Things to Do in North New Hyde Park

Turn your soul’s storage unit over to Dead Apple Tours for a two-hour sightseeing trip covering some of the city's deathiest spots. Up to seven passengers will climb inside "Desdemona," a 1960 Cadillac hearse, and then be whisked away in the funeral coach to Manhattan's macabre landmarks of murder, death, and mystery. See where President James Monroe spent his last days before his patriotic-to-the-end July 4, 1831, death, and cruise past the locations where artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring each saw final brushstrokes painted upon their respective mortal canvases. Other sights on the tour include the apartment buildings where Heath Ledger and Sid Vicious died, as well as the scene of mobster "Crazy Joe" Gallo's 1972 death by mob-hit. Dead Apple Tours also highlights the grisly histories of such landmarks as the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge and explores true-life tales of mayhem and mutilation, such as Hangman's Elm and the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park—the latter of which is guaranteed to temporarily remove soup from tour-takers' diets.

The New York Kids Club provides Big Apple families with enriching entertainment for both the young and the young-at-heart. On Friday night, the club holds its week-wrapping-up events—Friday Fun for Everyone or Pajama Party:

Queens Museum of Art plumps imaginations and piques visual interest with an ever-growing collection of art and educational programs. A one-year membership guarantees family admission for the entirety of a 365-day period, a 10% discount at the museum store, four free passes to the museum, and a free game of catch with the docent of your choice. Once inside the art vault, guests are free to gambol with their legs and frolic with their eyes over exhibitions such as the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, which dazzles brainwaves with lampshades, windows, and more than 200 flat glassworks made for and used by Tiffany Studios.

New York City has her bustling waterways to thank for a rich history of art, industry, and cultural development—perhaps more than any other factor. The sea carried in a stream of tens of millions of immigrants and fueled the industrial age in one of the country’s most accessible portals to the world. South Street Seaport Museum’s massive gallery space in Schermerhorn Row Block pays tribute to a bygone age while bridging it to the city’s modern aquatic-shipping and transport industry. Some exhibits illuminate the past, such as the pseudo-marketplace at Coffee, Fish, and the Tattooed Man and the immaculately preserved hotel at Remains of the Stay, while others highlight modern issues such as the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Weighted with history, the museum’s fleet of tugboats, schooners, and sloops stays stalwartly afloat, each with its own story to tell; built in 1885, the Wavertree was one of the last wrought-iron sailing ships commissioned, and the Pioneer has spent more than 120 years feeding the economy with boatloads of lumber, stone, brick, oyster shells, and tourists. The majestic four-masted bark Peking represents the famous German Flying P-Liners, designed to be crewed entirely by birds.