Guide To Queens Reveals Borough's Surprises
Queens: What to Do, Where to Go (and How Not to Get Lost) in New York's Undiscovered Borough by Ellen Freudenheim, St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 320 pp, $17.95
BY LINDA J. WILSON

Last July we reviewed a guide to Queens that purported to encapsulate everything there was to know about the borough in one sleek, slick, four-color, four-byfive inch package. That little volume provided a comprehensive overview, and it met with our approval. Now comes Queens: What to Do, Where to Go (and How Not to Get Lost) in New York's Undiscovered Borough by Ellen Freudenheim, which goes into more detail about 22 Queens neighborhoods, including Astoria, Bayside (and Douglaston, Floral Park and Whitestone), Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens (and Kew Gardens Hills), Rego Park, Jackson Heights, Jamaica and Jamaica Estates, Long Island City, St. Albans, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, the Rockaways (Fort Tilden and Jacob Riis Park Beach), Sunnyside and Woodside and other such notable places as the 59th St. Bridge, the BQE, the LIE, LaGuardia and JFK.

Ellen Freudenheim is the author of six books, including an awardwinning guide to Brooklyn, a wedding planner for the executive bride and Healthspeak, a dictionary defining more than 2,000 healthcare oriented terms. An avid New York explorer, she lives in Brooklyn but loves learning about New York's marvelous neighborhoods and was delighted to discover Queens.

Photo Dominick Totino Queens Borough President Helen Marshall accepts copy of new Queens guidebook, "What To Do, Where to Go (and how not to get lost)" from author Ellen Freudenheim (r.) at Borough Hall.

In Queens: What to Do, Where to Go (and How Not to Get Lost) in New York's Undiscovered Borough, Freudenheim brings neighborhoods into focus, describing restaurants, parks, historical tidbits, museums, and theaters. Included are itineraries, family-friendly destinations, directions, and maps. Essays by Queens residents, from the founder of P.S. 1 and the president of Queens College to the Korean immigrant owner of a nail salon and a young woman of Vietnamese descent who immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in Richmond Hill thinking she was African- American, so closely did she bond and identify with her neighbors, entertain and inform the reader as well.

One of New York City's big secrets, Queens, Freudenheim says, offers "incredible day trips, killer Manhattan views, Hamptonesque beaches, great food, real estate bargains, and tons of affordable art and music. Eat your way across the world in Queens; it's the nation's most ethnically diverse county." Visitors can go to the airport (the chapter "The Airports: JFK and LaGuardia" offers, among other suggestions, places to go and things to do to pass the time while caught in the limbo of a long layover), get dim sum, root for the Mets or watch the US Open, visit Satchmo's home, tour arty Long Island City, run along the Atlantic beach, and bend their brains at the New York Hall of Science.

Freudenheim proclaims the news for New Yorkers still discovering the outer boroughs: yes, Queens is the next Brooklyn. The real question is: Can you find your way around Queens? With the help of Queens: What to Do, Where to Go (and How Not to Get Lost) in New Y o r k ' s U n d i s c o v e red Borough, it is, indeed, possible to find one's way around the borough described as "understated, upside down and quirky as hell".

This is an amusing and informative book that crams a lot of Queens lore into its 320 pages. It's also well written and an entertaining read. We wish we could recommend it u n c o n d i - t i o n a l l y. Unfortunately, there are a surprising number of errors in this book. Queens will, indeed, get you to fabulous destinations, but some of the directions will get an unwary traveler more than a little lost. Anyone who looks for the Broadway Station Tavern on Broadway between 31st and 32nd Streets, for example, won't find the place-it's a block away on the other side of the elevated N and W line. It's easy to understand why Freudenheim and her "cadre of Queens spies" mistook Good Shepherd United Methodist Church for the United Methodist Korean Church of Astoria-the Korean Methodists could afford a larger, more prominent sign than the church from which they rent facilities- but even the Korean sign gives the church's correct address as 30-44 Crescent St., not 30-10 Crescent. The one-time 114th Police Precinct station house that now holds a branch of the Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee is not at 3-16 30th Ave. A brief perusal of the Official Directory of the City of New York, familiarly known as the Green Book, would have revealed that there is no such institution as the Richmond Hill Golf Course and a little more shoe-leather research would have revealed that the Long Island Rail Road station that serves Kew Gardens is not in Kew Gardens Hills, and the mansions that Freudenheim says bestow their stately presence on Kew Gardens Hills are also in Kew Gardens. Other errors are also disquieting: the Arthur Hammerstein of the Arthur and Dorothy Dalton Hammerstein House at 168-11 Powell's Cove Blvd., Whitestone, did, indeed have a nephew, Oscar II, but Oscar Hammerstein II did not write the lyrics for "My Fair Lady".

We will still recommend Queens: What to Do, Where to Go (and How Not to Get Lost) in New York's Undiscovered Borough, but we would advise that a traveler consult other sources of information at the same time, just for insurance.