What People Do All Day
Levittown and Hicksville lead on education and health care — teachers, aides, nurses and
techs, on their feet through a shift and lifting for a living. Garden City, Jericho and
Plainview run to finance and professional services: a desk, then the parkway.
The first complaint is rarely the same. Standing tolerance is one problem. Hip flexors that
have been folded for nine hours are a different one.
Stairs, or None at All
The original Levitt capes and ranches sit on concrete slabs. No basement and no cellar stairs,
but a steep staircase cut into the attic that was never meant to be a bedroom.
The split-levels and high ranches built from the mid-fifties to the seventies put half-flights
everywhere and the laundry downstairs. Pre-war houses in Garden City, Roslyn and Oyster Bay
have a full flight, and often the only proper bathroom at the top of it.
What Is Nearby
Patients come home from NYU Langone Hospital–Long Island in Mineola, from Syosset
Hospital’s orthopedic center, from Plainview Hospital and from Long Island Jewish in
New Hyde Park.
Bethpage State Park’s five courses, the Black among them, bring a steady stream of people
whose goal is eighteen holes on a walking course. Eisenhower Park in East Meadow does the same
for tennis, softball and the pool.