“It’s sort of like a bunch of kids with a clubhouse in the weeds somewhere,” said Victor Crozzoli, 55, a 35-year member. “We can rev our engines — I mean, we could shoot off fireworks — and there’s nobody around to complain.”  At 103 years old, Queensboro is perhaps the oldest motorcycle club in New York City. For more than 70 of those years, its home has been the modest clubhouse on the parcel it owns on 34th Avenue, a half-block from Citi Field.  But the clubhouse’s future is now in question, with the city in the process of clearing this area, known as the Iron Triangle, to begin a massive residential and commercial development project. The club had been negotiating to sell its property to the city, which would then sell the club a suitable property elsewhere in Queens, but those talks have stalled, said the club’s vice president, Billy Goldstein, 54.  “The city has told us to sit tight for now,” he said. If the city tries to use eminent domain to oust the club, the members are ready to rumble, Mr. Goldstein said before one of the club’s monthly meetings began on a recent Thursday night.  The auto shops had rolled down their metal gates and the area had become desolate except for a couple of dozen men, mostly working-class guys from Queens and Long Island, who gathered in the clubhouse. They wore leather jackets or vests with the club’s logo on the back in yellow and black, and many gathered by the bar and drank and smoked cigarettes.  First came roll call — “Ronnie, Curtis, Doc, Spider” — and the meeting was called to order, with Mr. Goldstein presiding at a card table, along with the club president, Mark Marciano, 48, and the road captain, Keith Anstead, 48.  There were updates on recent rides and planning for coming ones, as well as smaller items: who would cook for an upcoming chili contest, who would bring the doughnuts for the coming Sunday’s ride, and who was interested in attending a wedding at another motorcycle club in Riverhead, on Long Island.  When Mr. Goldstein, who recently had back surgery, announced that he would be participating in the Sunday ride, there were cheers around the clubhouse.  The Thursday night meetings are open to the public. Strangers are welcome to pop in for a drink at the long bar that occupies one full side of the clubhouse. It is a boisterous scene, but outsiders should not get carried away. At one end of the bar is a rack of six long ax handles with a sign that reads: “Authorized Personnel Only.”  Old photographs of members on motorcycles line the walls, along with dozens of trophies and plaques from motorcycle rallies and other documents dating to the club’s formation in 1910 during the early days of motorcycles.  In the 1930s, Queensboro’s headquarters was about a mile to the south, in what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, but the club was displaced without compensation to make way for the 1939 World’s Fair, Mr. Crozzoli, the club historian, said.  The club bought the Willets Point parcel from the city around 1940 and built a simple metal tool shed with a pitched roof. Electricity came later, and there was no running water until the 1990s.  “I think the reason for the longevity of the club, it’s something in our DNA, in our character,” said Mr. Crozzoli, who grew up in nearby College Point and has been hanging around the clubhouse since he was 11. “We’re a little wacky, a little unique, and I think it’s helped us evolve with the times.”  The club has always been law-abiding, family-oriented and very unified, said Mr. Marciano, of Freeport, N.Y. In addition to several group rides per week, it organizes frequent charity events and community service outings, and big picnics for members’ families.  There is a summertime bikers’ rodeo with events like the Porta-Potty pull — one member on a motorcycle pulls a portable toilet with another member inside — and One Way Out, a race named after an Allman Brothers song, in which a contestant lying on a mattress must pull on a pair of pants and jump out a mock-up of a window, as if to outrun a woman’s husband who has just returned home.  The club has roughly 50 dues-paying members, all male — and many more associate members, some female, who participate in some activities but cannot vote.
The clubhouse of the Queensboro Motorcycle Club, perhaps the city’s oldest such group, may have to make way for a massive redevelopment project.