The Borough of Fallbacks

After Hizzoner announced that the “first best choice” for an Olympic stadium didn’t work out, Queens boosters feel stung by the slight:

In the end, there is always Queens.

When no one else wanted power plants, Astoria said yes, and it now provides 60 percent of the city’s energy. When Manhattan banned graveyards, Queens became the Borough of Cemeteries. When no one else wanted airplanes buzzing overhead, New York built an airport in Flushing. Then it built another in Jamaica.

When New York wanted a World’s Fair, the city spent 50 years, from 1889 to 1939, holding out for a location in Manhattan, without success. Finally, the city settled on Flushing Meadows and won the fair, which returned in 1964.

And so yesterday, a day after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that Queens would be the fallback site for the city’s Olympics bid – his Manhattan dream having crashed and burned – few people in the Borough of Fallbacks were shocked. Once again, New York’s utility borough would pick up after Manhattan, repairing what needed to be fixed, bearing the burden of the city’s, and the nation’s, Olympic hopes for 2012.

“They can’t live without Queens,” said Gene Carballo, a retired sanitation worker who was playing cards yesterday at an Italian men’s club in Corona. “The mayor wants it over there. He can’t get it over there, so Queens is his second choice.”