ask Dan Selzer!

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...

my only big problem in queens is that most of my friends are still in brooklyn, and it's especially hard to see people in south brooklyn; i even had to quit my band b/c getting to park slope 3 times a week for practice was just too much. i was living in red hook before and i miss it there SO MUCH sometimes, especially the bars, and there's just nothing like that in queens. but meanwhile, i keep hearing about people in s. brooklyn getting crazy $400 rent increases, so maybe they'll end up here eventually.

I mean, Red Hook is getting ridiculous, The Good Fork and 360 are great, but notice who's going there? Pretty soon the only people who will be living in Red Hook will be yuppies with cars, the poor artists will be priced out and the middle class hipsters who gentrify the likes of Park Slope/Williamsburg etc still won't move there because it's too inconvenient transportation-wise.

One thing is that I have access to a car. I went to a little part in kensington last night and it was a 30 minute drive, which wasn't so bad. With no traffic we can zoom over to williamsburg in 5 minutes.

but speaking of red hook...pioneer BBQ was awesome!

Anyway, they need to get the G in fucking order and they need it to run far up into Queens ALL THE TIME.

that's a huge thing. and another thing is that you don't stay out late drinking.

I hear ya, but it's coming to Queens eventually, they're building a luxury tower four blocks from the Queensbridge projects! Plus all that waterfront stuff in the LIC ... Jackson Heights prices are going up ...

Jackson Heights however probably deserves it, the stuff we saw there was gorgeous. At the time I'd only really seen Roosevelt Ave and had a limited idea of the commercial areas, only a few weeks ago did I drive back on 37th (or 39th) then a few days later notice that even Northern Blvd in Jackson Heights is nice and filled with cool stuff (unlike here where it's filled with car dealerships and a diner called the Orange Hut, anyone been?)

Prices may be going up, but you can get a HUGE, like almost 1,000 square feet, 2 bedroom apt in an elevator building, all pre-war with details and shit, gardens on the interior etc, for 1400 or whatever, that's hard to beat. I just feel Jackson Heights is a bit further out. Woodside has the express 7 and the LIRR, which is nice, and lately although it's a bit more of a trek, we realize we can walk to the Northern Blvd V/R stop.

it seems Willamsburg/Bushwick people could care less about the Nets stadium monstrosity. i even caught myself snickering when i noticed all the high rises going up around McCarren Park. i should feel guilty about that.

other than that and the power outages and the fact that the R train tunnel gets flooded everytime it rains, it's great.

still no bar, though. shitty sports bars and generic Irish bars.

Tupelo used to fill the hipster-bar role pretty well, but for some reason they closed it and reopened in a different area as the Sparrow, which just ain't as good. (no DJ booth, for one thing)

We see hipsters every now and again in sunnyside, woodside and jackson heights. I've known lots of hipsters who've lived in queens at times, but as I mentioned, they're usually in a sort of "we're hiding out in queens" mode and probably wouldn't go to a hipster bar if it existed...or would they!?!?!?!

I think Lillies is closed now, no?

someone's going to do a good night out there soon enough.

if sunny's closed, a piece of me would die. i need to move back before i get priced out forever.

I now own 2 sets of cartridges. The Ortofon Nightclubs I just keep on my turntables at home and never take them off, so I don't have to fuss with them. The Electros I have as my travelling pair and they usually connect better then the Nightclubs, and they're a bit more robust and louder then the Nightclubs, definately better for travelling. Turntablelab recommended I buy the Electros over the qberts or whatever they're called, which are way more expensive.

Wait, WTF Lindsay...we sent in a claim for 149$ weeks ago and haven't gotten anything. Maybe they're doing Astoria first.

YES

http://www.tropicalcomputersystem.com

Is it true you gambled in vegas for the first time this weekend and won 100 bucks at blackjack?

YES

Is it true your latest CD, the collected Ike Yard, came out this week?

YES

http://www.acuterecords.com/

Have you always been this good at self-promotion?

NO

I USED TO BE BETTER

How awesome were Apache Beat and Holy Hail on saturday night?

COMPLETELY

is this ike yard record so good because the very humanity of the musicians is inherent to the sounds the crank technology to sculpt or is it just the fact that the records they made are the construction from human dreams tempered by an inescapable, empirical reality?

also, should i quit talking/thinking about it with the above horsepoop and get down to brass tacks?

First they look like Joy Division, then they look like SPK, going by the photos.

Thanks to all who came by Dazzle Ships last night. It was especially good when Beppe Loda told Jeremy to stop recording, then turned everything up to 11 and played Vangelis so loud the cops came.

Steve Shasta here. Do you happen to have the link to that prank call file directory that had that guy DSP-ing his voice to the record store girl and the electronics store customer service guy?

It goes like "triple double slip with a triple dribble check",

Steve Shasta

dan, i liked the opera track on blast segueing into vangelis. some girl sitting near us said the cops were at the door but i didnt believe her.

I never heard of Longmont Potion Castle but the Music Thing article with "triple flip double check" link has been updated.

They were funny, but no Zip Code Rapists...

http://stuff.justmcg.com/prankcalls

Thanks Dan!,
Steve Shasta (aka Dougan Nashnashnashnashnashnashnashnashnashnashnash)