Elmhurst, Queens

Elmhurst in an incredibly diverse neighborhood in Queens, with a mixture of Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic residents. The main strip on Broadway has a huge Asian supermarket as well as many good Asian restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores. It is also close to Queens Blvd with a lot of big box stores (Target, Best Buy, Queens Plaza mall, Queens Center shopping mall, etc). So in terms of shopping and eating out, Elmhurst is extremely convenient. Around the area of Elmhurst Hospital (one of the best known hospitals in Queens), there are many vagrant-looking people. While it would be unfair to say that this fact alone makes the town unsafe, it certainly does serve to make it less pleasant. Also, the only subway stop in Elmhurst is a local train stop (R, M), which makes the commute to the city a little longer. At the same time, the town boasts easy access to the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn - Queens Expressway. The rent and housing prices, as well as the cost of living in Elmhurst are very low, but the low-income immigrant population does make certain aspects of living here rather inconvenient. For example, the wait at the hospital can be extraordinarily long and the streets and recreational areas (such as parks and playgrounds) are very crowded.

Elmhurst in Western Queens is another ethnically diverse neighborhood that attracts me for its myriad shopping and dining options. Elmhurst has its northern boundary Jackson Heights and Roosevelt Avenue and Queen’s Boulevard as its limit on the south while Corona at Junction Avenue and Woodside Avenue, form its Eastern and Western limits.
Elmurst which is populated by detached wood frame multi-family houses and brick co-op apartments is home to a diverse population that is made up of Asian, Latin Americans Italian and Jewish folk. The main commercial drags of the neighborhood are located along Broadway, Whitney Avenue and Queens Boulevard. This largely ethnic working class neighborhood is well connected to midtown Manhattan via the G, 7, E, R, V subway lines and the travel time to midtown is usually 20-25 minutes.
As Elmhurst is home to an ethnically diverse population it is renowned for its fantastic restaurants like the Malaysian- Singaporean joint, Taste Good that provides cheap but delicious Singaporean fare and also caters for functions at the Singaporean consulate in Manhattan. Yet another great Elmhurst restaurant is Mie Jakarta which is a home-style Indonesian joint on Whitney Avenue that serves up great Indonesian fare like Nasi Campur and Mie komplit.
The neighborhood is also populated with many great ethnic grocery stores( the huge Hong Kong Supermarket which retails some of the freshest fruit in the city and also stocks Thai sweets made of sago) though it also offers much mid-range retail at its two big malls, Queen’s Plaza Mall and Queen’s Center Mall at Queen’s Boulevard.

Living in Queens is a lot cheaper compare to living in Manhattan. Elmhurst has a lot of Chinese supermarkets and restaurant, so it's convenient to do grocery shopping. It takes about 30-40 minute to take the subway in town, but the subway is really crowded in rush hours. I lived there for two months but moved away after I started my internship in Dumbo because I have to take the F train every morning and it takes me 50 minute to get there, it's just too time consuming for me. You can save a lot of money living in Elmhurst but it's not the most convenient place if you go to Manhattan everyday. Another thing is that if you're out in the city late at night, the subway is not that frequent, you have to wait for a really long time to get home.

Elmhurst is a northwestern Queens neighborhood that is surrounded by Jackson Heights to the north, Maspeth to the west, Middle Village and Rego Park to the south, and Corona and North Corona to the east.

Elmhurst is home to two urban shopping malls. The recently expanded Queens Center Mall, the most profitable mall per square foot in the United States, and the recently renovated and expanded Queens Place Mall, a smaller round shopping center originally built as a Macy's branch.

Accessible subway stations are Woodhaven Boulevard, Grand Avenue–Newtown and Elmhurst Avenue, all served by the G, R, and V trains of the IND Queens Boulevard Line. In addition, the IRT Flushing Line, served by the 7 train, runs along Roosevelt Avenue, the north border of Elmhurst, with stations at 74th Street–Broadway, 82nd Street-Jackson Heights and 90th Street-Elmhurst Avenue.

The population here is generally a mix of middle and working class families, and the landscape is a mix of co-ops, apartment buildings, and actual houses. The population is ethnically diverse; immigrants have flocked into the small space from the continents of both Asia and South America. This is not exactly a peaches-and-cream sort of neighborhood, thought it’s been much improved in recent decades – there are still some run-down areas, and some problems with illegal housing. Crime rates could be worse – but it’s recommended not to travel through the area alone, especially if you are a woman, as there have been plenty of rapes reported in the neighborhood.