Cat J.
Yelp
Okay, I have a love-hate relationship with this default library of mine, but I admit that the pros far outweigh the cons in this case.
What I Love (With Adoration):
-- Yes, the architecture: the beautiful blue-green glass, the modern, minimalist, yet not-stuffy interior, and (my personal favorite) the staircase that list out some famous titles in the native language and the English translation inscribed next to it.
-- The enormous selection of books, CDs, DVDs, multimedia... and in non-English languages too! I know my mom has her Korean dramas, my friends have their Chinese, Bengali, Russian, and Urdu fixes. I would say this library has the most comprehensive foreign language media in the city, if not the state.
-- Until I was 11, the Children's Room was my Mecca. They had a replica of a trolley car and I would read there (Don't know if it's still there, but I think so). They had American Girl Magazine, Highlight for Children, National Geographic Kids, and the juvenile fiction series with Sweet Valley, Baby Sitters Club, along with the classics such as Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is spacious and incredibly kid-parent friendly.
-- Where else can I borrow CDs and rip them to Windows Media Player or watch movies on DVD, not having to pay a dime? Thank you, thank you, thank you! We all could use a little nifty thrifty during a recession.
Now what I ABSOLUTELY Hate (With an undying passion):
-- You literally need to be at the library when it opens in order to claim a spot. You need to claim it and mark your terrirtory lest an unsuspecting person, assuming your empty seat to be free space, swipes it away from you.
--Those that DO get seats stay in them. All. Day. Long. Granted, a lot of them are older people that trek from other parts of Queens to read in their native languages, so I'll give them some slack. I'm just sort of impatient because quite frankly, there isn't a lot of public space in the Flushing area, period. The library is the only place at Main St. (exception: Starbucks), and it gets PACKED.
-- Can the workers be any more surly? It's like they're working only because someone threatened them with dynamite up their butts to get going. But again, to be the devil's advocate, Flushing has an insanely high circulation with lines that snake out past the ropes. That's a lot of people to be working with, but that's still no excuse for the workers.
All in all, a great library that I wish wasn't as crowded but I can understand why. With its immense size, many programs, and the user-friendly, multi-lingual setting, it is an ideal destination for everybody: bookworms, architects, the immigrants, the old-timers. Many things in Flushing have changed rapidly, but the library has been the one constant since 1998 that won't be going anytime soon thanks to our diverse population; I rest a little easier.