On Friday evening, the Astoria Trash Club, Queens DSA Community Solidarity Community, and Pop the Astoria Bubble hosted a joint event to clean up Astoria Park while spreading awareness about Pop the Astoria Bubble’s campaign to stop the privatization of Astoria’s tennis courts.
Astoria Park is seeking to engage a for-profit entity to enclose at least eight of the fourteen tennis courts at Astoria Park with a bubble from mid-October to the end of April, creating indoor courts. The private entity will also be awarded two courts in the summertime, and will construct a clubhouse that will remain open all year.
Pop the Astoria Bubble Organizer Aida Marquetti is a lifelong Astoria resident and Queens DSA Member who said she joined the effort to stop the trend of people, including many of her friends over the years, being priced out of the neighborhood.
“I couldn’t believe it. I grew up in Astoria, and I’ve watched so many of my friends get priced out of their homes, we can’t let them price us out of the tennis courts too!”
There are 105 tennis courts within 30 minutes of Astoria. Only 54 (51%) are free and public in the permit season that spans April to November. In winter, only 24, or 23%, are free and public. 14 of those 24 courts are in Astoria Park, which means if all eight of the possible courts are privatized as listed in the RFP, that would reduce the number of free and public courts outside the permit season by a full one third.
Nearby for-profit tennis court facilities and prices range anywhere from $42 an hour to $250 an hour.
According to Marquetti, the campaign doesn’t have any sort of leadership hierarchy, but does have a core organizing group.
“The original person that started to tell people about the bubble was a senior citizen named Kosta who migrated to Astoria several decades ago. He has played in the tennis courts for over 40 years and started printing flyers and telling other tennis players about the Bubble. Kosta eventually met Yoshi and Meng. Together, they started to pull more people into the collective and did the core research. Then they built the website and an email tool. They were able to get over 2500 signatures to a petition, a figure that is now up to 3500.”
Marquetti got involved by seeing a post from Queens DSA organizer Sara Abiboutros, who also helped get the Queens DSA Community Solidarity Committee on board for the collaboration. Marquetti says another person, Chris DiMino, has been another one of the original core organizers.
Astoria resident and Queens DSA member Michael Inkles attended the trash cleanup and supports Pop the Astoria Bubble, despite not being a tennis player.
“What I love most about Astoria is the wonderful sense of community you get here. Picking up trash with my neighbors really made me feel connected to this place where people from all backgrounds genuinely look out for each other. It’s why I support Pop the Bubble. I’m not a tennis player, but it’s the Astoria way to care about my neighbors who rely on the public courts for the activity they love most.”
Pop the Astoria Bubble is currently rallying residents to their next Community Board meeting on September 22 at 6pm to speak out against the proposal.