The Hole is a small, low-lying neighborhood straddling the Brooklyn-Queens border near Ozone Park, sitting roughly 30 feet below the surrounding streets — a sunken geography that gives the area its name and has historically cut it off from city infrastructure, including sewers. Known informally as the "Jewel Streets neighborhood" for its gem-named blocks (Ruby, Emerald, Amber), the area has long been characterized by vacant lots, chronic flooding, and a frontier-like isolation unusual for New York City, and gained notoriety as a site where organized crime figures disposed of victims in the late 1970s and early 1980s.