This place  has been my home for most of  my life. My father came from Treesdale, my mom from Sun Garden Estates. All my brothers and I were born here. Our best friends were the children of my parent's best friends. Almost 60 years later, we are still in touch.

And for fifty of those years nothing much changed in this town. Some new stores, people came and went at the usual rate. You would lose a family or two every few years, a new family would come along. The priests in the parish would change. The beauty shop owners would change. A new guy was running the deli, that kind of thing. But deep down, it remained the same, a rather nicer than average working class neighborhood ten minutes from the Bridge. Built in up in the 10s, 20s, 30s and 40s. Then at full bloom in the 50s, a slight decline in the 60s, a more precipitous one in the 70s,  rock bottom in the early and mid 80s, and then a few signs of new life.

First there were more Asian people, many from Korea. And people from central and south America. Then Romanians, Pakistani's, Nepalese. These were all immigrants of the usual kind. People from different countries, holding on to the ways they grew up with while their children taught them American ways. We all took some getting used to each other, but essentially they are what Queens is used to, new immigrants.

But, then, Oh, my, came a different kind of immigrant. People priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn. That is when the neighborhood no longer felt like home at all. A horde, armed with glossy brochures, ignorance and hutzpah, ushered themselves into a previously quiet precinct at the behest of an aggressive billionaire mayor who decided that since NY didn't make products to sell anymore it would have to sell itself.

So in surged a tsunami of people miffed that they couldn't be enviable Manhattanites, or even cool Brooklynites. So they determined to turn the quiet couple of blocks that is Sunnyside Gardens into a
"destination neighborhood."

Its been distressing, to say the least.