Flushing Meadow Park, home to the successor of Forest Hills Stadium, is a pleasant enough place with delights found in no other city park. The sport of soaring is very popular with Flushing's large Asian community, which seems to eschew the model airplane field with its noisy and expensive flying gadgets in favor of more tranquil aeronautics. Strange colorful creatures with long tails hang in the air, darting with the wind at various heights, some just dots in the sky, others fly so high they move completely out of sight. A forest of seemingly weightless string ascends to the heavens, and yet more string, the abandoned equipage of countless premature downings, crisscross the parking lot, the bridge, the walkways, tangling the legs of strollers and joggers; but few seem to mind. Saturday afternoon at the kite field is a delight. Bring a kid, a kite, and lots and lots of string. How high can you fly? The competition here is stiff. Another interesting event is the Asian style boat races; teams race beautifully carved, heavy canoes synchronizing body motions to the rhythms of on-board drummers. In this park, cricket is favored over baseball, and rugby over football. Last Sunday, a modest Asian festival drew thousands of spectators, and backed up traffic for hours trying to enter the park.

The jewel of Flushing Meadow Park belongs to the USTA National Tennis Center, and attests to their wealth and political power - at least, in New York City. See firsthand: As one walks around Unisphere Plaza and enters a broad promenade posited between two stands of trees, the glittering bowl of Arthur Ashe Stadium looms up at the point the trees narrow in the distance; a truly awe-inspiring sight, perhaps the most impressive setting for any public building in the city. Hidden behind the Arthur Ashe is Shea Stadium, which at one time must have enjoyed the focus of this vista, but tennis hit the Grand Slam. (Once again, the Mets were catnapping in the outfield, and didn't notice the lob slipping into their court. A more interesting contest would be the tennis club vrs. Steinbrenner's baseball club - more interesting then the World Series. Who do you think would get the room with a view?)

In return for the beauteous locale belonging to the taxpayers, the tennis club, in agreements with the city and local community boards, was to assume the lion's share of the park's up keep, and by tacit agreement, take a strong hand in the park's appearance. They have certainly become the prime tenant and main component of the park, and presumably have an interest in the park's well-being. In light of their public commitment, how much can tennis care about Flushing Meadow Park when half of all the facilities are inoperable? The main drinking fountains next to the kite, and cricket fields were dry this entire summer (though, they worked very well last year during the citywide elections, but again, not the year before.) Bathrooms and fountains on both the east and west shores of Meadow Lake have been "out of order" for the past ten years. This park is filthy from Monday to Thursday, and only cleaned up for the weekends, and not always then. Overflowing litter baskets rife with picnic refuse sit unattended for days contributing enormously to this park's fabled rat infestation. It is not unusual for a jogger to trip over a dead rat lying on the roadway. Across from the tennis stadium, the parks other attractions, the Queens Museum, and Theater in the Park, both still heavily subsidized by taxpayers, cling stubbornly to Western style art even though the local audience has become overwhelmingly Asian speaking people. For all the magnificence, tennis seems out of sorts with Flushing Meadow and apparently takes little civic pride in their new surroundings.

Press attention focused on the demise of the stately Forest Hills Tennis Stadium leaves out one important aspect - what might have been. Forest Hills is merely a shadow of its former self since the game of tennis moved away. A sad melancholy has crept in, and while both Forest Hills and tennis are prospering as never before, an indescribable emptiness haunts them both, like parted lovers, independent and haughty but sharing one soul. And now the final link will be severed. The Stadium's physical posture dominates the local landscape, its myth, nacreous aura, and rabid esprit inject a source of intoxicating elixirs into Forest Hills life, past and present; here, the currents of fortune fracture on their divergent courses at the gates of the majestic facade.

In Forest Hills Tennis is the national sport. And the Tennis Stadium par with Yankee Stadium. Talk about tearing it down is traumatic. Will the stadium get the respect accorded a New York legend going into retirement - a proper burial if you will?

What if . . . the West Side Tennis Club notices that the promotion of tennis in New York requires a successor to the current stadium? . . . they glance towards Forest Park and notice 35 acres up for grabs; empty land with direct access to JFK International Airport and mid-town Manhattan; land that borders Forest Park. ( Hell, half the city thinks the current stadium is located in Forest Park.) . . . their political panache helps game set & match the current feckless riffraff - heavy hitters more intimidating then McEnroe swinging a wide body in overhead smashes? . . . after sixty years of exploiting the land beyond legal limits, someone told the current owners: they got their money's worth?

( . . .parking, vertical, of course, was tucked away near the highway exits so tennis fans could stroll down Metropolitan Avenue on nice days, or shuttle through the park?) . . . tennis holds a farewell benefit for the stadium and . . . the brightest stars turn out to kiss the old girl goodby and. . . a new stadium rises on the ashes of the old? . . . one politician sees the light, what then? . . . Mt. Rushmore could be the destination instead of that other place most politicians go to?

October 1998