A few weeks ago I met a friend in Flushing for archery lessons. The #7 train was in the midst of some pretty serious construction east of Woodside. Anyone wanting to go past there had to get off and catch the LIRR along the Port Washington branch to get to Flushing. I hadn't done that in probably 10 years.
The landscape that the Port Wash cuts through is not the glitzy, exalted "International Express" that the #7 is along Roosevelt Avenue. Instead, it's the common man's route to Flushing. At first glance, it is block after block of hardscrabble wood framed row houses backing up to the tracks, cars shoehorned into frontyards where a postage stamp of lawn might otherwise grow up through. This is occasionally interrupted by a nondescript brick industrial building. Not the stuff of urban adventures. Or is it?
I happened to catch a couple of sights as we whizzed by at 60 mph... a Thai temple, balconies overloaded with bicycles, halal butchers next to massage parlors... all stuck among this strip of industrial residential landscape that gets no attention. So I took the train back (and forth) through this stretch today to see it again. And when I still wasn't convinced I had seen itclosely enough, I got of the LIRR and walked back (and forth, again) the 5.3 miles. Below are some of the fun things I saw. (To see larger versions, go directly to the Picasa page.)
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