If you want to see the other side of New York; chop shops, scrapyards, and garbage dumps, then you need to watch Chop Shop, a film shot in Willets Point, Queens. I just finished watching it on Netflix.
It is easy to forget that outside of the gargantuan skyscrapers in Manhattan, and the growing metropolis of Brooklyn, lies Queens, a working class borough with neighborhoods one would be more likely to find in cities like Detroit or Cleveland, than the fantasy filmmakers consistently deliver of life in the aforementioned neighborhoods of New York City.
We get to see a young kid hustling, trying to save up money he makes in a chop shop, by living in that chop shop, attempting to rescue his teenage sister from the streets. His sister sells herself, at times, works with him in the chop shop, at times, and hangs out with “friends” that are negative influences on her. Even though this kid is too young to be a teenager, he is focused on purchasing a truck so he can live out dreams of being a street vendor.
For some this is the day to day minutiae of life for real New Yorkers that aren’t rich, middle class, or even the working poor. This is that side of New York that your average tourist is afraid to venture through; while your urban explorers are busy exploring areas like Dumbo, Brooklyn or one of many infamous high rise projects, areas in Queens offer a different, almost “Midwestern” aesthetic in a city known for building into the heavens above, and the hell beneath. Great movie if you never seen it before …