‘Queens is the future,’ borough’s new road signs declare
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The “Welcome to Queens” signs were updated with a new slogan this week. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards/X
By Ryan Schwach
Some say Queens is the future — and now the borough’s road signs do too.
New signage greeting travelers on the borough’s major thoroughfares reads “Queens is the Future,” a nod to the borough’s diversity, vibrancy, growth as a destination and rise as a political power.
The addition came at the behest of Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, his signature catchphrase – “Queens get the money” – be damned.
"Borough President Richards has always been clear that Queens is the blueprint for what a strong, equitable future should look like in our society,” said the BP’s spokesperson, Chris Barca. “These signs cement that vision and serve as a reminder that there is no borough more vibrant than Queens. It also sends a message that in these turbulent times as a nation, no location in the country is more representative of our core American values of strength through diversity than Queens."
Richards celebrated the updated signs with a post on social media.
“Changed the slogan,” he said with an emoji of a fist and a picture of the new signage.
The new signs weren’t just created because Richards wanted a new phrase to adorn them – they had to be updated in January with the name of the city’s new mayor, former Queens resident Zohran Mamdani.
“As with every new administration, NYC DOT updates the welcome signs,” said DOT spokesperson Vincent Barone. “Borough President Richards proposed this new slogan during conversations with his office on the signage update, and we worked to accommodate his request.”
The DOT maintains nine “Welcome to Queens” signs at the borough’s borders, including on the Belt Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, the Grand Central Parkway, the Cross Island Parkway, the Clearview Expressway and on two of Queens’ bridges.
Richards is no stranger to catchphrases. His use of Queens-born rapper Nas’ “Queens get the money” is familiar to anyone who has spent any time around the BP, who began his second full term in office in January.
Queens pols and artists Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel unveil a restored “Queens is the Future” mural in 2022. Photo by Bridget Bartolini
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.
