New York City’s uniquely hard-coded DNA is everywhere around if you know where to look. Sometimes it’s right over your head and ridiculously literal.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

When you’re gallivanting around Manhattan and exploring the same sights everyone tells you are must-sees, it’s easy to forget New York City has more than one borough. Unless we find reasons to visit them of our own accord, we outsiders are happy to stay latched on to the biased mental images that movies and TV gave us. The Bronx has tough guys and a zoo; Staten Island has the only ferry in New York and not much else; Brooklyn has either the trendy food or the most colorful TV shows, depending on your preferred channels; and Queens is the other one. A handful of us remember Peter Parker is from Forest Hill in Queens, but otherwise it’s the baseline Big Apple stand-in. Queens is to New York City what Vancouver is to all the other major cities. Or so we out-of-towners think, because sometimes we can be uninformed simpletons.

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