Tag Archives: Astoria

look: after the superstorm

Posted on October 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

I sincerely hope these don’t become annual posts.

Hurricane/Superstorm/Frankenstorm Sandy pounded the east coast yesterday, and much of the city is underwater, without power, or otherwise struggling, so we are extremely grateful for our high ground in Astoria and the large local contingent of dedicated small businesses, most of which are up and running, if they ever closed. There was a line outside Bareburger this afternoon (Tuesday) waiting for tables. We’re not going to go hungry, and save for a little light-flickering anxiety, we were able to eat, drink, and watch weather-disaster-porn in safety and comfort. The best collection of pictures of the storm’s impact in NYC and surrounding areas is here, via the inimitable Alan Taylor.

Here are a few pictures of the aftermath in the neighborhood. It’s cold and blustery out, but dry, and things are getting back to normal. I have a new camera lens, too, a manual-focus 50mm/1.8 which I LOVE and am trying to master. Here goes:

Worst downed-tree damage I saw – 31st Avenue

More common sight: leaf litter & general mess. 31st Avenue

Skies clearing over 30th Avenue

The Apple House still open for business

Sandbags and tarp outside the Academy for New Americans

Tree down across the street from us, 30th Drive

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look: historic pool photograph

Posted on July 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

Astoria Pool, summer 1940

This is my current desktop image. I love all the high-waisted swimsuits. And that beautiful bridge? I’m planning to get married underneath it, in the park just a little beyond the pool.  (I wrote about the pool, in its modern dress, last summer.)

 

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explore: fridays at the noguchi museum

Posted on July 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

On the first Friday of the month, the Noguchi Museum, just across the street from Socrates Sculpture Park, is open late, is free to get in, and serves beer and wine for $5. You can wander throughout the museum, which was originally Noguchi’s workshop, and admire the huge range of sculptures and designs he produced. If you only know him as a designer of lamps and infamous coffee tables, there’s a whole rough-hewn, monumental, granite-and-metal world to discover. Plus, the shaded gardens are one of the most peaceful places in the city:

Noguchi Museum. 9-01 33rd Road, LIC (at Vernon Boulevard). Weds-Fri 10-5, Saturday & Sunday 11-6. General admission, $10.

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explore: office space

Posted on July 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

One of the things I love about living in a densely populated and wildly expensive city – seriously – is seeing creative solutions to the problems that that density and expense create. Specifically, the problem of space for creativity. Whatever the many flaws of Starbucks, it’s always struck me as one of the most convenient places in New York to park a laptop and get to work, mostly because it’s anonymous enough that I don’t feel guilty for mooching off the electricity and the bathroom facilities on the strength of one black coffee per two hours.

The quest for the perfect coffee shop to work in is one I take seriously – when I lived in Williamsburg, Atlas Cafe on the corner of Havemeyer and Grand, a couple of blocks from my apartment, came close to the Platonic ideal of the working cafe, where the food was good and cheap, the coffee generous, and the clientele earnestly hunched over MacBooks under a wall-sized map of the world made you feel a little guilty if you weren’t.

But sometimes you don’t want to traipse around for the perfect spot, or it’s Saturday afternoon and too noisy to set up your private-in-public desk, which is where the whole industry of workspaces to rent comes in. One day, I’d love to afford to work somewhere as gorgeous as the Oracle Club, in LIC, or Paragraph, or the Writers Room (which pointedly compares its daily rate to the cost of a double latte), but even those rates feel indulgent for now, like joining a gym which just makes me think that I should run outside for free, and admit that the problem is motivation, not space.

So I’ve been hunting around in the NYPL for a spot that’s not too windswept with AC and loud with tourists, and doing my best to make my desk at home workable. Then suddenly something new shows up. How about an office in a tree?

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look: after the hurricane

Posted on August 28, 2011 | 5 Comments

A ribbon hanging off the flag at our local public school

I’ve never lived through truly extreme weather – I’m from Southern England. The most dramatic storm I remember was the 1987 gale that downed trees and caused a lot of damage in the southeast, after weather reports scoffed at any danger. It gave my eight-year-old self nightmares whenever the wind made tree branches scratch my bedroom window. Since living here, extreme weather has been more frequent, but it’s always worse somewhere outside New York. I watched Katrina footage like I watch scenes from war zones – without being able to wrap my head around it by reference to any memory of my own. The stories my midwestern friends tell about racing tornadoes in their car are as alien to me as the weird green color that they say the storm turns the sky. So I had no idea how to react to Irene over the last couple of days – was this overreaction? Or sensible precaution? We wouldn’t really need a flashlight and a bathtub full of water and canned foods, would we? Continue reading →

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love: astoria park pool

Posted on August 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

the pool and the hellgate bridge

I’ve lived a 15-minute walk from this pool for two summers now, and yesterday was the first time I’ve got it together to go for a swim. The pool is open 11-3 and then 4-7 every day, and I was there for the evening session. It was the first hot and sunny day after a few days of heavy rain and gloom, so it was busy – I assume it’s always busy – but it’s huge, so even with several hundred kids playing all over, it didn’t feel overcrowded. The whole experience was unexpectedly nostalgic and moving for me; the bare-bones locker rooms with their turquoise-painted open-fronted changing booths took me right back to the municipal pools and lidos that I grew up visiting, and the feeling of curling your toes on the scratchy wet concrete floor, hopping the puddles and enduring the dankness and dark corridors for the sake of emerging into the light and the blaringly bright poolside.

overlooking the concrete bleachers

It’s not easy to swim laps since most people are hanging out in groups and playing, carving out little corners for themselves by the ropes that bisect the pool or at the edge of the water, but if you persist in your mental lane they’ll move out of your path. The place has all the democratic charm of a busy park on a sunny day, but concentrated and intensified by the excitement of the water.

the vast pool, looking over to the snack bar and picnic tables

The pool is a glorious monument of WPA architecture, stunning in its proportions, its generosity, its sheer presence. Nothing temporary or cost-cutting cramping its style. It opened in the summer of 1936 on the Fourth of July, making it the oldest outdoor pool in the city. Although it’s free it feels lavish, and as I lay drying off on one of the white plastic recliners in the sun I couldn’t help feeling like I was getting away with something.

would you look at those lines and curves?

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explore: astoria & lic

Posted on July 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

[Despite wandering into LIC, this post is participating in the Astoria Blog Carnival, at We Heart Astoria. If that's how you found me - hi! I have more Astoria posts here, here, here and here.

It has been a gluttonous 36 hours in this neck of the woods. Last night, dinner at:

We counted TX, MS, AZ, AK and ... Ontario? plates

our new local New Orleans-themed restaurant, which served a refreshing Pimm’s, a salty fried catfish, and a decadent side of mac & cheese. The half po’boys were ample and great, and there’s a Sazerac to sample and a whole slew of fried and broiled oysters to explore. The interior has a corrugated-tin-roof, vintage diner tables and lots of floral fabric and service couldn’t be smilier. Didn’t have room for dessert, which is a bit of a shame, given the name.

Then today, brunch at El Ay Si on Vernon Boulevard, which was thoroughly charming, cheap, delicious and comfortable enough that we hung out for nearly three hours. We walked over in the blazing sun to Gantry Plaza State Park, which is expanding rapidly and is a beautifully landscaped, peaceful little enclave with a killer view of Manhattan. There are wooden sunloungers and a row of bright orange hammocks woven out of what looked like repurposed seatbelts. To the girl in her bikini lying there reading House of Leaves, I salute you.

Lawn Guyland gantries. Ignore the damn trash can in the foreground.

The green outpost of the mostly wood-decked waterfront park

I'm always a sucker for a well-placed Adirondack chair

We wandered back inland and happened upon LIC bar, (watch out, music at the link) which had live music in the back yard and was a very nice place to while away a Sunday afternoon. Oh, and there was this:

White tiger & cub, red Buick and co-ordinating laundry bag.

And under the train tracks near Queensboro Plaza, this boarded-up, bricked-up, and beautiful building:

This was clearly a showcase for what they could do. 1892 and crumbling.

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explore: a new york weekend

Posted on July 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

It’s Fourth of July weekend, which means a lot more to Americans and especially Americans with office jobs that it does to me, but nevertheless, there’s an extra holiday feel in the air, and without really intending to, I had a pretty great weekend exploring Astoria and beyond.

Friday evening we took a walk at the end of a sunny day spent mostly inside working, and treated ourselves to beers and panini in the lovely garden at Bambino on 31st Ave. For my money this is the nicest restaurant garden in the ‘hood, all reclaimed wood and metal, which glows beautifully in the evening light. I realize I don’t usually post pictures of myself or of Tony, but I’m practicing portrait photography in my online class with the brilliant Nicole Gerulat, and I’m trying to work out what makes a good photograph of a person, even if not technically a portrait. So a few more faces might pop up around here.

Back garden at Bambino

Lagunitas. Might just be my beer of the summer

Beer and panini at Bambino

On Saturday I went to the new farmer’s market in Socrates Sculpture Park on Vernon Blvd., which is a little park by the water that I love anyway – it feels oddly remote and peaceful, even when there are lots of people there and even group yoga going on under the trees. The market was small, with mostly vegetables and one or two other stalls – cheeses, honey, bread, Long Island wines.

Pilates canceled!!?!!

Manhattan, from Socrates Sculpture Park

Cool power-line sculpture

Warehouse on Vernon Blvd.These ladies were serious about their produceBasking veggies

On Saturday afternoon I went down to Brooklyn to welcome my dear, dear friend Sarah and her family back to town, after a six-month stint in Ottawa. We took some quick pictures on the rooftop of their new apartment (Statue of Liberty!!) and ducked downstairs out of the blazing sun.

The view from a Brooklyn rooftop

Sarah and baby Juniper on the roof. How awesome are her glasses?

Today, Sunday, was drizzly and grey all day, after about five days of uninterrupted sunshine. Nevertheless, we were determined to take the bikes out – part of my plan to get comfortable and confident on wheels. I will probably never use my bike to commute or as naturally and unthinkingly and fearlessly at T does, having worked as a bike courier. But I do want to be able to get out and explore. So to that end we rode over to Roosevelt Island, an odd little outpost in the east river, which used to be known as Welfare Island and was the site of a famous mental asylum (which I first learned about in a Caribbean Lit class last year, in the poem Farewell From Welfare Island by the Nuyorican poet Julia de Burgos. The hospital is still there, although in a different incarnation, as well as lots of social housing and newer luxury condos (surprise!) I wondered as we were riding what it must be like to grow up there, an island off an island. Does Manhattan become ‘the mainland’? Does it feel particularly out of reach?

Bike ride to Roosevelt Island

To the Lighthouse! (at the end of the island)

Views from the island

The bridge to the 'mainland'?