Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Falling in love with Astoria Park


...here I was in Queens, standing on a soft grassy rise gazing out across the deep treacherous waters of Hell Gate channel at the glorious midtown skyline of Manhattan, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building jabbing the blue sky with gleaming silver spires, the hood ornaments of a driven city. A city of people and bridges and ideas and schools and commerce and history. A city of big endless dreams.

I want to leave all this, travel hours north, to watch leaves turn?

Madness.


Leaf me be, it's fall in Astoria Park

11 comments:

verdi said...

Our parks are our real treasures.

How about one for St. Saviour's ?

georgetheatheist said...

A little known fact: the Astoria Park was the original site of the biblical Garden of Eden.

BTW, I spent a day yesterday hiking around the Palisades in New Jerkey. I do this every year at this time - the fall foliage there is usually spectacular. This year it sucks, a real let-down for the foliage peeper crowd.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm... Crappie seems to have a bunch of positive Astoria postings lately.

Now, now, we all know nice articles about a community just directs development there (or is it someone has been sniffing around the local politicians for a nice juicy senseless contract?)

Oh, yes, the reality:

http://www.astorians.com/index.php?topic=6988.165

georgetheatheist said...

"free-loading pigeons"
"gold coins from a money tree"
"chuckling Linden Brook"
"a city of big endless dreams"
"dew-gemmed park"
'perpetuation of the human experience"
"diabolical East River reefs"
"fulvous leaves of fall"

Did he write "fulvous"? Yes indeedy he did, as in "whenever I read Brian Hamill, a fulvous stream of vomit rises up and out of my gullet."

Brian Hamill, A LAZY BUM of a writer, who only got to where he is by virtue of his nepotism-dispensing frere, Mr. overrated Pete (aka "da Putz"). Can you imagine yourselves, folks, walking once around Astoria Park and writing a Daily News column about this? No heavy lifting here.

Brian Hamill, Queens' very own "Asshole Extraordinaire".

Queens Crapper said...

Don't you mean Denis Hamill?

georgetheatheist said...

Pete, Denis, Brian, Tom, Dick, and Harry - a veritable sextet of fulvous regurgitant.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, georgetheatheist, I'm with the crapper on this one: you can't unleash fulvous torrents of streaming STFU's at a guy and use the wrong name three times while calling him out. I mean, you called him "LAZY"--how hard is it to look at a byline, or remember a writer you've read enough times to despise?

georgetheatheist said...

"Denis Hamill" is the nom de plume of Brian Hamill. Brian uses the name of "Denis" in honor of a Hamill forebear who arrived from the Olde Sod at the turn of the last century, Denis Padraig O'Hamill. Legend has it that an immigration official at Ellis Island could not pronounce the name "Denis" so instead he called the new arrival the not dissimular-sounding "Brian". Today his great grandson, Brian Hamill, to pay tribute to his forsaken forebear, uses the original moniker of "Denis".

Anonymous said...

Nice save lol.

Anonymous said...

the atheist probably has an ax to grind against this writer.

In my experiences, the Astoria pool is still the largest, and one of the cleanest in the city. The views of the city provide for some good wedding photography scenes.

As for nepotism, don't forget the Vallone dynasty, which represents Astoria.

Anonymous said...

I'm siding with George. If you check out Hamill's picture at the top of his column, he doesn't look like a Denis. He looks more like a Brian.