Day 780

Standing at the edge of New York City, I'm taking this photo from the wooden footbridge over Hook Creek that connects Meadowmere, Queens (on the left) with Meadowmere Park, Nassau County (on the right). These two tiny neighborhoods, nestled together with each surrounded almost entirely by the other's county, constitute something of a geographical yin and yang. This map will help you understand what I'm talking about; the dashed line is the city boundary, with Queens generally to the north and west and Nassau to the south and east.

The story of this area has long been that Meadowmere Park is the nicer neighborhood, with its well-paved streets and sewers and tidy lawns, while Meadowmere is largely forgotten by NYC, its low-lying streets more susceptible to flooding and its general appearance more ragged. (The city didn't actually have title to its streets until 1995.) Recently, however, the city has started paying some attention to Meadowmere, finally building sewers in the neighborhood a few years ago.