Flushing, Queens

One of the reasons for visiting Flushing was to do a photograph for an article being written by my wife for a Dutch magazine on the sub-prime mortgage issue. She is an urban planner, currently working on the staff of Community Board 4 (Chelsea and the west side of Midtown). Most of the sub-prime-related foreclosures have been in the so-called outer Boroughs, Queens being one of the hardest hit. It’s definitely a “tale of two cities” (please forgive the cliché) with Manhattan and the more prosperous neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens virtually untouched by the mortgage crisis while lower income, mostly black and hispanic, neighborhoods suffer.

Flushing, Queens

I took the 7 train out to Main Street Flushing, which has become a largely Asian area, something that is immediately visible to all. I walked through some surrounding residential neighborhoods where two and three story row houses are making way for tall apartment blocks, often in jarring fashion. It’s clearly evidence of a hot real estate market, but whether the recent mortgage mess is slowing things down, I don’t know. In any case, I was pleased to get this somewhat enigmatic image of empty row houses surrounded by tall wooden fencing and apartment high rises under construction in the background.

Grand Central Terminal

Back in Manhattan.