Best Field Trip

New York Hall of Science

47-01 111th St., Flushing, 718-699-0005

There are lots of kids’ museums and plenty of play spaces, but the Hall of Science combines the best of both, with an indoor lab as well as a 30,000-square-foot science-themed outdoor fun zone. Built as a pavilion for the 1964–65 World’s Fair, the wavy Richard Serra–ish structure is now home to several nasa-castoff rockets, a pitching cage where kids can learn about velocity, and a surfboard ride that illustrates the physics of balancing. Even the playground is instructive: A steel jungle gym offers a lesson in tensile strength, and a giant seesaw helps kids understand levers. Worth a trip on the 7 train just for the cow-eye dissections—if only because today’s preteen gross-out enthusiast is tomorrow’s surgeon.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine

Competition breeds the best. If only one pizzeria existed in New York, of course, there’d be no real winning slice. Thankfully, we’ll never know what that sorry situation tastes like, since pizza—like dance parties, dog runs, and fried chicken—has to evolve upward here.