Shanghai, Flushing, Queens

“Come to Queeeeeeeeeeens,” said The Brilliant Wong (henceforth referred to as TBW).

Having just moved back to his native borough, TBW had come to play in Manhattan many times, and now it was my turn to make a trip. But what should we do when I got there?

I knew almost nothing about Queens. I knew that the trains went above ground to get there.  I knew if I looked across the East River I could see it. I knew that my mother was born in Forest Hills, which I had visited once before. While there, my mom and I went to the T-Bone Diner on Queens Boulevard because I liked its neon lights. I had also recently been to Astoria for the first time to visit HL. But I knew one thing we’d be able to do, because it’s something you can do no matter where you are in the five boroughs: eat.

I set my challenge forth to TBW who once, after being asked what his favorite places are in New York, simply responded, “Food.”

 “What kind of food do you want?” he said.

“What kind is there?”

“Pick a country.”

Oh, the joys of living in New York.

But since I’ve moved here, and pardon me if I’ve written this already, I had yet to experience this amazing Chinese food New York is supposed to have. I really wanted to be blown away by deliciousness. Or at least something different. Where could we go for that, TBW?

“Flushing,” he said, without pause. And then he offered the best response ever to the Chinese food question. “From what city?”

There are only so many parts of the U.S. where you have a choice of exactly what city in China from which you would like to experience the cuisine. My native South Florida is certainly not one of them. Oh, the joys of living in New York yet again. I picked Shanghai, mostly just because I felt like it. TBW instantly knew a place. “Take the 7 train to the last stop in Queens,” he said, and the next day at 6:30 we’d meet on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street in Flushing.  

When I stepped out of the train station in Flushing, I had no idea what was coming. My adventures in Manhattan’s Chinatown paled in comparison to the banks, post offices, laundromats, and even Popeye’s chicken storefronts that now stared at me across the street, all imprinted with Chinese characters. “Yeah, in Manhattan it’s tourist Chinatown. This is real Chinatown,” TBW said later when he met me on the corner.

In 2009, New York Times writer Kirk Semple wrote that Flushing “rivals Chinatown as a center of Chinese-American business and political might, as well as culture and cuisine.” And that was two years ago, so I can only imagine how it’s grown since. The center of Flushing, where the 7 train lets off, is also the center of the city’s Asian community, home to not only many Chinese but also Korean and Vietnamese establishments.

We walked to the restaurant and I stared at everything, wide-eyed: legumes and ginger for sale by the pound in storefronts, pastel pink bubble teas, neon plastic toys. The short trek down the street was a parade of visuals I wasn’t used to, especially the street covered with signage in a language I didn’t understand.

We arrived at Taste of Shanghai (Shang Hai Xiao Chi) and found a table up the stairs. We were served what we decided was rice tea (delicious) and then picked out a bunch of dishes to share. There was Drunk Chicken, served cold and marinated in an alcoholic beverage of some kind, that came off the bone in piecey little shreds; cold sliced beef lightly marbled with fat that reminded me of a thicker, tangier pastrami; a plateful of quarter-sized rice cakes; and soup dumplings filled with a broth made sweet with pork. As TBW often says, it’s really hard to find bad food in these parts. Because there’s so much competition, if a place isn’t good, it just can’t stay open. At the same time, it’s always great to have a nice meal, especially one you just didn’t think you’d be having in a Shanghainese restaurant on a random Tuesday night, way far out in Queens. I won’t lie, while the food was yummy, part of what I enjoyed about the meal was the walk through Flushing to get there.

Many thanks to TBW for making me get out of my Manhattan box. I would say for certain, after having gone to Flushing, to eschew Manhattan’s Chinatown and instead hop on the 7 for a visual and physical feast on a much larger and dare I say mesmerizing scale.

Do a Little Dance

There are only so many places in the world where you can wake up and say to yourself, “Well, I think I’ll go to a dance parade today.” Mostly because the New York Dance Parade is the only parade worldwide that exclusively celebrates dance in all of its diverse forms.

On a steamy Saturday this past weekend, over 9,000 dancers wound their way from 21^st Street and Broadway all the way down St. Mark’s Place to Avenue A, all in the name of dance. Bellydancers bumped their hips, couples tangoed tightly, modern dancers kicked their faces with long, lithe limbs, A high school marching band stepped in time with attitude and a troupe of soul-skating divas made figure-eights on the asphalt.

Now in its fifth year, the New York Dance Parade is dedicated to honoring the roots of various dance styles from all over the world. It functions as a history of dance, beginning with the earliest forms from places like Africa and Japan, and ending with the explosion of techno and rave dance culture.

People of all ages participate in the parade. There are proud, bellydancing older women with sagging breasts and stomachs in lush, purple costumes fringed with gold coins; young men breakdancing in white linen pants; young women with their hair tied up in knots, swinging legs to impossible heights; and mustachioed older men in neon green hot pants and bright pink flamingo hats. Dancing down the street in whatever their form may be, they exude the energy, happiness and confidence one feels when getting dressed for prom. This dance, this ensemble, this choreography is all a part of who they are. The dance parade ends up not being just a celebration of dance, but a celebration of the self, of creative expression and movement. It is a delight to simply watch people having such a great time.

After making its way down St. Mark’s Place, the parade emptied out into Tompkins Square Park, where the dance party continued with a conglomeration of dance studio booths and vendors, dance performances, DJs and leftover drummers from the samba portion of the parade. Ravers swung their bodies about to the music as if on some invisible trapeze while b-boys tutted sharply and even ballerinas cut loose, all together in a massive herd around the DJ. Arms flailed, fists pumped, hips shook in the delight of a warm, sunny day in the park with pulsing beats from tall speakers.

When a person dances, a fire starts inside of them. Knowing this, it’s easy to understand that the New York Dance Parade is not just a celebration of dance, but a celebration of that fire, that mystical, powerful heat that fuels creative expression and—especially after watching people from all different walks of life dance together in the park—unity.

Here are some photos from the day:

A Day of Three Boroughs: Or, Saturday (Part 2)

I called up my friend Gaby to see what she was up to. She had an interview planned for the evening, part of her epic 100 Interviews project (for which she has a book deal!).

“I’m going to Staten Island, if you want to come.”

Staten Island. I heard only the most awful things about this place. I once remember reading an interview in New York magazine’s Look Book section. The question was something along the lines of “What’s Staten Island like?” A girl, around 16, with straight brown hair, doorknocker earrings and a plaid shirt drolly answered, “It’s like Manhattan but not as cool.” I always wondered, what would Manhattan be like if it wasn’t cool?

I was sitting on my couch, the prospect of another evening with Dr. Gregory House staring me in the face. Or I could go to Staten Island and see what all the fuss (or lack thereof) was about. At the very least I’d get to take the ferry, which I had never done before.

“Yes. Yes! Yes. Let’s go to Staten Island.”

“Okay, but I’m trying to catch the 8:30 ferry. Do you think you can make it?”

It was 7:30 and I had to actually put on clothes, but I was pretty sure I could get there.

We hung up and seconds later I was a whirligig of flying clothing. What does one wear to Staten Island?? I made a sandwich for the road and ran out the door.

“Staten Island Ferry, please,” I said to the cab driver. “Do you think we’ll make it there before 8:30?” I have a tendency to wildly overestimate how long traveling by cab takes since all the other forms of transportation tend to take much longer (i.e., getting a train to Tribeca would take probably an hour, while a cab takes 15 minutes).

“What? You are kidding, yes? I get you there before 8 o’clock, you don’t worry.” Sounds good to me. We zipped down the highway and, as promised, I was there at five minutes to eight. The ferry terminal’s bright blue neon signs shone brilliantly above me as Gaby and I met and went inside.

A buzzing mass of people crowded in front of the ferry’s doors and just before 8:30 the doors opened and this mass moved forward onto the ferry. A janitor told us the best place to stand to see the Statue of Liberty, on the second floor on the right hand side. The cool night breeze floated through our hair as we stood outside on the balcony. “Oh heyyyy, Lady Lib!” I said. “How you doin, gurl?”

“Ooh gurl, my arm is damn tired, okay? Like can I get some relief up in here?”

Or at least that’s how I imagine she would sound.

The curators

We docked in Staten Island and walked to the site of Gaby’s interview. We passed a building that looked like Disney’s Hall of Presidents, along with a smattering of local bars and a strange lack of noise that I wasn’t quite used to. Gaby was interviewing two curators in an artist’s studio underneath a Subway (sandwich place, not transportation). It was one of the many sites of the Second Saturday Staten Island Art Walk, “a monthly art walk including gallery openings and cultural events taking place in public spaces, pop-up galleries, restaurants, cafes, artist studios and apartments around the island's North Shore,” which these two curators had, well, curated. Art in wonderfully unconventional places, filled with beautiful, strange, and interesting people.

 

Down a set of stairs decorated with mirrors, collages and graffiti, we entered the studio. Various artists had hung their work on the walls, mostly paintings and photography. People milled about the white-painted space drinking wine from small plastic dentists’ cups. People sat on a cluster of ottomans and a bed with an antique iron frame to view the artwork. While Gaby conducted her interview, I met one man who told me he modeled for Richard Avedon and another who traveled to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos on a regular basis. They both had scraggly, silvery/charcoal grey hair and talked a lot with their hands. There was also a woman who wore a coat made of bits of colorful fabric tied in knots, another a top hat decorated with a large gold spider brooch. Two girls with a parade of earrings down their ears had buzzed half of their heads while they let the other halves flow with long locks. A man wore a bright blue cardigan that stretched over his stomach. And then there was Minnie La Driver, a man in a bright red bobbed wig and red sequined dress who, as “The Ambassador of Love” answered the audience’s questions about love in a German accent. It was a cute little soiree, and after Gaby finished her interview we walked back to take the last ferry back to Manhattan, along with several laydeez goin’ to “da club.” You know, that one club that everyone goes to.

The Olive Tree Cafe

Starving, we decided food was in order. We could have easily gone to the East Village as we had done numerous times before, but went against our pattern and headed to the West Village instead. Gaby took me to the Olive Tree Café on Macdougal Street still buzzing with people at 11:30. It’s a Mediterranean restaurant and burger joint, one of Gaby’s favorites. I have always loved it when people take me to their favorite places because they tell you things about it that make them happy.

“See that screen over there?” Gaby pointed. “They play Charlie Chaplin movies on it all the time. I saw The Gold Rush on it. And look! You can write on the tables!” She slid a tiny ashtray filled with chalk toward her and drew planets on the black tabletop. I smiled. There are so many tiny little places and big, touristy things to do that it’s nice to see what people who live here have chosen for themselves as “the best”. I did a lot of new, exciting things today, but sitting at that table watching Gaby draw rings around Saturn was by far the most wonderful.

A Day of Three Boroughs: Or, Saturday (Part 1)

So, as is perhaps now readily apparent, I like to do stuff. Preferably cool stuff. And, as I’ve learned, doing cool stuff will sometimes take you beyond the island Manhattan and into the four other boroughs of New York. Yes, kittens, this past Saturday your very own Miss Manhattan was mostly not in Manhattan at all, but rather in *gasp* Brooklyn and Staten Island.

See? Overpass. They weren't kidding.

First, to Brooklyn for the New York Photo Festival, which entailed an extended train ride on the F. After about an hour, I arrived in the neighborhood Dumbo, short for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.” And with that name, it does not disappoint. There are parts on the edge of Dumbo where you literally look up and see only bridge. The parts I like best of Dumbo are the old, historic ones—there’s an open space walled in with brick and iron bars that was once a tobacco market, along with the remnants of old, cinnamon-colored brick factories that have been turned into performance spaces, art galleries and apartment buildings. One of my favorite spaces was the Smack Mellon gallery, which featured a blank white wall on one side, with rugged, exposed brick and piping on the other. I’ve always liked my buildings a little grungy.

Awesome old Tobacco Warehouse used for the exhibition

But then there were the parts of it that I did not find as enjoyable. Dumbo is one of them newfangled, up and coming neighborhoods, so it’s still kind of in that phase where it’s really into itself. A friendly map near the neighborhood’s entrance pointed out all of the popular points of interest in the area. I hate maps like that because they only ever make me think, “Really? That’s all you got?” when in reality there could be much cooler stuff lurking around that they don’t want you to know about for whatever reason. While some of the cool old factory buildings hang off in the distance like the high school rebels smoking cigarettes behind the bleachers, there are shiny, spiffy new buildings toward the neighborhood’s center, all made of pristine concrete, chrome and glass. These buildings feel like snobby, nouveau riche cheerleaders—I didn’t like them at all.

Building preference aside, my real goal there was to see what was cooking at the New York Photo Festival. In 2008, the festival was founded by Daniel Power, the mastermind behind art book publisher powerHouse Books and Frank Evers, who also founded artist management agency INSTITUTE. It was created in order to succeed prestigious European festivals that create “an international atmosphere of inspiring visual installations, professional and aficionado fellowship and camaraderie, and news-worthy staged presentations, awards ceremonies, and symposia.” The festival is also meant to showcase what the future of contemporary photography might look like, displaying the work of many up-and-coming photographers, some of whom are still college undergraduates.

What’s really nice about the festival is that it’s not set up as a typical booth-and-vendor fair outdoors. Instead, when you purchase your festival ticket you’re given a map of all of the NYPH venues around Dumbo with a listing of what appears at each one. Then, you find the venue, see the exhibition, and move on to the next venue. Lather, rinse, repeat in a supremely awesome scavenger hunt-esque way. I started at the aforementioned tobacco warehouse then moved forward, down streets named after dead presidents (Washington, Jay, Adams, etc.).

My favorite exhibition was from China, entitled “Capturing Xiang Sha Wan,” part of which included photographers following camel herders in Malaysia. It was wonderful how they were able to make something so exotic by New York standards (I mean, we have a lot of things here but camels are not one of them…as far as I know) seem completely relatable. I also never thought I would think of a camel as beautiful, but these photographers proved me wrong.

After exploring the festival and Dumbo a bit more, I made the track back to my apartment in Manhattan. By this time it was early evening and though I happily sat on the couch and did nothing the night before, I was not inclined to do it again...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

A bespectacled, mustachioed man exited my neighbor’s apartment as I left mine, his hands filled with some kind of tray covered in a knotted pink sheet. He turned to his right toward the elevator, then looked back at me.

“You might want to take the stairs,” he said. “We’re bringing her down now.”

At first I didn’t understand. Had she had some kind of accident? I must have looked confused because he sympathetically offered, “She passed away.”

“Oh,” I said, as the corners of my mouth drooped and turned into sadness. How sad that she had passed away. In the next instant, though, I realized I had no idea who he was talking about.

I only knew that the Korean newspaper was delivered to the door next to mine once a week, that the sound of a duo or trio of Korean ladies yelling at each other carried through to my apartment every so often, and that sometimes the cooking smells coming out of their apartment made me hover with delight at my own door, just so I could smell them a little bit longer. Beyond that, I had little idea who my neighbors were. My guess is there was one elderly woman being cared for by her daughters, and this was the woman who passed away.

I know we tried to meet them (her?) once because we were having a party in our apartment and wanted to apologize in advance if it got noisy, but they (she?) never answered the door. We left a note, but it stuck to the door for three days before it was suddenly gone.

I felt a stillness in the hallway unusual for a Saturday morning. When the sun is bright, it seems to draw people out of their apartments, buzzing and excited like bees at a hive. There was none of that energy now, and I moved down the stairwell, conscious of and grateful for being able to tread in the hallway on the tired, dingy linoleum I always wished would look a little cleaner. I did not know this woman who passed away, but I still felt sad, sad for her family who would now have to empty her apartment, sad that a life that was so physically close to me had ended and I had never known the life at all.

I heard often that this was the nature of apartment living in New York. We all live so close together but don’t enter each others’ lives, choosing instead live in some kind of hermit-like bubble. It’s almost as if we say “This is MY LIFE and it is NOT YOURS,” to each other. “Just because we live so close doesn’t mean I want to know you.” So we never do know each other; not really anyway.

There was one especially cold weekend when NP was away and I needed change of $20 to do my laundry. Rather than go outside, I knocked on my neighbors’ doors and asked them for change. I met a few of them that way. Their apartments are much larger than mine, and they were on the whole very friendly. I like to think we bonded over our shared distaste for the laundry room. 

For the most part, though, I can identify the people who live in my apartment building, but I only know a few of their names. Last night Brad from downstairs came up to say that I was walking around my apartment too loud in my heels and had woken up his baby. I had never met him before, but I apologized and told him I liked his Beastie Boys t-shirt. We smiled and shook hands, and I took off my heels.

Mike lives two floors up. He has some kind of job that involves a suit and I always see him coming back in wearing athletic gear. The first night I arrived, he offered to help NP, my mother and I move allllll my stuff into the apartment. I think I have had three conversations with him ever, all in the elevator.

I recently met a lady who lives down the hall from me. I think her name is Norma and she has a white pixie haircut. She held the elevator door for me while I fumbled with my keys outside. “It’s nice to know your neighbors,” she said and smiled sweetly.

There’s also the lady with the llama dog. It’s not actually a llama, but it’s almost tall enough and hairy enough to be one. In the fall and winter it has luxurious flowing locks of tawny fur, but the lady recently trimmed its hair for the warm weather so it looks much less glamorous and more like a sad third grader with a generic haircut.

There’s the thin Russian lady with the black cherry hair, the mother who was dressed in bee costume for Halloween and her children, the kind of hipster looking tall man with clear-frame glasses, a ruffly, fifties-like pompadour and a charcoal-colored French bulldog dog named Rick James.

But I don’t really know any of them. After the Korean woman passed away, I realized that we tend to put a cap on the number of people in our lives, as if to say, “We’re no longer accepting friend applications, thank you.” When do we do this, and why do we stop? This is not to say that quantity beats quality as it certainly doesn’t, but after a while we tend to close ourselves off to the experience of meeting new people, as if we think there’s only a few times in our lives (college orientations, first days of work, etc.) when we’re supposed to do that, and that time has passed. But it hasn’t. My mother once told me that if you let someone into your life even for a little while, they can enrich it more than you would have thought possible.

So I’ve recently been trying to make an effort to meet my neighbors, to be a little friendlier in the elevator. I don’t think a smile and a little small talk ever hurt anyone.

Street Like That

Sprang in New York means street festivals everywhere. This includes but is not limited to the Union Square Farmer’s Market, the Hester Street Fair on Hester and Essex in Chinatown/Lower East Side and, most recently, the Festival of Ideas for the New City. I had the pleasure of attending all three yesterday, mostly without trying! All of the neighborhoods are so close together that it’s easy to forget where one ends and the next one begins. I ended up pleasantly surprised when I would see yet another row of tents urging me to peruse wares, projects, treats, and more.

The Union Square Farmer’s Market takes place on the perimeter of Union Square and features goods all produced by farmers in and around New York. Some deliciousness I particularly enjoyed: Pear Apple Wine from Eve’s Cidery in Van Etten, New York; homemade goat cheese from Lynnhaven Farm in Ulster County, New York; and lamb jerky from Catskill Merino in Sullivan County, New York. I’ve always felt that being around fresh produced and locally produced goods was a bit magical, so the Union Square Farmer’s Market is a constant delight. Plus, so many free samples. It’s open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 8am to 6pm.

The Hester Street Fair happens every Saturday when it’s warm. Opening day was actually this past Saturday and apparently over 11,000 people swept in and out of the somewhat small fair space. One-of-a-kind food vendors selling everything from bahn mi to brownies dotted the fair, along with some crafty ladies and gentlemen selling wares like decoupaged coasters and knit caps. A Zydeco band supplied the soundtrack. The fair has actually been around since 1895, and was home to one of the largest pushcart markets back in the day. Today it’s thankfully more modern. I mean, how did they live without shaved ice machines, anyway?

Last but certainly not least is the Festival of Ideas for the New City. The first year of what I imagine will be a once-a-year event, the Festival of Ideas is a collaborative initiative of downtown organizations harnessing their creative energy to affect positive change in the arts and the way we live in New York.  One of the ways the creative energy was shared was through a StreetFest along the Bowery, where local and grassroots organizations displayed products and plans for a better future. It was a nice idea, but I enjoyed the unplanned sights more than anything. A festival like this draws people from all walks of life, from dance studio directors wearing fairy wings without a hint of irony to uptown goddesses strutting about in their high heels. Here are some highlights.

Sprang

As fitting for one of the world’s most impatient people, I do not like to wait for things. There are times when I wish the microwave would hurry the hell up, and I wonder why it takes SO LONG for the subway doors to open. So at the beginning of April I still had to bundle myself up in tights and boots, I was not a happy Manhattanite.

To be fair, I have long had trouble adjusting to weather in the Northeast, as in Florida by the beginning of March we are back at the beach. But this year it just seemed absurd. The days of simultaneous sunshine and warmth were too few and far between to make any sense. Where was this famed springtime New York was known for? Yes, there were few days when I thought to myself, ah yes, here it is! I could walk through Central Park on the way home from work, getting some of that sweet sunshine Vitamin D I had gone without for far too long. On those days, all seemed right with the world. And then I would be balled up in a coat for the next week, hiding under my little red umbrella, wishing New York would be less bipolar and just be spring already goddammit!

Now, though, New York’s bipolarity seems to have faded. A cardigan and a light jacket are enough to keep me warm. My sandals and high heels have reappeared from under my bed, as I am no longer fearful of losing my feet to frostbite. I have replaced my café au laits with iced coffees. Now, on May 1, I am not at all hesitant to say that it finally feels like spring.

With that in mind, and knowing this weekend would be a warm and sunny one, NP and I made plans to get some of that much needed Vitamin D. I had been appalled at my paleness, and it finally occurred to me that my Florida skintone would not appear even a smidgen as often as it had back in the day. The time to fix the paleness, however, was happily upon us. We walked to Central Park and had ourselves a mini-picnic in the sun, complete with blanket, iced tea, and pasta salad. Toy sailboats floated across the manmade pond nearby, families played kickball with their children, a group of older folks popped bottles of champagne. After all, who said springtime wasn’t a time for celebration? I thought it would be funny if this group of older folks got busted for having booze in the park, but NP rightly said that, hey, this is New York, and nobody probably cares. It’s a beautiful day—live and let live. Amen, sister.

I had forgotten how much I loved the warmth of the sun on my face. Science has told us time and again that sunshine is necessary for happiness, and after days like this I understand why. I kind of took it for granted when living in Florida—you just have sunshine all the time. It’s basically our greatest contribution as a state. In New York, though, I’m starting to realize that the fantastically beautiful, cool/warm sunny days are to be enjoyed in the biggest gulps. Dare I say I will make an effort to be outside whenever there’s sunshine, just in case it goes away in an instant.

Which it did today. We had a nice 45 minutes to an hour of sunshine before a strange haze set across the sky and a slight chill swept through. NP and I split ways, and I wrapped myself in my headscarf  and put on my big sunglasses a la an incognito 1950s movie star and headed home (what is spring, also, if not a time for semi-surreal fabulousness?). On the way, I passed a Mister Softee ice cream truck and, in a burst of childlike enthusiasm, got myself a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone covered in rainbow sprinkles. Years from now, I think this is the vision I will have of myself as a young New Yorker—glamorous, absurd, and excited about rainbow sprinkles outside of Central Park on a spring day. Some stuff you can’t make up even if you try.