![]() ![]() On weekends, the soccer players arrive together by country, mostly Latin and South American. You might get a game of Dominican softball on the grassy diamonds along the park’s western portion that pits men from Santiago against those from El Cibao. There are teams aligned with the cities and towns of home countries. On weeknights and weekend mornings, the rhythm of the park is the same: the people arrive, the nets are unpacked and set up, and the soccer and volleyball games commence, in any given clearing, often with extended families hunkered down nearby for a long day’s picnic. ![]() Looming over the treetops near the Grand Central Parkway and presiding over all are the Jetsons-era saucers of the New York State Pavilion, a massive space-age relic designed by Philip Johnson and reaching 226 feet high. And in those reflecting pools - once grand fountains, now dry - soccer games hold sway. At the Queens Zoo, by the park’s western edge, bison graze at the foot of the strange-looking Terrace on the Park banquet hall. The neglected monuments give the park a science-fiction feel and provide an interesting crosscurrent to the bustle of the park as a haven for hard-working immigrants at play.įor example, near the base of the “Rocket Thrower” statue, along the line of reflecting pools emanating out from the Unisphere, groups of Latino men race their high-performance miniature cars by remote control, making for a full-on smack-up derby that attracts many spectators and has its own pit crews. Nearly everything that is happening is happening in the shadow of some surreal-looking World’s Fair remnant. ![]() One recent weekend a woman was selling empanadas out of a shopping cart to the skateboarders at a popular, newish skate park near the base of the decaying New York State Pavilion. The countries are no longer represented by exhibits in booths and pavilions, as they were at the World’s Fairs, but rather in the sports leagues and the food vendors, which can be licensed carts or fly-by-night gas grills propped on park benches. “There is no other park in the world where you can get all these different people from different countries coming together in one place,” said Gilberto Gil, who goes to the park on weekends to watch the soccer team he sponsors, in a men’s league of Colombian immigrants. 11, is heralded as a global event, many fans never glimpse the real multiculturalism of the park, an international display much like, well, the World’s Fair itself. Although the tournament, which this year runs from Monday through Sept. It does enjoy a glimmer of attention each year when the United States Open tennis tournament is held at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. At 1,255 acres, it is the second-largest public park in the city, after Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Things happen here in their own informal way, and this is what makes an overlooked park one of New York City’s glorious public spaces. Sprawling south from CitiField, it lies within walking distance for the Chinese of Flushing, the Mexicans and Ecuadoreans of Corona, the Colombians of Jackson Heights. And this park, site of both the 19 World’s Fairs but faded since those heady days, is now their backyard. You’re in Queens now, pal, borough of immigrants.
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