The Philosophy of Art Outside

One of the best art experiences you can have in this city isn't in a gallery or a museum. It's not even in Manhattan. Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria will force you to shed your reservations about long N-train rides, art, and the cultural validity of Queens. Beyond being an anomaly in the neighborhood, SSP stands out because of the art itself. The curators seem to understand the perverse humor of putting a sculpture park on the edge of the East River overlooking Roosevelt Island and the temporary installations at SSP have the same aura of playful unexpectedness: a stack of plaster birthday cakes, a fake subway entrance, a beheaded and cross-sectioned vinyl whale. Their new exhibit opens September 13th, and though their summer film series is over there will be more events before Arctic winds blow in from the Bronx. So stop being an art-snob and go to Queens to learn that good art knows how to enjoy itself.

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Landmarks • Astoria

Hipster Granny Style

Astoria does not want for shops. If you want to buy a mop, a cannoli, a faux-leather jacket, a vat of hair gel, or a cell-phone plan, you'll be set. But if you're one of the 15 people in the neighborhood who'd rather buy a granny-dress than a granny-cart, Loveday 31 is your best--perhaps, only--bet. The buttonhole-sized shop on 31st Avenue (get it?) is a colorful oasis of mothball-scented garb from the past six decades, including a wall of boots, some funky handbags, and jewelry new and old. Lovely to be sure, but not lovely enough to justify the price tags which are much too high if you can find them at all. As the only game in town, it seems Loveday assumes its preciousness can compel the funky frontierswomen of Queens to pay $65 for a dress that they'd probably pass over at the Salvo a few blocks away. Regardless, if you're in the market for a sequin-encrusted sweater, Loveday's your place. Just be prepared for irony when the Astoria-octogenarian in the deli is wearing the same one.

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Shopping • Astoria

Astonishing Discovery

Sweet Afton had only been open one week when I went, but I wouldn't have known: great food, great service, no sign of new-bar foibles afoot. What gives? Turns out this new addition to the Astoria scene was manufactured by the Manhattanites responsible for Bua and Wilfie & Nell, and follows a similar formula: exposed brick and salvaged materials make up the interior, while "locally sourced" food and antique-modern cocktails fill the menu. Though common in other parts of the city, these rote restaurant trends are still hard to come by in Astoria. Hence the crowds even on weeknights as locals enjoy brews from Kelso, pickles from McClure's (deep-fried, consumed voraciously by yours truly), and comfort-culinary delights like Gruyere mac n' cheese and luscious-looking burgers. The vibe is more Fort Greene than Queens, as are the prices, but the super-enthusiastic waitstaff and tasty food-and-bev will make Sweet Afton a hang-out for many Astorians. Sweet.

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Nightlife • Astoria

Very Vino

Psst. I gotta guy in Queens, a closet foodie with neighborhood pride, slippin' me the dirt on new eats. He's been raving about Vesta, so I did some investigatin'. My guy, he knows his stuff. Vesta's an unlikely Italian nook in Greek Astoria that feels fresh and familiar at the same time. The smallish, diverse menu changes with each new shipment from the Rooftop Garden and balances classics with trendier combos. Pastas and pizzas are light and flavorful without being laden with sauces and cheese. They're also big, but not quite big enough to split, so sate your cheese-fetish by adding a small plate of baked Taleggio or sheep's milk ricotta. The entrees are tasty if not outstanding--I prefer my mama's lasagna, but who doesn't? Vesta knows where it shines, and says so in its URL: vino. Superbly-selected, by the shot and glass, with almost all bottles under $30. I've yet to try the Baby Jesus Cake, but my guy in Queens recommends it: "I mean, they named it after the son of God!" So go, enjoy, and don't thank me, thank my informant. He's the one holding the chicken.

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Restaurants • Astoria

Global Borough Strikes Again

While foodies have finally discovered the diverse cuisine of Queens, Mundo cuts the guesswork and train hopping by cramming a world (or borough) of food into a tiny, side street cafe. The massive Mundo menu reads like a FIFA playoff bracket: Portuguese, Argentinean, Greek, Spanish, Turkish, Brazilian, Italian. We warmed up with the much-lauded Red Sonjas, red lentil and bulgur blobbets wrapped in lettuce leaves which we agreed were correctly advertised as a must-try. Turkish meatballs, unlike their sullen, sodden Italian brethren, were akin to light and crispy beef falafels. The crabmeat burger is forgiven for lacking distinct ethnicity as it clearly hails from the nation of delicious: its rich crabby goodness will likely paralyze me from ordering crabcakes anywhere else. While I've heard some entrees are odd (Ottoman dumplings reminiscent of beef cereal and milk), everything on our table was flavorful and perfectly presented. By the end of the meal, the initially empty restaurant was filled to capacity with every sort sipping wine and slurping Sonjas. Among the drapes and tin lanterns, we wayward Westerners could have been in a cafe anywhere on the Mediterranean rim. Who'da thunk we were in Queens.

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Restaurants • Astoria

Czech It Out

Everything everyone tells me about Astoria is a lie. No more Greek inhabitants? Tell that to the Phoenician-descended signage. No more cool Astorians? Tell that to the drugged-out '90s club kids, suited dullards, yapping old people and alien laborers laboring under the delusion that life is worth living. OK, fine, I'm wrong. But another thing people lie to me about in regard to Astoria is that there are no more Czechs and Slovaks. But the Bohemian Beer Garden is affiliated with a Czech-Slovak language school and only admits Astorians of Czech and Slovak descent into its secret Bohemian Citizen's Benevolent Society of Astoria. And the garden has light beer, dark beer, French fries, sauerkraut, sausages, uncomfortable benches (ouch, my incisors) and an enormous outdoor 'hall' (or whatever) space. OK, fine, I'm wrong. There are no more Czechs.

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Nightlife • Astoria

A Pita By Any Other Name

I don't know what most people call it, but we call it by the name on the sign: "Pita Hot." Yes, it's grammatically confusing, but when one of the kings of falafel who run the shop offers you a free sampling of hummus-dipped pita hot off the panini-press, it all makes sense. Not just hot: hawt. As in damn-delicious and mighty fine. Same goes for the baba ghanoush, the falafel, all of it. Pick your filling and $3.50 buys you a pita sandwich, carefully--nay, lovingly--stuffed with fresh lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and their own creamy-nutty tahini sauce. Should you be so bold, go for a bit of spice when prompted. And if you're truly audacious or just plain starving, dare to order the Jerusalem Falafel sandwich, packed with crispy tender falafel and THREE more fillings. There are platters and wraps, appetizers and desserts--for these I cannot speak. For me, the holy pilgrimage to Astoria is for one purpose only: to worship at this hot house of pita.

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Restaurants • Astoria

Youth Unbridled

According to one storied website, Buzzer 30 is a "community arts organization with an exhibition space" located in a somewhat modern-looking warehouse in Astoria. In this same building exists Astoria Soundworks, some ballet thingamajig, an impressive staircase and a tenebrous confederacy of theoretically art-centric, mysteriously Peter Pannish, stylistically late-90s young people intertwined by a single magical linking collection of syllables: Wonderland. I have nomadically infiltrated this circle of spring chickens in a time of uncertain housing and I have found it wild. I encountered endless amounts of food and drink, ceaseless revelry and disparate young people lounging on probably dust mite-infested sofas. Youthful, frowzled and interlaced by somewhat interchangeable lank young men with dark hair and guitars, Wonderland (I mean, the haunt of the kids in the building that houses Buzzer 30) is an instructively college-like arena; its aura lackadaisical, hospitable and disconcerting. And I'm totally into that in a strategic social-experiment sense.

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Art Galleries , Landmarks • Astoria

Ovelia

Some storefronts act as a halfway house for half-baked business ideas. In recent times, this address has been temporary home to a non-descript café with unmemorable food and a kinda-sports bar/sorta-deli that didn’t succeed at either try, though it seems to have found a more permanent resident in, wait for it, a Greek restaurant! In Astoria, nonetheless! Serving the niche of those dying to pay Manhattan prices but just can’t seem to stomach the train ride in, Ovelia makes a noble (but outdated) attempt at the cool quotient eluding most neighborhood eateries. Swapping sentimental for sexy, bouzouki for Worldbeat, and the requisite refrigerator-cum-kitchen entrance with a well-executed maritime-twilit bar, it (more fairly) treats diners as guests, rather than customers who accidentally stumbled through the back door (although I tend to like that vibe…). The fare is given a more tender treatment (better execution and plating) than proximal competitors, and extant haute cuisine like sweetbreads tempt the audacious palate, but an $8 glass (all Greek selection) may leave you feeling less adventurous pocket-wise. Thankfully the basics are a safe bet but the prol in me can’t help wondering if I wouldn’t have been happier at Opa Souvlaki.

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Restaurants • Astoria

El Boqueron Tapas Restaurant

“Be sharp, I move pretty fast,” said Miller Bermeo, manhandling a sangria pitcher while posing for a photo. Easy for him: he´s not already two drinks in, celebrating an impending 6 am flight to Mexico. Waah...He and his brother Gonzalo, co-owners of El Boqueron, both suit-clad (the waiters in tuxes), circled the room like slick presidential hopefuls, sharing hospitality duties with the wait staff to handle the 10-deep line at the door. Not typical for Astoria (waits, tuxes, or hustle) but tapas isn´t perfected by sitting on your ass. Case in point: here, Sardinas al a Plancha Sal Gordo (lukewarm grease elsewhere) comes fast and flaky with a perfect char, salt and natural oil in a delicious balance. Pulpo al a Gallega (elsewhere charred rubber) masquerades as seared tuna texture-wise: an extra virgin and paprika-heavy wonder. And in their hands, a simple escalibada is whipsawed “Grandmother Style” into cod ceviche with the sweet zip of marinated peppers and zucchini. True to my wallet, each tapas is Queens-priced (none over $9) and served with a tasteful flamboyance parcel to knowing you´re very good at what you do. Vive Hombres Bermeo!

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Restaurants • Astoria

Latin Cabana

While first impressions are important, I sometimes need two or three; just remembering names is tough. True story: midway through my second lunch special that day (a well-reviewed cubano) and third meal overall at a nameless Astoria restaurant, I had an impression. It stunk. Upset over dry, sliced(!) shoulder and thick dead pickle in a crumbly coffin, I threw in the towel and pedaled, ass-frozen, to Astoria’s Little Camaguey: Latin Cabana, and for a third lunch had Nilda Valdez’s sandwich masterwork that should have been my only that day. For $4 (drink included), moist pulled pernil replaced slabs of dry flesh, the pluck of a tangy pickle exploded out of folds of firm but forgiving Cuban white brushed with garlic, olive oil, and lemon to a high-gloss finish. Drowning the last bite in Mojo Criollo, I felt explorer’s remorse: Tuesday’s gravy-thick Rabo Encendido (Oxtail), and Friday’s flaky Bacalao a la Cabana (both $5.50 w/yucca and maduros), specials that I’d normally have perused, were usurped by far substandard victuals. Nilda, in camo flannel and Yankees’ lid: can you forgive me? I returneth, ne’er to stray again.

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Restaurants • Astoria

The Greater Astoria Historical Society

The space occupied by the Greater Astoria Historical Society: a one-time mausoleum magnate's family gallery located above a still-operational funeral home, cannot escape a certain implicit irony. Equal parts precious artifact museum, document repository, and lecture hall, it, like its ground-floor neighbor, serves a certain needed civic duty as a salon of reflection, remembrance, and memorial for that which has passed forever to antiquity (in this case, the independent municipality of Long Island City incorporating the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunter's Point, etc. pre-1898 NYC annexation), never to return. While a somber space for some (read: sympathetic Brooklynites who like to whine over their similar loss of indie cred), a whimsical memory-lane stroll for others, this all-volunteer society, whose membership ($20 yearly) is in the hundreds, has a living agenda. Through monthly lectures, walking tours, book publication (all events are listed on http://www.astorialic.org), web involvement, and neighborhood site protection, the Society's aim since its formation in 1985 is to bring value to the neighborhood's past to help better define its future. In the face of Fedderization and Ratner-itis (it's only a matter of time, Astorians...) such grassroots civic-mindedness is essential.

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Landmarks • Astoria

The Bargain Stop

The odd-lot good: victim of the machinations of mass production. Decent appliances with bruised boxes, bed sheets with bygone designs, and suspect off-brands like Trisonic batteries and Standard screwdrivers tantalizingly priced and shelved next to an overstocked-come-shunned real McCoy: who will speak for them? The disgraced starlet relied on Warhol for redemption; these also-rans have The Bargain Stop. A three-storefront mall on 30th Ave: this mega-low-mart has supplied a secondary market to Astoria's deal hunters for over 15 years. Not all goods are good: skip the sweatshop clothes and home objects d'crap and go for the surprising selection of name-brand toiletries, storage/luggage, beach/BBQ/kitchen gear, hard-to-find specialties like plug adaptors and vacuum bags, and impossible-to-make-shitty items like safety pins. A one-stop for a frantic apartment re-org. Best feature: staff has bookish retention of store inventory like all sizes/varieties of laundry detergent, great for a quick need-it-now, lest you fend for yourself and get side-tracked by a great deal on a Black and Decker fry daddy, or cheap gifts for blind Grandma: red light bulbs, 3-pack/$.99.

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Shopping • Astoria

The Quays

Irish pubs in NYC are more numerous than unplanned Catholic pregnancies. But what makes a good one? Irish owned, naturally. No masquerading Upper East Side frat traps. Buybacks are necessary: every third on the house makes the next two a forgone purchase. Irish bartenders—real ones with real accents from the real country—are a plus. Numerous framed pictures of Shane MacGowan on-stage at the bar with a pint of Guinness mid-throat like that ostrich in the poster (he's also been seen urlin' in the next-door laundromat) make it extra special. The Quays has all of that, plus a padded wall at the bottom of the bathroom steps for head-first piss-take plunges. That's fucking brilliant. Also, glass booths every third or fourth stool confine loud sing-a-long blearghhing every time Sally MacLennane comes from the band or the jukebox, separating the merry pint-swillers from the surly shot-nursers. The Irish may have left Astoria for Woodside, but they left the Quays to remind us how much we still have to learn about drinking.

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Nightlife • Astoria

JJ's Restaurant

31st Ave, Dr, or Rd? If named streets were too difficult for the turn-of-the-century annexed borough, what led them to this bombastic nomen-fisting? Similar questions might confound those used to necessity-based chowing in Astoria when encountering hard-to-spot JJ's Restaurant, a French-Sushi Fusion known by JJ Fusion, JJ's Tofu, or just JJ's. Relax, because it's the destination that is the reward in the journey. Interesting twists like tuna sashimi with wasabi basil oil and apple chips, potato and leek spring rolls w/sweet chili, and edamame dumplings brighten the standard apps menu. For mains, pepper-crusted tuna slabs with vinaigrette-doused arugula are a nice left turn up a typical sushi one-way. Rolls, however, are Richard's specialty: salmon, soybean paper, mango sauce, and almonds w/brown rice make a nice 5-ingredient pile-up. Or make your own. More trips off Astoria's subway avenues should be as rewarding.

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Restaurants • Astoria

Opa! Souvlaki

Buried under the N Train at 30th Avenue and tiled like a proud Grecian bathroom floor, the street window of Opa! Souvlaki seems more of a heat-cured grillmaster peepshow than an inviting glance into an eating opportunity. But judge not! For curiosity rewards you handsomely. At the storefront's broken-armed statue, customers choose from a pictographic menu offering satisfying souvlaki take out dishes. However, diners looking to eat like Tony Sopranopoulous are led Swingers-style to a true Mediterranean respite. Past the ovens and dishwashers mid-Opa! you’ll find cozy indoor and outdoor gardens with Hellenic hand-painted murals that, while kitsch, are wholly transcendent. Flaky spanakopita, dense pastisio (think lasagna on Retabol), and pleasing garlic, roe, and eggplant dips w/bakery bread list as starters but eat like full meals. Loukanaki and fresh fish are worthy mains, but a must-try is their grilled octopus: filet mignon with tentacles. Top if off with house retsina, hum to Greek pop filling the air, and marvel that 20 feet up, the roaring N seems eerily silent in this pre-EU paradise.

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Restaurants • Astoria

Sai Organics

Lots of businesses have philosophies asking you to obey your thirst or to be cointreauversial or something similarly vacuous. Not a new phenom, but a philosophy with a business? Now we're on to something profound. Well, we in this case are Syed and Lizette Jaffri, co-owners of Sai Organics. Followers of Swami Sri Sathya Sai Baba and his teachings of truth, unity, and love, they were motivated to offer something of value, regardless of form, to the neighborhood. The results? Besides a marvelously stacked all-organic market offering a majors-rivaling selection of in-season (majors may try to slip you phony corn) product and produce, Sai Organics holds steadfast to its ideals. Not sure if pumpkin seed oil recharges an ailing prostate? Truth: on-site reference manuals answer questions Syed and Lizette cannot. Looking to take your healthy lifestyle to the next level? Unity: organic cleaning products, pet foods, vitamins, recipes, and listings for community yoga classes available here or the website. Love? Well, Syed plans to open a non-profit space above the shop so local health and legal professionals can donate counsel to Astoria's needy. Oh yeah, smoothies and organic coffee to go. Gotta love that...

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Supermarkets • Astoria

Astoria Park

Before there were public parks, people took their picnics in the graveyards of the city—spreading blankets and playing games with balls and bats amid the stones. The urban improvement movement of the late 1800s, which culminated in the grandeur of Central Park, also planted many, smaller parks throughout the city. These small, neighborhood parks are not destinations but shared back yards. My back-yard park boasts two bridges and the largest public pool in the five boroughs, but I love it for what is typical about it. I love walking in the morning and seeing how many are jogging, how many are dog-walking, and whether anyone is breathing through the ritual of Tai Chi. I love sitting on a sunny weekend afternoon and seeing children beg their parents for ice cream money, listening to urban youths taunt one another through basketball games, watching the young women tan, and the young men watch the women. And I love knowing that, while I am watching, others are also watching, and that one of the ones these others are watching might be you.

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Landmarks • Astoria

Sissy McGinty’s

Irish drinking is a much maligned cultural tendency, but the Irish love of the sociable, companionable, everyday day drink has supplied the city with a great number of the sort of bars in which people do still sit and talk and watch the light change through the windows. These are not “going out” going out bars, but second living rooms for many—a place to watch the game if you don’t have cable, a place to be around other people without necessarily having to talk to these other people, if you live alone. I live directly across the street from my Irish bar and watch the people come and go and step outside to smoke their cigarettes. I have come to know the habits of the bartender—she goes for a sandwich around five, she pulls her long blond hair into a ponytail by seven or eight. I have watched a group of jersey-wearing soccer fans enter hooting one Sunday night and emerge stumbling the following Monday morning, at the hour I was getting ready for work. What goes on in, or in front of, your Irish bar?

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Nightlife • Astoria

Salvation Army

The fact that thrift stores exist indicates more about the nature of purchase and ownership in American culture than the seven stories of the Herald Square Macy’s or the two H&M’s within a block of one another nearby. The thrift store is an overflow bucket, a sopper-upper. Items show up with tags attached, in bags containing their sale-priced receipts. Because closets in the city are so small, thrift stores are particularly robust. Through thrift shopping, I have observed that neighborhoods embrace brands and that goods, more than faces, betray personalities—who was it that donated the review copies of popular novels to my last thrift store, who is the woman in my current neighborhood who grew out of her several pairs of size-4 velvet pants. Buy and wear something from your thrift store, and see if anyone you pass in the street looks particularly interested in, particularly familiar with, that item. Donate your own bag of shouldn’t-have-bought to the thrift store, and keep your eyes open for the teenager who can pull off that baby-doll dress or those polka-dotted pants.

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Shopping • Astoria