The highway is mainly elevated in Brooklyn, with some open-cut sections. In Queens, the highway is a mix of elevated, open-cut and at-grade sections. The BQE was built in the 1950s, it was completed in 1964. The part that passes over the Gowanus Canal leading to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is known as the Gowanus Expressway.
Motorists who drive the BQE know that it can be hard to find an entrance onto the elevated highway from Brooklyn side streets. Perhaps the funniest BQE sight gag was in the 1990 movie Quick Change starring Bill Murray, in which Murray robs a Manhattan bank disguised as a circus clown. Murray and his cohorts escape from Manhattan in their getaway car, only to take the wrong turn from the BQE -- they find it impossible to get back on. Murray finds a sign reading "To I-278," but the arrow at the bottom of the sign rotates around, and around....