South Slope Gets Its Own Tower of ToysA ‘Retirement Home for Well-Loved Stuffies’ (not scruffles, mind you) has taken up residence near a tree in this hood. Plus, everything else in our daily borough roundup!
neighborhood watch
Everybody’s Sexy in Stuyvesant Town!Busy, buzz-y bees transfix the UES, canine golden showers threaten the Tribeca ecosystem, and cool-coiffed Queens beep Helen Marshall rocks springtime style in Woodside. That and more in our breathless daily boroughs report.
Sharks on Coney Island! And Expensive Ones, at ThatBowery: No sooner had this lovable bum moved out of the street box he lived in and into a proper $300-a-month room than his troubles began. [NYT]
Bushwick: Behold the new ‘swhick-specific haiku trend: “Dude with the corn rows/Stop selling crack, you scumbag/Sell good pot instead.” [BushwickBK]
Coney Island: The fancy exterior redo for the New York Aquarium may have to be, uh, scaled back due to a planned $64 million exhibition on sharks. [Coney Island via Curbed]
NewsFeed
Roosevelt Avenue Enjoys a Moment in the Sun
Roosevelt Avenue in Queens has always been one of our favorite strips: middle-aged-lesbian dance parties at Bum Bum! Baby-doll night at Flamingo! We like to eat there too, and apparently so does Good magazine which, we hear, will name “la Roosie” one of America’s best food streets. Their picks: El Sitio, Unidentified Flying Chicken, Krystal’s, Zabb Queens, and the Arepa Lady. The feature will be found here in the coming week (others, such as a writer’s attempt to bag a deer in suburban L.A., are up now); in the meantime Metromix and AM New York have joint-published a Joshua M. Bernstein piece in which he hits ten places on Roosevelt and spends just ten bucks — culminating in an ill-fated attempt to eat a fertilized duck embryo raw. If you want to try one of these without gagging, hit up Elvie’s Turo-Turo.
Issue 009: All You Can Eat [Good]
Dollar Grub: Roosevelt Ave. [Metromix NY]
Related: Riding the V Line: Guinea Pig on Roosevelt Avenue
Neighborhood Watch
Live Poultry Not Live for Long in Woodside; Champagne at ParadouDumbo: The Japanese publication Mapple released a guide to the nabe and recommends Jacques Torres Chocolate, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, and Grimaldi’s as top picks. [Dumbo NYC]
East Village: You don’t need to hunt down any Danish to track Frank Bruni; he’s a huge fan of Death & Co (and hopes the bar’s not really in trouble). [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Meatpacking District: A $25 Champagne tasting at Paradou next Tuesday also comes with snacks. [Paradou NYC]
Midtown: A rare bottle of scotch fetched $54,000 at Christie’s liquor auction last night. The Rob Roys we made with it were great. [Food and Wine]
Woodside: For a truly hands-on holiday meal, you can head to Bismillah Live Poultry market in the warehouse quarter; choose your “turkey out of a flock of around 30, and off it went in a shopping cart to be slaughtered, scalded in hot water, and plucked by the staff. Fifteen minutes later it emerged in a bag, warm to the touch, its fat tail sticking out.” [The Grinder/Chow]
The Orange Line
Riding the V Line: The King of Cuban Sandwiches
Night on Broadway in Woodside is electric: Trains rumble overhead, a hundred dialects of Spanish are barked in the air, and the promise of everything from dance lessons to roasted guinea pig glares nightward out of neon signs. When we step off the V at 65th Street, though, we somehow never find ourselves tempted by all that novelty. What we want is the undisputed classic, the El Sitio Cubano sandwich, the patriarch of its race. It’s just a few steps from the train to the counter, but even those are too many.
Foodievents
Queens Restaurant Week Is Upon UsThe idea of Queens Restaurant Week, we maintain, isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. Sure, the borough is defined by great restaurants that cost next to nothing, so a $20.07 dinner special may not sound worth schlepping to Elmhurst for. But in fact, anything that brings people to Queens is worthwhile; its restaurants are the source material for so much of what is happening in Manhattan, and most chefs, at least privately, will admit that the ethnic kitchens of Bayside and Jackson Heights are usually better than their midtown emulators.
neighborhood watch
Times Square Gets Butt-UglierBushwick: Finally, a place to share your memories of growing up around here. [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: First Ethan Hawke, and now Joe Franklin. Who will be the next celeb to show his support of Stanley Bard and family? [Living With Legends]
Clinton Hill: Don’t bitch that Brownstoner posts a preponderance of items about this hood … even the score by sending in tips about your hood! [Brownstoner]
Coney Island: Developer Joe Sitt hit a community meeting last night to drum up support for his embattled Coney plans, saying he’d go home and pray for good press. [Gowanus Lounge]
Harlem: How is it that construction starts here a full 45 minutes earlier than anywhere else in the city? [Above the Doorframe]
Highland Park: Who is poaching the beautiful wild American goldfinches in the Ridgewood Reservoir? For shame! [Queens Crap]
Times Square: A huge billboard of smiling buttocks will go up here soon to promote a new, built-in bidet-type gadget. [AdAge via Gothamist]
Woodside: More affordable housing will likely come to this part of Queens as well as to Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Corona. [NYDN via OuterB]
neighborhood watch
New Zoning Laws Make Queens Boulevard Even UglierBrooklyn Heights: Looks like the popular eatery Le Petit Marche (there’s no “e” on Petit, people, it’s masculin!) is getting a fancy face-lift. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Fort Greene: The landmarks commish last month gave the nod to the Carlton Mews Project — which, remarkably, everyone seems to love. [Brownstoner]
Harlem: Now that H&H bagels are at Saurin Parke Café it requires 24-hour police surveillance. [Harlem Fur]
Hell’s Kitchen: After two pedestrians were killed and one injured by vehicles on Ninth Avenue, it’s Manhattan’s latest “Boulevard of Death.” [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: You think all those Saabs and Volvos cruising Seventh Avenue are just out wildin’? Nah, they’re looking for parking … because, a new study finds, there isn’t any. [Gowanus Lounge]
West Village: Longstanding and beloved bistro Florent, the last bohemian holdout of the newly flashy meatpacking district, is now taking credit cards. Sacre bleu! [Blog Chelsea]
Woodside: The upzoning of Queens Boulevard has led to ugly, cheap buildings too tall for the area. [Queens Crap]
neighborhood watch
Squatting in Bushwick Not as Much Fun as on BroadwayBushwick: Christian anarchists squat with no heat, lights, or water. Rent made it seem much more fun. [The L Magazine]
Chelsea: Atop David Barton Gym in the old 23rd Street YMCA building, the penthouse is still unoccupied, its price sagging from $7.4 to $7.2 mil. [BlogChelsea]
Greenwich Village: Who’s that grinning from the toilet in the floor plan of this $645,000, on-the-market Fourth Avenue loft? Could it be … Satan? [Curbed]
Harlem: Talk about mighty Aphrodite. Yet another Aphrodite Cleaners is opening at 113th and Frederick Douglass, within blocks of three others. No wonder locals are calling the chain “the Starbucks of Harlem.” [Harlem Fur]
Park Slope: Book-industry thuggery? Adam’s Books on Bergen Street has been reshingled Unnameable Books after owner Adam (duh) was visited by a violent goon who may or may not have been from the (slightly defensive?) Adams Book Company. [Brooklyn Record]
Woodside: Hey, is that a new residence at 65th Place … or with all that metal cladding, is it a live-in Brinks Truck? [Queens Crap]
Openings
Queens Favorite Storms Manhattan (Sort Of)Given the almost cultlike following of Woodside Thai shrine Zabb, the opening of its Manhattan branch hasn’t inspired the kind of celebration one might expect. The Roosevelt Avenue location became a beacon thanks to the food’s intense flavors and incendiary spicing. The food is almost as good, if not quite so radioactive, at the East Village outpost. So why aren’t more people eating there?