<img src=”https://queensledger.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_6960-scaled-e1790614445768-1024×527.jpeg” alt=”” width=”1024″ height=”527″ class=”size-large wp-image-20287″ /> Former Queens Community Board 1 member and State Assemblymember-elect Brian Romero testifies at the September 22 meeting. (Photos: Cole Sinanian)

<strong>BY COLE SINANIAN</strong> | <em>cole@queensledger.com</em>

ASTORIA — At a packed Community Board 1 meeting at Astoria World Manor on Tuesday night, board members voted 30-2 to ask the NYC Parks Department to cancel a <a href=”https://queensledger.com/2026/09/10/pop-the-bubble-activists-tennis-players-organize-to-stop-astoria-park-bubble-enclosure/”>controversial proposal</a> to build private “bubble” enclosures over the majority of Astoria Park’s tennis courts.

The vote capped a <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU9IwUlxMvk”>four-hour-long meeting</a>, during which no fewer than 30 New Yorkers young and old, tennis players and non-tennis players alike, came out against the privatization push in a show of solidarity that united a <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/poptheastoriabubble/”>broad coalition</a> of local clubs and political organizations over their shared desire to keep a beloved space public.

Among them were members of Astoria Trash Club, wearing shirts with the volunteer cleanup group’s logo; Democratic Socialists of America members sporting Queens DSA tote bags; and State Assemblymember-elect and former CB1 member Brian Romero, who spoke against the bubble proposal.

“There is unity in a lot of different groups because we see beyond the scope of what this bubble does,” said Astoria Trash Club founder Paul Langis in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting.

“We don’t want to see people get priced out.”

The proposal would see the City hire a private company to erect and operate inflatable bubbles over 8-10 of Astoria Park’s 14 tennis courts between mid-October and mid-April, which would cost somewhere between $50 and $100 per hour to use. A tennis permit at Astoria Park currently costs $100 for the season.

Not a single person at Tuesday night’s meeting spoke in favor of the bubble proposal, and several pointed out the disparity between the roughly 300-signature petition in favor and the nearly 4,000-signature petition against it. Some brought up affordability concerns, arguing the proposal would exclude working-class people from using the courts. Others worried that relegating free playing time to just a handful of courts would limit after-school programming for local children, while others still cited the previous precedents of the board — which shut down similar bubble proposals in 1992, and again in 2005.

<img src=”https://queensledger.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_6957-1024×768.jpeg” alt=”” width=”1024″ height=”768″ class=”size-large wp-image-20288″ /> Members of the public await their turn to speak. (Photos: Cole Sinanian)

But it was discussion of mental health, and the importance of free, accessible athletic space to keep locals healthy and happy during life’s lowest lows, that got the most airtime Tuesday.

One woman explained that free access to tennis in her community and the friends she made in the courts’ open-air environment kept her hopeful after her third miscarriage. Another approached the podium with an infant strapped around her, tearing up as she spoke:

“We are 4th and 5th generation Astorians,” she said. “And it’s unconscionable to me that my son could actually have less than me in any capacity.”

Aida Marquetti, who said she grew up playing tennis at Astoria Park, recalled sneaking into the courts with her friends who had permits because she couldn’t afford it.

“I was poor,” she continued. “We should not gatekeep access to only those who can afford it.”

Gloria Ellis, an Astoria resident for 30 years, spoke of the open tennis courts’ public health utility, and how they’d kept her both fit and social into her old age.

“I am 81 and a half years old,” she said, before being interrupted by an audience member. “What’s your secret?” they shouted.

“Tennis!” Ellis replied.

“You ask me why do I look like this? Because that allows me to move,” she said. “It’s the place where you can move, there’s free air. There’s trees. There’s a sense of being out of an open space. You lose that when you have to buy that service.”

As several Astorians pointed out Tuesday, the chronic underfunding of public agencies like NYC Parks, and their subsequent reliance on private capital to fund even basic maintenance is not the only way. Private capital, too, is far from a reliable partner in maintaining public spaces, as recent history suggests. Audits from <a href=”https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/audit-report-on-department-of-parks-and-recreation-oversight-of-capital-improvements-by-concessionaires-2/”>2004</a> and <a href=”https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/audit-report-on-department-of-parks-and-recreation-oversight-of-capital-improvements-by-concessionaires/”>2010</a> show that the agency failed to collect concession fees from private companies operating in NYC Parks, while at tennis bubbles like those at McCarren Park, as well as the <a href=”https://www.amny.com/news/cb8s-last-ditch-effort-de-privatize-ues-queensboro-oval/”>Queensboro Oval</a> on the Upper East Side and elsewhere, the Parks Department failed to enforce contractually obligated capital improvements, while park users allege the private operators let conditions slide.

“The larger issue here is that we still very much have a Parks Department that gets <a href=”https://hellgatenyc.com/nypd-overtime-report/”>less than the overtime budget of the NYPD</a>, which says a lot,” Romero told the Queens Ledger.

The Astoria Park bubble proposal comes amid recent privatization pushes at public parks nearby, perhaps the highest profile of which is the alienation of public land at the site of the future Metropolitan Park Hard Rock Casino at the edge of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which the State Assembly <a href=”https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A6781″>approved</a> in May 2025 in a near-unanimous vote, despite <a href=”https://queensledger.com/2026/06/07/we-just-want-our-day-in-court-anti-casino-lawsuit-drags-on-over-venue-fight/”>fierce local opposition</a>. And just on the other side of Newtown Creek, Greenpoint’s Transmitter Park faced its own concessionaire battle, when locals <a href=”https://brooklyndowntownstar.com/lead_story/2026/08/06/gpointers-blast-transmitter-park-proposal/”>swiftly killed a proposal</a> to “activate” a section of the waterfront open space with a commercial marina and a swanky new restaurant.

”I think there’s broad consensus that folks want to think about investment in our public institutions very differently,” Romero added. “They want them to belong in public hands, be taken care of as a public good.”

For Langis, the conversion of once-public spaces to luxury amenities that only the fortunate can afford — even if it’s just a few tennis courts — sets off alarm bells. Unless locals are vigilant, he says, such measures could mark the beginning of more permanent, more transformative changes.

“We kind of foresee what may start as a few bubbles on some of the tennis courts expanding to something larger,” he said.

“Ultimately, that’s what gentrification is at the end of the day. You bring in luxury items for some, and it’s the local residents and the local businesses that suffer at the end of the day…We just want to keep Astoria the beautiful community that it is.”

THE GOTHAM GOOSE | thegothamgoose@gmail.com

At 7:22 one morning, a man stopped outside QED Astoria, purposely spilled his drink onto a sidewalk with chalk drawings and dragged his foot across it attempting to erase it. Then, as QED’s owner described on Instagram from security footage after several incidents, he looked toward the camera and gave it the finger. The chalk announced an art camp for children ages four to eight.

I don’t know what goes through a person’s head that early besides the strong desire to actually drink the coffee. I do know what Hannah Lieberman was doing there. She draws QED’s upcoming events on the sidewalk herself, meeting neighbors, talking to kids and petting passing dogs while she works. For a business that hosts many events each month, chalk is a fun way to advertise. For Hannah, it’s also a way to be part of the block.

QED is easy to call a comedy club, but that doesn’t cover it. There are stand-up shows and open mics alongside storytelling, children’s programs, book clubs and fundraisers. Kambri Crews built the place in 2014. When she announced in 2024 that she planned to close unless someone took it over, neighbors responded like they might be losing a national landmark. Fortunately, Hannah, a comedian who had performed and produced shows there, bought it in 2025 and kept it going.

Chalk is supposed to disappear eventually. The issue is a person choosing to come back and erase this woman’s work, then turning his attention to her online and in her security camera to harass her.

Hannah says the erasing went on through the summer. This was not his first reported confrontation with QED. Former owner Kambri Crews says the same man was arrested in 2024 or 2025 after putting Trump stickers on the venue’s windows and damaging them. Crews says she passed documentation from that incident to Hannah. He was returning to a business he had targeted before.

She says two neighbors who confronted the man heard him object to QED’s “We Stand With Immigrant Families” poster. I haven’t spoken to those neighbors, so I can’t tell you what he meant by pointing toward the wall. Hannah has made clear that her support for immigrant families isn’t going away.

As Gotham Goose, I run an Astoria satire page and serve as a self-appointed public nuisance as a native-transplant waterfowl™, poking at neighborhood absurdities and local politics. Before the feathers, I needled employers while organizing a labor union, making memes to get people talking and signing union cards. I know the thrill of getting under someone’s skin. Unfortunately for him, the neighborhood has a goose with a column.

Sometimes there’s a cause; sometimes something is just stupid and deserves a laugh. But as a self-appointed representative of honorable and proud trolls, I object to this man’s branding. Repeatedly targeting someone just because you don’t agree with their politics isn’t a joke. It’s pathetic bullying dressed up as trolling. I recognize the appetite for a reaction, though. Attention can turn even criticism into a prize. If every post becomes a debate about his latest provocation, he gets to set the agenda for a place he doesn’t run. Even by writing this piece and knowing that trolls don’t deserve attention, I recognize he’s probably loving every minute of it.

Hannah found a better use for that attention. On September 18, she invited Astorians to a chalk-a-thon. Kids, artists and neighbors covered the block with drawings. She baked cookies and says they raised more than $250 for the Queens Community Defense Fund, which supports families affected by immigration enforcement. What began as one person’s attempt to remove a message became a larger, brighter version of it. The next day the “Chalk Vandal” returned but faced a sidewalk full of chalk. Footage of him trying and failing to erase it made the rounds and drew laughs.

There is an almost absurd lesson in that. If the aim was to make QED’s support for immigrant families less visible, the result was a sidewalk full of neighbors and a fundraiser for those families. He could erase a drawing. He couldn’t erase the people who came to make another one.

Facebook posts from an account many have already identified as his include insults, a sarcastic claim that QED hired him for publicity and his bogus claim that he is being “doxxed” after his performance on camera. The account then mockingly called her “Hannah Leibersteinshitz,” an alteration many would consider blatantly antisemitic. The other names he used aren’t appropriate to put in this column. Hannah says she made police reports.

After the Facebook posts, she says an officer told her that if she asked him to stop naming her and QED and he continued, she might have a harassment case. She made that request; he changed her name to a crude sexual insult, she says, and she could not reach that officer again. Instead, she says, a detective told her they were “both being petty,” suggested she stop making chalk art and dismissed her concern about antisemitism. I have not heard the detective’s account.

An investigator can decide whether any law applies. But after Hannah followed an officer’s suggested step and reported another insult, suggesting she stop advertising events outside her own business misses the pattern she asked the precinct to examine. No wonder neighbors were angry.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even commented on Hannah’s post that the situation was unacceptable and said her office would contact the 114th Precinct to help keep people safe. That is a welcome response. What happens next matters more than the comment: Hannah deserves to have the full sequence heard and assessed seriously.

The rest of us have a part that doesn’t require learning the man’s name or visiting his page. Go to a show at QED. Bring a friend to a free event. Buy a drink (for me too). Support the Queens Community Defense Fund if you can. Let Hannah know that the place she helped save matters to the neighborhood.

And if you walk past a fresh chalk drawing outside, take a moment to look at what’s on. It might lead you into a room full of people you didn’t know were your neighbors.

From one troll to another: thanks for the publicity. You tried to erase QED’s message and helped raise money for the families it supports. The chalk will wash away. You can’t undo the crowd you brought to that sidewalk—You mad bro? Honk.