Another New Hotel In Queens Plaza, No (Hot) Sheet!

When it comes to offering hourly rates, just say no:

A new Quality Inn Hotel featuring sleek, modern accommodations for tourists and weary business travelers located just minutes from the Queens Plaza transportation hub has been opened in Long Island City.

The hotel opened its doors at 30-03 40th Ave. last weekend. Owner/manager Vipul Patel and his staff welcomed Big Apple visitors to its 48 units — each featuring a complimentary Internet connection, a daily complimentary breakfast and a 32-inch plasma television for use via complimentary satellite dish TV service.

. . .

Tourists will find that rates at the new Quality Inn will save them valuable vacation dollars, too. Introductory prices include a queen-size unit for $129 per night and a double-double unit for $149 to $169 per night. Grand opening prices will be adjusted at a future date, he added.

Patel guaranteed that the hotel would not offer short-stay rates. “If our staff is approached by anyone seeking such accommodations we will tell them ‘No,’ and suggest they go elsewhere.”

But does that big hole in the ground really count as “access” to Penn Station?

Patel said, “This is the perfect location for tourists and business travelers seeking quick, easy access to all subways, buses and highways. We are also just minutes away from Long Island Rail Road access [to] Pennsylvania Station. Who could ask for more?”

Jack Kerouac Was A Hero To Most But He Never Meant IT (That’s Capital “I,” Capital “T”) To Me

And the horrible truth about Jack Kerouac is that “On The Road” is probably way overrated anyway:

Go to the places in Queens that Jack Kerouac once frequented — from the home on Cross Bay Boulevard where he lived for six years to the bar he patronized across the street to another house in Richmond Hill — and you will find widespread apathy that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the publishing of “On The Road,” the novel that spawned the Beat Generation.

And there appears to be no celebration in the borough to mark the milestone.

Joanne King, a spokeswoman for the Queens Library, said the library had no events listed.

In fact, finding some evidence that Kerouac once had roots in Queens — the starting point of his cross-country journey documented in “On The Road” — is hard to come by.

A small, red plaque hangs discreetly on the bricks of his former home at 133-01 Cross Bay Blvd. in Ozone Park.

“The poet and novelist lived here from 1943 to 1949,” it reads. “During those years, he wrote his first novel, The Town And The City (1950) and planned On The Road (1957), his seminal novel that would define the Beat Generation.”

. . .

Talk to patrons at Glen Patrick’s Pub, formerly McNolte’s Tavern in Kerouac’s day, and they know the Kerouac name and can point to the left corner seat at the bar where he used to sit and drink. They know that Kerouac enjoyed throwing darts but have not read one page of “On The Road.”

“This guy’s a legend or something,” said the bartender, who only wanted to be identified as Chick-E. “For whatever reason, I don’t know. He’s like a folk hero, this guy. I can’t believe it.”

The bar’s customers were equally clueless.

“This “On the Road” — is it a good book?,” asked John Riepe. “There’s not one person in this place that’s read the book.”

“All we know is from what we read on that thing,” he said, pointing to a 1990 Newsday article about Kerouac framed on the bar’s back wall.

“Everybody that comes in here reads that,” Chick-E said. “Everyone, strangers off the street and they come take pictures.”

Kerouac spent six years at the Cross Bay Boulevard home before moving to a house at 94-21 134th St. in Richmond Hill.

A resident of the Richmond Hill house said the fact that Kerouac once lived there “don’t mean nothing” to him.

“West Side Stadium” And “NYC2012” Sounded Appropriately Grandiose, But “Airport Village” Still Has A Ring To It . . . Right?

The problem remains that West Side plans failed, that Olympic thing was a wash, and you wouldn’t want to hitch your wagon too soon to volatile projects like Atlantic Yards or Coney Island. So where do you go for the great blank slate with which to solidify your place in history? Jamaica, Mon:

A plan to transform downtown Jamaica, Queens, into a vibrant “airport village” while preserving the quiet, low-scale character of neighboring side streets cleared an important City Council committee yesterday, all but ensuring final approval next month for the single largest rezoning of the Bloomberg administration.

Covering a 368-block area that sweeps northeast from the AirTrain transit hub, the rezoning would expand the neighborhood’s commercial core by allowing hotels and office towers to rise on underused industrial land surrounding the train station, officials said. At the same time, it would encourage new, denser housing and retail development in some areas and limit residences to one- and two-family homes in others.

“We’ve all been aware for so long of the potential of Jamaica,” Daniel L. Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, said of the plan, intended to create a regional business center minutes from Kennedy International Airport. “You go to cities around the country and around the world and they’ve got major commercial centers near their airports. We don’t have anything like that.”

. . .

The plan, officials said, is in keeping with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s approach to economic development of enhancing secondary business districts and creating mixed-use 24-hour communities in all five boroughs.

City officials and community development advocates have high hopes for the rezoning package, which was approved with modifications by the City Council’s Land Use Committee. The City Planning Commission must now accept those changes before resubmitting the package to the Council for final approval, expected on Sept. 10.

“It’s going to make great use of the train-to-the-plane,” said Councilwoman Melinda R. Katz, chairwoman of the Land Use Committee. “Basically, this is really an example of something that is good for the borough of Queens and good for the city of New York,” she said, but added that it was important to accommodate some of the concerns in the neighborhood that the zoning would allow for too-large buildings on Hillside Avenue.

Indeed, said Amanda M. Burden, the city planning commissioner, working to address concerns that made the rezoning effort complex and time-consuming. “This has been a marathon four-year effort,” she said. “Jamaica already is a retail destination,” she said, “but around the AirTrain you just couldn’t build.”

But with the land, now zoned for manufacturing, soon to accommodate buildings as high as 29 stories, officials envision three million square feet of commercial space bringing 9,600 jobs to the hub, as well as 5,200 new residences, 770 of them subsidized.

To accommodate that growth, officials said, they are working to bring in schools, sewers, parking spaces and other infrastructure improvements, including lighting and trees along Hillside Avenue.

Carlisle Towery, president of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, said that the rezoning would help attract private investment to build on other developments that are helping create a regional center. Queens County civil courts have clustered nearby, he said, while a Food and Drug Administration laboratory and a Social Security Administration office are federal anchors.

Earlier: Sure It’s A Vacant, Dilapidated Building, But It’s My Vacant, Dilapidated Building!

The Ones That Got Away

If it were up to them they would have held out for the fish:

NYPD scuba divers pulled four fishermen to safety yesterday after an angry Atlantic Ocean swamped the stone jetty they were casting from in Queens.

A school of bluefish proved too tempting for the friends to turn their backs on – even as the waters rose around their feet and stranded them about 2:30 p.m., said one victim, Javier Rodriguez, 46.

“They were all over the place, the bluefish,” he said. “We got about 30 fish with four guys. We stopped fishing because the waves were so high. And they were banging against the rocks.”

Rodriguez said the crew planned to cling to the jetty while they waited for the tide to drop after nightfall and for the waters around Breezy Point to calm.

Then they saw an NYPD helicopter hovering above them.

“We didn’t call for help. Someone called for us. We were okay,” the proud fisherman said. “We were waiting for the tide to go down. We had special boots. We had all that fish, so we had to get that fish out.”

. . .

Two divers were dropped from the chopper. They grabbed the fishermen, swam them to lift buckets and the police flew the men out of the chop in pairs, police said.

But the pals had to leave their fish and tackle behind.

“They had a good catch,” the sergeant said. “They had some big [fish], but it’s not worth it. The rocks are too slippery when the tide comes in. They couldn’t move their feet without being swept to sea.”

To Rodriguez, a laundermat worker, and his pals, those bags of fish meant dinner.

“Everybody has family here, and we were taking the bluefish to eat,” he said. “I’m diabetic. I always go to catch fish for me. I don’t do it for sport. I do it because I eat it. It’s very expensive at the fish market.”

From Books To Balls, The Borough Of Barganza Does It All

In a week of pace setting, Queens continues to outdo itself:

Jamaica resident Ashrita Furman, 52, takes the old saying ‘records are meant to be broken’ to the next level.

Furman, who has set more than 150 official Guinness world records and currently holds the most records by an individual with 65, added to his total on Sunday, August 12 when he broke three more.

Furman set new records, which Guinness representatives have to verify, by doing 36 deep-knee-bends on a Swiss ball in one minute, throwing and catching a water balloon with a partner 74 feet, which shattered the previous record of 60 and his personal favorite, running a mile while bounce-juggling three balls — with zero drops. Furman utilized the track at Queens College for his final record finishing in a time of 9 minutes and 9 seconds.

“Nobody has ever done that before; it’s a new category that Guinness approved,” Furman told The Queens Courier. “Of all three I am most happy about this because I really think it’s going to catch on. I feel like I have established a new sport.”

While his interest in the Guinness book started when he was growing up in Kew Gardens, Furman said he was not an athletic kid and never imagined he would ever break a record — until he met his spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy.

After participating in meditations conducted by Chinmoy, Furman experienced an epiphany in 1978 while participating in a 24-hour bicycle race in Central Park and decided he wanted pursue a quest to break records.

Less than a year later, Furman began his record-breaking by setting a Guinness world record for most consecutive jumping jacks — 27,000, which was previously set at 20,000.