What is Jackson Heights, anyway?

Diversity is a beautiful thing until you have to write for it. Then it’s just confusing as hell.

“La Pequeña Colombianita [Miss Colombia], Jackson Heights” by Jorge Quinteros.

Building a hyperlocal news product requires insight into a neighborhood’s every bodily function, and developing that insight takes time. In my case, it’s taken six years to get a grip on Jackson Heights, a chimeric urban community in Queens, New York. It would take me another six years to describe how it eats, sleeps, shits and screws.

Because words fail me, I present numbers from the US Census, which estimated that of the 65,000 or so people living in Jackson Heights in 2015:

• 17.5% were non-Hispanic white, compared with 33% citywide.
• 59% identified as Hispanic, with roots mostly in South America — Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay — though the neighborhood had its share of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Brazilians. World Cup season is a blast!
• Almost 20% traced their origins to Asia, particularly India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. There were also plenty of people with roots in Nepal, Tibet, Thailand and Indonesia. I’m mostly of Filipino decent, so toss me into this pile.
• 45% of my neighbors didn’t speak English very well, but they didn’t all speak Spanish either. They spoke Bengali, Russian, Urdu, Thai, plus dialects of dialects from everywhere. A nearby school for the deaf means the entire first floor of my apartment building communicates via sign language — Polish sign language.

At public meetings, I’ve heard neighbors complain about being stopped and frisked outside the gay bars on gritty Roosevelt Avenue. And I’ve heard neighbors complain about espresso grinds being dumped outside Starbucks in the hedge-lined historic district. We’re one paycheck away from homelessness and we’re buying million-dollar pre-war apartments. We’ve got all kinds of stuff going on.

This panoply of people and problems had me stumped for the better part of six years. What tied this community together if the only thing people had in common was how different they were from each other? How was one reporter supposed to investigate their concerns when everything concerned them? Was it even possible to get a grip on this?

Alas, the grip came in Year 5, Month 4 of my Jackson Heights residency.