Astoria, New York

Josh and I are pretty sure we have settled on the neighborhood for our church plant in NYC.  Astoria, New York is a neighborhood located in the northwest corner of Queens.

Source
Do you see it right there to the left of LaGuardia Airport?



So... why Astoria?

As best we can tell, Astoria is home to about 170,000 people from 125 distinct ethnic background.  And as far as we know, there is one evangelical Christian church.  (Did you know that in order for NYC to have the same ratio of evangelical churches to people that we have in the South and Midwest, we would need to plant 22,000 churches in NYC?) 

Astoria has a lot of appeal for other reasons too: Socrates Sculpture Park, Kaufman Astoria Studios' Museum of the Moving Image, the Bohemian Beer Garden, and Astoria Park, which is located along the East River and houses the largest public swimming pool in NYC.  But best of all (okay, not really best), Sesame Street is filmed at Kaufman Astoria Studios.

Well, technically this was taken in Times Square, not Astoria.  But speaking of Times Square...





Because Astoria is located in the northwestern corner of Queens (the corner closest to Manhattan), we will be approximately 10-15 minutes via subway from Midtown.  And in the opposite corner of Queens, we have NYC's version of Gulf Shores, about an hour from Astoria by car (Yes, we'll keep one car.)....

Rockaway Beach

So, who's ready to move with us?