Posted on 08/27/2007 4:59:27 PM PDT by Lorianne
When Gloria Black looks into Jamaica’s future, she sees a grand restoration: Department stores will move into spaces where discount jewelers sell removable gold teeth; vacant storefronts, their windows taped up with yellowing newspaper, will fill one by one. The prosperous downtown of the 1960s — the one that drew families from Harlem and Brooklyn and South Carolina — will return to southeast Queens.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I went to elementary school in a town (Valley Stream), which bordered this area, and where many of the inhabitants “fled” the region in question. BTW: Negrophobia played a part, but so did the constant flooding. Whoever builds in SE Queens does so at their own risk.
>The prosperous downtown of the 1960s — the one that drew families from Harlem and Brooklyn and South Carolina — will return to southeast Queens.
And I will be elected president after being swept into office by a 50 state sweep.
Its dead, jim.
Nonsense. By the '60s the area was past its prime as a shopping hub.
I was raised in Queens Village and remember stores and businesses all up and down Jamaica Avenue and along Springfield Blvd. My family left in ‘62 because my Dad was transferred and I saw that it went downhill for a long time but thought it had come back with the influx of Haitians - hard-working, middle class folks. One friend from there whom I’ve known since kindergarten jokes that I can drink with more people from Queens here in my neighborhood bar in Nashville than if I still lived in Queens.
HI Clem
I grew up in the Laurelton/Springfield Gardens area of SE Queens........we were practically neighbors!!!
Where did you go to high school?
The Caribbean immigrants (NOT just from Haiti) stabilized the place, as many were HOME OWNERS and drove many of the HUD families out (mostly down south, some out to Hempstead). The problem is that even the immigrants would prefer a short drive to Green Acres or a slightly longer drive to the nicer Roosevelt Field than shop on the avenues.
Nevertheless, I would advise against folks of any color moving to SE Queens, as the flooding is as bad as anywhere along the Raritan here in Jersey.
BTW: I grew up in Malverne, although I was zoned for Valley Stream schools. I HATED Valley Stream and still think that it s-cks.
We never had a flooding problem.....but the neighborhood has certainly changed!!
I was only 12 when my family left there and had gone to Catholic school (S.S.Joachim & Ann near Hollis Avenue) so I would have gone to Catholic high school, too, since my family pretty much required it.
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