Queens is the largest of the five boroughs by area, the second largest by population, and the one visitors most reliably skip. It is also, by most measures used to count these things, the most linguistically diverse place on earth — around 160 languages in a borough of two and a half million people.
The practical version of that statistic is the food, which is better and cheaper than anything in Manhattan, and the fact that nobody in Queens is performing for anybody.
The 7 train
The 7 runs from Hudson Yards under the river to Long Island City, then up onto elevated tracks along Roosevelt Avenue all the way to Flushing. It has been nicknamed the International Express, and the run is the single best introduction to the borough: you are above street level for most of it, looking down on the shopfronts of a dozen different neighbourhoods.
One fare. About forty minutes end to end. This route follows it.
Long Island City
First stop off the 7 at Vernon Blvd–Jackson Av, or the E/M to Court Sq.
New towers, converted warehouses, and the best Manhattan skyline view in the city from Gantry Plaza State Park — directly across the water from Midtown, with the old Pepsi-Cola sign and the loading gantries kept as landmarks. There is almost never anybody there.
MoMA PS1 is a former public school running the most adventurous contemporary programme in New York, with a courtyard that hosts Warm Up on summer Saturdays.
The Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park are a short bus ride north in Astoria. Noguchi’s museum is a converted photo-engraving plant that he laid out himself, and it is one of the calmest rooms in the city.
Astoria
N/W to Broadway or 30th Av, or continue from LIC.
Historically Greek, still substantially so, and now also Egyptian, Bangladeshi, Brazilian and Bosnian.
The Museum of the Moving Image on 35th Avenue is excellent — the history and technology of film and television, with a permanent collection that includes the makeup and props from The Exorcist and a Chuck Jones gallery — and it is almost unvisited.
Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden on 24th Avenue has been run by a Czech benevolent society since 1910 and is the oldest beer garden in the city. A large outdoor yard with long tables, cheap pitchers and grilled meat. On a summer evening it is one of the best places in New York to be.
Eat on Ditmars Boulevard or Broadway for Greek, or on Steinway Street in the 20s for Egyptian food and shisha in the area locally called Little Egypt.
Jackson Heights
7, E, F, M or R to 74th St–Roosevelt Av.
The most concentrated version of what Queens is. 74th Street is South Asian — sari shops, gold jewellers, Indian, Bangladeshi, Nepali and Tibetan restaurants, and the best momos in New York. Two blocks away, Roosevelt Avenue under the elevated tracks is Colombian, Ecuadorian, Mexican and Peruvian, with taco trucks operating until three in the morning.
The neighbourhood was one of America’s first planned garden apartment developments, and the historic district — with private interior gardens behind the blocks — is worth walking.
Diversity Plaza on 37th Road is a pedestrianised block that functions as the neighbourhood’s living room.
Corona and Flushing Meadows
7 to 111th St or Mets–Willets Point.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park holds the remains of two World’s Fairs, 1939 and 1964. The Unisphere, a 140-foot steel globe, is still there. So is the New York State Pavilion, a decaying Philip Johnson structure with observation towers, which appears in Men in Black and is slowly being restored.
The Queens Museum, in the 1939 New York City Building, holds the Panorama of the City of New York — a 9,335-square-foot architectural model of all five boroughs built for the 1964 fair, with every building in the city at 1:1200 scale. It is extraordinary and hardly anyone goes.
Citi Field, where the Mets play, and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the US Open, are both here.
The Lemon Ice King of Corona on 108th Street has been selling Italian ices since 1944.
Flushing
7 to Flushing–Main Street, the end of the line.
The largest Chinese community in New York, considerably bigger than Manhattan’s Chinatown and covering far more of China, plus a substantial Korean population.
New World Mall food court in the basement on Roosevelt Avenue has around thirty stalls — Sichuan, Xi’an hand-pulled noodles, Dongbei dumplings, Taiwanese beef noodle soup, Malaysian. Golden Shopping Mall is smaller, older and rougher and has been the Chengdu destination for twenty years.
Main Street has bakeries, hot pot, and dozens of regional restaurants with no English on the sign. Bring cash.
A realistic day
You cannot do all of the above. Two good versions:
Food day: Jackson Heights for a late lunch, Flushing for dinner, with the Queens Museum in between.
Culture day: Long Island City and the Noguchi in the morning, the Museum of the Moving Image after lunch, Bohemian Hall in the evening.
Either way, arrive hungry and bring cash.