ask Dan Selzer!

-- jäxøñ (jaso...), Yesterday 10:28 PM. (jaxon)

dude, i first heard this 2 weeks ago! I am a pop-laggard.

I MEAN...

WHO WANTS A COUCH?

FREE COUCH.

Big. Brown. Corduroy. Totally vintage.

Someone has to come take it next week.

xoxo
Ian Johnson

Academy record buyer did me right on vinyl that day.

you can always check:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/nyhappenings/

http://www.acuterecords.com/free_couch.jpg

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/zip/176609597.html

heard them on a few mixes and am completely won over by Sounds Of JHS 126 Brooklyn
http://www.discogs.com/release/500311

i'm seeing internet prices ranging from $9-$80 for the Chill Pill 12". could it reasonably be had for $20 or so? likely to turn up in area stores? (i hate buying off the internet)

btw, ask Dan Selzer where he is now and why he's not posting to the internet? He's now in manhattan at his girlfriend's friend's house using the computer. A very sizeable portion of Queens, including the area I moved to just a few weeks ago, has been out of power for several days now. This is so important that NY1 has finally covered it. Thousands and thousands of people without electricity...we don't even have hot water for some reason, and the rest of the city goes about it's business. Not true, parts of brooklyn were out and browning out yesterday as well. Anyway, in Queens, Con Ed is going HOUSE to HOUSE to find out where the electricity is out! And they're distributing ice at various parts of Queens. Thanks for the ice, Con Ed! This happened the last time there was a heat wave, but then I was living in brooklyn, I remember saying "Thank god I don't live in queens!".

just saw ap report on nytimes.com re: queens, they say 25,000 without power but "we thought it was only 2500 because we were only counting those who called us about failure"

Note to Con Ed...a)many of the people who live there don't speak english. b)the rest of us may have looked out of our window and saw NO POWER and figured everything was out.

good thing con ed reads the noise board.

My boss's girlfriend is wicked sick in Queens right now :(

everything in my neighborhood has been closed the past few days with no power but my apt. is fine. all the streetlights are out but there is power on my street. got lucky I guess.

renard, where in queens are you?

lindsay, I had written that I thought they were working eastward, hooking up the rich(er) whiter LIC/astoria first, but today i ran into an old coworker who lives in astoria and he's still fucked.

my building is mostly fixed except for the elevator, which means electricity is still low, so I'm not gonna turn on the AC. Luckily it's not 105 degrees anymore.

I think I wrote some more about realizing I'm not that far from astoria and asking where the cool places in astoria are.

Anyway, since friday, I've gone to the berkshires, come back, and finally, due to enough complaining, the power outage has made the news.

the crazy thing is everything I wrote friday still stands

my apt. on 35th street is fine, everything else in the neighborhood is still mega fucked ... most stuff below 33rd seems to be out, and one ave. over from me on Ditmars everything is still out up past 36th and beyond

regular neighborhood features: blackened manholes pouring out steam that smells like plastic, Con-Ed trucks on every corner, cops on every major corner with pink flares directing traffic b/c of no stoplights working

I was over in Woodside last night and it was even worse .... my friends in Sunnyside have enough juice to run a few lightbulbs but their fridge still isn't working

tried to go out to dinner tonight (restaurant was closed, no power) and on the way back walked past a bakery with a sign in the window: "Closed, No Power, Con-Ed YOU SUCK"

(i'll try to get to "cool places in Astoria" in another message ... )

i'm worried that they are only patching things up though, and that this is all going to happen again in like a week.

anyways, i'd like to know if there are any cool places in astoria too!! i've found lots of nice & cheap places to eat, but i haven't found any fun bars.

My building has electricity, but still no elevator. Most of this area looks like it's back online and I hear people using AC. Someone was using the washing machines downstairs, which I desparately need to use. But I'm trying to conserve...not out of some "we all must pitch in" bullshit, but I'm seriously afraid that if I plug in the AC, or put in a load in the wash, Queens will black out.

I will be making a claim to coned for spoiled food...it seems like they're loosening up the regulations, they should really just give everyone in Queens a 150 dollar credit.

All I know about Astoria is the museum of the moving image, which I used to come to all the time anyway, the bohemian garden, Kebab Cafe on Steinway, which is fantastic, and I've recently been told about Cup, but haven't been yet.

on the way back walked past a bakery with a sign in the window: "Closed, No Power, Con-Ed YOU SUCK"

photo of this sign is in today's NY Post .... funny.

jj's for sushi, and also the place the just opened on steinway around broadway or 31st ave (ginsu? or something, it's very shiny and new looking) is actually pretty good.

i wonder if the beer garden has power/is open? it's actually tolerable outside this week!

What about Cafe Henri in LIC? The other french bistro there wasn't so hot.

quick version:

Rose & Joe's - Italian bakery with great pizza by the slice under the N on 31st
Sal Kris & Charlie Deli aka Sandwich King - cheap/huge/delicious Italian subs on 23rd Ave
JJ's is okay, I like Watawa better, haven't tried Ginsu yet
Fatty's Cafe - newish place that just added an outdoor patio, 25th & Ditmars, great mojitos, food is hit or miss
Elias Corner - kinda pricey but really good Greek whole fish place near the beer garden
Taverna Kyclades - basically a cheaper/not quite as good version of Elias

I only went to Cup Diner once and it was terrible

yeah, same here, if I go out around here it's pretty much the beer garden, the Sparrow (across from the beer garden) or the Irish Rover .... beer garden used to be so awesome but it's way too crowded now, gotta go on a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday night. ugh.

Sparrow = sit in near pitch dark drinking $6 beers ... at least the music is usually halfway decent (Nick Cave, Modern Lovers, etc.)
Irish Rover = you can probably guess

pretty slim pickins

i wonder if the beer garden has power/is open?

was open when I walked past on Friday

dan, please recommend some places in woodside! (other than sripraphai, i know & love it already.)

Donovan's Pub near the intersection of Roosevelt and Woodside is Time Out's Best Hamburger in NY joint. To be honest, I thought it was great, totally solid hamburger in a weird irish pub, but don't know if i'd say BEST.

On 61st st just off roosevelt is another thai place, Khao Homm, which is more conventional then Shri Pra Phai, but probably the best Thai place of that style Thai i've ever had.

There's an Irish grocery with takeout food in the back called Tommy Maloneys though they're repainting the sign so maybe it's gonna be called something else, on 58th or 59th between woodside ave and roosevelt, they have stuff like Steak and Mushroom Pies. There's a bigger version of the same down in sunnyside, 41st off Queens Blvd called Butcher Block, a HUGE irish grocer. I haven't eaten enough in Sunnyside, but El Jarro on 48th Ave and 45th st on the south side of sunnyside was great, that's where I got the aforementioned torta.

El Sitio on Roosevelt in the high 60s was some of the best cuban food I've ever had.

Really, we've only been here a little bit and there's just too much food to try between Sunnyside, Woodside and Jackson Heights. I drove down Roosevelt all the way through Forest Hills and it's just restaraunt after restaraunt.

otherwise...caravan chicken on broadway is genius...as is chicken festivale on ditmars. (i like thhot sauce better at festival). el mariachi on broadway has amazing!, seriously amazing, chips...and damned good breakfast. (thats all i've had there but freinds live on that place)... according to local obsessives they guy on 34th and broadway has the best street meat.

on of my favorite places out there is bahlk kabob..the afghan place on 31st...round the corner from the beer garden. (get the pumpkin!) i so miss the garden, but all reports make it sound far from anyplace i could stand to be anymore.

hell, i miss astoria.

ill ask a friend who lives on broadway and is a massive food person to do a quick must go list of astoria/lic/sunnyside ... theres so much, its can be pretty hard.

======

on of my favorite places out there is bahlk kabob..the afghan place

good to hear ... been curious to check it out but sometimes I need to hear someone vouch for a place before I take the plunge ...

La Flor on Roosevelt and 53rd.

love it, I've had both dinner and breakfast there and both were great.

there is a restaurant that opened recently in Woodside called Spicy Nina (sp?) that was billed to me as "the Indian Sripraphai" but I haven't tried it yet

my favorite restaurant in Jax Heights is probably Pio Pio (Northern Blvd in the mid 80s), you don't even look at the menu, just count up how many people you have with you and decide how many El Matador Combos you want. It's a whole roast chicken, salcipappas, plantains, salad, and some other shit for like $24!! definitely feeds three people ... four if you're not all starving.

my co-worker is all about that place...i have tyo go sometime...theres on in the 90's on the east side too

totally vouch for balkh.

also have you seen the video for Stop Bajon? totally retarded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0l70Yr4neU

anyway, back to queens...

I'd heard of Spicy Mina but read all these debates about them changing location and Mina leaving to work at a rest. in manhattan and it suffering. The only indian I've had in Woodside was Masala on 61st which was just ok. Seriously though, the best indian food I've ever had was a total standard joint, Joy on Flatbush avenue in Park Slope/Prospect Heights area, the Chicken Tikka was the MOISTEST most DELICIOUSNESS I've ever experianced.

Haven't been back to Punjabi 5 Star in years and looking for recomendations in jackson heights. We hit an indian-chinese kebab king place that had manchurian/general tso's style crispy fried baby corn and very good kebabs.

I just can't justify most of Brooklyn to anyone. We were looking at Kensington/Ditmas Park area if my girlfriend ended up at Brooklyn College grad school, and in the end I'm glad we're in Queens, that area is as far from the city, and further from williamsburg then where I am now, and the amenities out there are totally lacking compared to here. Meanwhile everyone moves to Bushwick and now Bed-Stuy...if you're going to be so far out in brooklyn and only on the J train, why not move to Queens? I walk around here and everyone is so friendly and it's so quiet at night...