Joanna Eng

If you can’t get away from it all, at least take an afternoon off to escape to Long Island City, where the East River is glad to serve as your buffer from the mania of Midtown. Sling your feet up in an orange webbed hammock, or stake out a red Adirondack chair that’s playfully hidden in grasses, while you wonder (idly, of course) what they’re all up to in the United Nations Headquarters, the Empire State Building, and countless other skyscrapers within view. The skyline looks almost close enough to touch, but your colleagues—scouring spreadsheets and sweating in suit jackets, so you imagine—are in another world entirely. Suckers.