fish are truly an unpleasant welcome upon entry. Last night’s trash occupies the edge of the sidewalk. An unknown liquid substance leaks (and reeks) from the garbage onto the city streets and has become a staple of New York’s Chinatowns. Something as simple as keeping the city clean should not be such a prevalent issue in our society.
Whenever I walk around the surrounding area from my house, I always see litter on the ground, whether it’s just wrappings, paper, or spoiled food.
The things that are happening in Bellerose Inn are crazy. A hotel that was beautiful and very welcoming has become a homeless shelter where people who look like delinquents congregate.
State Sen. Leonard Stavisky complained as early as 1988 about poor road conditions on a stretch of the northbound Van Wyck Expressway where it meets the Whitestone Expressway. Twenty-eight years later and things haven’t changed.
During my ten years living in Flushing, NY, I have seen it all. Pedestrians flying four feet off the ground, hit by a truck? Seen it. People getting into arguments because they’ve bumped into one another? Seen that too.
College Point, Queens is a quiet residential neighborhood filled with working class families. That’s why it’s tragic to report there is an epidemic of people constantly buying selling and smoking illegal substances in public parks, near local schools, and in front of and even on private property.
The Q30 bus by Queensborough Community College provides by far the worst bus service in New York City. A large amount of Queens students take this bus to get to work or school. After a while, students are forced to take different buses, or even choose illegal "gypsy" cabs. It is time to make a change, someway, somehow. The most aggravating problem with the Q30 bus is that it is very, very slow. The many students from Queensborough Community College who utilize it are just fed up with its service.