Native American history in Queens and more in the QNYC Evening Edition for Monday November 26, 2012

A brief Native American history of Queens

On Thanksgiving we published an article about the Native American history in Queens, which is just fascinating. A few tidbits: scholars believe that Queens was not densely populated, and that tribes lived along water sources – ponds, bays, and creeks – where they could find shellfish and catch fish, as well as farm and forage. Major groups that lived in the area are probably familiar names already – the Maspeth, the Canarsee, and the Rockaway. A main thoroughfare through Queens was known as the Old Rockaway Trail, “which follows what is now Jamaica Avenue through Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, Jamaica, Hollis, and Bellerose, then onto the current-day Jericho Turnpike into Nassau County.”

Is solar the answer in the Rockaways? For the Belle Harbor Yacht Club, it is

This video is pretty interesting – how solar helped the Belle Harbor Yacht Club power up after Hurricane Sandy. They, and a few other spots, are using a portable 10KW solar generator provided by companies like Solar One. The Yacht Club has been a center for distributing supplies and volunteers after the storm. They even served Thanksgiving dinner there last week.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaMPr2tsYGg]

Brunch at The Queens Kickshaw is delicious

On Friday, we tried a bunch of new brunch dishes at The Queens Kickshaw, and all were really impressive and very, very tasty. The french toast has a hard to attain custardy quality to it; the egg custard is nice and light; and the miso butter in the cold poached eggs dish is a real winner – we are still thinking about how deeply delicious it was. The brunch cocktails also look good –  nice to see a michelada (a spicy beer cocktail with origins in Mexico) on the brunch menu as well. They’ll be serving brunch on weekends and on holidays.

Interactive Hurricane Sandy flooding map

We found this interactive map from the NY Times highlighting the flooding that happened during Hurricane Sandy to be pretty interesting. The clickable boxes with more information about particularly hard hit neighborhoods is also cool. WNYC also has a flooding map, and it’s really easy to see there that the southern shores of Long Island and the entrance to NY Harbor really got thrashed.

We’ve got a list of Queens holiday markets for you

It was a lot of fun to compile this list of holiday markets in Queens for you. The first one is the Holiday Kids Bazaar on Saturday, December 1 and the last one is the Christmas Market at Bohemian Hall on the weekend just before Christmas. There is a whole range of options – markets geared toward parents and kids, food-oriented markets, and craft markets for everyone. This list should help make your holiday season even easier to navigate. And if you know of any other markets, please let us know and we will update the article.