Business officials want to change Long Island City to LIC
Don’t call us Long Island!
Officials and business leaders want to change the name of Queens neighborhood Long Island City to the trendier “LIC” — so as not to be confused with Long Island.
“It’s bad for hotels, it’s bad for real estate, and it’s bad for morale,” said Rob MacKay, head of the Queens Local Development Corp. Tourism Council.
“It puts us out on Long Island, and that’s inaccurate — we are urban and hip.”
The name is also a problem when MacKay tries to persuade foreign travel agents to book guests in the neigbhorhood’s hotels.
“They are constantly telling me that when they do booking and see Long Island City, they say, ‘Oh, that’s too far’ from Manhattan — they think it’s either in suburban hell or the Hamptons.”
The 21 hotels in Long Island City’s East River waterfront area could be losing 5 percent of their business simply because of the confusion, said Jeffrey Reich-Hale of the Wyndham Garden hotel.
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Businesses never cease to shock me with their monumental self-centeredness. You actually want the world to change to suit you. You think your bottom line is the most important thing on everyone’s mind. Well, guess what?
You are there to serve the community. We do not exist to serve you. You are making a living, be joyful. You are as bad as any other conquerer. You come to a place, push your weight around, cause everyone around you to accommodate you, change absolutely everything, then decide the geography works against you. You are, in fact on Long Island. Manhattan is that big thing across that cold wet blue stuff you can’t walk on. You are not in Manhattan, that is why you can afford to open a business.
Now I know what the Indians felt like. It wasn’t the fact that the people were white that made them invaders, it was their superior economic strength, selfishness and their control of the press.
IF you will go so far as to change the name of the place for an extra 5% you are greedy beyond belief. Your profit has blinded you to the world around you.
“Suburban hell?” Yes, I’m sure that possibility is the most pressing concern for travelers from Trieste.
And to the gentleman at the Wyndham Gardens hotel and his customers’ “confusion”: that hotel is near the intersection of Vernon and 44th Drive. If you walk on Vernon to the 7, that’s one stop to Manhattan; walk on 44th Drive to the E or M, it’s one stop to Manhattan. Sounds like the confusion belongs to the hired help, not the tourists.
Excellent idea.
“It puts us out on Long Island, and that’s inaccurate…”
Last time I checked, Long Island City is most definitely on Long Island…. hence the name. It’s of course not in Nassau or Suffolk counties, but nevertheless, geography is geography.
Perhaps what they should do, in addition to changing their name (like KFC did) is to secede to Brooklyn, because I’m sure being in Queens doesn’t help them much either. Then they could really be “urban and hip”.
It was Long Island City when you opened your business there, deal with it.
sorry to say Long Island City IS on Long Island – the western edge – anything else to help this self-absorbed neighborhood?