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The last great no-mans land in New
York City stretched from this point just west of Howard Beach/Lindenwood,
to Pennsylvania Avenue just over the Brooklyn/Queens border.
The mounds of dirt to the left cover a monstrous landfill composed
of decades worth of city trash. In the past couple of years a
more or less landscaped bikepath was finally completed across
that fill, linking Howard Beach with Sheepshead Bay, running
alongside the Belt. It was the culmination of a wait that lasted
over 60 years to see some semblance of organized parkland developed
along the long Belt shoreline. The Belt has also received a new
name in the last decade, to memorialize those missing in action.
The new name, however, was never transferred to all the directional
signs leading to the Belt, and nobody in the city would know
what you were talking about if you told them to take the POWMIA.
To this day, the Cross Island is the only Belt module that managed
to retain its independent name, succeeding well enough that few
even know it was part of the Belt system. The Laurelton, Southern
and Shore sections, however, have all been submerged into the
amrphous entity everyone today calls quite simply, The Belt.
It is unfortunate that the city and state planners chose such
a venerable, nearly unassailable name to challenge in their half
hearted attempt to grant our missing servicemen and their loved
ones some very real and overdue recognition. Far better had they
chosen a longer, less ingrained name to replace, like the Grand
Central, or Sunrise Highway. |
