 My Queens County deserves a closer look and it does here on Community Matters. I'm Jay Fiedel and I'm thinking obviously for the former dean of the William S. Richardson School of Law joins me for this discussion because he is in Queens right now. Welcome, Avi. Thank you, Jay. It's good to be here. Home of the famous Americans. Not only Jay Fiedel. I can tell you about Queens because ever since we decided to cover it, I've been thinking about Queens because I grew up in Queens and I know a lot about Queens because I rode my bicycle in every neighborhood in Queens everywhere. Well, you can take the boy out of Queens, but you can't take the Queens out of Jay. Something like that. But first the news, right? But first the news. They always say that. I always like to say that. You may have heard, but Trump has announced his candidacy, his wish to be president in 20 years. Another Queens guy, I believe. That's right. And he grew up not too far away from me and we're going to have a map here. We're going to black out that section of the borough in his honor. But the one thing that strikes me, I woke up on this, is that she was. What about section three of the 14th Amendment? It says if you're involved in an insurrection, you can't run for a federal or state office. It just seems to be dead on here. The problem is, there's no mechanism expressed in section three of the 14th Amendment. So in the actions of language, structuring a mechanism, what do we got? Do we have a mechanism? Is there a default system for implementing that provision? Well, there are a whole lot of things that go on in constitutional law for which there's no mechanism. So that should not be in any way a complete block. And it was very important at the time of the framing of the 14th Amendment, not surprisingly because a civil war had just ended. And what the Republicans realized was unless they did something to make sure that the unreconstructed Southerners had some barrier, they would be outvoted very quickly because the South suddenly, since they gave blacks the vote, would have much more representation than they'd had before. It was no longer three-fifths representation. So this was the hotly debated issue, but it's never been invoked. And it could be, and the mechanism could be derived. So one shouldn't think that's the end of it. I want to say for a moment, Jay, the section two has also never been invoked and is I think much more immediately significant because it says that if a state abridges or denies the vote, then the state loses representation. And the first thing listed is the electoral college. So states that now should have been invoked because we know lots of states have put up major barriers to the exclusion of the votes through Jim Crow and so on. It's never been invoked, but it could be. And it's an answer to this argument that the independent state legislature can decide who the electors are. Right there in section two of the 14th Amendment is a text that says, no, it's not left to the state legislators. It's left to the people, to the vote. Well, how could that, at least in the possibility, how could those provisions be enforced? Who has standing to do that? Standing is important, isn't it? The standing is important, but not insurmountable. And we see the current court, when it wants to find standing, it finds a way to have standing. And that's particularly true of some of these, in my view, rogue district court judges who think, oh, I can join something across the whole country. You know, they must have standing. And that's an example being the college's loan forgiveness. And there are lots of other examples of that. So standing is a pretty malleable concept. So I don't think that's an absolute barrier. But we have to talk about Queens and not Constitutional Law, Jay. Yeah. Okay. We'll get together and develop an approach on the Constitution later. But now it's Queens. So you're living in Queens. You like New York. You like NYU for sure. That's my school. I had to go there twice. You know, the first time wasn't good enough. I had to go the second time. And as you may know, as everybody may know, that I am in the book. If you walk into NYU Law School and you ask about me, I'm in the book. I'm in the book twice. How do you like that? Yeah, Jay got a master's as well as his regular JD degree. And they talk of him still. But they won't let him in when he has to use the restroom these days. No, they did. They did. And I said, gee, I paid all that money, spent all that time. And I get this incredible benefit to use the restroom. And it was very helpful at the time. So Avi, what is your impression of the borough of Queens? Because it's really different. It's like the islands. They all have their own personalities. And certainly Queens has a different personality than the Bronx or Brooklyn or Manhattan, or for that matter, Staten Island. What's your impression of Queens? Well, I am very surprised. And I must say pleasantly so. I were here for family reasons that I spent a lot of time in other parts of New York because my whole family on both sides were New Yorkers. My folks were sort of the only ones who broke away, but it was a close extended family. Cousins in New York. I worked in New York some. But Queens was always a place that was off the map. There'd be dragons out there. So for other family reasons, we are here in Queens. And our daughter and her family, now two grandchildren, for us, are living in Jackson Heights. And Jackson Heights, I read a little bit of history, but I really asked Jay a question, which has led to this discussion. And that is, what's the history of Queens? So I know only really about Jackson Heights. And that history is it was started as an exclusionary neighborhood. They wanted to keep out Jews in particular, but also blacks, of course. And no one was thinking about Latinos at that point. And that was the 1920s. And now it boasts as being perhaps the most diverse neighborhood in the country. And it is true. You walk down the street, you hear six or eight languages. You see many different costumes, as were cultural and ethnic and religious reflection in the way people are dressed and restaurants and markets. It's really quite incredible. So Jackson Heights in 100 years has changed from its founder's vision to this incredibly diverse place. And we now have walked through or seen a few other nearby neighborhoods. And I'm also struck by how they were clearly ethnic neighborhoods at one point. And now they are much more diverse. So one thing to be said about Queens is it's changed even since, and maybe because Jay Fidel left. You know, my thinking back out of Queens is not only much more diverse than it was when I was a kid. You know, when I was a kid, you had My Block, which was a combination of Jewish and Irish. And then The Block down the road was all Irish. And then The Block down the road from that was all Italian. And when we were kids, and I'm talking about less than 10 years old, we didn't go to the other blocks. It was dangerous that the kids of the same age on the other blocks would somehow be aggressive with us, although it never happened, I have to say. And over time, you saw what went on. I mean, it was all these buildings being built. All six store must have been the law. Six story apartment houses owned by one landlord. And sometime in the 50s, I guess they invented rent control, which the landlords really hated because they had invested in order to make money on these six story apartment houses. And they were very nice and they put nice appointments in these apartment houses and put them in the same thing. But then rent control came and they couldn't make any money and rents were so cheap in the level of the struggle and strain to make more money and they couldn't do it. I don't know the circumstance now that I'll say that a good part of Queens is six story apartment houses. And they're middle class and they're well appointed and they're large apartment. And that's the kind of building I grew up in. So of course in June, when I was back in New York for a return visit, the writer of return, they have the writer of return in Queens. So I went back to my old neighborhood and I'll tell you, obviously it was neat as a pin. It was like suspended and just suspended all those years. It's really extraordinary how some things don't change at all. Though my building, my block, it was frozen in amber from how many years ago. And it was spacious. My recollection as a kid is it wasn't that big, but it seems like it's bigger now. Maybe it's supposed to go in reverse, but the fact is it's a very comfortable dimensions on the streets and the intersections. And the buildings are clean as a pin and everything has got landscaping. I don't remember the landscaping. I think that's relatively new. Maybe rent control went out so the landlords could afford the landscaping. Everything is rental. There's really no condominiums to speak of. It's all rental property. But nearby, after the war, developers built these row houses, which are also very nice. And you could buy a row house when I was a kid for $12,000, $14,000, and it would be a real first-class house. We always admire the kids who lived in the row house. And if you look at them today, they're lovely. The streets are wide and clean and bright and well manicured, and the houses are painted and what have you. I was so impressed by the quality of the neighborhood and the neighborhoods around my neighborhood, which was Forest Hills adjacent to Regal Park, which is kind of a continuum along the subway. This Queens developed along the subway. Was there a subway in Jackson Heights? Yeah. The Roosevelt stop is a big one, right? It's overhead at that point, so it's very loud underneath. And our two-and-a-half-year-old loves to go watch trains, and we count the cars. They almost all have 11 cars for some reason, but the big subway stop. Actually, a lot of people change at Roosevelt. We lived only a block away from the Long Island Railroad, which was elevated, and had been there like forever. And it was built on a mound of earth, so it was elevated without having steel structure under it. And it was like part of the landscape. And it went all the way from Manhattan, where it was underground, coming out of what, Grand Central Station, out to Long Island, where it forked into the North Shore and the South Shore and all that, all the way out. I think we're coming out of Penn Station, and one of the big breakthroughs is the Long Island Railroad is going to go to Grand Central. They're advertising. But now this is a big thing. It's going to be at Grand Central as well as Penn Station. Penn Station, yeah. And of course, people took the subway. Everybody took the subway. Now, when I was a kid in the 50s, the subways weren't all that clear and clean. There was a lot of graffiti, a lot of tawdry characters on the subway, and as kids, we had to be careful. We had to travel in groups and have sort of an akamai sense of how you avoid tawdry characters. But later on, they put new cars in there, and they cleaned it up. And right now, taking the subway is a good experience. It's automated. Months and while there was some violence, there was about a year or two ago, and somebody shot up a subway car, but mostly it's safe. And people take it. It's part of their lives to commute. Queens is a commuter community. And I want to take a moment at that because when it was first developed, it was the borough of cemeteries. And so cemeteries in some industrial just over there. After you cross over from Manhattan in midtown, and you start the long trek on Queens Avenue, Boulevard, rather, that goes all the way out to the city line, where Queens is adjacent to what, Nassau County. You have these cemeteries that go on and on. And they started in the 19th century, and they got bigger and bigger. And every ethnic community has its own cemetery out there. And if you wanted to see your relatives, you can go out and it's all labeled. And it's a database where you can look people up and see the graves and all that. It's a real industry, I think. But the problem is that between Manhattan and the residential areas, like Jackson Heights, have miles of cemeteries. Can't they do better than that? I mean, really, in all this valuable property, it's all invested in cemeteries. Well, one of the things, Jay, so your description, I think, is an accurate one, but it's an unusual one where people go back to where they're from. And usually, it's a story of decline. But you just told a story that's the opposite. And I think you're right. I think Queens has made a lot of progress. And the row houses you were talking about really do look very well kept. I'm sure the price is a lot more than it was in your time. But I think they're still affordable, certainly by New York standards. That's very rare. And affordable is a matter of some relativity, of course. But you see a lot of families. You see a lot of kids. And there are parks for those kids. And there seem to be a lot of schools around. There certainly still are a lot of religious institutions. But the cemeteries are still there. And I want to put in a plug for the new LaGuardia, because it used to be when you went to LaGuardia, past cemeteries, and that's about all you saw. And then LaGuardia had not changed much from the New Deal days when it was built. And now they have renovated one of the main concourses. And it's gorgeous. They've done a terrific job. And it's airy. And there's a lot of food options. So it makes some sense to fly into LaGuardia these days. And you're, of course, closer to the city than if you fly into Newark or Kennedy. Yeah, LaGuardia used to be a kind of second-rate airport. And my father used to take my brother and me. We go and we stand next to the fence on the flight path. And we watch the planes come in, by the way, no jets at all at that time. Well, we're living now, which is East Elmhurst, right next to Jackson Heights. It looks like they're going to hit you in the head because they're coming for a landing. They work very close to LaGuardia, actually. Well, remember, too, that it's not too, it's five miles away. And it's Kennedy. John F. Kennedy International Airport, which is the South Particle. Jackson Heights is in the north, near the Long Island Sound. And what do they call that? Fringe Verzano? Or is it Verzano-Narrows Bridge? Fringe Staten Island, right. I know. The one I'm thinking of is the one that goes up north. Well, the Queensborough, which is no longer the... Oh, I know what you're thinking of. It used to be the Triborough. But Bobby Kennedy, it's now named after... The Triborough Bridge is now Bobby Kennedy. Really? Why do they rename bridges like that? It really throws you off if you're visiting. But here you look down the street and you see the skyline, the New York skyline. You're really very close. And as you said, the subway goes underground, and there you are in the middle of Manhattan. Yeah, and it doesn't take very long. I mean, from my neighborhood forest hills, Rigo Park, it was, you took the express train, but the thing was like 20 minutes, 25 minutes, right into Manhattan. So there was a real benefit there. And if you could not afford Manhattan, which was always much more expensive to live in and still today, then you go to either Queens or Brooklyn. Now, Brooklyn was an older neighborhood. Downtown Brooklyn was established before Queens. While they were building cemeteries in Queens, they were building downtown Brooklyn. And it was a business district and a lot of good residential neighborhoods. But then the Dodgers left, Jay. And Evans Field came down a tragedy which people have still not gotten over. But a friend of ours, whose name is Danny Greenberg, grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And he likes to say these days, well, it's just a great country. Think of it, the United States of America in one generation from Brooklyn to Brooklyn, because Brooklyn is now as hip as it could be. That hasn't happened to Queens yet. Gentrification isn't quite here yet. Well, like I was saying, they have different profiles, different persona. Brooklyn declined for a long time. You wouldn't want to go there. A lot of terrible, Fort Apache type slums, dangerous. You got out of the subway and you needed police on all sides to protect you. That's not like that anymore. It's gentrified. Friend of mine bought a brownstone in the 70s and he was so excited. But he said, I'm making a bet. I'm making a bet that the Fort Apache line will stay away from me. And the gentrification line, I'll be within it. He was wrong. It turned out the other way. And before you know it, he was in a slum. But I think his brownstone is probably worth a lot more now because the line has gone the other way all over at least that part of Brooklyn. And so, and Queens is different though. I mean, Queens is really middle class. And I would say that it is completely diverse. True. Why? Because the people in the United Nations, you know, in the 50s after the war, they had to have a bedroom community. They could not afford and they didn't want to stay in Manhattan. A lot of them talking about staffers and representatives of all kinds. And so they wound up settling in Forest Hills. A lot of them. And my neighborhood with all those six-story apartment buildings was filled with people from the United Nations. And as a result, you know, my friends, my classmates, were very diverse. This was way back in the 50s when I was a kid. And some people say I'm a kid now. And I have the same sensibilities now. So I really enjoyed that part of it. And it was very diverse. The food was very diverse. You know, the whole experience was very, and the religions were very diverse, although they changed. You know, and that's the piece we should focus on is that as constant as some of these elements in Queens are, they're also dramatically changing. And so in Italian bakery, for example, that really reminds you of what a little bakery might be in Italy. Those are still around. But I think they're celebrated across the lines that you were talking about used to be scary to go off your block. And now people, you know, of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds go to that Italian bakery because they like a particular kind of pastry. And there's a lot of that on the same street. Yeah, everything, anything and everything you want. I wanted to have a conish when I went back in June. And sure enough, the conish place was still there. The only difference was that the person serving the conishes was from Russia. And they had a plastic thing about COVID, you know, that covered half the store. And I was disappointed in that, but I understood. Queens Boulevard is a remarkable, remarkable phenomenon. I mean, it's so well designed. And I wanted to take a moment and just remind you of Robert Moses. Robert Moses in the 30s. Everybody considered him a dictator, a municipal autocrat, if you will, a corrupt, you know, city official. And yet he built the Bilt Parkway. He built so many roads and well designed. I don't know if he was involved in all of the subways, but at least some of the subways. And he created, what do I call it, the boroughs around Manhattan, if not a good part of Manhattan. And it was towering leaders like that that made New York possible. Right now, two and a half million people live in Queens. And I think they would all say it's a good solid middle-class community worth commuting to. Well, I think we differ about Robert Moses. I mean, there's a play that I guess just came over from England about Robert Moses. And we differ particularly because he did a lot of building of highways and other things across minority neighborhoods. And he paid very little heat to who was living there in order to make what he considered progress. I don't think he was regarded as corrupt in the usual sense of corruption. He just was sort of a God complex. And he wanted to put the roads where he thought the roads ought to go. And in some cities, not just New York, it really led to terrible problems. Putting, I mean, New Haven is one of many examples where there was just a highway right across the Black neighborhoods. And it was kind of the end of New Haven, though it was called the model city for a few years. So a lot of arguments about Robert Moses and about Jane Jacobs on the sort of counter. She was the protester who said, you need neighborhoods. You need people who are out on the streets. It makes it safer and it makes it more colorful and more enjoyable. And I guess maybe we're both in agreement that Queens has a lot of that still. There's still a lot of that, it seems, in Queens these days. But I'm no expert at all. I've just been here for a few months. No, I don't disagree. I agree. He was a bullet in the finish up. And he created these things in the thought, it was a visionary thought. He was wrong, but in the thought that you needed that to develop the city. And he didn't care that it was a Black neighborhood. I'm only as a foil for you. And it's not curses foiled again. I just want to hear you talk about Queens, Jed. Well, I want to talk about Flushing Metal Park for a minute. 1939 World's Fair. They set aside a huge amount of land around Flushing Metal Lake. It was really beautiful in the middle of a pretty dense borough and city. There you have this fantastic open space. And when I was a kid, it was only like a quarter mile, half a mile from my house. I would go down there and play. And they left one significant building after the fair, which was the New York City building. And they made it into a roller rink on one side and an ice rink on the other side. And I was down there every weekend. Me and everybody I knew were down there learning how to skate. And it was a wonderful phenomenon, a wonderful facility for all of us. Flushing Metal Park was part of a sort of depression. So you had my neighborhood, Forest Hills Regal Park, a little higher up. And then you had the neighborhood in Flushing, which was north of that. And then you had this depression. Depression moved around between my neighborhood and Corona, which was an Italian neighborhood. Notice how I still associate the ethnic thing. And in the depression, I mean the depression of the land, between my neighborhood and Corona and Flushing, was where the troops came back after World War II. And there was no housing for them anywhere. And they came back and they were marrying and having kids. Where do they go? They didn't want to go home. Maybe there was no home to go to. So the government built barracks for them. And this whole area was filled with these barracks, I mean, thousands of them. And when I was a kid, you could go to the edge of my neighborhood and look down into the depression and see all these barracks. I was there for years, at least five years, until they got settled somewhere else. But that defined Queens. There was so much land, so many homes, these barracks. And then, of course, the developers got the notion and they built everywhere. And part of the building was, as you said, retail and commercial. And from points east of the cemeteries, all of a sudden, Queens took off in the 20s, the 30s, and became a middle-class community. And I think a lot of it, probably including Jackson Heights, was Archie Bunker country. He had to live somewhere. That's probably where he lived. It was either Archie Bunker or next to Elmhurst, maybe in Flushing. And at the north end of that, I'm sure you got to see it or you can go to see it, is College Point, referring to the Maritime College, right on the water. It's where you go if you want to get papers and serve on maritime ships. And over the years, it's had a close relationship with the Coast Guard. That's why I know this. And it's a fantastic institution also, right there in the heart of Queens on water. Beautiful location. You should take your kids and grandchildren out there and take a look at it. You left out Shea Stadium as one of the things that happened since those barracks left. And now it's City Field. So there's depression at City Field, too, these days, given what happened in the playoffs. And then there's the south part of Queens, which I actually used to take my bike to. My buddies and me, we get on the road and we pedal all the way down to Rockaway, which is part of Queens, not too far from the Kennedy Airport. And Long Beach is also a part of Queens, I think. No, Long Beach may be part of Nassau County, but it's right next to it. And there's a bridge between Rockaway and Long Beach. And all these clubs, oh, yeah, we're getting a map of that. There's the bridge. And on the way down there, I forget the name of the highway. There was a highway, two-lane highway, and everybody would go for the weekend and gem up on the highway. And on the highway, there were these fantastic Frankfurter places like Nathan's in Brooklyn. And the number of people that can stuff into these places is amazing. Thousands of people on a Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening enjoying the kosher food. I don't think it's there anymore. I don't think that area could survive as a recreational area with a pressure, the residential pressure coming south. Because the population of Queens is 2.5 million, maybe 3 million now, that's a lot. It's twice or more than all of Hawaii. And there's a lot of pressure for residential. There are a couple of neighborhoods that still do hang on, and they were badly hit by Hurricane Sandy. So there's been kind of a running series almost in the papers about the community and how it tried to help one another out, but they really got hit hard. So can the people been there forever hold on? And you're right. It's very valuable real estate, even though Hurricanes hit it. Yeah, they don't seem to change the value. In fact, maybe they direct attention at it. But we would be remiss if we did not mention of the Queens College by Alma Mater. The Queens College was actually a women's reformatory back in the 30s. And it had one distinctive thing about it. I mean, I don't mean the women who need to be reformed, but the architecture. It was really lovely. And it was reminiscent of like McKinley High School. It was that Arabic architecture from around the turn of the century. Rudolph Valentino architecture. And there were like six big, stuck-old buildings around a really large campus when I went to Queens College. And there was very little new construction going on. And we all went to classes in these old buildings. Little by little, they built more buildings. And of course, they were not Rudolph Valentino buildings. They were brand new modern buildings. And the city really liked Queens College because it had good academic standing. In those days, part of the city university in New York. It was as good as Brooklyn College, which was very good. And the city schools were terrific. Matter of fact, let me share with you that when you finish your second year at Queens College, you had to take a test. It was called the Language, Literature, and Arts Test. And unless you passed that test, you didn't go to your third year. You couldn't do it. You're done. It was just really a lot of pressure on the kids in school. But it was essentially free. And that meant a lot to changing the complexion of New York, changing the prospects for everybody who lived in Queens. As I recall, most people in Queens College came from Queens. So I went back in June, Abbey. I went back to Queens College, which used to have all these big open areas and fields and green grass and these stucco buildings, I told you about. You couldn't even see the stucco building. You had a search for them because they were surrounded by the towering edifices of eclectic. They invented the word eclectic around Queens College. It looked a little like Manoa. I'm afraid to say. But it was so jammed in shoehorn buildings everywhere. I guess that means it's a successful school. Yeah, probably so. So Jay, I learned something important about you from your description of calling the skating rinks. So that explains why you've been on thin ice ever since. And you just got there again with a little slam at Manoa. I wonder if it's still there. If it's still there, you want to take your family and see the city building. And also, I wanted to say that 1939 was only the first of two world's fairs. 64. In Flushing Meadow Park. The second one was in 1964, which was also very popular. And the city building was still standing in 1964. And I was still skating. But by then I had left Queens. And a lot of my friends had left Queens. And I wanted to say that if you went around Queens now, I mean, just kind of hypothetical, you wouldn't find my classmates in Queens. Everybody went to Forest Hills High School, left town. Everybody went to Queens College, including my classmate Paul Simon, left town. And it was a brain drain kind of thing. Queens is a brain drain. And new groups come in, immigrant groups, what have you, they come from other parts of the country. They play the role of the middle class serving businesses in Manhattan. But their kids don't stay. And that's too bad about Queens. You couldn't find any of my classmates in Queens right now. Well, there's always change, particularly in cities maybe. And I think it is surprising how many little kids they are around. And who knows if they're going to be able to stay, if they're going to want to stay. But I think there's a revival of a sort that you touched upon before of Queens no longer being sort of out there and dismissed people, I think are valuing Queens these days, Jay. Yeah. And it doesn't have that kind of special cachet that downtown Brooklyn has, but it's much bigger than downtown Brooklyn. And it has a middle class, solid feeling about it, a diverse tolerance. It's very tolerant. And the borough, my trip in June, very healthy. The businesses were healthy. There were no shuttered stores or anything like that. I don't know. Everything was atomic. And Brooklyn, you can have too much gentrification as I think Brooklyn is demonstrating these days. So it may not be a healthy mix. Well, every borough has its own. And so maybe next time we should do Brooklyn. I'm not suggesting you should move to Brooklyn. Don't do that. But we're only here temporarily and we're enjoying it, but we're also looking forward to getting back home, which we're going to, at the end of December, we'll be back. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the end of December. Anyway, this has been a great discussion. I mean, thank you for suggesting it at night. And it's caused me to look back on my own childhood and try to make this extraordinary jump from where we are. I'm sure you've done the same thing in your childhood places, where you think of a place as you know it today. And then you see like Proust, right? Looking through the keyhole. Remembrance of things past. You look through the keyhole and you see yourself. You actually see another person who is yourself back in the day. You see yourself in another neighborhood with old friends and a life experience that it's not like today, but you're familiar with it. And that's my experience in thinking about Queens today. It's a good way to end this, Jay. Nicely done, but we should continue it. I got more questions about Queens for you. Ask me one more question about Queens. When did you leave? Oh, well, I was in NYU at law school and my first experiences. I moved in with a bunch of guys from NYU who shared an apartment, a big apartment in Forest Hills near my home. And we all studied group kind of thing, and we all took the subway to Manhattan to go to school. But that was not really sustainable. Too many people in too small space. And ultimately, I moved into Hayden Hall, Hayden Hall. I went to see Hayden Hall when I was in New York in June. And there it is. Very nice building right across the street, candy corner from NYU Law School. And that's where I lived. And actually, I never came back. Never came back to Queens. And that was right around the time that Kennedy was shot. So it was at 63. And from there, I lived in a graduate, I was a graduate counselor in an undergraduate dormitory by the name of Joe Weinstein Hall, the founder of May's department stores. And from there, Coast Guard and Hawaii. So I never moved back after Kennedy was shot. Well, we're glad you made it to Hawaii, Jay. Same for you. I didn't know your family originally came from New York. That is really something. And as you talk about free and good education, so my father was a product of CCNY in its heyday and its politically very active heyday. And my mother went to Hunter and they were both very good schools and they were free. This explains a lot. And I had only regard for CCNY. And like Queens and Queens College, it was a brain drain. Everybody left. Very few people stayed around from CCNY. The world was their oyster. It was the Harvard of Manhattan, you know what I mean? But free, a first-class education, paid for by the taxpayers. Who can imagine such a thing? And Hunter was the Radcliffe of Manhattan. Come from good stock, Avi. Thank you. You too. Hey, well, enjoy. We'll talk again soon. Thank you so much. Okay, so stay above that thin ice. Keep moving, Jay. Keep moving. Avi's time for Temporarily in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Thanks. Bye.