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11
ASTORIA PARK — Back When Cars Were Allowed on “The Strip”

Long before it was rebranded on Google Maps as “Shore Blvd” (???), Astoria Park’s waterfront stretch was known by locals simply as The Strip — a place where cars cruised, engines revved, and teenagers perfected the delicate art of looking cool while doing absolutely nothing. This is where we hung out as kids and probably where our parents conceived us.

Originally built in the 1800s as a private road for waterfront mansions, The Strip eventually became something far more important: a low-stakes rebellion zone. By the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was where young New Yorkers parked, smoked, made out, showed off their gas gussling muscle cars, and briefly escaped both their parents and any real responsibility to look at the beautifully filthy East River under the Hell Gate Bridge (soon to be called RFK Jr. Bridge).

Of course, if you ask anyone who grew up here, it was also “better back then”

After COVID, the city closed the road to traffic indefinitely — turning The Strip into a pedestrian space now widely referred to (mostly by people who moved here in 2019) as “Shore Blvd.” Which is technically correct, but spiritually… unsettling.

Yes, the bike lanes and pedestrian walkway is here for safety — and that part is real. But we also hope newcomers can respect a long-standing Astoria tradition: letting the old-timers have something to complain about. Seriously, just… just let them VENT my guy. Ya’ll run the neighborhood now anyway so just turn the other way for Christ sake… these are our parents! You’ll probably lose something you love too when you’re 60 so give them some graze. We don’t have really lawns here so this basically the “Get off our Lawn” version of that.

If we’re being honest, half the people arguing about it don’t even bike here regularly. At this point it’s less about transportation and more about a full-blown neighborhood culture war — the kind that somehow manages to give everyone involved just enough dopamine to keep it going indefinitely. And we’re here for it.

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