Hi, my name is Ajay. I live in Hicksville, New York. Hicksville is a town in Nassau County and a part of Long Island. Hicksville is a relatively quiet neighborhood, with all private residential houses, or some town houses that are slowly on their way out. Hicksville isn’t too deep into Long Island, it takes about 15 minutes to enter Queens. Hicksville is compltely suburban still, but I feel that this is going to change soon as other neighborhoods slightly west of here have been becoming more crowded and apartment buildings have started becoming more common.

There isn’t really one big place to recognize in Hicksville. Recently, a lot more Indian stores and restaurants have been appearing in Hicksville, and this is becoming a more Asian oriented neighborhood. About 10 – 15 years ago, it was almost all German and Irish people living here.

Hicksville has about 5 elementary schools, and 1 Middle School, and 1 High School. These elementary schools aren’t as spread out as you would think, a few of them are pretty close to one another. I live in between two schools, and ended up going to the one that is further away from my house.

There really is one main road that cuts through Hicksville. The official name is Rt. 107, but everyone here just refers to it as “Broadway”, because it has all the stores, and is basically the business district of this area. This is where all the Indian restaurants are, the supermarket is, and most of the American food chains are also on this one road.

The average household contains about 2 kids and 2 adults. The majority of the homes are single family, but there are a few two family homes around. Most of the homes were built in the 1950’s, but a lot of people now are opting to tear down the old home, and rebuild a new one from scratch. Most of the homes here look somewhat similar to one another, and most have some amount of brick on the front, with two doors, one in the front and one in the back. Not many homes have side doors here. There are about 40,000 people living here, so its not exactly a small town, but a medium sized one. Each home has about 3 floors, a basement, the main floor, and one floor upstairs. Attics aren’t too common here, but some newer homes do have them. My house is from the 50’s but it has been improved since then by the previous owner, and my family too. Homes here have pretty big backyards, and you could technically fit another home in the backyard, if it was legal to.

Commuting to the city isn’t too bad here, as long as you take the Long Island Rail Road. If you take the LIRR, it takes about 50 minutes to get to Atlantic Terminal, which is right next to Barclays Center, or about 45 minutes to get to Penn Station. If you choose to drive, it would take close to two hours if its during rush hour in the morning, or evening. At any other time you could go to the city within an hour to an hour and a half. I wouldn’t drive to the city too much, but i’d choose to take the train like I do to get to school daily.

Hicksville is overall a pretty quiet neighborhood. We’re still not too deep into Long Island, but only about 10 miles away from the Queens border. I think that in the next few years, we will slowly start become more gentrified mainly because we aren’t too far from the city, and the city would definitely benefit from more space.