Queens Blvd. at 78th Avenue Forest Hills Photo Gallery: Queens Blvd

The corner of 78th Avenue is where anyone wishing to travel down Union Turnpike waits for the eastbound Q46 bus, but those buses, one of whom has just turned the corner from westbound Union Turnpike, like to tease the eastbounders a little before letting them board. It is common practice for some buse routes to disgourge their final passengers a half block or so behind the turnaround stop. The more abrasive drivers will then just sit there, while you stare, glare and curse at them from the boarding bus stop. Think they give a damn what kind of weather it is? Let me make it clear that this doesn't go for all of them, but that any of them do this is that many too many. Thankfully there is an all night donut shop right by the spot, so late at night, when the Q46 runs only once an hour, there's some guaranteed human presence and a dry place to wait out storms. Though the subway has an exit right by this stop, it closes late at night, forcing riders transfering to emerge onto the boulevard way back across Union Turnpike. There, transferees must make a snap decision on whether any bus sitting by 78th Avenue will still be there when they run the two blocks to catch it, or whether they should assume it won't and start sprinting the block and a half down Union Turnpike where the bus stops first after leaving 78th Avenue and turning around. Either way, it's a horse race.

The view from across the boulevard at above mentioned bus stop. This was one of Queens Boulevard's pioneer office towers, although calling a six story building a tower might be overdoing it. As do the similarly constructed LeFrak towers in Rego Park, the Pickman building employs the Look Building type brickwork and Colgate type steel and glass combination.

On the south side of 78th Avenue sit a 1920s vintage Tudor style commercial building hosting both a decidely un-Tudor-like wireless equipment merchant, and a shoe repair business that might very well have also existed in Henry VIII's days. Anybody remember cobblers?.

The city run Q46 owns the northeast corner of 78th Avenue, but the Green Line Q60 owns the west. The Q60 is Death Boulevard's very own bus line, and runs all the way into Manhattan. The other buslines stopping here are express routes. Of those, it appears that the X68 has a bit of a complex, and feels the need to trump the others by insinuating its marker above the Q60, even though it is already on the list below, albeit dead last.

©2001, Jeff Saltzman. All right reserved.