Astoriapolis is an Astoria, Queens-based video storytelling project on Instagram and TikTok. The social media experiment stems from my neighborhood blog, Corner of Astoria that evolved from periodic updates on zoning, real estate and politics into a historical investigation. I had spent lock-down in 2020 working on a blog post on the backstory of Paretti Hall, which unlocked an earlier era of Queens. In 2026, drawing from the material I found in the archives, and the experience of living in Queens, I set out to make a series of related video-essays.