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LUANN MESTRE, just back from an invigorating 10-mile run, gestures across Astoria Park, past the track - teeming with runners, walkers and exercisers - and out toward the East River and the New York skyline.
"Isn't this a beautiful park?" she asks rhetorically.
A half-dozen runners in various stages of dress - there are shorts and T-shirts as well as polypropylene jogging suits on this late winter day - nod in assent. These are members of the Hellgate Road Runners club - a group Mestre and her husband, Jared, founded in 1996. The club shares its name with the second of the two magnificent bridges that loom high over Astoria Park, adding to the awe-inspiring view (both the club and the majestic Hell Gate railroad bridge are named after the treacherous East River channel, located north of the park, that bedeviled sea captains for decades).
It's hard to disagree with Luann's assessment. If nothing else, Astoria Park offers the best New York City view of any Queens park. Unlike Alley Pond, Cunningham or Kissena - local parks with woods deep enough that you can imagine you are someplace else - Astoria proclaims its locale and identity as assertively as a New York City tourist commissioner. You know you're in New York when you're in Astoria Park.
Yet, despite the presence of a Triborough Bridge tower soaring 315 feet overhead, despite the towers of uptown Manhattan buildings in the distance, despite the captivating and varied forms of East River traffic that pass across the park's horizon, Astoria Park is anything but passive. Sure you could probably spend hours just sitting on one of the benches here, admiring the view (and plenty of folks do, particularly on Shore Boulevard, at the western edge of the park, famous for its nocturnal visitors, couples who come to park, sit in their car, gaze dreamily over the skyline and do ... well, whatever else comes to mind). But most of those who come to Astoria are here not to spectate but to participate. In fact, the Saturday morning we visited, the place looked like a health club with the roof torn off: People were running, walking, doing push- ups and pull-ups, playing tennis.
The centerpiece of all this action...