Flushing Meadows holds more than a few aces

If you walk around the park on a summer weekend, however, it seems as if the world decided to stay after the fair left town. Teenagers dressed in the national colors of their native South American countries play a spirited game of soccer, while on an adjacent field, Bengali men in spotless uniforms engage in a cricket match. Korean and Chinese families from nearby Flushing wander the pathways as their children pedal their tricycles, and women dressed in colorful saris push baby carriages past vendors selling empanadas, carne asada, and chorizo con papas.

Central Park is New York's most famous parkland, but Flushing Meadows offers a more authentic slice of the Big Apple. While Central Park is the backyard for the city's ultra-rich and famous, Flushing Meadows is New York's grittier commons. No celebrity-gawking tourists, Bugaboo strollers, and hansom cabs here. Instead, you'll find working-class Queens residents from the borough's diverse ethnic neighborhoods, a small-scale version of the melting pot that has defined the city for centuries.

Planes on their approach into LaGuardia Airport occasionally roar overhead, smoke from family barbecues wafts through the air, and the boisterous shouts and cheers of crowds watching soccer games routinely pierce the air.

The energy of the city permeates Flushing Meadows, but that's part of its appeal. It is a park meant to be used. It's a well-trod recreational playground, where trees are as apt to be used as soccer goalposts and volleyball net poles as they are shady respites from the summer sun. Plus, the park is home to cultural institutions such as a zoo, botanical garden, theater, and museums that rival those in the rest of the city.