“What’s next here, Jay-Z?”
The reunited semi-replaced Replacements are coming to NYC. I feel slightly uneasy about that fact, but I’m quite excited about the venue: the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium!
The old home of the US Open is a legendary rock concert venue. It’s legendary mostly for time and place. The sound system was apparently awful, the aisles and backstage cramped and the streets and train stations overwhelmed by the throngs of rampaging kids. But at a time that rock-n-roll and youth culture were surging and there wasn’t much in the way of non-classical concert venues, the stadium served as a useful home for some of the first big New York concerts by The Beatles, Dylan, the Doors, the Stones – you name it.
When I lived a few blocks away, the stadium had long been supplanted by Arthur Ashe at Flushing Meadows. It was a quiet relic. I’m not sure what went on behind its ivy walls in that sleepy neighborhood. There were nights when I would try to imagine what it would be like to hear the distorted tinny amplified sounds of Keef’s clarion-call riff kicking off “Satisfaction,” fighting to be heard over the screams of a thousand girls wafting through the air like a bad block party.
So, the opportunity to see a show there? I’m in (if the scalpers don’t beat me to it). But it got me wondering, when did they start running rock concerts in Forest Hills again?. And then I found this gem, from the Queens Chronicle:
Last year’s sold-out Mumford & Sons concert at the iconic Forest Hills Tennis Stadium may have been declared an impressive success by elected officials and community leaders, but some area residents hope the curtain comes down on any future shows.
[snip]
“I can’t tell you what torture it was that day, getting back and forth,” Tola said to the crowd of around 70 people. “What’s in it for us?”
Tola, a resident of Exeter Street in Forest Hills for the last two years, defended his stance against concerts being held at the venue by claiming the shows booked by Madison House Presents will bring disruptive noise and open drug use by spectators to the immediate area.
“You’re bringing that element. You’re inviting them in,” he said. “What’s next here, Jay-Z?”
Stay classy, Queens. The NIMBYism, well, you can get that just about anywhere. But the dog-whistling racist NIMBYism? Well, that’s a Queens art form. And until the return of rock-n-roll to Forest Hills Tennis Stadium was one of the better known art forms in the borough. It’s time for new art in Queens. Even if it is an oldies concert.
Developmental Diversity
My hometown’s getting a bit of a black eye from the NY Times this weekend. On Friday, the Grey Lady published a profile of Bellerose (a few blocks from my Floral Park and “across the street from Nassau County,” take note), where our local drive-in Frozen Cup ice cream shop is being bulldozed to make way for a new sex hotel.
This is one of many changes, notes Times scribe James Angelos:
The closing of the beloved neighborhood spot strikes many residents as simply the latest sign of the death of old Bellerose. The bowling alley, another local hangout that some considered the beating heart of Bellerose, closed a few years back, to eventually be replaced by a Staples, among other stores. Several years ago, the nearby movie theater closed, and the building now houses a martial arts supply business.
I played in a youth league at the Bellerose Lanes, mind you. My dad worked a part-time job there. I was sorry to see it go, if only because it’s damn hard to find a decent bowling alley in New York these days. Around the same time, two bowling alleys near my old Kew Gardens home also closed down, muscled out by new developers who will likely also replace them with hotels or office supply stores. And when I moved in to Bay Ridge, it was hot on the heels of a protest over the shuttering of the local Key Food grocery store to be replaced by – wait for it – a Waldgreens drug store, while the nearest supermarket, Coney Island’s Pathmark, is swamped with shoppers from four under-served adjacent neighborhoods. It’s all just capitalist development, no? Another example of Jane Jacobs’ theory of success driving out success when it comes to real estate development, leading to numbing homogeneity and the “death of great cities?”
But the Times smells something else at play. At that something else is the faint whiff of curry:
“They’re turning the neighborhood into a third-world country,” Mr. Augugliaro said. “We don’t want it over here to look like Richmond Hill or Jackson Heights,” he added, speaking of Queens neighborhoods with sizable South Asian populations.
As he spoke, Ms. Augugliaro shook her head in disapproval at some of his remarks, and he seemed to pick up on her unspoken criticism.
“I’m not a racist,” Mr. Augugliaro quickly added. In fact, he said, he was tired of the subject of race coming up so often. “What does race have to do with it?” he asked.
Indeed. What does race have to do with it? I have a strange sort of pride that the neighborhood I grew up in is now New York’s Little India; that slumming yuppies make pilgrimages to Floral Park to sample the vindaloo (pity my bland palate can’t handle the stuff); that my parents’ home has quintupled in value, and when they cease to live there, it will be painted purple and adorned with brushed nickel metal accents.
Others, like Mr. Augugliaro (whose name sounds familiar; I think he volunteers for the same community theater group as my folks), are threatened that the changes to the neighborhood look and talk different from the Irish and Italian stock that formerly constituted northeast Queens. But they are letting The Man pit us against each other. The problem is not that another generation of immigrants are pulling themselves up by the boot-straps, buying in to the community and adding a taste of curry to the proverbial melting pot. The problem is that land, and usage, and community service are for sale to the highest bidder, and that local real estate desperately needs some limits and controls placed on it, to ensure a continued diversity of use and community, and that the endless sea of Wal-Marts, Walgreens, Applebees and Home Depots are still dotted with the occasional bowling alley and ice cream shop so that our neighborhoods remain communities.
Goodbye, Queens. Hello, Brooklyn
I’m not a well-traveled person. I secured a reputation of sorts in grad school, on the first day of Elaine Bernard’s global labor movements class. As we went around the room for introductions, and everyone explained who they were and where they came from (yes, yes, they were the union, the mighty, might union) and discussed their various international contacts and trips abroad, I introduced myself with a flip “Shaun Richman, AFT, Queens, NY. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable leaving Queens.” I’ve spent my entire life – nearly 30 years of it – in this fine borough, but all things have an end. I finally received an acceptable offer on my apartment. I signed the contract of sale on Friday and will be gone by November.
I’m looking to move to Brooklyn, someplace close to the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano Bridge, and within an hour of midtown by subway. Someplace quiet, pretty, affordable and in close proximity to fun. I’m not sure such a neighborhood exists. It’s the “affordable” part that’s difficult. I managed, in the end, to sell my apartment for nearly twice what I paid for it five years ago. Unfortunately, everything else went up in cost at least as much. Obvious choices like Park Slope and Fort Greene are prohibitively expensive.
I had high hopes for Sunset Park, with its ubiquitous park and skyline views. It is affordable – barely – but sleepy and undeveloped. Bay Ridge, slightly to the south, had much more appealing shopping and dining, but it’s so far from everything, I’m afraid no one would ever visit me and the neighborhood would serve as little more than a bedroom community for my Jersey commute.
Yesterday I got my hopes up about the unfortunately-named Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, but I dashed them today by visiting there. Even the nabe’s enthusiastic booster blog has trouble highlighting more than nice architecture and convenient geography:
“PLG is among the last of the neighborhoods that border Prospect Park where average working people can still (almost) afford to live… That lower price tag, however, comes with concessions – there are none of the higher-end boutiques, bars and restaurants that populate Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Brooklyn Heights.”
It was lovely, but I had a hard time locating a supermarket, a fruit stand or even a decent slice of pizza. You could call places like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Sunset Park “up and coming” neighborhoods, but only a fool counts on a neighborhood turnaround in troubled economic times like these. Perhaps I’m asking for too much. Perhaps simply being able to afford a roof over one’s head is the best one can hope for these days in New York. I’ve got three months until I’m out on my ass. Expectations decline on a daily basis.
The Land Where It’s Never Christmas
The Guardian of London has a heart-warming seasonal story about a small town called North Pole in Alaska, where it’s Christmas 365 days a year and all the town’s residents (including the school children) answer “letters to Santa” that come in from around the world. Last spring, a group of about a dozen of North Pole’s sixth graders were caught “making a list and checking it twice.” Their Columbine-style massacre plot was narrowly thwarted. Perhaps the incessant holiday “cheer” drove them to it, writer Jon Ronson wonders?
I was thinking about North Pole while doing some grocery shopping this morning in Kew Gardens, the Land Where It’s Never Christmas. All the shops are open as normal. Perhaps they’ll close an hour early for the big day in deference to the rest of society. There are no Santas around, the streetlights are plain and unadorned and almost no houses are decorated. It’s bliss. This is a less-advertised perk of living in a majority Jewish neighborhood (and, being Queens, those who aren’t Jewish are Hindu, Sikh, Taoist, Buddhist and Stewardess). Sure, it’s hell to find parking on a Friday night, but you won’t be driven bonkers by the whole “X-Mas Atmos.”
Serving on my co-op’s board, it has come to my attention that my apartment has probably doubled in value in the last three years. If we promote this whole “No Christmas” thing the way that North Pole promotes its “Year-round Christmas” thing, we could probably redouble our home values with all the Scrooges beating a path to our doors. But if I ever do sell, someone please remind me of this post. Just start singing “Jingle Bells,” and my Pavlovian response will kick in: “Never leave Kew Gardens.”