37-20 61st Str, Woodside, NY 11377
Woodside, Queens
Three examination lanes for the sight test and the health check, and a frame room next door with its own optician's bench — the same practice, the same visit if you want it. Book an eye examination, or come in and look at frames without one.
Some of this cannot wait for an appointment. Sight lost suddenly, a curtain or shadow across your vision, a shower of new floaters with flashes of light, or a painful red eye with vision that has dropped: that is an emergency room today, not an appointment. Everything else, ring and describe it.
Where to start
Pick whichever one is actually why you are here.
The full check: how you see, and how your eyes are.
Most people come for this and have not had one for longer than they think. It covers how well you see at distance and near, how your eyes work together, the pressure inside them, and the health of the front and the back of each eye. You leave with a written prescription whether or not you buy anything here.
Forty-five minutes, and longer the first time.
A red eye, a sudden change, a knock, something in it.
We keep time free every day for eyes that cannot wait until next week. Ring rather than book online, because the right answer is sometimes to send you straight past us. A sudden loss of sight, a curtain across your vision or a flash of light with new floaters is an emergency room, today, not an appointment.
Same day where we can, twenty-five minutes.
The frame room, the lens bench, and the fitting.
Four house collections, from children's flexible frames to hand-finished acetate and titanium, with the lens options and coatings priced separately so you can see what you are choosing. Browse without an appointment, bring a prescription from anywhere, and come back as often as you like to have them adjusted.
Half an hour with the optician, no appointment needed to browse.
The frame room
Everything in the frame room is one of our own collections, from children's flexible frames to hand-finished acetate and titanium. Lenses and coatings are priced separately from the frame, so you can see what you are choosing.
Hand-finished acetate, classic shapes.
Cut from Italian acetate sheet and tumbled for three days until the edges go soft, which is the part that makes an acetate frame feel expensive and is the part nobody can see. Shapes that were correct forty years ago and will be correct in forty more.
Titanium, as little of it as the frame will stand.
For people who want to forget they are wearing anything. Titanium takes a much thinner section than steel at the same strength, so a Larkspur weighs about as much as a letter and does not corrode against skin. It is the collection we fit most often to somebody who has been told they cannot wear metal.
Bigger, bolder, and meant to be noticed.
Heavier sections, stronger colour, and shapes with corners in them. A frame is the only thing most people wear every day without choosing it deliberately, and this collection is for the ones who would like to choose it deliberately.
Children's frames that survive being a child's.
Flexible nylon that bends a long way before it breaks, rounded edges, spring hinges, and no metal against the skin. Sized properly rather than scaled down from an adult frame, because a frame that sits wrong on a child is a frame whose lens is not in front of the eye, and in a child that matters more than in an adult.
The appointment diary
A frame adjustment is fifteen minutes at the dispensing table. A first contact lens fitting is an hour in a lane. The twelve appointment types below run at eight different lengths in all, and every one publishes its fee before you book.
| Visit | Where | Length | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive eye examination | Examination lane | 45 min (+15 first visit) | $145 |
| Contact lens fitting | Examination lane | 60 min | $125 |
| Contact lens follow-up | Examination lane | 20 min (+10 first visit) | $55 |
| Children's eye examination | Examination lane | 40 min (+10 first visit) | $125 |
| Myopia management review | Examination lane | 30 min (+15 first visit) | $95 |
| Dry eye assessment | Examination lane | 40 min | $115 |
| Urgent visit: a red or painful eye | Examination lane | 25 min (+5 first visit) | $95 |
| Diabetic eye screening | Examination lane | 35 min (+10 first visit) | $105 |
| Glaucoma monitoring | Examination lane | 35 min (+10 first visit) | $105 |
| Low vision assessment | Examination lane | 60 min | $155 |
| Frame styling and fitting | Dispensing table | 30 min | Free |
| Repair or adjustment | Dispensing table | 15 min | Free |
Who is here
Whoever is in the practice that day, not a single named optometrist you have to wait for.
Optometrist, and the partner who runs the practice
Nadia opened the practice on 61st Street and still spends four days a week in a lane rather than in the office, which is the arrangement she says she would not give up. Most of the children seen here are seen by her, and the myopia programme is hers: she started keeping eye-length measurements on children years before it was ordinary, which is why some of the records here go back far enough to be worth something.
Optometrist
David does most of the monitoring work here — the people who come back every six months to have the same three measurements taken and laid beside last time's. It is the least dramatic clinic in the building and the one where finding something early actually changes what happens to somebody. He also runs the dry eye assessments, on the grounds that nobody else wanted to.
Optometrist
Marisol takes most of the same-day eyes, which means her diary is deliberately half empty at nine in the morning and rarely half empty by noon. She also runs the low vision assessments, where an hour is spent on the four or five things somebody has stopped doing rather than on a chart, and where the answer is more often a lamp than a device.
Dispensing optician
Tom runs the frame room and the bench behind it. He measures every frame that leaves the building and re-measures most of them a fortnight later, because a frame settles and a settled frame has usually moved the lens away from where it was set. He is also the person who will tell you that the frame you have fallen in love with cannot take the lens you need, which is not a sales technique.
Practice manager
Eileen answers the telephone, keeps the diary honest, and does the work of finding out what a plan says before somebody arrives rather than after. She has been in optical practice for long enough to know which questions get a useful answer out of an insurer and which ones get a form, and she will tell you plainly when the answer is that she cannot find out.
Before you ring
Forty-five minutes, and an hour the first time you come, because the history takes longer than anything else in the appointment. Shorter visits exist for particular things — a contact lens follow-up is twenty minutes and an adjustment is fifteen — and every appointment type on this site says its own length before you book it.
Yes, at the end of the appointment, in writing, without asking, and including the pupillary distance that a lens cannot be made without. It is yours and you may take it anywhere. A practice that makes this difficult is telling you something about itself.
Only if there is a reason, and you will be told before the drops go in rather than after. If they are used, plan on a few hours of blurred near vision and light sensitivity, and do not plan on driving home. Booking the dilation as part of the appointment adds about twenty-five minutes to it.
Yes, for glasses, as long as it is current. For contact lenses we need a contact lens prescription specifically — a spectacle prescription cannot be converted into one — and we will not supply against an expired one without seeing the eye.
Every appointment type on this site publishes its fee before you book. Frames, lenses and coatings are priced separately from each other so you can see what you are choosing, and nothing is ordered before you have been told the price of the whole job.
Ring rather than book online, and describe it. Sight lost suddenly, a curtain across the vision, a shower of new floaters with flashes, or a painful red eye with vision that has dropped means an emergency room today rather than an appointment here. Anything else, we keep time free every day.
Nobody is on the other end of this. This is a demonstration website. Woodside Eye Care is not a real optometry practice, nobody answers the telephone number on this site, and no appointment booked here reaches anybody. If your eye hurts, if your sight has changed suddenly, or if you need an eye examination, please contact a real practice near you or an emergency room.
Ring to book an eye examination, or come in and browse the frame room — no appointment needed to look.