If you find yourself wending your way through northern Queens on the M60 bus to La Guardia Airport, and you're not lost in a book or frantically trying to balance your suitcase and knapsack on the jerky bus while fumbling for your boarding pass and checking your watch, and you look up and out the window on the right side of the bus at the exact time that it is turning through the intersection of Astoria Blvd and 82nd St, you might catch a glimpse of it: the familiar looking Parks sign with the best logo of any city agency--the Parks Leaf. Except that this sign designates a park with one of the most peculiar, at least one of my favorite names: La Guardia Landing Lights. Look a little closer and you find the eponymous structures--a series of lightpoles spaced a few hundred feet apart that lead landing airplanes to Runway 4 at the airport.
And if you're unencumbered by luggage, not rushing for a flight and happen to get off here, and if the planes are landing on Runway 4 that day, you'll be right in the laning path of big jets floating down to the end of the runway barely a quarter-mile away.
The edges of airports can be strange places to find oneself. They have a Lilliputian feel; by the very nature of where it's located, things are low-slung. Streetlights are half-sized. Buildings don't usually go above a single story. And there is a surprising number of folks who, equally enamored of planes passing barely 50 feet above their heads at better than 100 mph, skulk around the ends of runways just sitting and watching. Several for hours. On a recent visit, at least two families pitched a sheet and were picnicking while planes roared overhead. It seemed quintessentially urban. I loved it. And I'll be back here a lot over the next few weeks.
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