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

you know my response.

there's seems to be more people discovering Sunnyside, my girlfriend said she saw more hipsters than ever at the start of this season's CSA. That could mean like 5 people, but still.

I'd say the same as I always have, which is Woodside is cheaper than Sunnyside, closer to the express train and LIRR, closer to Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, etc. But Sunnyside can be pleasant.

Ditmars is cool, but we generally don't love Astoria. Not bad if you really love the N train.

j/k

tempted to just move somewhere where you DON'T see hipsters. Hipsters share apartments and stretch their finances, driving up rents.

sunnyside is a perfectly fine hood but it just seems weird that some outsider from the burbs would get excited about such a modest place. As someone who grew up in a relatively generic lower middle class neighborhood like sunnyside it's hard to imagine getting excited about it. Of course the areas that would get me excited are way out of my price range these days so there you go

I mean I know the suburbs suck but aim higher when you go urban

If you move to Sunnyside, Hurting, I know a place where you can go see the jazz guitar you hate on Wednesdays.

It's not hard to understand how you can get excited about a relatively cheap and pleasant neighborhood that's really close to Manhattan and Brooklyn and has everything Queens has to offer. That's all I'm talking about. It's not like someone's gonna come in from the suburbs (or where ever, not sure what you mean), and be blown away by all the amazing shopping and nightlife or whatever. How much higher can you aim? You can move somewhere "cooler" that's a few minutes away and pay twice as much. It's not for everyone but for those of us who maybe don't need a cool bar every night, and who have a car, these areas of Queens are a godsend.

I'm talking as someone who grew up in NYC in a less than hip place and I just find it slightly odd to hear "ordinary" queens hoods praised as great places to live
I mean they are absolutely fine. I guess the practical reasons seem not entirely diff from the practical reasons people choose the burbs

Also I value bars way more than restaurants so take that with a grain of salt and a lime chaser ; )

sunnyside is not an ordinary queens hood. it's very close to manhattan, sunnyside gardens is fairly historic / unique and the grocery etc. options are way better here than just about anywhere else in western queens (much of this is due to recent developments). anyway I sorta love it cause of the overwhelming practicality.

but in any case, it's def not flooding with hipsters in any sense.

Welcome back, thought that would draw you out

it's heartwarming that someone noticed

anyway there is no hood in queens w/ good non-ethnic bars but I imagine sunnyside is still a lot different today than it was when you lived here.

My only point I guess was to point out that only someone who grew up in a mind-crushingly bland suburb (admittedly a lot of people) or a committed urban idealogue ( : D) could get hot & bothered over sunnyside. But yes the gardens and proximity to manhattan and the ethnic mix are all admirable

I actually like ethnic bars a lot but assume most transplants might not be thrilled with old Irish alkies

yeah I mean I love it here because I have a 24/h cvs on my corner, a v. good commute and there are lots of good places to eat and take pleasant strolls w/ the gf. and this part of queens has a very interesting history w/r/t things I am a nerd about.

but in the longer-term these parts of queens are not gonna get flooded w/ young people, they're gonna be flooded w/ professionals who see them as a good deal and commute.

flooded prob the wrong word - lots of the hood is owner occupied, familes, old people and the only place zoned for new construction is along queens blvd. lots of the professionals I see getting on the train every morning are 1st or 2nd gen immigrants.

I totally don't agree with Buzza. Pretty much every single person I know who visits Sunnyside and Woodside is totally blown away and excited by them for all the reasons discussed, and the only reason they don't move there is there are no hipster bars and not enough young hipsters.

If the "professionals" flood the area enough to raise rents and make these neighborhoods an extension of LIC, that will certainly keep young hipsters at bay, but if they don't, there has already been a slow increase in young people, which we've definitely seen in the 5+ years we've lived here, but there's the third group, which is the young family hipster, which has more often ended up in Jackson Heights (if not priced out of brownstone brooklyn), and there seem to be more of those types, i.e., myself (though no family yet), but not so concerned about a scene. And some of these young people don't necessarily commute on the train in the morning.

The sad truth is everyone will just move to Ocean Parkway.

But I wouldn't mind something like Queens Kickshaw opening up in Sunnyside/Woodside. It's one of a small handful of hip new places in Queens that actually gets it right. On a whim we tried Cranky's in LIC the other day. Terrible. Mediocre food. Terrible art on the walls.

I just do not see very many white 20-somethings, and I'm out and about pretty often. like, a few, sure. and salt and fat, that place is tres brooklyn and seems to be doing very well, tho I wonder how much of the clients made a trip to go. but for the most part this neighborhood is still overwhelmingly immigrants and their kids and I'm not sure it really makes much sense for anyone to try and open up a bar for prob the smallest demographic in the neighborhood.

how much = how many

i think dan is misinterpreting me, i don't think it's weird for people to like sunnyside at all, it's just weird if you grew up in the circumstances that i grew up in to see gung-ho boosterism about it

I don't think there is that much gung-ho boosterism tbh? it's still relatively under the radar and cheap considering the alternatives these days and I fear that won't last much longer. but it's never gonna be 'cool'.

out of curiousity, where in the bronx did you grow up?

buzza otm. There is Queens blood in my veins and you cannot astonish me with Queens virtues.

i have no idea if there is a general "fever" for queens, more just talking about you and dan on this thread lol. and that's cool that you feel that way, more a general "really?" than anything, but we are coming from different ends of the nyc experience.

i moved around a bit but let's say marble hill/kingsbridge and neighboring areas as my home turf. queens is where cousins and other family members lived,including sunnyside

Seems to me like you were questioning my own gung-ho-ism, which, being my own opinion based on living here for over 5 years, I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to have. All I mentioned is that 5 young white hipsters moved to Sunnyside, and that it has it's virtues. In the context of current New York real estate prices and quality of life, Sunnyside is not just some boring lower middle class neighborhood, regardless of what it seemed like when you were a child.

Still waiting for the promised influx of hipsters to reach critical mass in JH

Promised by who? It's not going to. The "hipsters" who I've known who moved there are all young families. I know they live there but I've never once run into them.

I dunno, by the hipster tipsters maybe? In any case, you are exactly right about the situation.

"less slope" maybe but "more park" is a big stretch.

Tell me about it. We just narrowly squeaked by in the Battle of the Garden School Tarmac.

Never actually had contact with the guy that came up with that ad campaign.

2 or so years ago we were looking into buying a place and a lot of the options were in Jackson Heights. What became clear real quick is that those beautiful old garden apt buildings with the green courtyards are NOT much more affordable than various decent areas in Brooklyn or whereever. We looked at some nice buildings (and some really shitty ones) but proximity to a nice building with a beautiful PRIVATE green space does not beat out easy access to Prospect Park!

So yeah we visited Forest Hills yesterday and got a little tour from a family friend. We're kind of leaning toward it in terms of (1) commute, (2) cost-to-quality-of-life ratio and (3) my theory that it's probably more insulated from rental market craziness because it's not *up-and-coming* or trendy. We're a bit traumatized by our 20% rent increase and we really don't want to have to keep moving every year or two.

I guess I was disappointed that it didn't have more idk character or something, and Queens Blvd is kind of miserable not to mention scary to cross with a stroller. But Austin St. is not bad if you don't mind chain stores and we had really good falafel. And holy shit, the gardens section is just mind-blowingly nice, like I had no idea there were houses that nice within city limits.

Gardens are beautiful, but have a pretty disturbing history regarding exclusivity/restriction and whatnot. There's some good stuff out there. Kew Gardens Cinema. Eddie's Sweet Shop. Nick's Pizza. Ben's Best. Bukharan jewish places I've never tried. Otherwise it's like Brooklyn heights/montague. Not the great ethnic diversity/eats you'd find in Sunnyside/Woodside/Jackson Heights. And it's further out and I think more expensive than over here.

2 or so years ago we were looking into buying a place and a lot of the options were in Jackson Heights. What became clear real quick is that those beautiful old garden apt buildings with the green courtyards are NOT much more affordable than various decent areas in Brooklyn or whereever. We looked at some nice buildings (and some really shitty ones) but proximity to a nice building with a beautiful PRIVATE green space does not beat out easy access to Prospect Park!

― dan selzer, Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:05 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've been looking to buy an apartment mainly in ditmas park and a little in jackson heights, and i think JH is a lot more affordable now than most parts of park adjacent Brooklyn. Prospect Lefferts Gardens still has affordable places, but there seems to be a lot more available in Jackson Heights.

xp yeah I definitely have a sense that Sunnyside/Woodside/JH would offer more in the way of eats, which is a big thing for us, but otoh we have a kid now and Forest Hills appears to offer more in the way of, e.g., daycare. Of course anyone who feels otherwise would be welcome to challenge that notion, because honestly without a kid I'd choose Sunnyside in a second over FH.

I mean there is something about Forest Hills that sort of scares me in a way, a certain, IDK, heaviness, like it feels like the kind of place you can move to and be forgotten about. That's probably in my head though.

I guess one other question -- does anyone have any thoughts on the area north of Queens Blvd vs. the area around Forest Park/Metropolitan Ave.?

there is not much of note north of qb in that area.. otoh the further south you go, the further you get from subwayland. the biggest benefit of fh is the express stop so if you live further than a 5 min walk from it, there's really no point anymore. could also look at kew gardens...a little sleepy but still on the express and nicer than much of forest hills. a fairly short walk to Austin or forest park.

Hurting, I would also look at Jackson heights. I imagine there's some infrastructure there for transplanted Brooklyn families.

Are you referring to kew gardens, north of queens boulevard? It's a nice area. I would recommend Jackson heights though if you want something in between lack of child services sunny and woodsides and established forest hills/kew gardens.

I'm not sure sunnyside is that cheap at the moment. I've been looking at the listings preparing for a move and it seems $1300 is on the lower end for a no-frills one bedroom.

I think sunnyside would be a great place to bring up kids, though. There's lots of little playgrounds, always teeming with families. If you want bilingual kids, you should move to corona.

I don't know about services for children...but Sunnyside is getting yuppie enough that there has to be stuff. And the farmer's market has gotten relatively big.

We have neighbors in our building who send their kid to some kind of progressive green school in LIC. Other neighbors have kids at St. Sebastien, the huge catholic school a block away, that I think is well regarded, but of course there's always that whole "catholic" thing.

I've never seen most neighborhoods with cheap 1 bedrooms. My theory was always that there just aren't that many and that most of them had enough space to be turned into shitty 2 bedrooms. Our place has gone up in rent, we're now paying a little over 1600, for a pretty huge (by brooklyn standards) 2 bedrooms in a really pleasant area across the street from a park. Most of woodside isn't this nice looking though.

This is called Woodside because Sunnyside south of QB is official Woodside for some strange reason:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/abo/3070844459.html

Search 1 bedrooms in Woodside and there are a lot of cheapish places that we technically think of as sunnyside, the more hispanic area south of QB where De Mole and the Library are.

this apt is down the hall from mine. It's much smaller though:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/reb/3037971980.html

lol u live near a lounge called saints and sinners

Yeah. And I ate there once. It was terrible. They have karaoke and a live band called "Sax Appeal".

Cuckoo's Nest however, a few blocks away, is totally awesome. Great fish and chips and irish breakfast. Sunday "trad" session, the whole deal.

j/k

We were told by someone in the know that we could get a fairly large 1BR (like 750-900 sqf) in a co-opish building near the subway in Forest Hills for like $1600-1800. We're thinking we may suck it up and do a 1BR for a couple years, especially if we can get in-building laundry/dishwasher/elevator for stroller purposes. So it doesn't seem massively more expensive than Sunnyside/Woodside/JH.

Ok, tell me this though. Just say I wanted to do a quick, driving/walking tour of sunnyside and woodside to get the flavor of the area, where would you recommend going?

coming from brooklyn, take greenpoint avenue into queens, you'll see the south side of sunnyside, greenpoint is the main strip and there's lots of housing off of it. You'll cross QB when Greenpoint Ave turns into Roosevelt and gets a bit crappy under the train, but you'll pass La Flor, a nice little brunch spot. Take a left on 55th street then the next left on Skillman ave, that's the start of skillman, take that all the way down to 42nd or so street and that's the north side of Sunnyside. zig zag around there, drive on 47th or 46th or other streets through the gardens. Know you will not live there, but it is beautiful. Drive up to 39th Ave, all very pleasant. 43rd Ave and Queens Blvd have more food and whatnot.

For Woodside get back to Roosevelt and keep driving to 61st st where the LIRR and the express 7 stop is. That's my little downtown woodside, where my bank is, my dry cleaners etc. Beyond that woodside is really big and block by block, some of it's really ugly and not very nice, some is decent. Over where I live near Doughboy Plaza is really the border of Sunnyside and is pretty great. Because it's not "technically" Sunnyside Gardens, it's cheaper, but it's just a few blocks away, yet is closer to the trains.

Woodside also streteches north, the other side of Northern Blvd where you're near the M and R trains and start to border Astoria. I wouldn't necessarily want to live up there, but it's good that I can walk to those trains if the 7 doesn't suit me. I actually take the LIRR to work because they don't take my ticket so it's free most of the time and way faster way to get to the west side.

I second most of that except for the driving part. also qb is sorta the main drag more than skillman or greenpoint and sunnyside is the only part of queens where it's a (half) decent place to walk.

Agreed

Yeah, make sure your driving tour includes skillman avenue around 39 to 43--there is a big playground/ballcourt there, and thats where the farmers market is on weekends.

Where I live there is a little playground around 42nd and greenpoint, where you can also find the sunnyside library.

Also, what are your transportation needs? If you want something other than the 7, Jackson heigts, forest hills or kew gardens
have more options.

I can deal with the 7 to Grand Central (10 block walk to work from there or take the 6). The E is great for me which is another benefit to forest hills.

btw thanks all

Of course. Sunnyside (especially around Skillman in the low 40s) always feels like Sesame Street to me, so I highly recommend it for children.