All Aboard The Seven Line

Photos Gloria SandersThis week, the "International Express" brings us to our last stop in Sunnyside, 33rd Street Rawson Street and enters Long Island City. As we get closer to Manhattan, we notice the change in atmosphere down Queens Boulevard. With Chinese stores, Italian restaurants and Irish pubs, this area is more diverse than the rest of Sunnyside. It has also acquired an artistic bent since it is the temporary home of the Museum for African Art, which will organize offsite exhibitions until it permanently relocates to Manhattan in 2008.

Long Island City, Sunnyside's neighbor, is quickly becoming a center of the New York City arts scene. Although MoMA QNS, the Museum of Modern Art, moved back to Manhattan after setting up temporary quarters here, it was great to be able to visit the works of Picasso and Jackson Pollack right here in Long Island City for a while.

It is also home to one of the top three large community colleges in the United States, LaGuardia Community College, named for New York City's New Deal mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia. La Guardia, known as the "Little Flower", united and inspired a city of immigrants, and the college named for him gives students, many of whom are newcomers to America, affordable opportunities for quality education. Around the corner from LaG CC is The New York School for Medical and Dental Assistants as well as the Long Island City branch of the YMCA, the largest not-for-profit community service organization in America that has been offering youth programs since 1852.

Located in the most ethnically diverse and rapidly growing borough of New York City, people in Long Island City regard their neighborhood as the ultimate place to learn about business, technology, and arts and sciences while conveniently situated just across the bridge from the Big Apple. Moving further into Long Island City, more entertainment and nightlife venues are to be seen alongside the entrances to the Queensboro Bridge.