While “Queens is the future” doesn’t have the same hip-hop roots, it was also born from art.
The phrase likely stems from a mural in Jackson Heights, which includes the slogan, written in white against a red banner next to a subway train lifting off the ground with the help of rocket thrusters.
It was painted in 2007 on the wall of a handball court at I.S. 145 in Jackson Heights by married artists Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel.
In the years since, it’s joined the Unisphere, the Pepsi Cola sign and the Queensboro Bridge as an iconic Queens landmark.
“It’s an honor to contribute to the city in this way,” Frankel recently told the Eagle over the phone. “The mural has been a dream, and having it echoed on these signs is a dream that I never even thought was possible.”
New York natives Frankel and Biddle came up with “Queens is the Future” when conceiving the mural. They said the phrase was inspired by their own personal experiences with the borough and its people.
“Places that have many people from different backgrounds and experiences compressed together or packed together in a dense space, these are the places that become factories of new ideas all across history,” Frankel said. “The places that have been centers of culture and science and invention and philosophy and new ideas that change the world.”
The mural made headlines when Sony Pictures added, without the artists’ permission, a depiction of Queens-born superhero Spider-Man to the image, along with the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. The mural deteriorated following Sony’s incursion.
In 2022, the mural was restored to its former glory with the help of funding from Richards and other local officials.
In the years since, the borough has begun to live up to the phrase.
The city recently approved some of the largest housing developments and rezonings in the city’s history in Queens. Later this year, the city will begin to welcome residents to Willets Point, an entirely new neighborhood in the five boroughs.
Queens will also soon have two of the city’s first full-fledged casinos at Metropolitan Park and Resorts World, which were approved by the state last year.
The borough also remains the most diverse county in the country.
“When I’m in Queens and I feel the entire world all around me in a single place, it continues to inspire me,” Frankel said.