63rd Road & 97th Street
Photo Gallery: 63rd Drive

Okay, okay, who's the wiseguy who let 63rd Road into the picture here? Yes folks, this is NOT 63rd Drive, but it IS! Making all the widest avenues one way (And for the uninformed, all Drives and Roads in Queens belong to the Loyal Order of Avenues) was not the only inexplicable idiosyncracy of New York's traffic planners when it came time to grid out Queens. They saw fit to Drive (Yes, pun intended) every unobservant motorist in these parts bananas by changing the names of the avenues as they crossed Death Boulevard, seen a block away in the background. Essentially, as they crossed the Boulevard of Death from South to North, 63rd Drive became 63rd Road, 65th Road became 65th Avenue, 63rd Avenue became 62nd Drive, and if it was able to cross in one piece (even the roads get hit by obstacles on Death Blvd), 64th Road would transform into 64th Avenue.

If that shell game isn't bad enough, the North side of Death Blvd STILL has a 63rd Avenue, 63rd Drive, 64th Road and 65th Road, while on the south side of the Long Island Railroad tracks, all of these avenues, including 62nd Drive, pick up again despite being cut off by the tracks. Okay, 63rd Drive isn't cut off by the tracks, but is so unnerved by the threat that it expires at Woodhaven Blvd, never to be heard from again. The world is not so lucky with the others. Again and again and again and yet again again, all these mid 60's Roads, Avenues and Drives pick up, run a block or two, get cut off, pick up again, get cut again, over and over until the borders of Ridgewood and Bushwick, Brooklyn finally put them all mercifully out of their misery. Don't try tying their loose ends together as the crow flies either. 64th Road on the south side of the tracks is noplace near 64th Road of the North side, let alone where either is in conjunction with that of the North side of Queens Blvd, and I won't even begin to rant about their continuations east of Flushing Meadow Park. So if we want to nitpick and be stubborn...and we do...THIS 63rd Road is really THAT 63rd Drive. Lost amid all of this nonsense is quiet, unassuming little 97th Street. Quiet and unassuming until the dark day shortly after this shopping mall opened, when a section of the parking garage seen here caved in. Yes, Virginia, after all that insanity about the Avenues, the real subject of this page is the Devil's Garage! This shopping complex used to be the Alexanders that almost became the Caldors that did become the Sears and ate a few dozen cars for lunch one day.

If 97th Street, seen facing west here, can commiserate with the Avenues on anything, it's on getting dead ended. It starts one block behind me, at the 63rd Drive that really isn't, and extends a couple of long blocks down to where the Long Island Expressway eunichs it. Wouldn't have mattered much if it didn't, because if not cut by the Expressway, it would have been obliterated by Lefrak City. Nobody gives you much respect when you're three shy of 100. One of the neighborhood's three LeFrak office towers looms in the background.

© 2001, Jeff Saltzman.