Category: Queens

Little India in Jackson Heights

Today I am in Little India New York in Jackson Heights, Queens. This was an area that I used to visit weekly back in the 1990s but I haven’t been back there in over 20 years now. In little India you can get an array of beautiful foods, all cooked authentically which differs from Little India in Manhattan, where they cook the food for a Western audience.

ECW Elks Lodge – The Madhouse of Extreme

The NYC History video today is at the Elks Lodge in Queens where ECW held their wrestling shows at the Madhouse of Extreme. This is more of a personal story rather than an out and out NYC history video, when I used to come to the Elks Lodge in the 1990s to watch ECW Wrestling. There are a couple of other items in the video, the Boca Juniors football themed restaurant and the First Presbyterian Church.

The Long Island Baseball Grounds

Today I pay a visit to the site of the old Long Island Baseball Grounds in Maspeth, Queens. Back in the 1800s, up until 1893, the baseball grounds here were home for several years to the New York Cuban Giants. Aside from the Giants a whole host of future hall of famers also played at this ballpark.

Old Brooklyn Dodgers Ballparks: https://youtu.be/gojm8ii-pRE

Feldman’s Park: https://youtu.be/Sk0YM6gEFuA

Baseball stopped being played here in 1893, but that doesn’t mean that the area doesn’t have a story to tell, and I am here to tell you that story. The Cuban Giants were the first fully salaried African-American professional baseball club. The team was originally formed in 1885 at the Argyle Hotel, a summer resort in Babylon, New York. Initially an independent barnstorming team, they played games against opponents of all types: major and minor league clubs, semiprofessional teams, even college and amateur squads. They would go on to join various short-lived East Coast leagues, and in 1888 became the “World Colored Champions”. Despite their name, no Cubans played on the team. The “Cubes” remained one of the premier Negro league teams for nearly twenty years, and served as a model that future black teams would emulate.

Maspeth Walkaround

We take a Walking in New York City trip today around my neighborhood of Maspeth in Queens. I show you some of the old signs in the area, local stores and we finish with a great conversation with two auto repair shop owners/workers. The business has been around since the 1950’s and the guys were really gracious in talking to me about their cars.