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

I don't mind spending time there, it just has a really different vibe. Some of the residential areas seem like these long samey blocks and it doesn't have the same neighborhood feel as those others. I guess it's a gut feeling mostly.

haha okay disdain is probably the wrong word...maybe part of it is that when you approach astoria from our part of queens you first get the trashy steinway astoria.

good things about astoria:
love the middle eastern part of steinway, especially at night.
astoria park, obv
I like 34th avenue for some reason
brooklyn bagel mmm

otoh the beer garden is surely the single worst place in the borough

for the record, hurting jr is neither confirming nor denying a run for president

no to be clear, there isn't one on the way yet, just planned

otoh the beer garden is surely the single worst place in the borough

― iatee, Wednesday, February 23, 2011 10:37 PM Bookmark

btw, thank you for saying this. Everyone talked it up so much and when I finally visited it I felt like it was such a characterless shithole.

it's such a bizarre environment, like some frat's social chair fucked up and threw the annual kegger in the middle of a queensy neighborhood

ex-fucking-actly!

Which beer garden y'all talking about? 36th Street or 24th Avenue?

24th, bohemian. I haven't been to studio square, cause I heard it appealed to the same crowd.

I had a good time at the beer garden once, went at like noon on a saturday. Had some lunch, drank some beer, played some boggle. There were little or no lines, plenty of tables. By 4 or 5 it was filling up with a rowdy crowd and by the time we left there was a huge line. A big fight broke out that was kind of crazy.

Never been to studio square, seems like it would be a worse crowd.

Went to Dutch Kills for the first time a few weeks ago. It was really crowded around the bar but the waitress service tables up front looked really nice.

are any of you guys *from* queens?

i was born in flushing. and my mom lived in bayside when she was growing up -- graduated from bayside high.

LIC doesn't have many left, it's too expensive to live there and overrun by skyscraper dwelling ex-manhattanites.

the area where i live now (the "arts district" part of north hollywood) reminds me of what LIC was like 10-15 years ago. there's a lot of raw space where people have built practice spaces, recording studios, theatres, art galleries. it's gentrifying (slowly, thanks to the shitty economy), but if you stay away from the condos, the rents are still cheap-ish.

Far as I know that doesn't really exist in LIC. When I first looked to moving there, after my first apt after college in 98 or so, we just couldn't find anything. More recently before moving to Woodside I looked again, not at the skyscraper condos but regular ol' apartments, and they were really expensive...1800 dollars for a 1 bedroom where the kitchen and living room was one room. Another place we looked at was a really nice homey apartment but the owners said they'd come back regularly to use the basement and backyard, neither of which we were allowed in, and they kept talking about all the renovations they did because they thought their kids were going to live there and they started crying. I think the problem is there just isn't a huge stock of housing.

cheaper rent exists next to the queensbridge houses...that's technically LIC (or 'ravenswood') but I can't think of any good reason to live there. I like wandering around LIC, I think it has a really cool aesthetic, 1/3 industrial dirt and grunge + 1/3 historic queens + 1/3 super contemporary buildings. and gantry plaza state park is really laid back and nice. but there really aren't a ton of grocery stores and I feel like one block of restaurants would get boring after a while. I'd imagine the people who live there are probably like dan's aforementioned sunnyside person who lived her life in manhattan.

they're still in the process of building it up considerably, though, and in 20 years it'll be pretty populated.

I've been searching all over Queens and parts of Brooklyn for studio space and have been really frustrated. The areas on the other side of the Ravenswood projects and near the Noguchi have some great deals, but it's pretty far from any trains. Just above Queensborough Plaza there are some deals as well, but you're not very close to the G. Below the plaza closer the G things get expensive.

There's some interesting areas further away from the G that appeal to me because they're closer to my house...the Standard Motor Parts building on Northern and 36th and the area around Laguardia Community College which is still considered LIC but is on the Sunnyside side of the Sunnyside train yard.

Virgie Plain, I'm only laffing at Astoria because I had to hear its praises aaaaaall the time. My ex was SO into the food and stores and being around "other Europeans" and was dying for us to move there so he could buy Vegeta. I dug my feet in because I'm stuck on Bk, obv.

those areas are sorta like walking through a freeway, which is why they're good deals I guess. I'm surprised that lcc students don't get hit by a car on a daily basis.

otoh they're actually building a lirr station on skillman and queens boulevard as part of the east side access project, would make it a pretty damn convenient area for you in a few years dan

My friends who live in Jackson heights like the fact that in Astoria there are more restaurants and bars and new stuff is opening all the time. One friend who lives in Jackson heights doesn't like that it's becoming like park slope.

yeah jh really doesn't have that much park slopey stuff...espresso 77 and a starbucks? that's about it isn't it?

Can't think of anything else. And even e77 has a local feeling, the owner and his niece who works there are Bangladeshi.

The jax hts complaint was about babies and strollers, which the historic condos attract. I like the beer garden. But its only good if you go with a crowd of people. The other beer garden sucks. I like Dutch kills but its not too convenient for me.

I have some friends who live in homey family-style apartments in lic bu whenever I've looked it's just been the fuck-off overpriced new construction high rises. Th main difference between Brooklyn and queens (besides the social aspect) is that queens is lacking in historical brownstones and good-looking architecture in many respects. Though there's is a certain charmnin

yeah a few blocks in lic are the closest thing queens has to any brownstones and even the pretty garden-style sections of sunnyside, jackson heights, forest hills, kew gardens are a few blocks away from hideous looking stuff. I think if queens had the bronx's art deco housing stock it'd be a much more expensive place...you'd there are certain upper limits to gentrification, like I can't imagine upper class people ever taking over a neighborhood that looks like woodside.

this style architecture:

http://links.mlslirealtor.com/mlsphotos/full/1/570/2324570.jpg

is not just unattractive, it's like, so fundamentally ugly that it's almost impressive

It's just hideous infill.

But from the inside, it probably has significant advantages over the "historic charm" kind of buildings that we all nevertheless prefer. Plus, balcony/ies!

I wish they could just ban those awful cheap metal awnings. it seems like a lot of them weren't originally on the buildings. does anyone know the history of this style?

But from the inside, it probably has significant advantages over the "historic charm"

Well it would depend on when exactly they were built and what the owners wanted for the interiors, but it's like they're built from kits or purchased plans, so interiors are less haphazard than a 150-yr old building that's been cut up 6 ways to Sunday. Plus more likely to have laundry on the property somewhere, plus normally sized rooms that will all have at least SOME kind of window, even if the construction itself is poor-to-middling. Kitchen spaces that are actually kitchens, with recent-model appliances.

Some of the upsides are just from being NEW, period, and I don't imagine the buildings as a whole are going to age very well, so it makes them tolerable to rent but not to buy.

Plus, balconies!

Actually aren't awnings as a general concept super energy-efficient and good? Retractable cloth ones obv much classier than metal ones but also more expensive and need occasional repair/replacement.

even the pretty garden-style sections of sunnyside, jackson heights, forest hills, kew gardens are a few blocks away from hideous looking stuff.

our last building in woodside was probably built 70s/80s not quite one of those barf rowhouses but a 3 story thing with the same pink brick. our current one is 1920s, definitely has more 'historic charm' inside (old school very loud heating, there's a huge very hot water pipe in the bathroom, etc.) neither has laundry inside. def prefer historic charm.

xp

yeah we like to walk to cannelle and the walk up jackson heights is particularly tragic, cause you have some absolutely lovely garden neighborhoods followed by some decent middle class housing followed by the row houses in east elmhurst that are practically mobile homes, but aren't even as nice as mobile homes... some of the ugliest buildings I've seen in my life.

I'm just curious as to how this particular aesthetic choice has persisted so long and spread so far, I mean 'cheap' is surely at the root of it but the buildings made in sunnyside/ridgewood mathews flat style (skillman ave etc.) were also cheap - they'll never be brownstones but they have a definite middle class charm...

Photo example of Skillman Ave style, pls? Looking on gmaps but where I am it's mostly industrial, so....

http://www.astorialic.org/photo/mathew/mathew_index.shtml

So the question is, why is a well-designed building that both the architects and the laborers put extra work into more attractive than a poorly designed/undesigned building that everyone put the minimum of work into? No, seriously, idgi.

the fundamental reason why they're crap makes sense, I'm more curious as to why one particular style seems to have spread

there's an entire blog dedicated to this:

http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/

at least it was when it started. People call the buildings "Fedders Boxes" or something, because they all have those empty boxes below the windows for ACs.

Those Mathews Model flats buildings are in other neighborhoods. I've seen them in Brooklyn, can't remember where.

that's a hell of a blog, dan

Isn't the style we're complaining about from about 70 years later than the GX Matthews buildings? I don't think it's possible to overstate the affect that crappy Home Depot-level building supplies have had on the lower end of housing construction -- it is now possible to get all your cheap and ugly in one place, and looking exactly like everyone else's cheap and ugly. This accounts for probably all of the cheap unpainted pine door jambs and window-frames in the entire city, and all the boob-like light fixtures, and all the really fucking ugly bathroom vanities.

maybe part of bushwick that borders ridgewood?

I always thought that blog was more just general nimbyism (and sorta anti-immigrant/republican).

btw, renovated MOMI theaters and cafe very Kubrickian, but most of the programming is excellent. I will probably go every 4-6 weeks or so.

(still can't get used to AMMI as MOMI, I guess there was an official name change)

and obv I will be around for a few carefully selected Mets games.

Yeah, but in the beginning every post was about how people would tear down a beautiful house in flushing and replace it with a 12 story feders apartment complex and pave over the grass yard for parking.

This was also during the fights over the landmarking of Sunnyside Gardens.

i was serious, dan!

I was responding to iatee's comment about it's content.

(still can't get used to AMMI as MOMI, I guess there was an official name change)

I'm annoyed that there isn't a more popular queens-wide blog than the crapper - which I don't check often but def has moments of flat out racism. but I guess there's not a lot that LIC and queens village residents have in common.

plus despite everything I think infill is actually a great thing (in theory) and an ugly 10 story building is probably better than none at all.

tho I guess it makes sense that the only thing that works as a borough-wide interest is nimbyism