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Lake Ronkonkoma. Long Island, NY. Suburb of NYC. It was originally settled as a kind of working class summer community around the lake with pavillions that featured big bands and other entertainments. It's located at the end of Vanderbilt Motor Parkway, the first highway on Long Island and people would drive out from Queens and Brooklyn to little bungalows located around the lake. A little later the pavillions gave way to regular bars and some halfway houses for people with various problems and it was a pretty funky little town for a while in a low rent kind of way. I think it had more bars per capita than most other towns around here. Now it's pretty much a regular suburb with the bungalows converted to year round housing and lots of development over the last few decades. The lake has the obligatory legend attached to it, regarding a Native American princess, starcrossed romance with a member of a different tribe and now the lake takes one young man a year, or so they say.
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