Jewish people in Kew Gardens Hills should be able to go to synagogue without fear of being harassed or attacked on the street. That’s it. End of story. No ifs, ands or buts.Not only are they right to do so, it is their right to do so. And the…

It was only three weeks ago, in our 27th Annual Celebration of Queens: On the Cutting Edge special edition, that we had an article marveling at the amazing volume and type of data the city provides everyone, online, for free. It was just one …

The two teenage boys were standing in water only knee-deep, the reports said. How dangerous could it be? And yet it was deadly. A wave hit and they were swept away, never to be seen alive again. Their names were Elyjah Chandler and Christian …

“Turn your car off, please. Do you know why I pulled you over?”“No, officer.”

They can take Thomas Jefferson’s statue out of City Hall, but they can’t take his immortal words out of our nation’s soul.“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal,…

Asked what he thinks of the plans for new dedicated bus lanes along Hillside Avenue, state Sen. Leroy Comrie cut right to the chase.“The city seems determined to destroy our small businesses,” the veteran lawmaker told the Chronicle Tuesday. …

Technology is moving so quickly today that at Kennedy Airport, those managing the New Terminal One project hold off on placing major orders until the last minute to ensure they get the most up-to-date products. They want to be certain that up…

If you liked the botched rollout of legal marijuana, the who-knows-what’s-legal approach to motorized two-wheeled vehicles and the endless delays on downstate casino licenses, you’ll love the latest from Albany: the most generous and most poo…

It’s only natural that the public response to Mayor Adams’ City of Yes rezoning plan for housing gets a different response in Long Island City than it does in Howard Beach. They’re very different communities. Which is just one reason the plan…

We won! Though she arrived late to the party, Gov. Hochul has done the right thing and put the kibosh on congestion pricing. Not just Queens, not just New York but the whole tri-state area can celebrate. And we commend the governor on her dec…

New York City was considered ungovernable within living memory, and it requires a strong mayor to keep its moving parts in any kind of synchronicity. The chief executive has to be able to surround himself, and, perhaps soon, herself, with lik…

Among the key ideas in our system of government is that with limited exceptions, no one person gets to make the biggest decisions alone. That’s why there’s a Legislature. And a Congress. And a City Council. When there is one person making the…

It only takes two to tango, but it takes at least three to do the city library budget kabuki dance. Really it’s more than that, but there are three main costumed characters playing their overly dramatic, predestined roles: the mayor, the City…

It’s Memorial Day weekend! Time to honor the nation’s fallen, and Queens offers at least a dozen parades and ceremonies at which to do so. But it’s also the start of the summer season, and that’s where the reverence turns to reverie or, if yo…

Citi Bike racks. Restaurant shacks. Spaces reserved for car-share vehicles. Areas striped off for safety reasons. Areas striped off for no apparent reason. One and all, they’re taking away our parking spaces.And there’s more to come, a lot mo…

There are many criminal defendants who deserve some sympathy and mercy from the court — people who made that proverbial one mistake or maybe acted out in a moment of fear and harmed someone in a way they are unlikely to repeat. That’s not the…

It didn’t take long for Mayor Adams to walk back his claim that within a month of getting new authority from Albany, he’d close all the city’s illegal pot shops.Oh, well. Politicians exaggerate when they’re pushing for something. No one ever …

The Town of Hempstead is late to the party, but that’s OK — it brought enough drinks for everyone.Our distinguished neighbors to the east, who somehow saw fit to break away from Queens County in 1898 and help form something called “Nassau,” d…

Last weekend was a big one for the Queens Chronicle. The New York Press Association held its Spring Conference, which means the Better Newspaper Contest awards for 2023 were handed out. And the head of NYPA was barely kidding when she told Ch…

Is it finally time for the reign of the illegal marijuana shops to come to an end? Call us cautiously optimistic about what the latest smoke signals from Albany portend for this scourge.The state’s rollout of legal pot was about as welcome as…

Does it feel like you’re crawling along at 25 miles an hour on streets where 30 was a fine limit just a few years ago? How’d you like to go down to 20? That’s just what some members of the City Council want to do, and the state has now author…

Just in time for Earth Day, some no-goodniks decided to destroy about 300 freshly planted trees in Kissena Park, apparently so they could ride around on dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and maybe mountain bikes.Where there had been spindly sa…

Unlicensed vendors have many defenders in Queens, including our esteemed borough president, Donovan Richards. And while we differ, believing the law must be followed, we do understand that the city is not providing the number of permits it is…

The Mets are on the field, daffodils are popping, robins are bopping, and all that can only mean one thing: the Queens Chronicle’s annual Spring Guide is out.Yes, things are greening up, but you’ll be no greenhorn wandering the borough wonder…

There was a time when squatting was at least somewhat useful, back when buildings in the city were being abandoned en masse and the only way they were getting renovated was if people who had no legal claim to a property moved in and did the r…

La Nostra Pizzeria boasts quality pies and many other Italian and Spanish dishes, along with standard American diner fare, all at great prices. El Puerto Mexicano will floor you with its steak, shrimp and fanciful monster drinks in many color…

What part of “Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election” and “provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over” does the leadership of the City Council not understand? It’s pretty clear to us that the above lines in…

That cheering you may have heard earlier this week wasn’t necessarily from Mets fans getting an early start on the season. It was more likely from the army of well-paid consultants and public relations firms representing the deep-pocketed com…

The senseless, horrific death of Bayron Palomino Arroyo, the 8-year-old East Elmhurst boy run over and crushed to death by the driver of a pickup truck, in front of his mother and brother, down the block from their home, in a crosswalk where …

The city just announced a new ad campaign, seeking to get people to ride e-bikes safely. Sure, it’s fine to try to convince someone who can stop pedaling and just cruise for a while — up to 25 mph, the same speed last year’s winner of the Tou…

The Queens bus route redesign plan is a noble effort and long overdue. As you’ve probably heard, some of the buses run along the same routes that trolleys used to follow. We’re talking 100-plus years ago. While some of those routes may still …

Bike lanes, bus lanes, plastic poles that spring up overnight, mini speed bumps in the middle of intersections, parking spaces suddenly blocked off and painted over for no discernible reason, restaurant shacks that sure look abandoned — New Y…

The Postal Service is not legally required to install a ramp for those with mobility issues at the Jackson Heights Post Office, but it would be the right thing to do. Too bad that doesn’t seem to count for much.It was a whole year ago that Re…

The battle has been joined! The bet has been called. No longer is Steve Cohen the only deep-pocketed player at the table; now experienced operator Genting is also publicizing its bid for a lucrative casino license.Genting is of course the int…

It’s high time the authorities take a stone-cold sober look at the proliferation of pot shops pervading the city and finally get serious about shutting them down for real.What they’re doing so far is not nearly enough. Shops get closed, they …

Ask people what the biggest crisis we face is and you’ll get all kinds of answers, from the environment to the economy, from fentanyl to firearms.But just as big and frightening is the problem of young people’s addiction to screens, specifica…

Chalk up a win for America! A panel of appellate judges on Wednesday upheld the 2022 ruling that declared null and void and unconstitutional a law that would have allowed legal immigrants who have been here for as little as a month to vote in…

Anyone taken in by the recently released plan for 65 acres of new green parkland where the Citi Field parking lots now sit has to understand it’s just an exercise, a PDF, a PowerPoint. Its creators certainly put their hearts into it and belie…

Remote learning failed the test even by the schools chancellor’s own reckoning Tuesday, so can we just drop the charade and go back to the periodic joy of snow days?Blaming IBM for not handling the tech challenge of the city school system’s f…

Grace Episcopal Church in Jamaica was built when Abraham Lincoln was president. The parish had been founded 160 years earlier, in 1702, and the first sanctuary on the church’s present site, now 155-15 Jamaica Ave., opened in 1734. Grace Episc…

Ask and ye shall receive! At least that’s the way it is with us and the city following our Sept. 14 editorial, headlined “It’s time to enforce the law ’round these parts.”The focus of the piece was two-fold: prostitution and unregistered mope…

City Councilman Yusef Salaam has to get himself down to the Department of Motor Vehicles, if he hasn’t already.Salaam has been living in the city for a while, but he’s still driving around in a car with a Georgia license plate on it. That’s n…

This is why you tell your family you love them every day and why you don’t go to bed angry. You just never know when a loved one will be called off this plane of existence, leaving you mourning and wondering more than ever if there is some ot…

Mayor Adams is working hard to stop the City Council from overriding his veto of the How Many Stops Act, which would unnecessarily burden the Police Department with excessive paperwork. What could really make a difference is if people call th…

Don’t worry, you nervous nellies: Everyone will have to keep their pot plants out of plain sight to deter theft and teenagers. The rules say so!Those would be the new rules out of the state Cannabis Control Board, which is such a mess it’s ca…

As more and more people get hooked on marijuana, with the support and indeed the urging of the state, which benefits from a numbed populace paying more taxes, you can expect more carnage on the roads.You’re out there. You know it smells as if…

There’s no one alive more inclined to perform death-defying, stupid stunts for no reason beyond cheap thrills and bragging rights than the teenage male. And just last Friday we lost another young man from Queens to one of the dumbest of all h…

The UFT has entered the chat. And that could be a game-changer.The disaster-in-waiting known as congestion pricing already faces two lawsuits, but they’re out of New Jersey.

While Gov. Hochul did ignore the elephant in the room at her State of the State address Tuesday, we were glad to see she tackled some of the other massive issues plaguing New York.The governor set out markers on a number of issues that reinfo…

Are you as glad to put 2023 in the rearview mirror as we are? We thought so! But we have to believe that 2024 will be better, right? Let’s make it so.First off we must hope for world peace, naturally, as good-hearted people do. Yet we have tw…