A few weeks ago I had a chance to flex my Queens street grid knowledge for the benefit of a passing stranger. On 33rd Street heading north a man ina large SUV stopped at the crub and held his phone up to my face. I briefly imagined this a decoy or trap for a kidnapping as multiple goons from an unknown militia hustled up behind me and thrust me into the back of the vehicle. But no such militia appeared, and I was immediately able to make sense of what this person was asking. An address on his screen was “47-## 34th Street.” He asked if he was going the right direction. I said “No, that’s the other direction, you need 47th Avenue.” “Is that what that means?” he asked. “Yeah, the first number is the cross street. He did not understand this pretty fundamental piece of the Queens street-numbering grid but I was pleased to educate him. He was heading north on 33rd Street. I asked “Do you know where Steinway Street is?” He affirmed that yes, it was yonder to the right. “Okay, go to Steinway, take a right, then go over the bridge at Sunnyside Yards, then just keep an eye out for 47th Avenue and you’ll take a right.” He seemed satisfied and, dare I say, impressed. Then he asked if I knew where the precinct over there was. I had no idea. I know where the 114th in Astoria is but not in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another time, it was dark, I was out walking nowhere for no reason, when a couple of 20-somethings approached and asked if I knew where they could get a cake. These guys really, really needed a cake, stat. I rhetorically asked “Where are we?” Looking for signage I found we were at 36th Avenue and 37th Street. Flexing my knowledge not just of the street layout but also the local esstablishments I expertly guided them to what was, at the time, the only possible place that side of Broadway where they were going to find cakes. “Okay, we’re at 36th Avenue, you’ll need 34th Avenue, which i s two blocks that way, and you’ll make a left until you get to 35th Street.There’s a Bravo. They have cakes up front and cakes in the back, or at least they used to have cakes in 2 places, so check around.” The men were over-the-top appreciative and I was proud to know they would almost certainly be cakeful within the half hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another time a blind or nearly-blind man asked if he was on the downtown E train platform to the World Trade Center.\u00a0I assured him “You are exactly where you want to be for downtown E train to the World Trade Center.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there was the great 33rd Avenue moment. A confused non-Queens traveler had to be somewhere on 33rd Avenue in Astoria. This is a street many life-long Astorians will insist does not exist in the 11106, but it certainly does. These people were looking at 33rd Street, which is meaningless in the quest for 33rd Avenue. I overheard someone else offering to help but they had no idea where the mystery Avenue was. I gamely approached, asking “33rd Avenue?” All present said “YES!” I jokingly said “Nobody knows where this is. Forget 33rd Street, you need 29th Street, take a left, and after 6 or 7 buidings you’ll see 33rd Avenue, and you’ll see why no one knows where it is, it’s a random in-between street.” That was a triumph of direction-giving. And it’s totally true that lifelong Astorians have insisted to me that no 33rd Avenue exists in the 11106. They are wrong. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago I had a chance to flex my Queens street grid knowledge for the benefit of a passing stranger. On 33rd Street heading north a man ina large SUV stopped at the crub and held his phone up to my face. I briefly imagined this a decoy or trap for a kidnapping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-cpa","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}