54-46, that's my number: the Queens thread

I'm one of those awful people who likes anything if it's spicy enough and jackson diner vindaloo is pretty spicy

another queens favorite of mine (and some ilxors from FAPs past can attest) was taverna kyclades on ditmars. yum grilled octopus!

http://www.tavernakyclades.com/

Holla! My library system actually sort of sucks, but thanks for the shout-out.

Seaburn is either going out of business or renovating. It's a used book store that never has/had anything good in it.

Is Aubergine closed now?

I had a horrible experience at M Wells. I went alone and they made me sit at the "community" table.

Ate at Delhi Palace in Jackson Heights the other day--it's a solid, though unremarkable choice.

Anyone have any good Filipino or other food recs near the Woodside library?

31-45

For the record, I was the first person to write a yelp review of De Mole.

i hope this goes on your tombstone dan

nah aubergine's still open

our favorite place near the library is probably quaint

wayyyy better burgers than donovan's

i just googled the street where my astoria guy lived and it's gentrified so much!

35-14, i believe? all those buildings look the same.

I don't know. On a good day I'll take Donovan's over anybody else. And I have had them at Quaint. I wish they had a larger and more varied menu. Other then that it's a great place. I've been to dinner a few times and always get the roast chicken with gratin potatoes.

Good filipino? I don't know. Payag has gotten mixed reviews. Went once, didn't know what to order, was underwhelmed. Have had breakfast at Engelines, it was good but mostly avoid the places due to low vegetarian friendliness.

Best places around Woodside library...Donovan's obviously, Rico Pan has great cheap empenadas and arepas and other treats. La Flor of course, for breakfast/lunch/brunch. Dinner is good too but more pricey. Rumphool across the street from Donovan's is really good Thai. Not as good as Srip or Chao, but better then anything in Brooklyn!

Cuckoo's Nest for Irish pub grub.

35-14 what? Astoria is a good place to visit to get a meal, but not somewhere I'd want to live. Very euro-trashy! Favorite greek is way up in Ditmars at the very end of queens just across from Astoria park and under the Hellgate bridge...Agnanti Mezze.

roommate always used to suggest fiesta grill for filipino, we never went but it's supposed to be cheap. sorta far from the library though.

ditmars.

yeah astoria feels way more euro-white than gentrified-white

though there are more $$$ restaurants

We love Arepas Cafe in Astoria as well. Same basic thing as Caracas but less hipsters and crowds and instead 1 delicious spicy mystery sauce, they have 2 slightly less mysterious delicious sauces.

The only real sign of gentrification, if you read gentrification as affluent white hipsters instead of affluent white euros (or even affluent white midtown office worker types) is Sparrow and maybe that bar that has deep fried pickles, what's it called?

But Astoria has always had certain amounts of gentrification going on, but always from a different angle. Like there's Astoria "hipsters" who all think they're too cool for sceney Williamsburg (actually just jealous!) and you have people from Long Island who work in midtown that figure Astoria is a good compromise. I'm sorry, I can be such an Astoria hater. But my girlfriend and I always play this game about labeling people as "hipsters" or "queens hipsters", which isn't to say a "queens hipster" is just a hipster who lives in queens. It's a totally different breed. For instance we have more in common with your classic brooklyn hipster then with "queens hipsters". Of course we lived in Brooklyn first.

So sad. We are just talking about food. I love Taverna Cyklades--a little more for the atmosphere than the food. It's on Ditmars around 34th St. I like the place near the park for atmosphere, not so much for food.

Best thing to happen to Astoria this year--the reopening of the Moving Image.

I co-started this thread. I can rant about white people if I want!

We'll try Taverna Cyklades. We had a decent meal at Philoxenia 2 years ago.

Astoria is a good place to visit to get a meal, but not somewhere I'd want to live. Very euro-trashy!

This is so lolsy. And true.

Astoria is a huge place though. I would say only the 30th avenue area could properly be called euro trashy (and that more so on the weekends). The ditmars area is almost sedate and suburban and the broadway area has more of a mix of Spanish and of course the Steinway area is Egyptian.

give me some examples of a "queens hipster."

signed,
brooklyn hipster for most of my life

Went to Ayada Thai recently, best Thai food I've had in the city.

I really do want to find out what's listed on the section of the Rumphool take-out menu that's only in Thai, though. Every time I look at it, it's like it's mocking me

I really do want to find out what's listed on the section of the Rumphool take-out menu that's only in Thai, though. Every time I look at it, it's like it's mocking me

find someone on the internet to translate it! l.a. has a restaurant called jitlada that became a big sensation when a diner made a translation project out of the "thai" (non-gringo) menu and shared it with the world.

not to derail the thread away from queens, but here's the post: http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=13933

And I've had that special Jitlada dish. The southern lamb curry. It was the spiciest most delicious thing I've ever eaten and I still dream about it.

Rumphool seams to be starting to at least put some of their specials in english on the whiteboard.

Ayada is good too, but I prefer Srip and Chao. I used to love Zabb but that was like 3 owners ago.

More on queens hipsters later.

sorry to keep discussing LA, but the deal with Jitlada is that it's this special southern menu that has nothing in common with what know of as regular thai food or the norther/issan styles that are so popular now. Seeing as how Thailand borders Malaysia to the south, it made sense that the food basically tasted more malaysian...at least the dish I had had an earthy/rendang quality to it.

I've been going to the Malaysian and Indonesian places in Elmhurst a lot recently as well, but with mixed results. It's particularly tough because the two people I go with are not meat eaters.

More on queens hipsters later.

There was a great Thai restaurant in Astoria, but it closed down--Poodams.

I don't think there are any hipsters in Queens, not in Astoria anyway. There are annoying college students and recent grads. There might be hipsters in LIC/Sunnyside?

There have always been hipsters sprinkled throughout Astoria. They just don't out. If they did they'd move to Williamsburg.

Poodams was pretty good.

Sunnyside has a few hipsters. LIC doesn't have many left, it's too expensive to live there and overrun by skyscraper dwelling ex-manhattanites. I once met a woman who moved out to sunnyside to save some money. She did her grocery shopping, went to the gym, at dinner, went to the dry cleaner...all in manhattan.

LIC always seems like it has lots of hipsters around PS1 but presumably none of them live nearby

She did her grocery shopping, went to the gym, at dinner, went to the dry cleaner...all in manhattan.

there are so many grocery stores / restaurants / dry cleaners / gyms around here...what a weird way to live your life.

you know what could be a really hip area? blissville. it's so isolated and weird. if I were in charge of queens hipsters I would propose taking over blissville.

pretty crappy transit options tho.

also you will probably get cancer, but that hasn't stopped people from moving to greenpoint

nah, seriously all the studies of the newtown waste issues has the problem spreading directly south and west into greenpoint. Nothing towards queens.

There are tons of brooklyn hipster artists types who have art studios/work in LIC, but don't live there. A few do but not many.

In the years I've lived here, I've seen a few hipster types move up to the south side of sunnyside thinking "hey, it's close to greenpoint! I can bike to Bushwick from here!". (not speculation here, talking about actual people I know!)

Then they get bored and move back.

People of Queens, I ask you:

Is it possible/likely to find an apartment that is
- within a 30-40 min commute of midtown east
- 2 or more bedrooms
- in a relatively safe neighborhood
- with a decent grocery store and a few decent places to eat
- and maybe a little green space too
- for under $1800 a month or less?

And if so, best places to look?

why do queens ppl (apart from vp) not fancy pints

hurting I had to move recently and looked at basically every queens CL posting for a couple weeks so I have a pretty good idea of western queens prices at the moment...I'd say 'absolutely'

except for the green space thing, there's no green space in most of the better neighborhoods in queens

ok I can budge on the green space

wanted to go to the last fap but was busy :( xp

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/abo/2231038895.html

etc.

I concluded recently that there exists an unreasonable 'Brooklyn premium' that you pay in almost every neighborhood in Brooklyn just by virtue of it being in Brooklyn and regardless of whether it actually possesses any of that Brooklyn-ness that everyone seems to be looking for these days. I've decided I want to avoid that premium.

I've always wanted to live at the Bliss St stop.

Hurting, I looked recently (in Astoria) for a 2 bedroom in the 1600 range, and the prospects were dire. We do have ample green space here though.

The typical commuter neighborhoods are lic, Astoria, sunnyside, woodside, and Jackson heights. If you want to go a little further out, you could try forest hills and/or kew gardens. Any of these should have enough services/infrastructure for you.

I'm w/ dan when it comes to astoria, nice place to visit but didn't consider moving there when we had to move again recently. just about anywhere in the sunnyside-woodside-jackson heights corridor is gonna have some good restaurants and a grocery store + is gonna be safe + is gonna get you to midtown reliably fast. the 7 is actually the most frequent train on the system.

I live in woodside. HUGE (relatively) 2 bedroom apt. Safe building. Across the street from a park (doughboy). Great neighborhood. 7 Train. 7 express. R and V and LIRR. 1500/mo. Been here for 5 years though, but still.

Considering Sunnyside, parts of Woodside and Jackson Heights, you'd have to work hard to find an expensive dangerous area with nothing to eat!

LIRR is pricey but they don't always take your tickets, and it's 10 minutes from 61st st Woodside to Penn station.

If you want to be more adventurous, deals can be found in Elmhurst and Corona, but I'm a big Sunnyside/Woodside/Jackson Heights booster, obv.

Downsides to these Queens neighborhoods other than not having that Brooklyn-ness (which might even be a plus)?

Sunnyside residents can also join Sunnyside Park, but other then those, not a lot of green space that isn't a cemetery. Though Flushing Corona isn't far. It's not pretty but it's got history, the panarama of NY, the museum, worlds fair relics and a great little zoo.

2 or more bedrooms

hurting are u hinting at something

These areas don't have "brooklyness", which I define as....

No bars that aren't irish pubs or mexican sports bars.

No record stores or book stores.

Not many traditional brunch places.

It's worth noting that I have a car and go to Brooklyn several times a week. Sometimes several times a day. If I was 25 and single and had no car, I'd probably still be in Boerum Hill. Or living off Cortelyou St. in Ditmas Park which has way less to offer than queens, but is still hipper.

But it's not hard to get to Brooklyn without a car. You can bike easily. Or take the 7 to the G.

And there's 1 bus that goes from sunnyside to greenpoint but they recently cut back service to no weekends or late nights.

But yeah, I'd say most people who choose queens do it because or end up feeling that it's preferable to "brooklyn-ness", either because they don't need it, they're better then it, or they're jealous of it. Or a little of all three.

yeah green space would be my #1 drawback - like when I go jogging I have some paths set out, but it's def not the same as running in central/prospect etc. flushing meadows is a super interesting place but it never feels like a park.

other possible downsides:
- the bars are all irish or spanish
- generally hard to convince manhattan/brooklyn people to visit.

went to the louis armstrong museum recently, saw the tony millionaire map, good stuff all around!

Ned S*blette, Postmambo Studies musicologist and author and tour guide w/ 1 of his 2026 tours. He doesn't use a website and likes to keep off of social media

Five intense days and nights of Latin jazz, bomba, vodou, merengue, ndombolo, and much more -- Postmambo founder Ned Sublette’s personal picks in his adopted hometown, a powerhouse of African-descended cultures and the world’s most dynamic music city. With a mix of private and public performances, we’ll move through the city’s barrios to celebrate New York City's cosmopolitan essence and immigration in general. We’ll hear presentations by historians of this magnificent city, enjoy the city’s wide variety of popular food – tacos, tapas, roti, yassa, mofongo, and more -- and most of all, enjoy the intense music of Afro-New York's multiple communities.

Ned says: This Seminar kicks off on my 75th birthday, which is also my 50th anniversary to the day of moving to New York City on July 8, 1976. Please join me in celebrating the world’s greatest music city with the best multi-day party I can throw. I can’t give you artist names yet – it’s too early -- but trust me on this.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUNt2T2jdd9

thought that might be a link to the two queens things filling my feeds.

1. food influencer goes to Plaka in Jackson Heights and everybody wants to save mom and pop greek restaurant. It's pretty good, but a weird location. Nice to have a parking lot but if you're driving around western queens looking for greek food, you're gonna end up in Astoria. We went back to Agnanti on sunday for the first time in a while and it was amazing. Plaka does deliver to Woodside though.

2. NYC council member Julie Won announced running for congress in NY-7. She's up against state assembly member Claire Valdez, who is endorsed by Mamdani and DSA. I don't see how she can win. PLUS, her husband inexplicably was Eric Adams campaign manager...NOT a good look. But the view from the ground...Julie Won is fantastic. We're big fans. Maybe it's the nature of city vs state, or the fact that Valdez is based in Ridgewood while Won is in Sunnyside, but Won's been feet on the ground in western queens doing good.

would much rather have julie won as the city council member, hopefully she can stay in office when she inevitably loses the primary

Misread that as "Julie Chen won" at first.

https://qns.com/2026/02/fairview-residents-heat-outage/

we live in a co-op of similar vintage. scary!

Ugh

a colleague lives in that building and says the article is misrepresenting the situation, that Z has been an ongoing source of conflict. (though the whole situation there sounds a mess, beyond the hvac issue)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1IWV_ctBH8

https://qns.com/2026/04/maspeth-man-charged-murder-arson-flushing-fire/

i walked past this scene a few hours after it happened, still completely surrounded by fire trucks and cops. so incredibly sad

Queens Library system is closed today because of annual training, which fact made me think of ILX0r Virginia Plain who used to work there back in the day.

I believe she worked at my local branch?

New playground just opened up near my house, across the street from the controversial Sunnyside Gardens (Private) Park.

Best queens meal of late? Trinciti Roti Shop in South Ozone Park.

Which branch is that?

Woodside, where Skillman and Roosevelt meet.

Oh yeah, I know exactly where that is. up a little hill, or incline at least.

Just passed by and looked at it from a 7 train window

At some place right now in Astoria called The Rabbit Hole where many friends seem to have ended up.

https://qns.com/2026/06/boy-struck-concrete-jackson-heights/

reminder of why sidewalk sheds exist in the first place :/

WTF? That's a few blocks from here.

Basically that could have been anyone I know, might still be. Not that that even matters of course.

Oh, Saturday