Day trip next door: Museum Row

by Michael Gannon

Editor

About seven miles east of the Queens border, children can climb through a threedimensional maze; don firefighters’ gear; and see an airplane owned by Charles Lindbergh, as well as the Long Island-built aircraft and machines that took men to war and to the moon and brought them back safely.

The place is Museum Row in Garden City, LI, home of the Long Island Children’s Museum, the Nassau County Firefighters Museum and Education Center and the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

They make for a great day trip. All are within walking distance of each other off Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, and the tickets combined are less than one would spend on three museums or possibly two in Manhattan.

“Family-friendly and family-friendly prices,” said Maureen Mangan, director of communication for the Children’s Museum.

The LICM is a recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Services. Mangan said it is fully open and both the staff and their visitors are longing to get back with each other.

“The Children’s Museum is really designed to allow everybody in the family to have fun,” Mangan said. “And the exhibits are designed with multiple ages in mind so that children can naturally grow through the museum. What they might have done as a 3-year-old toddler they can still enjoy when they’re 7 or when they’re 10 or when they’re 12.”

The museum’s most popular exhibit is “Climb It,” a maze of curved, wavy platforms suspended by wires that allows children inside to choose multiple paths to multiple levels. They must be as least 42 inches tall.

“It’s amazing as you watch kids navigate through it,” Mangan said. “They have choices to make in terms of which way to go. But it’s also one of those things where children learn ‘I can do this.’ You watch them as they help each other during the process.” Those not yet ready for Climb It can go to TotSpot, specially designed for children under age 4.

“One of the things we saw with Covid was that so many kids were inside where physical activity was limited in a lot of cases,” Mangan said. “They really, desperately wanted physical activity, so Climb It has been a huge, huge hit.”

And she said no one comes to the museum without stopping by the Bubbles exhibit. “It’s one of those galleries where kids can see their parents play and realize that ‘Oh! Mom and dad were kids once too!’”

The museum will be closed between Sept. 9 and 23 for its annual fall fix-up, when it does necessary repairs, painting and maintenance. It will reopen Sept. 24

Tickets are $14 general admission or $13 for seniors 65 and over. No adults are permitted without children. Hours and tickets are available online at licm.org.

A short stroll to the east brings people to the Firefighters Museum, where Executive Director Alana Petrocelli said fun can be a vital tool in passing on the very serious message of fire safety. “It’s fun and kids can learn,” Petrocelli said. “We’re all about fire safety and everything in the museum is interactive. So while they’re playing they’re learning about fire safety.

“We have trucks for the kids to sit in. We have gear for them to put on. We have plenty of kids who just want to do that all day, and that’s just fine with us.”

One interactive display allows children to pretend to be firefighters putting out a blaze.

“So it’s a fun place, and we hope children walk away with something that could save their lives someday,” Petrocelli said. And, she reiterated, children are the biggest advocates for the museum’s mission of fire safety.

“Parents, unfortunately, are busy and can forget,” she said. “It gets put on the back burner. The kids are the ones who are going to go home and say, ‘Hey, mom, I saw this at the museum. Do we have an escape plan? What’s the escape plan? Do we have a meeting place? What’s the meeting place?’

“These are the things you need to know, and the kids are the ones who carry the message home,” she said. “They’re going to say ‘Mom, did we change the smoke detector batteries? Hey, dad, do we have smoke detectors in all our bedrooms?’”

Tickets are $5. Further information on the museum can be found on its website at ncfiremuseum.org or by calling (516) 572-4177.

While the Wright Brothers may have been from Ohio and launched their first fight in North Carolina, the Cradle of Aviation Museum, located next door, is appropriately named for an institution on Long Island, according to museum President Andrew Parton.

“We have 75 planes and spacecraft, cockpits for kids to crawl into, and there’s a lot to see,” Parton said. “And the thing is it’s all connected to the region. Everything here is from Long Island and the Metropolitan region. We don’t have a single aircraft that wasn’t either built here or where there wasn’t some sort of milestone here. Everything has a connection.”

The crown jewel, he said, is an actual lunar module from NASA’s Apollo moon landing program. All were built at Grumman in Bethpage, LI.

“We have one of the three that were built to go to the moon that didn’t because the program was cut after Apollo 17,” Parton said. “We have Apollo 18 here, and it’s fully loaded and on display, the only one of its kind. The other two [lunar modules] are at the Kennedy Space center and the Smithsonian ... And a lot of our docents who work as guides in our galleries, especially our space gallery, you might actually meet someone who worked in that program.”

The museum also owns an LI-built Curtiss Jenny World War I biplane, the first plane owned by Charles Lindbergh. And while the Smithsonian has the Spirit of St. Louis, in which Lindbergh became the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean — taking off not far to the east of the present-day Roosevelt Field mall — the Cradle of Aviation does have one of two sister ships built at the same time.

“Ours was used in the movie starring Jimmy Stewart,” Parton said, referencing the 1957 film “The Spirit of St. Louis.”

The museum’s World War II gallery features the carrier-based Grumman Wildcat fighter plane as well as its replacement, the Hellcat. There also is a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber and a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter built by Republic in Suffolk County.

Referring back to the space gallery, Parton said an entire section is dedicated to “The Future is Now,” inspired by the present and future plans to head to the moon and Mars; and recent successes in civilian travel involving Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

“We’ve built a Mars landscape where you

can use augmented reality, an app you can download on your smartphone and drive a rover across our landscape. And ,when you get home you can take your Mars rover that’s in your smartphone and drive it in your living Family-friendly room if you want.” The museum’s newest exhibit is an arcade Museum Row of the old stand-up video games — no quarters necessary — that one would play before they could be played on phones and TV sets. “It’s an exhibit as opposed to an arcade in that the original was created on Long Island at the Brookhaven Labs,” Parton said. “The game Pong was originally created as an Air Force project. They were working with radar and fell into creating this silly video game.” Admission is $16 for adults and $14 for seniors age 62 and over and children between 2 and 12. There also is a theater and planetarium where one can attend shows for $10 without admission to the museum galleries, or for an additional $5 on a combination ticket with the galleries. The arcade exhibit is a separate $10 charge, but does not require one to pay for gallery visits. More information is available online at cradleofaviation.org. Q Climb It, a multilevel maze, is one of the popular activities at the Long Island Children’s Museum. PHOTO COURTESY LI CHILDREN’S MUSEUM The Nassau County Firefighters Museum and Education Center offers interactive — and fun — lessons on fire safety. PHOTO COURTESY NASSAU COUNTY FIREFIGHTERS MUSEUM

Next up, on Oct. 15 and 16 at 8 p.m., will be “Who Knows the Show,” a journey from East to West and beyond, from rural Japan to New York City, directed and choreographed by Aya Jane Saotome. The bill will also include Nattie Trogdon and Hollis Bartlett, in “a collaged duet performance” called “O Fallen Angel,” expressed through a patchwork of images, rigorous repetition, stillness and deep formalism.

Tickets for each performance: $17 presale; $20 at door; $22 credit card. Green Space is located at 37-24 24 St., #211, Long Island City. More: Visit greenspacestudio.org or call (718) 956-3037.

Black Spectrum Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary, one year late thanks to the pandemic, with a special outdoor event on the lawn outside the theater on Oct. 3 at 4 p.m. Of the milestone, the theater’s founder, Carl Clay, said, “It’s an amazing feeling, the idea that something we conceived 50 years ago is still in operation and growing.”

The event, which will continue with an indoor performance, will include a reception, awards ceremony and greetings from Dionne Warwick and Kool of Kool and the Gang.

“Black Love,” the company’s first production, will be brought back (revised for the 21st century, per Clay) for the first time in 30 years from Oct. 13 to 31, to be followed by “Mamalogues,” a new play about all the dimensions of motherhood, both poignant and comic. It runs Nov. 10 to 19. And on Nov. 20, members of the popular “Martin” TV series will reunite for an evening of comedy.

The theater is located at 177-01 Baisley Blvd., Jamaica. For ticket and other information, visit blackspectrum.com or call (718) 723-1800.

The Kupferberg Center for the Arts, located on the campus of Queens College, has several events, both in-person and online, coming up in the near future.

A virtual theatrical event, “Musicophilia,” tells of a famous neurologist who meets a woman suffering from a rare form of musically triggered seizures. Their friendship deepens and they eventually unravel the events in her past that led to her unusual malady. A live artist talkback takes place after the performance.

Two top names in music are on their way to the campus: Popular salsa performer Victor Manuelle is in concert at Colden Auditorium on Nov. 13 at 8 p.m., while the Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band fuses rhythms from Palmieri’s native Puerto Rico with the complexities of jazz for two shows at LeFrak Concert Hall on Nov. 20 at 7 and 9 p.m.

The venues are located at 153-49 Reeves Ave., Flushing. More: kupferbergcenter.org or call (718) 793-8080.

The Secret Theatre, which folded under the strain of the pandemic, has found a new home in Woodside, its exact location still, yes, a secret! The first production to play there will be “Into the Woods Jr.,” performed by members of the theater’s in-house academy, youngsters 18 years of age and under. The new 60-seat theater will open in September. Visit secrettheatre.com for details as they become available.

Another offering highlighting talented youngsters comes via the Astoria Performing Arts Center, which presents, for two performances only on Aug. 28 at 4 and 6 p.m., “Summer Stars,” the culmination of a community-based program for youth ages 8 to 15.

The center is also offering “Lucky 88 (in concert),” a bilingual musical set in a fictional food court in Flushing, focusing on three food stalls and the people who work there. The free virtual performance is available at Fiveohm.TV and the center’s YouTube channel.

A fully staged production of “Man of La Mancha,” the classic musical, is in the works, postponed from last year because of the virus.

The center is located at 44-02 23 St., Long Island City, the former home to The Secret Theatre. More: apacny.org or (718) 706-5750.

For a change of pace, a visit to Thalia Spanish Theatre might be in order. From Oct. 1 to 24, it presents “El Veneno del Teatro” (“A Thrilling Theater Game”), by Rodolf Sirera, and starring Soledad Lopez and Roberto Diaz Gomar. Directed by Angel Gio Orrios, it will be performed in Spanish with English supertitles.

It will be followed by the popular-demand return of “Añoranza de Colombia,” or “Nostalgia from Colombia,” a nearly wordless dance musical tribute to that country. It will run from Nov. 12 to Dec. 12.

The theater is located at 41-17 Greenpoint Ave., Sunnyside. More: Visit thaliatheatre.org or call (718) 729-3880.

Most venues require adherence to safety protocols; check their websites for details. Q

Eddie Palmieri will lead his Latin Jazz Band at LeFrak Concert Hall. PHOTO COURTESY KUPFERBERG CENTER FOR THE ARTS Jennah Fox, above, and New York-based soul/funk group Bombzr, right, will both perform at Culture

Lab. COURTESY PHOTO, ABOVE; PHOTO BY LISA CHARLES, RIGHT

alent of Playboy bunnies with “Curse of the Chippendales,” which looks at the rise and fall of the popular male exotic dance troupe from the 1980s and early ’90s.

The upcoming 20th anniversary of 9/11 will spawn many hours of documentaries, with the National Geographic Channel kicking things off with “9/11: One Day in America.” Vice TV is keying in on an interesting niche with “Too Soon,” which looks at how comedy was affected by the al Qaeda attack on us. Many of us remember when “Saturday Night Live” impresario Lorne Michaels asked Mayor Rudy Giuliani in October 2001, “Can we be funny?” Giuliani dryly replied, “Why start now?”

AXS TV has become the go-to cable network for anything pop music-related these days. “Rock My Collection” will examine offbeat collectibles from rock luminaries such as Brian Wilson’s driver’s license, Tom Petty’s motor scooter and Jimi Hendrix’s autographed map of Italy.

“Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman” has the film star with arguably the most recognizable voice in Hollywood hosting a series about the prison breaks that have most captured the public’s imagination. It will air on the History Channel.

Netflix, the king of streaming services, will have a pair of offerings about those on the wrong side of the law, with an international touch. “Lupin” details the life of a clever French thief while “La Casa de Papel” (in English renamed “Money Heist”) details how a Bank of Spain robbery went terribly wrong for a gang of crooks.

Lifetime will be relaunching “Highway to Heaven,” which starred the late Forest Hills native Michael Landon in the 1980s. Actress and singer Jill Scott is assuming Landon’s angelic role. In addition to executive producing the series, Oscar-award winner Nicole Kidman stars in “Nine Perfect Strangers” as the resort’s mysterious director. PHOTO COURTESY HULU