Throwback Thursday - Arverne by the Sea

With the Blogging from A to Z Challenge done, I am resting today.

For my post Monday, I blogged briefly about a woman who lived in a housing development in Queens (part of New York City) called Arverne by the Sea.  Here is my original post from 2010, written before Superstorm Sandy.  If only I had been able to talk to her at length, but, alas, it was not to be.  She did tell me that the neighborhood in general had been greatly impacted by Sandy, but Arverne by the Sea, due to the planning that went into its design, survived with minimal damage.

Maybe one day I'll meet someone with more knowledge of what is happening in my birth neighborhood. 

For now, my post from 2010:

 I've talked about growing up in what became a slum neighborhood of the Bronx, but I am actually from Queens.

I have only a few childhood memories of tales of the place that was my home back when I was a little baby, from where my parents moved from when I was five months old.  I was never to return...at least so I thought.

Stories my Dad told me as a child, so distant in my memory, flooded back recently.

I was born in the Rockaways, an area of Queens (part of NYC).  We lived on Beach 56th Street, in a neighborhood called Arverne.  

Arverne had become a slum, too, by the time I was a teenager.  My two childhood homes, both slums.  No wonder I escaped New York City all together.

My Dad told me he would wheel my baby carriage on the Boardwalk.   I was a baby during the winter.  When it snowed, the snow would melt in the salt air.  I love the ocean, although I don't see it often. The ocean is in my blood.

The other day, I picked up an old New York magazine where I exercise.  People discard magazines and books.  Sometimes I find something interesting.  This magazine caught my eye.  I brought it home.

The magazine talked about various New York City neighborhoods.  One made me totally stop and gasp.

 Arverne by the Sea.  The magazine called it an "urbanist experiment".

It's urban renewal as you've never seen it. A social experiment.  To be blunt, a lot of the area is high crime, and the commute to Manhattan is quite long.  But on the bay side, Arverne by the Sea rises, challenging a hurricane to destroy it.

I found something else online..the word Edgemere Houses.  It's not the housing project where my parents lived-I wish I could remember the name but I know Edgemere wasn't it. [I have since found it] But-  I looked Edgemere up on the Internet and found a treasure trove of photos....including that boardwalk where I was wheeled in a baby carriage. Part of it is called Ocean Promenade and all together it's the largest boardwalk on the East Coast.

But much of what it winds through is....vacant.  Abandoned.  Such sad photos. Arverne by the Sea seeks to change that.

Arverne by the Sea.  I will continue to follow the development with interest, and wish it much success.

Zoo #AtoZChallenge #blogboost #MusicMovesMe

I never thought that the end of my January trip to Florida would result in a trip into my early childhood.  But it did, in one of those "it's a small world" events.

We were on the Auto Train, preparing to head back to Virginia.

We were just about ready to leave the Sanford, Florida station when the woman sitting in front of me struck up a conversation.  It was her first trip on the Auto Train, and, since I had ridden it several times, she started to ask me some questions.

We were chatting as the train began to move.  We were about five minutes out, maybe even less.

Suddenly she started to yell, "Did you see that? Did you see that?"

Not what we saw on the Auto Train- Riverbanks Zoo, Columbia, South Carolina August 2017

"I saw giraffes!  They were just there, walking alongside the tracks!"

I thought about it for a minute, wondering if she was hallucinating, but then remembered that there is a zoo near Sanford, Florida (The Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens). 

I've always loved zoos - I know not everyone does, for various reasons.

I was born in the Rockaways, in Queens, one of the boroughs of New York City, but grew up in the Bronx, another borough.  An aunt used to take me, several times a year, to the Bronx Zoo.  I loved being with her, and loved visiting the zoo.  I had my favorite exhibits, she had hers, and we always had a good time.

Hearing my train friend's accent, I suspected my train mate was from New York City, too.

I asked my seat mate (one row ahead of me) where she lived.  And she said "in Queens, in a development called Arverne by the Sea."

What were the chances?

 My first home, as a baby, was located blocks from Arverne by the Sea.  What were the odds, out of everyone who travels on the Auto Train, to find someone who lived in my birth neighborhood? 

The zoo was far in the past by now. We were on our way back home.

Lake Myra, Florida

The train traveled on, as the sun started to set in Satsuma, Florida.

The rising sun tinted the eastern sky red as we passed through Richmond, Virginia the next morning.
Truly homeward bound, as visions of Bok Gardens, Lake Wales, January flowers, St. Petersburg, Madeira Beach, manatees, seabirds, gulf sunsets, Ybor City, and now giraffes, danced through my memory.

But I'm not done yet.  After all, this is Monday and it's time for #MusicMovesMe, a Musical Train that leaves the station every Monday.

Who are the 4Mers who participate?

The Head 4M'er (Engineer) is XmasDolly.  Her co-conductors are:  Callie of JAmerican Spice, (who is on hiatus but is always welcome back once she is able to conduct once again) and ♥Stacy of Stacy Uncorked♥   Also,  Cathy from Curious as a Cathy.  And, ahem...a special announcement - guess who is the newest conductor?

Yours truly - me! (Thank you, fellow conductors!)  So...with thank you's out of the way....
Time for songs beginning with "Z".

Scorpions - The Zoo

OK, technically, this 1967 song by one of my all time favorites, Simon and Garfunkel, is called At the Zoo, but I am counting it as a "Z" song.

Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.  I have to admit, I am also partial to the satiric version by Weird Al Yankovic called Grapefruit Diet.

Zombie - a current song by Bad Wolves.

And now, once more, thank YOU, 4Mers, for voting me the latest conductor for Music Moves Me.  will strive to carry out my conducting responsibilities.

On that note I end the April 2018 Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost, and the Blogging from #AtoZChallenge.  On May 7 we are supposed to blog a retrospective post, but since that is a Monday, I will do it sooner. 

Thank you for taking the train ride with me, and joining me on the trip through Florida - Outside the Theme Parks that was my A to Z theme.

Why not join me daily, and enjoy my other offerings?

Thank you for reading!

The Pigeon Commuters

As I blogged about over two years ago, I have never seen the neighborhood of my birth in the Queens borough of New York City.  And now, I never may.


Many of us have seen the "after" pictures of the Rockaways.  The wrecked buildings, the people still without power, the neighborhood that neither the City, the State nor FEMA quite know what to do about.

But, thanks to a MSNBC commentator, I got to see the "before", of families frolicking on the beach, of surfers riding the subway, of pigeons that have learned to ride the A train over Jamaica Bay.  The pigeons commute, the easy way, from the Rockaways to the mainland.

I wanted to share this with you, because this is another New York City the tourist will never know.

And, sadly, perhaps, I will never know it either.
Arverne, on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, suffered its share of damage from Hurricane Sandy.  And now, it is starting to develop sinkholes.  Part of the neighborhood may end up in a sinkhole.  The other part may mold away.  Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it.


Not exactly. What ever happened to the Arverne by the Sea development I mentioned in my 2010 blog post?

You may not believe it, and this gives a lot of us hope.  Perhaps there is hope for the Rockaways. Arverne, one of the grittier parts of this pennisula, may help show the way.

Destruction or hope?  I don't envy the residents of the Rockaways, but I am glad that I was, in a very small way, part of their neighborhoods once upon a time.

Tomorrow - whatever happened to Red Hook?

Under the Full Moon, the Real Boo

Who needs a fake Halloween haunted event when Nature gives you the Real Boo?

(Witch decoration on Vestal Rail Trail, Vestal, NY courtesy of AM)


My home neighborhood, where I spent part of my babyhood (Arverne,in the Rockaways section of New York City) is flooded.  Rockaway Beach is flooded.  Power shut off in parts of Lower Manhattan.  13 feet of water at the Battery. Subways in danger of flooding.  Reading Twitter, some massive transformer explosion, huge green flash and East Village goes dark. But first some one tweeted a photo, with cars floating down the street under an eerie yellow glow.

The Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, that I blogged about several times in September, is flooding.  High tide came - under a full moon.  Could you make this up?

And then there is The Crane. The huge crane dangling in midtown Manhattan, looking like something melted it.  As of this writing, it's still there.

I'm crying out to NYC friends on Facebook:  are you there? One responds, sending me a map where I can check out power outages.  Looking at this, I think a cousin has lost power and he later posts on Facebook that he, indeed, has lost power.  Someone in Bensonhurst (a neighborhood in Brooklyn) says the downed power lines are putting out quite the fireworks show.

The Daily News (one of NYC's papers) is flooding.  So much for The News.

A cousin in Harrisburg, PA lost power for a while and has water in his basement.

We made the right call in insisting my elderly mother in law and her disabled son, who live in the metro area, stay with a relative.  Power is out where my mother in law lives now, and, knowing their electric utility, it could take days to be restored.  Normally, she doesn't flood and didn't flood during Irene. Let's hope she doesn't now, either.

State of emergency here in Johnson City NY, 150 long miles away from NYC.  But, the weather here is actually less dire than first predicted.  We lucked out.  Hope I'm not too premature in saying that.

I'm prewriting this so I can post immediately upon waking up today, or in case my power is out.  I won't know what I will be waking up to.

To all my readers in the path of Sandy...I hope dawn finds you safe and undamaged.  I know what the family of NYC residents will do.  You will all unite and get things done.  NYC residents are proud, and are survivors.

You will survive.  And I will be with you in spirit.

Arverne By the Sea

 I've talked about growing up in what became a slum neighborhood of the Bronx, but I am actually from Queens.

I have only a few childhood memories of tales of the place that was my home back when I was a little baby, from where my parents moved from when I was five months old.  I was never to return...at least so I thought.

Stories my Dad told me as a child, so distant in my memory, flooded back recently.

I was born in the Rockaways, an area of Queens (part of NYC).  We lived on Beach 56th Street, in a neighborhood called Arverne.  

Arverne had become a slum, too, by the time I was a teenager.  My two childhood homes, both slums.  No wonder I escaped New York City all together.

My Dad told me he would wheel my baby carriage on the Boardwalk.   I was a baby during the winter.  When it snowed, the snow would melt in the salt air.  I love the ocean, although I don't see it often. The ocean is in my blood.

The other day, I picked up an old New York magazine where I exercise.  People discard magazines and books.  Sometimes I find something interesting.  This magazine caught my eye.  I brought it home.

The magazine talked about various New York City neighborhoods.  One made me totally stop and gasp.

 Arverne by the Sea.  The magazine called it an "urbanist experiment".

It's urban renewal as you've never seen it. A social experiment.  To be blunt, a lot of the area is high crime, and the commute to Manhattan is quite long.  But on the bay side, Arverne by the Sea rises, challenging a hurricane to destroy it.

New York City does get hurricanes, you know.

I found something else online..the word Edgemere Houses.  It's not the housing project where my parents lived-I wish I could remember the name but I know Edgemere wasn't it.  But-  I looked Edgemere up on the Internet and found a treasure trove of photos....including that boardwalk where I was wheeled in a baby carriage. Part of it is called Ocean Promenade and all together it's the largest boardwalk on the East Coast.

But much of what it winds through is....vacant.  Abandoned.  Such sad photos. Arverne by the Sea seeks to change that.

Arverne by the Sea.  I will continue to follow the development with interest, and wish it much success. One day I will remember the name of the housing project where I lived as a baby, and perhaps the Internet will allow me to solve another puzzle of my childhood.  And maybe one day both Arverne and my Bronx neighborhood will rise again from their ashes.