Celebrating 20 years of YouTube: From the Big Duck to Jones Beach, these videos reflect Long Island in all our glory

The first YouTube video was posted 20 years ago on April 23, 2005 ( "Me at The Zoo"). Since then ...

Well, how to possibly get your head around that "since then?"

For starters, some 20 billion videos have been uploaded since then. A vast and growing "creator economy" has grown up on YouTube since then, too.

In 2025, YouTube has become the single largest TV viewing source on the planet, far surpassing all those others (like Netflix), with 500 hours uploaded each minute, amounting to about 262 million hours a year.

As much ocean as website — the world's second most visited site after Google — navigating YouTube is both a breeze and nightmare. Marking this 20th anniversary, Newsday decided to give it a try anyway by taking a YouTube tour of Long Island.

With roughly 55 million Long Island-related videos to choose from — those tagged with the phrase "Long Island," or which have "Long Island" in their title — this turned out to be both breeze and nightmare.

Indeed, "Long Island" in the search bar yields an astonishing number of "Long Island Medium" clips — the most viewed among them (9.3 million) is Kate McKinnon's "Saturday Night Live" parody. But the search term "Massapequa" offers an unwieldy number, too (37,000). (Neither YouTube nor parent Alphabet offer precise figures.)

So to create this 20th anniversary viewing tour, I backed into this obvious question: What people, places or things best express the culture so uniquely and vividly Long Island?

There's no right video here, just as there's no right answer. There is, however, a cornucopia to choose from. A journey through YouTube in search of the Real Long Island turns up something both moving and hilarious, but also irrefutable: This 118-mile stretch, unlike any other place on earth, is full of natural beauty, human comedy, dazzling cultural variety and a lot of places to eat.

Let's go to the videos:

THE BIG DUCK

Built in 1931 by a duck farmer who hoped to use this as a store to sell (what else?) ducks and duck eggs, the Big Duck of Flanders has since become probably the Island's best-known landmark. With all this fame, it makes perfect sense someone should bring his own duck to the Big Duck for this selfie.

PILGRIM STATE

The 1985 movie "Murder: By Reason of Insanity" was based on Pilgrim State patient Adam Z. Berwid, who stabbed his wife to death in 1979 while on a one-day pass from what was once the world's largest — and now largely empty — psychiatric hospital in Brentwood. But Pilgrim State's notoriety long predates that. Indie filmmaker Erik K. Swanson nicely captures all this in just two minutes here.

JONES BEACH

London-based Kinolibrary archives thousands of hours of what it calls "rare and inspiring archive footage" — some of which has made its way to YouTube, including this remarkable 37 second 16 mm clip of Jones Beach. No date is given here, other than "1940s Long Island." One immediate observation: Just as crowded back then.

LAKE RONKONKOMA

Lake Ronkonkoma — a so-called glacial "kettle" lake and the largest body of freshwater on the Island — was once a thriving tourist destination, with grand hotels like the Lake Ronkonkoma Inn and the Thompson House catering to the New York elite who could get here via William Vanderbilt's Long Island Motor Parkway. "That 1930's Guy" is here to tell you all about it. Bonus: Here's a 1950s home movie of a family enjoying a day at the lake:

THE SHORES OF THE SHINNECOCK

Author, filmmaker, member of the Shinnecock Nation (and chair of the Graves Protection Warrior Society) Shane Weeks has posted a series of videos about Shinnecock life and culture. His goal, he writes, is to "spread awareness and bridge the gaps between the Shinnecock community and communities abroad."

BAY HOUSES

Austere, functional, charming, Long Island's unique housing stock — or what's left of it — is perched on the edge of salt marshland and subject to the vicissitudes of tide, weather and time. Also the vicissitudes of developments — scores were razed when the Wantagh and Meadowbrook parkways were built, according to "Long Island Traditions," which says there are just 30 left near Woodmere and Hewlett and 42 in the town of Islip dating from the early 1900s.

DATELINE: LONG ISLAND

This amazing 1964 video is actually a Newsday promotional film that celebrates the joys of midcentury suburbia (as well as the newspaper covering it). In addition to a glimpse of Camp Newsday, a summer retreat for newspaper delivery boys, there's also a segment on Harry Guggenheim, the philanthropist who founded the paper in 1940 and became publisher in 1963 upon the death of his third wife, Alicia Patterson. 

LONG ISLAND'S HIDDEN HISTORY

Yes, there are plenty of Long Island history videos, but "Long Island's Hidden History" stands out. In what may have begun as a pandemic project, an enterprising filmmaker named Christian Barba got the idea of producing a series of videos on the "hidden history" of Long Island. They are fascinating, too, starting with the first episode about the Long Island Rail Road.

ROBERT MOSES

The Babylon resident did more to change New York than anyone else in history, and more to change Long Island, too. This fascinating career retrospective says Moses only learned about the otherwise inaccessible Jones Beach by taking his small boat there. The future chairman of the State Council of Parks and Long Island State Park Commission had big plans for that beach — the rest of the Island, too.

JERICHO HIGH VIDEO YEARBOOK 1989

Long before YouTube, long before the internet, an enterprising student at Jericho High had the idea of filming his senior class for this "Jericho High School Video Yearbook." It was inevitable that like some message in a bottle that washes up on a distant beach it would find its way to YouTube. Watch this and prepare to be fully immersed in a now-distant era — distant, except for the optimism and vitality here that feels as fresh as yesterday.

SUMMER '82 INTERVIEWS

Hey, what exactly were Long Islanders talking about in the summer of 1982 — or more specifically, Long Islanders who were shopping in Glen Cove and Greenvale on July 22, 1982? YouTube may be the only place in the universe where you can get an answer. This amusing clip features an unidentified interviewer who asks random people-shoppers, "You enjoying your summer, or what?" The accents (and hair) are quintessential Long Island, circa '82.

ALL AMERICAN HAMBURGER

 The iconic burger drive-thru (founded in 1963) has a special place in the hearts and minds of YouTube posters everywhere, judging from all the extant videos. This brief and representative Travel Channel clip features co-owner Phil Vultaggio III (grandson of the founder, Philip Vultaggio, who died in 2013 at the age of 91) who says "love and a lot of practice" explains the enduring success.

ZORN'S OF BETHPAGE

 Besides poultry, what Zorn's has done awfully well is embrace YouTube. The 85-year-old institution has posted a series of videos over the years, some narrated by founder Peter Zorn's granddaughter Merrill. These aren't mere infomercials, but nostalgic time capsules of a lost world.

BOARDY BARN

From 1971 to 2021, Hampton Bays' Boardy Barn was famous for — in no particular order — beer, smiley-face stickers, a huge red-and white-striped tent and beer. How much beer? This throwback video from 2015 hints at a considerable volume. The original BB — just one of many Island clubs from the '70s — did close down but a pop-up version arrived in Manhattan last year.

LI's HIP-HOP SCENE

In just under three minutes, the first video offers a concise if hardly exhaustive history of hip-hop on Long Island, beginning with Public Enemy. Meanwhile, the latter ranks the icons of Long Island rap (No. 5? Biz Markie. No. 1? Busta Rhymes.)

 NATIONAL SPEEDWAY COMMERCIAL ("SUNDAY!!!!")

 Here's the ubiquitous radio commercial for New York National Speedway in Center Moriches — one of the many stock car tracks and drag strips that once flourished on Long Island. It closed in 1980.

LOCAL COMMERCIALS

A few local commercials have burned themselves (for better or ill) into our collective memory banks. Like these two: Brothers 3 Pools of Bethpage ("My uncle makes them, my father sells them..") and the now-shuttered Fun Zone of Farmingdale ("Hold on, kids ..." )

WLIR/92.7

Hugely influential Hempstead-based WLIR essentially ended its historic run at the end of 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission finally revoked a temporary license (after which WLIR became WDRE). This old clip from a newscast lamented the end — and got some memorable sound bites from some of the legendary DJs-in-mourning there, like Donna Donna and Larry "The Duck" Dunn.

THE GOOD RATS

How many times did one of Long Island's most iconic bands, the Good Rats, play at one of the Island's most iconic venues, My Father's Place in Roslyn? This brief clip from 1974 doesn't give an answer, but it does hint at just how much fun those gigs must have been.

LONG ISLAND PHILHARMONIC

Born in 1979, the passion project of Huntington newcomer Harry Chapin, the Long Island Philharmonic became a treasured institution. Then came the hard times: Brilliant founding music director Christopher Keene died in 1995 and the large government grants started to dry up. The Philharmonic collapsed in 2016 but lives on here — this clip featuring a tribute to Louis Armstrong.