Diversity in Jackson Heights

By KERRY ELEVELD from the New York Blade, Friday, March 09, 2007

In its singles issue last year, Time Out New York (TONY) tagged Jackson Heights, Queens, as the neighborhood where 21- to 39-year-olds make up a third of the population, but it seems the area’s emerging gayborhood has more of a couples composition.

The Blade was lured to Jackson Heights (JH) one Friday night after a cascade of articles about its fine food (Moving for the Food, New York Times, Dec. 31, 2006) and how it was a “homeworthy ’hood” (TONY, Feb. 1-7, 2007) were followed up by e-mails from our readers about its growing enclave of gay denizens... But they all moved here for about the same reason: It’s cheap and the spaces are beautiful... Christopher Goeken described the first day he and his partner of 14 years, Glenn Magpantay, began their search to buy in JH. “I’ll never forget, we got out of the car and I couldn’t believe how it felt like a European city on some of the streets,” he said. “If you get away from Roosevelt Avenue where all the bars are, all the restaurants are, you’ve got these beautiful gardens and these beautiful old buildings built in the ’30s.” They found their dream apartment that very same day...