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

there are lots of cool historic buildings in the astoria village area, like the little flatiron building. I like the walk down that block.

oh also around the north-woodside astoria border there's this suburban rowhouse that looks almost frank gehry-esque, completely out of nowhere. it's completely random and I've always wanted to know if there was a story behind it. anyone seen this?

where exactly?

There's lots of pretty areas in Queens but many of them are further out or just too expensive. The really nice JH garden co-ops aren't exactly cheap, nor is Sunnyside Gardens. Parts of Forest Hills and Kew Gardens are gorgeous, but there's not as much to do.

it's either on 31st or 32nd avenue...I gtg but I'll try and find it on google maps later

I take it back, I love you Astoria:

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2011/02/pachanga.html

Circumstances have been bringing me to Forest Hills and Kew Gardens a lot lately, and I have concluded that either would be a nice place to live were one to have a family. I particularly like Metropolitan Avenue around Forest Park. There is a less suburban-y part of Forest Hills, near Nick's Pizza and the nice Japanese food store around Ascan Avenue that I like as well.

How come no one wants to talk about Richmond Hill?

gah I think it's on a part of the map that google streetview doesn't cover. I swear this strange little house exists.

I've only been to richmond hill once or twice and never ate there...getting to anything that isn't near the astoria/flushing/queens boulevard subway lines is something we can only do on the weekends. living that far on the j/z seems like it would really suck but I guess it's still a step up from no subway land. dan you ate there didn't you?

forest park seemed like it was more forest than park, probably a nice place to go jogging but not much else?

Thanks for the food rec, Dan--that's right around the corner from my house.

I walked around Forest Park when I was doing jury duty and I was going down completely deserted trails and worrying about being assaulted.

But what about South Richmond Hill, home to a vibrant Guyanese and Trinidadian population and the place I am currently posting from?

Forest Park is great, I think it has the largest old growth forest in NYC? Meaning it's not invented like the other big parks but actual old trees.

They have a nice vintage carousel, but be careful hanging out there sitting on a bench with your girlfriend and not children, watching the carousel, because people will likely think you're planning to steal a child.

I've been to South Richmond Hill twice for dinner. First time we went to a place who's name I can't remember and it was great. They were really nice, the kind of place where they just give you a plate of stuff and then they say "you have to try this" and then the woman service you says "mom, can I go do my homework now?" and at the end you're like "how much was that?" and they just make up a number. Had doubles and some jerk chicken and a bit of goat and some delicious desert snack. Went back a few months later with a third person and EVERYTHING was closing and it was only like 8 or something. Really weird. Found some place that wasn't quite as good. I can't compare them to the Brooklyn places though. Been meaning to go back.

Other queens food adventures include Mumbai Xpress in Floral Park, which was OK. They make the kind of indian snack foods that you can't find elsewhere outside of the good places out in Jersey. Also, deep in flushing across the street from Southern Spice, which is a pretty highly regarded/agrued about indian option, is a Sri Lankan place that is one of the dirtiest places I've ever been to, but they had the dish where they take roti and spices and vegetables and meat and fry them all up together while chopping them up, I think it's called Kottu Roti, and it was totally awesome.

Only other Sri Lankan place I've been was at San Rasa on Staten Island, where they have an amazing sunday brunch.

hmm that last dish sounds pretty good, how deep in flushing are we talking?

20 minute walk from the 7 train. There's a lot of gems down there. The Sri Lankan place is called Bownie Restaurant, with Southern Spice across the street. Not too far from there is M+T, one of the more interesting Chinese places in NYC, from a northern region in china...they had a fried fish dish with peanuts and peppers that is the best thing ever:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3848975/mt.jpg

We walked from the Main St. stop once, but mostly drive.

sorry, always mixing up italic and image tags.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3848975/mt.jpg

That's fried fish. Time Out had written about it. We couldn't find it on the menu so we had to point at the review posted in the window. At the end of the meal I asked the waitress what it was called so I could find it in the menu next time. She said that there was an error in the menu and that it was listed as "fish stick soup". I said "that's not a soup." Hope they fix that!

20 mins isn't bad, don't think we've ever been to that part of east flushing. looks like 45th ave is the main commerce street? we've ended up in flushing a lot lately to target/bed bath/etc. furnish our new place.

http://grieve-smith.com/transportation/blog1.php/2011/02/06/envisioning-a-great-walking-boulevard

discuss!

We drive or take the R to the Queens Blvd for the mall and target. Actually more often we drive to the Target in College Point.

he doesn't mention the other alternative, which is Northern Blvd leads directly the Queensborough bridge and is a much more appropriate entrance then Queens Blvd in Sunnyside, which is flanked by small retail, food, several community colleges and high schools, etc.

when we were in woodside we'd just walk to the 65th st station to get to the mall, but now flushing seems more practical than transferring. plus that area is such a clusterfuck, not always in the mood for it.

yeah I like the article and am obviously pro-congestion pricing but that doesn't seem like a direct answer for this problem, triborough has fees and the area around there isn't quite a pedestrian paradise. I think traffic cameras / enforced speed limits + some greenery would be the right start.

How about a pedestrian bridge over the 7 train? Think of the views!

otm

I have had that exact thought many times! the queens high line. I imagine construction costs would be realllly hard to justify, is the thing.

does anyone remember the grind cafe? (qns blvd and 39th) i miss it...

i like aubergine. haven't tried cafe marlene yet.

it was gone before I moved here, but now that I currently live 2 blocks from there...would probably be there every other day. the sign on the wall is still up. where do you live RR?

I never went to the Grind but that's where our CSA pick-ups were going to be before it closed. I mostly read bad things about it on chowhound or the sunnyside yahoogroup or somewhere.

I was over there today looking at a commercial space. It's really crazy down there, basically when 90% of the printing industry fled manhattan, they either went to NJ, western LI or that part of sunnyside. I had never walked right in front of Soel, just seen the lines on weekend nights. Pretty hilarious.

such a strange place for a club, isn't it?

it's actually my boyfriend who lives here, on 41st street near skillman ave. i do like that the grind sign is still up.

i do remember once waiting ages for a square of pizza that my bf ordered. but still miss it.

are there any other good places in sunnyside cafe-wise, or are aubergine and cafe marlene it?

those plus la marjolaine (not technically a cafe but they have wifi...) and starbucks are the only things north of queens boulevard. south there's one cafe on greenpoint, I think it's called 'ave coffeehouse' now, it used to be something else. it seems pretty middle of the road. as far as queens goes that's a lot of options...woodside and jackson heights both only really have one + one starbucks and neither is great.

ave coffehouse was an Esparks. Weird chain...there was like 1 in Elmhurst, then one opened up on the site of an old Hallmark store in woodside near 59th st, and a month later 1 opened up on greenpoint ave, then a month later the first one changed their signed to "Cafescape" and the second to Ave Coffehouse. Looking online, the main one is in Glendale and they have 2 franchises, the one in elmhurst that's still there and one in Great Neck. There was one in Astoria as well. Bit of a mystery.

So after checking out that space instead of taking the 7 back I decided to walk and I've always wanted to take more pictures of the neighborhoods and I had my camera to take pix of the space so I figured I might as well and took all these shots

http://gallery.me.com/danselzer#100060

excuse the 1 tilt shit photo. I had forgotten my camera had that setting so I gave it a shot. I think it would be more effective with a different angle. Anyway, some nice overcast views of sunnyside, sunnyside looking over to LIC. The Phipps Garden Apartments which I've always obsessed about because it's deco sign and it has that Jackson Heights interior garden thing going on. Cool looking building but not all very nice. I have a friend who lives in there, found a 1 bedroom sublet for 900 dollars just a few years ago. Says it's one of those building that they won't bother fixing up nice because it's not a co-op and it's filled with rent-subsidized old people or something.

Anyway, across the street from that is Donato's, which is not very good and one day I hope to buy it and turn it into a Lucali's style quality pizza place then there will finally be good pizza in this part of queens and the location is so charming people will come from all over for it.

googled it and someone on chowhound says "According to the owner-manager in Woodside, he's independent and bought out Esparks to operate at this location." so presumably something similar happened. maybe they were just overambitious.

I will eat your pizza. that route in your pics is my jogging route, actually. it's the safest place to run around here.

I also like barnett ave...sorta hidden and mysterious

I mostly jog around the industrial parts of woodside...39th and 37th ave, broadway. There's all these printers and temples and small manufacturers. It's really fascinating. That is, the 2 times a year I jog.

yeah I take that route when I jog to astoria. it's interesting how many different languages you'll see on the signs.

it seriously astounds me that sapori d'ischia gets *any* customers with that location.

oh apparently the glendale esparks is right by the trader joe's, I think I've seen it.

Have you been to Sapor D'ischia? We went once for dinner, the food was pretty good. The atmosphere was hilarious. Supposedly they have good deals for lunch. Some fancy pasta on an industrial stretch of queens.

yeah we went twice. their dinner is a little out of our normal budget but it's def good. their personal-but-big lunch pizza is pretty cheap and worlds better than the rest of the pizza options.

actually had the vegetarian pizza at la flor recently and it was sorta california-style 'I'm basically eating a salad' but it was pretty decent!

Always wondered about their Pizzas. I can't get enough of their chicken quesadilla. It's not like a normal quesadilla, it's got really thick masa tortilas, more like a bread then just tortilla. It's pretty much the only thing I ever get there. I went for dinner once and had this short rib with mashed potato and spicy mexican cole slaw or something and it was pretty delicious. They have amazing hot chocolate and the chocolate brioche is great but I always avoid getting it.

I don't know why I capitalized "Pizza". I should probably go to bed.

haha yeah me too, I'm staying up for no real reason

the last two times we went for dinner there was this same local dude singing cheeseball covers, sorta annoying actually. also we've always had problems with the service speed, though that's true for a lot of places around here.

75$ of the time we're there for breakfast and I get the huevos a la mexicana and/or pastries. their tortillas *are* really good, any idea if they use nixtamal's?

errr 75%
gnite!

yeah the one time we went for dinner they had the singer. Really strange move. I don't think they use nixtamals. Certainly we were going there before nixtamal opened and my girlfriend has never mentioned a difference. The quesadillas don't use tortillas at all really, more like a masa pancake. So good. Chicken or shrimp inside (pork and veggies are the other options but not as good) with cheese and mashed potato inside and more cheese on top, and tons of the red and green salsas. Service used to be great because it was always just one of these two women, but as they've gotten busier they always seem to have some new person who's not on top of things. Still it's a gem for the neighborhood.

I've been trying to do some research on the 'fedders renaissance', I hadn't really thought about it beyond 'haha...queens sure is ugly' until now.

apparently 'fedders building' was coined by a bay ridge activist some years back. it seems like it's worth taking seriously beyond like 'lol cheap buildings' - I mean it's the result of a lot of individual decisions and market incentives. depends on how you define it, but I'd imagine that it's quite possible that at this point there is more fedders housing stock in NYC than historic brownstone so it's not an insignificant part of 'new york city'.

thoughts:

- how has fedders cornered the low-end AC market so well? (+ freidrich) like okay sure, they're the cheapest but how'd that happen? idk a lot about AC, I think it should be illegal btw.

- why does light pink brick seem more popular in queens than brooklyn? it's not absent in brooklyn, but brooklyn-style fedders seem to be a tad more colorful.

- would there be a way to incentivize 'good design'? the typical solution, density bonuses...prob not gonna appeal to queens crapper / bay ridge types - the people most invested in the issue. and beyond that - I mean, what is good design? facades in sunnyside and jackson heights don't look *that* different from nycha buildings or fedders when it comes down to it - nicer brick, uniform streetscapes, subtle but not super complex architectural flourishes. how much more does it really cost for a developer to include some simple brick flourishes?

- a 'nice' building doesn't make a nice neighborhood - sorta a prisoner's dilemma thing for developers, why spend time on design if nobody else will and the hood is pretty ugly anyway? this makes sense for the majority of queens and certain parts of brooklyn - but there are still fedders in pretty parts of brooklyn - seems like they're throwing away money?

- how much of this is cultural? new flushing buildings are generally asian developers and a majority of people living in the fedderiest parts of the boroughs are 1st/2nd gen.

- how much of this is just snobbery? is there someone out there that thinks "wow, that's a great new building, lots of parking and a balcony"? look at that shiny stainless steel!

- is the demand for housing in the nyc area is so strong that people will live in literally anything? if it's that simple, this phenomenon isn't so different from 'why are all new williamsburg developments (even the non-fedders) so ugly?' and if that's the case it's pretty much guaranteed that all development outside of manhattan is going to ugly for decades to come.

I um, didn't say so before but I def think of that style of building that posted, with the ugly protruding balcony and the metal awning, as "immigrant housing." Probably because that kind of thing in Jersey City is all Filipino and in Greenpoint it's Polish and I'm sure in other places it's Russian or Puerto Rican or whatever. But yeah. I don't know how to address that any more deeply.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2011/03/03/2011-03-03_rezoning_push_would_add_flavor_curb_development.html

queens blvd infill is good but again this goes back to earlier discussion about making queens blvd livable first. I find the skyscrapers+highway aesthetic that the blvd takes outside of sunnyside sorta weird.

sidewalk cafes on skillman is great, queens blvd pointless, I wouldn't go. until it looks like this again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEPwYcM1qTs

http://gothamist.com/2011/03/06/5_pointz_may_be_eliminated_in_owner.php

sad but prob practical? there are other gigantic buildings to paint that aren't in huge transit hubs

Too bad, it's a real landmark and a great site to see when the 7 train comes above ground and loops around. I don't know what they're doing throughout LIC. Is there need for more apartments? I thought they couldn't fill some of those buildings? QB Plaza is insane. Still empty buildings, empty storefronts, strip clubs but also expensive properties and brand new developments. Tons of construction and "new traffic patterns" throughout the plaza itself, new dividers made up of jagged boulders. I don't know how long it will last as an arts hub, despite PS1. The spaces I've seen are often overpriced and people are getting priced out and moving to Bushwick (or Sunset Park).

nyc big picture there's absolutely need for more housing - there's a steady population increase projected and people gotta move somewhere. these parts of queens have the proximity / subway lines / space.

there's plenty of overpriced 'luxury' buildings in LIC and maybe the market won't support those kinda places forever but in the meantime more dense housing is more dense housing. is LIC still an arts hub? I don't think it really needs to be - I mostly look at it as a secondary business district + transit hub.

the new jagged boulders are pretty wtf landscaping, I agree. the eventual path along qbp is gonna be pretty and green though.

sunnyside railyards also needs to be built over, someone's gonna make billions when that finally happens. what a crazy use of land.