Astoria

The True Story of the Paretti Club

It’s not easy being weird but I’ve spent the course of some five years researching and drafting what has so far resulted in an 8,000 word essay I wound up calling Revolt Club, Long Island City: Uncovering a Lost History of Queens Political Clubs. I started out by wanting to make the slightest point.

The Paretti Club headquarters, *Long Island Daily Star*, 1934

Around 2019/2020, I set out to correct rumors around a building at 38-62 11th Street, a three story, brick Colonial on an industrial street. If you’ve ever lived in or around Queensbridge, the Ravenswood Houses or in the mixed-use area in between (or just wandered around north of the Queensborough Bridge), there’s likely a decent chance you’ve noticed a vertical EXILE marquee attached to an imposing, stately facade with 13 front windows (plus a transom window and five front basement windows), wide, black doors and various ornamentation. Less obvious would be the two-story ballroom inside on the second floor with a surrounding balcony, the site of all-night Depression era dances and 1980 punk shows that included the Misfits. The site is not an official landmark but it’s arguably among the most intriguing and exquisite prewar gems in the Long Island City-Astoria area, up there with the Long Island City Courthouse, MoMA PS1, the Terra Cotta Works building, the Sohmer Piano Factory, the Loew’s Triboro Theater, the Masonic Temple and the Moose Lodge, and it tells a story about the neighborhood and about modern Queens.

Screenshot from promotional blogpost for 2010 party, *Beautiful and Damned*

When I moved to 36th Avenue in 2015, I was curious about the building, with the inscription James J. Paretti Association, Inc., across the top and 1933 at the bottom corner. I figured the building once housed some kind organization that served an Italian community that once existed more prominently in Long Island City, but I had no idea what sort of organization, and how it possibly served the community. It wasn’t like I could find a Wikipedia page about James J. Paretti, or any kind of reliable article anywhere on the immediate surface of the Internet. One blog post, an advertisement for an event called Beautiful and Damned, made claims about the building, ostensibly to lure a Brooklyn and Manhattan crowd to the first Queens stop on the F train, and into a desolate, industrial area at night for a 1920s-themed party. The promotional content claimed that Tammany (the former name for Manhattan’s Democratic Party organization) built the Paretti building as a headquarters. (Sure, the building looked like Tammany Hall itself at Union Square but smaller). The playful advertisement also claimed the building became a speakeasy, and only later became a “Democratic party headquarters” before one day transforming into a punk rock club. For a while, this was the only thing you could find online about Paretti Hall, unless you used newspapers.com or the New York Times “Time Machine” tool or some other site (likely by a paid subscription or a library account) that let you explore archived newspapers–but even that would be limited to a handful of articles referencing James Paretti or the clubhouse.

The *Tammany House* website, using a 1940 tax department photo and a false narrative.

Motif Studios also uses the Tammany rumor on its website for the Triplex.

I read the Beautiful and Damned advertisement/flyer website, probably in 2015 (and watched its silent-film styled video), and over the years, when I thought of writing my own, journalistic blog post, I Googled the site again, and found that in 2017, a company called Warehouse LLC, which purchased the site in 2014, began to market the building as an event space called Tammany House. Tammany House posted pictures of one or more events, a photo shoot, a concert, that happened in the then-renovated interior. Another company, Motif Studios, also rented the space as Triplex LIC. Both companies’ websites echoed the rumor that Tammany built Paretti Hall!

Tammany House invented its own elaboration on the so-called history, claiming that John and James Paretti built the site in 1933 but that it was “originally planned to be the headquarters for Tammany Hall after their original headquarters on 14th Street was sold.” The Tammany House website went on to say that in the year the building was built (1933), Franklin D. Roosevelt became president (that’s true) and “helped” Fiorello LaGuardia become mayor. Well, I don’t know to what end that might be true (FDR was a Democrat, LaGuardia was a Republican who ran on a Fusion ticket) but anyway LaGuardia did win an election in 1933, and became mayor in 1934. The Tammany House website says LaGuardia reformed City Hall (which is true), and then, “With the New York City Council now created,”(the City Council did not go into effect until 1938) “the influence of Tammany Hall waned” (that’s true) and there was no more need for a “10,000 square feet” Tammany headquarters in Queens. The website then concluded that James Paretti decided to use the building as a catering hall.

In 2017 a local Long Island City blog called LIC Talk helped promote Tammany House with a blog post called The Legend of Paretti Hall. The author made the lazy remark: “Who exactly was James J. Paretti and what was his ‘Association’ are lost to the sands of time. In fact the building’s precise history is not fully verifiable. ”

You might say that I took that as a personal challenge. I thought to myself: there has to be a way to answer those questions! First, I lucked out, because in 2018 two of James Paretti’s descendants posted comments on LIC Talk‘s post, and one left an email address. That got me talking to the family (by sometime in 2019 or so), which was amazing, and I was grateful. They connected me to some other people from the neighborhood. Then, around summer 2020, I started digging into Census records and digital newspaper archives. Later, starting in 2021, I spent most of my weekends for a few years in the archives of the Queens Public Library’s Central branch in Jamaica, reading primarily the Long Island Daily Star, which had never been digitized but had a lot of details on James Paretti. First I read all of 1935, when James Paretti ran for alderman, then I focused mainly on election seasons from roughly 1925 to 1938. When not in the library I simply educated myself on New York City history, and let me tell you Queens history from 1898 to 1945 as far as I can tell barely exists in the form of any books or serious literature.

Here are three points why the Tammany House claims are false and you might even say problematic.

Tammany Hall was a Manhattan organization. There was no possibility of it ever setting up a headquarters in Queens. Queens had its own Democratic party organization. Sure, Tammany’s Al Smith was governor of the whole state in the 1920s, but the organization itself represented one manifestation of the New York County Democratic Committee, and it would not in all likelihood relocate its headquarters to some other county. That would in essence be absurd. In fact the early Queens Democratic County Committee was not an ally of Tammany. And in the 1930s when James Sheridan, a New Dealer, took over the Queens Democratic Party, it was if anything more related to the Bronx Democratic Party than Tammany.
James J. Paretti had essentially nothing to do with Tammany Hall. The closest link I can make is that in 1929 he ran for state assembly with the Clean Government Party (by then calling itself the Queens Democracy), which was led by Frank X. Sullivan, who lived in Queens but had run a Tammany campaign for Jimmy Walker in Queens in 1925. (There were for a few years or so “Queens Tammany” clubs in the Sullivan faction.) The building resembles Tammany Hall, but likely just as a figurative Italian version of a Tammany Hall for the Long Island City area. Labeling the building “Tammany House” in a roundabout way erases the actual history of Italians in politics in Long Island City and Astoria during the turbulent 1930s. Besides running a club that served as a resource for the community (call it “machine politics”, if you will), Paretti served in the Board of Alderman for two years–an incredible two years that involved major New Deal works projects in his district, which spanned LIC and Astoria. Not only that, but in 1935 he defeated an incumbent, Carl Deutschmann, for alderman, becoming, with Mario Cariello, I believe one of the first two Italian-Americans to represent the area in government. We might take for granted now that Italians are normally in office in New York, but these were first-generation children of immigrants, when the community was still relatively new to the country and considered poor and outside of the system, Fiorello LaGuardia notwithstanding. Imagine if in 90 years someone came across the names Julie Won, Linda Lee, Shekar Krishnan, Steven Raga or Jenifer Rajkumar and said they ran a catering hall, or something? And what if there were a landmark, or some type of time capsule, for any one of them, and someone gave it a made-up, irrelevant history?
The Paretti building was, indeed, used as a catering hall, but that was secondary to its purpose as a political club. You can say the underlying purpose of the club was to elevate the Italian community into power in Queens’ First Assembly District, and to supplant the powerful Regular Democratic Club of the First A.D., which became associated with the corruption of the boss John Theofel in the early 1930s. Tammany House likely got its details about the place staging Italian operas from a self-published memoir called Rita, but the author, Mary Restivo, was recalling her early childhood, and wouldn’t necessarily remember the political story of James Paretti. The Paretti Club had other locations, including the family residence next-door, before building the large, extravagant clubhouse, which you might say was a statement. There were at the time hundreds of political clubs in Queens, some which met in stand-alone clubhouses, others in storefronts or residences. These clubs also hosted rallies and dances in the old social halls, such as the Moose Lodge or the ballroom which is now Break Bar. In the high point of political clubs, Queens was believed to have more political clubs and civic associations than the other four boroughs, despite being second-to-last in population. That said, the Paretti building is actually a testament to the cultural history of Queens in the first half of 20th Century.

I’m not saying that I ever considered my investigation finished. It isn’t, but eventually I felt ready to publish a sort of origin story that I was able to piece together. It’s the story of a revolt club. Maybe you’ll want to set aside some time to read it, and I’d be grateful. Or just wait for me to write the more detailed story.

Some new things in the Queensbridge-Ravenswood area

It has been one and a half years since the last post on this blog. And for some reason, according to stats, people still visit this blog. Now would be a good time to make note of some new and potentially new things in the Queensbridge-Ravenswood area.

Vordonia

Quietly, Alma Realty’s 404 unit, double-tower building between the waterfront and Vernon Boulevard, has apparently opened and now has residents moving in. The site, formerly called Alma Towers, is now called the Vordonia Towers, ostensibly after a small Greek village, with a logo reminiscent of “Pointy Haired Boss” from the Dilbert cartoons. The Vordonia Towers took about seven years to complete since construction began in fall 2014, or more than twice the average time it takes to build a residential building in New York City. Astoria-based Alma bought the property in 2001, so we’re talking about a 20 year epic here.

So, what will it mean for the Ravenswood area? We can say that more than 400 residents will be added to our little, gritty, quiet corner of LIC/Astoria. Current listed rents range from $2,676 to $3,025 for one bedroom apartments. That’s average for Astoria, according to RentHop, but probably higher than average and the median for this corner of it, even among private rental buildings alone.

For sure, there will be population growth. The influx from Vordonia alone, might mean more people on the Q103/102, walking down 36th, 35th and Vernon avenues to the subways, getting coffee at Flor de Azalea or Château le Woof, using the Citibikes, going to Rainey and Socrates parks, etc. They won’t use the 9th Street Laundromat because they’ll have washers and driers, according to these cheesy promotional videos by real estate company, Compass’s “Irizarry Team.” One video is especially…. let’s say, avant-garde?: a woman looks out her window, drinks from a mug on her balcony, rides a stair master in slow-mo (as we see from below and behind), meditates, and in an epic sequence, struts up Vernon Boulevard in a black jacket and shades, returns to her apartment where candles are already lit, removes her bag and her coat revealing her crop top situation, then sits carefully down to look out the window again. Her window apparently does not face Big Allis.

The videos attempt to sell the towers by selling Astoria: its parks (Astoria Park, not Rainey or Socrates for some reason), shopping (aerial of Costco’s parking lot) and diverse cuisine. But the Vordonia Towers are barely in Astoria. I say this directly to the new and prospective Vordonia tenants: This area is sort of Astoria, or “South Astoria.” There is a distinct difference in ambience and geography from Astoria proper. In fact, I should change the name of this blog to “Not Astoria.” This neighborhood, from south of the Queensborough Bridge to Broadway, was actually historically called Ravenswood, which along with present Dutch Kills was the 19th Century third ward of Long Island City. Most of the neighborhood’s population lives in the Queensbridge and Ravenswood houses. That’s why I’m calling it Queensbridge-Ravenswood. There are delis and takeout spots but not many restaurants per se over here. (Queensview is part of it too, but that community is especially close to Broadway.) This is a largely industrial area, abundant with light manufacturing and warehouses. As Vordonia residents, you will live across the street from a drug and alcohol rehab and a vape store, and directly next to the largest power plant in New York City, the Ravenswood Generator/Big Allis, which periodically lets out huge plumes of steam from its side – recently, a misguided social media post got everyone thinking there was an explosion – and the air can smell odd nearby. In fact they call this asthma ally. By the way, if you take a picture or video of the plant from the sidewalk, a security guard might drive up to you in a truck and possibly harass you. From Vordonia, it’s a 20 minute walk/hike/trek to the main strips of restaurants and bars on Broadway or 36th Avenue. Also, this is the corner of Astoria but it’s also the corner of Long Island City. Why do real estate people seem so often to know the least about places they market? Why only mention the neighborhood to the north, not the neighborhood to the south, when the property being discussed is on the border of both? LIC has stuff too. Besides food, this whole area has a plethora of art institutions and cultural events. Vordonians will find a museum and an arts park with cultural programming less than two blocks up the street. Let’s not ignore or erase where we actually are.

35-01 Vernon Boulevard

Half a block south of the Alma thing, on the corner of 35th Avenue and Vernon, is a two story, wide, brick building with a bold marble doorframe. The building, according to City Planning’s Zola map, was built in 1931. The site’s 1995 Certificate of Occupancy listed it as a factory, office and warehouse. New York YIMBY reports obscure developer Agayev Holding is seeking to build a nine story, mixed use property on the site. YIMBY says the proposal involves 107 residential units, 27 of which would be below market-rate. The vision for this building also involves retail and light manufacturing, which I suppose means there’s a practical anticipation of what would be demanded of a building in this context. Both Vordonia and this thing are part of a series of large, new waterfront residential structures that have been cropping up along the lower Astoria and Ravenswood-East River waterfront, along with Vernon Tower and the 500+ unit Astoria West fortress with its bougie rooftop pool, north of Broadway.

Astoria West hung a banner with Florida-like colors over a rough patch of waterfront.

The proposed structure down at 35th Ave is much more inside the neighborhood historically known as Ravenswood, and would be a significant addition to this immediate neighborhood, not just in numbers of people and a possible gentrification effect, but in retail, of which we have very little here. The whole waterfront is changing. If Big Allis and the IBZ were to go, I’d have to get a better paying job.

Across from Queensbridge, meanwhile, those giant, graffitied, gray buildings are on their way to becoming Urban Yard, apparently a kind of office complex. When I started this blog in early 2018, I had my eye on those structures. I even tried calling the escalator repair business that I believe was there but no one would talk to me. Recently I noticed a tree growing out of a window. Sometimes I suspected squatters lived inside. On the day I moved here in 2015, got a coffee at Hot Bagels and stored some things at Cube Smart (I had fled a situation in the Bronx and had no apartment for a week or two), I felt like I was moving into an area on the figurative “edge of town.” I still feel that way, but I knew those large gray things looked too much like New York in the ’80s or something, and would be redeveloped soon.

I took this picture in summer 2021 when the Amazon warehouse opened on 21st Street.

In the very first blog post for Corner, I mentioned that the Green Apple supermarket unsurprisingly closed, I guess the final spark of inspiration to start this blog! Last summer, an Amazon warehouse opened at that site.

Since the summer of 2020, I wasn’t sure if I’d continue this blog. From the beginning it seemed like a possibly arrogant and annoying thing to do. But I had a kind of respect for hyper-local blogs, and I wanted to do some writing on my surroundings. While in quarantine in 2020, I started a potential blog post, which turned into a bigger project that I’m still researching. I also filmed the city council primary race for the 26th District. I still need to do a final edit on that. Thanks for coming to this site. As always, I never know if I’ll be back.

The enigma of the ‘lost coast of Queens’

Alma_broadshot_Vernonclose

In a 2017 piece titled, “Discovering the Lost Coast of Queens,” the New York Times profiled several of the developing residential building projects along the Astoria-area East River waterfront. The southern-most of those projects, Alma Realty’s 34-46 Vernon Boulevard, was just getting the “finishing touches,” the Times reported then. The double-headed, 17-story, 404-unit development squeezed between a Ravenswood power plant sub-generator and the film and TV warehouse by Rainy Park, was expected to be leasing, the Times had reported, by the fall of 2017. More than two years and a pandemic since that projected date, the yet-to-open set of towers sits behind a wall of deteriorated construction signs and has become a neighborhood enigma.

Alma-Workinprogress

“It is going to open,” an unidentified voice told me, this last July 6, when I called Alma. The building is “still in the process of construction,” the voice said. I asked if there was a delay. “No delay,” the voice said. I was transferred, as usual – I’ve called several times before the Covid-19 pandemic – to a line that went to voicemail.

One might use the pandemic as an explanation, but the state didn’t include non-essential construction in its stop-work order until April, and then didn’t, in actuality, fully include non-essential construction until late May. Besides, a document displayed at the site shows Alma was granted an essential business permit to proceed in April. In any case, these last few months don’t count for the five-plus years since construction began.

Alma_chain

Alma_Permit_socialdistancing2020_closer

Five-plus years is almost the same amount of time I’ve lived here, within a few blocks of the site. I’ve watched the building unfold slowly, sometimes having conversations with neighbors or roommates who were confused about the endless construction site/empty building by Rainy Park. One local business owner who’d set up shop after Alma’s construction began, was waiting for the building to open, counting on those hundreds of new potential customers. After the pandemic set in, that person has sold her business, a new cashier told me. Another neighbor is more weary, not looking forward to the influx of high-income tenants. And some people just ask me, because I’m a journalist, if I’ve figured out yet what the deal is with that huge empty building that’s been sitting there more than five years.

To put five-plus years in perspective, 432 Park Avenue, the stick-like super-tower known as the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, just across the East River, took about three years to build. Skyline Tower, the Long Island City residential scraper known as the tallest building in New York outside Manhattan, is expected (New York YIMBY reported on March 30) to be finished by the end of this year, after construction began in late 2017, making work possibly only three years. Vernon Tower, one of the buildings profiled in the Times piece, seems to have been built in about three years. A two-decade analysis in 2018 by real estate site, The Real Deal, found, with the exception of hotels, the median duration of building construction in New York City to be about three years.

The Real Deal also reported, in 2016, that Alma bought the land at 34-46 Vernon Boulevard in 2001. Records show the company filed for excavation and foundation work in 2008. TRD reported in 2010 that the project, then called Alma Towers, had been “beset by construction snags and recession-related issues.” An architect told the outlet that during the economic crisis, rising steel prices necessitated a redesign, pushing the work back to 2012. Work kicked off in the fall of 2014, YIMBY had reported, bringing the site up to 13 or 14 stories by June 2015. The signage at that time projected a completion date of spring 2016.

From what I can tell, the usual real estate outlets stopped reporting on the project except for the Times’ real estate section with its “Lost Coast” piece, which also used the phrase “gold coast.” One of the developments mentioned, Alma’s other, more high-profile project – a five-building, 1,700 unit megaproject – Astoria Cove, was slated for a site by the Astoria Houses on the northern edge of the Halletts Point peninsula, next to the Hallets Point megaproject. After facing pressure from affordable housing advocates, organized labor and then-Borough President Melinda Katz, the Astoria Cove zoning proposal passed the City Council in late 2014, becoming the first development to fall under Mayor de Blasio’s Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning program, with 27 percent of the units below market rate. Alma never broke ground on the project, which was, in 2016, attributed to the expiration of state tax abatement program 421-a. The company put the site on the market, temporarily. In a 2019 post-mortem of sorts, Politico New York later said the project “didn’t actually have the correct breakdown of low-income units to qualify for the new version of [the 421-a] abatement.” The Politico piece ultimately portrays Alma as possibly an inept, minor developer in over its head.

The print version of the Times’ piece was titled, “The Lost Coast of Queens,” which suggests the Astoria-area waterfront had been known in the past. Maybe the point was developers had forgotten about it since the Shore Towers were built in 1990 or since East River Tower was built in 2007. The online article included the word, “Discovering,” suggesting, perhaps, developers had been unaware that desirable, as in convenient or scenic, waterfront existed north the Gantry Plaza State Park. The piece, apparently contradicting those notions, describes Alma as “a family-run firm that has invested in the area for decades.” That’s because Alma is part of the area. The company, which has properties all around the Tri-state area and more than a dozen branch offices, has its headquarters about 15 blocks away, or a 20 minute walk, from 34-46 Vernon Boulevard, at 31-10 37th Avenue in the Dutch Kills section of Long Island City. Alma’s founder, Efstathios Valiotis, came to the U.S. from Greece, a TRD profile says, in 1972. LIC-based Greek-American newspaper the National Herald toured Alma’s headquarters in 2017, describing Alma as “one, if not the only one, of the few expatriate companies from the concierge up to the supervisors in complex construction who speak Greek.”

The National Herald, which appears to have mixed up the Citigroup Building with Citicorp Center, misdating the arrival of the former by at least 10 years, and may have exaggerated Alma’s stock in the emerging waterfront (Astoria Cove and 34-46 Vernon Boulevard together would have surpassed Halletts Point by only about 100 units), was given a tour of 34-46 Vernon Boulevard. The Herald reported, back then in 2017, that the “apartments are functional,” set with washer-dryers and balconies, though I’m not sure the balconies were finished. The piece, which doesn’t get into delays or politics, is a warm portrait of Valiotis and his daughter, the company CEO Sophia Valiotis, involving a photo of them in an office, behind them a stack of cases of Crystal Geyser sparkling water. The short TRD profile of Efstathios (or Steve) Valiotis includes an alleged 1990s European bank-corruption scheme. In 2015, Politico New York reported, tenants rights group Stabilizing NYC included Alma on its offender list. The group found seven Alma buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan with reports of tenant harassment, disrepair and vermin. Con Edison was suing Alma for stolen gas. In 2016, then-Public Advocate Leticia James listed Valiotis as the number three worst landlord in New York City for racking up 1,141 total violations. Valiotis is not on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ current list. As of this post, Department of Buildings records show the project at 34-46 Vernon Boulevard has racked up 97 violations.

Alma-safetytraining

#BlackLivesMatter protests across Queens

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 1.29.48 AM — Protesters in Hollis (Screengrab of video by QNS reporter Dean Moses)

Demonstrations in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white cop in Minneapolis as well as other police killings of black Americans such as Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Tony McDade in Tallahassee, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and others have been reported across Queens in neighborhoods including Astoria, Queensbridge, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Flushing, Jamaica, Hollis, Whitestone, Bayside, Fresh Meadows and Far Rockaway.

Screen Shot 2020-06-04 at 10.45.53 PM — Protesters on Queens Blvd (Photo credit: Twitter user @lockebox2)

“In #sunnyside queens, we started with a modest crowd—I think it snowballed as we passed so many supportive folks on the street who joined us #BlackLivesMatternyc” one of the activists tweeted yesterday. Photos show activists on 43rd Street, under the 7 Train and on Queens Boulevard where many took a knee.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 12.18.43 PM — Queensbridge (Credit: IG user morgan_s)

As this was posted Friday night, a vigil honoring Breonna Taylor’s birthday was held at Queensbridge Park. A crowd filled the park for a vigil on Wednesday. A simultaneous demonstration happened across the water on Roosevelt Island. By Thursday night, someone on Twitter said, cops were arresting people for being outside at Queensbridge. “COVID-19 response is militarized in the hood,” @UpFromTheCracks tweeted.

Screen Shot 2020-06-04 at 10.54.58 PM — Photo credit: Twitter user @CRGuarino

Several hundred people rallied and held vigil at Astoria Park on Monday. On Tuesday, protesters also rallied on 30th Avenue and marched down Steinway Street. A simultaneous demonstration was also happening in Bayside.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 12.25.12 AM — Photo credit: Twitter user @undercatpro

Last Saturday, hundreds in Jackson Heights rallied at Diversity Plaza, marched down Northern Boulevard and took a knee outside the police station near Junction Boulevard. On Sunday, protesters marched by the Unisphere in Corona Park, as seen in an AP photo. That night back in Jackson Heights, a vigil was held at Travers Park.

On Wednesday, the Queens Post reported, protesters led by Make the Road New York marched to Assembly Member Michael DenDekker’s office in East Elmhurst. The group says DenDekker, who co-sponsored a repeal of a law that keeps police records confidential, can push harder for police reforms, and that he has only donated a portion of the campaign money he had taken from police PACs.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 2.16.59 AM — Jamaica (screengrab of vid by Twitter user @NubianPhoenixx)

In Jamaica, protesters said “thank you” to the local precinct commanding officer when he joined them in taking a knee on Jamaica Avenue and Parsons Boulevard where someone read aloud names of various black people killed by police. A few hundred people also rallied in Hollis, where the police disclosure bill was also pushed for, on Wednesday.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 2.27.03 AM — Far Rockaway (Screengrab of vid by @TheeeUgly)

“They said Far Rock was gonna riot, loot and violate. Look at this, nothing but unity and peaceful protest in our hood,” Twitter user @TheTruthSerg_ said of the march and rally in Far Rockaway on Tuesday.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 2.59.34 AM — Whitestone (Twitter user @sassyveeee)

In Whitestone on Monday, a white man, driving by a BLM protest on the Cross Island Parkway overpass on Clintonville Street, yelled out, “Wrong neighborhood, bitch.” A protester yelled back at him, “Fuck you!” He pulled over, got out of his car and chased one of the protesters with a bizarre-looking object, then threatened the others. He was later arrested, it was reported. A video of the scene was captured on social media.

It was reported more than 100 people protested on the corners of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing Tuesday night. One unexplained video on Twitter shows a whole bunch of cops attacking someone.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 3.38.33 AM — Seen in this photo left to right: State Sen. Jessica Ramos, Borough President Melinda Katz, State Sen. John Liu, State Rep. Alicia Hyndman, City Council Member Donovan Richards and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng. (Screengrab of Twitter vid by QNS reporter Angélica M. Acevedo.

Yesterday afternoon, a march took off from Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows to Borough Hall, where various officials such as City Council Member Donovan Richards spoke out. Richards, chair of the public safety committee, also spoke out at the rallies in Sunnyside and Far Rockaway and possibly others. He is running for borough president. At some point, the march passed by Sean Bell Way.

Speaker Corey Johnson comes to Astoria

Astoria City Councilman Costa Constantinides, middle, Speaker Corey Johnson, right.

The first thing City Council Speaker Corey Johnson wanted the crowd to know was that he is openly HIV positive and has been sober for nine years. The first thing Council Member Costa Constantinides wanted us to know was that the school we were in, P.S. 171, is getting solar panels that he allocated from the city budget.

Unlike the mayor’s town hall I went to in LIC last year, there wasn’t a line outside when I got there. I was only 15 minutes early but the auditorium did fill up eventually. Someone asked if I RSVP’d, and I wondered who actually does that.

Constantinides listed funds he brought to Mount Sainai Hospital and the library and other things which I didn’t write down. He said Johnson is not just a colleague but “really is my friend.” CoJo in return said Constantinides is “a leader who really gets it.” He said his colleague, chair of the environmental committee, brought $26 million to west of 21st Street, including the $2.5 million for the solar panels.

There was one big drama that took up a lot of the outset of the forum, which came from tenants of the Acropolis Gardens, a large condo building up on Ditmars Boulevard and 33rd Street. The 600-plus unit building is facing foreclosure as of last Monday after its board missed a payment. Continue reading “Speaker Corey Johnson comes to Astoria”

HomeMark 99¢ strip on 31st Street to become “Astoria Artisan Food Hall”

HomeMark99

The Commercial Observer reports that the low-key strip on 31st Street and 35th Avenue with HomeMark 99¢ on the corner is set to be torn down and replaced with an “Astoria Artisan Food Hall.” Developer Vass Stevens Group bought the strip at 34-39 31st Street last October and already got rid of the tenants and demolished the interiors, apparently. It plans to divide the building into eight storefronts and aims to include, says the Observer, “a coffee roaster, a microbrewery, a specialty dessert bakery and an Asian concept.” There was also mention of “ethnic Hispanic concepts… Fitness concepts, performance groups and creative tenants.” Continue reading “HomeMark 99¢ strip on 31st Street to become “Astoria Artisan Food Hall””

N/W stations reopen, Hunters Point South Park Phase 2: One sweet week of summer

The N/W stations at 36th and 30th avenues have opened, along with Hunters Point South Park Phase 2, making for one, (almost) perfect week of summer, before the Broadway and 39th Avenue stations shut down on July 2 for eight months. As noted elsewhere, the stations still don’t have elevators. The idea of a shuttle to elevator-stations has been floated.

36thAveNW_newglass

I haven’t seen the 30th Ave station yet (or taken the train at either) but did see the funky glass walls at the 36th Ave station. Not sure what they were going for or who designed this.

Continue reading “N/W stations reopen, Hunters Point South Park Phase 2: One sweet week of summer”

A few notes

A funeral was held at Most Precious Blood Church for the baby that was found in a garbage can at Dutch Kills Playground. The baby was given the name, Dutch James Hope.
Flor de Azalea Cafe on 34th Avenue and 9th Street in Ravenswood is hosting an open mic on Saturday, April 28 from from 5-7pm.
The Steinway Astoria Partnership is hosting the International Culture Fest on Steinway Street on Sunday, April 29 from 12-5pm.
We Heart Astoria is throwing a party, which celebrates local businesses, with tickets starting at $45 on Thursday, April 26.
Also April 26, from 7-9pm the Boundless Tales Reading Series is on at the Local NYC in Long Island City. It’s free.
Suraj Patel gets a write-up in student paper, Washington Square News, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets featured in Salon.
New York YIMBY has renderings for a residential project on 44th Drive in Hunters Point.
There are free English language classes going on at the Jacob Riis Settlement.

A call for a permanent shuttle on 31st Street

20180408_132942 — Broadway Station of the N/W line at 31st Street.

With some good news for the elevated N/W line in Astoria comes a new idea. Last Wednesday the MTA presented Community Board 1’s transportation committee with a plan to build much-called for elevators at the Astoria Boulevard station. Today, the board voted unanimously to send a letter (posted below) to NYC Transit proposing a permanent shuttle along 31st Street to bring even more accessibility along the whole elevated line. Anyone who needs an elevator would be able to take the two-way shuttle to Astoria Boulevard or down to the Queens Plaza station for the E, M, or R trains. Thirty First Street is currently served by the Q102 bus between 30th Avenue and Queens Plaza (map PDF).

Continue reading “A call for a permanent shuttle on 31st Street”

Constantinides and JVB both eyeing BP seat (prolly)

Councilman Costa Constantinides, screenshot from City Council webpage

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, screenshot from City Council webpage

The Astoria Post reports that City Councilman Costa Constantinides is probably eyeing the Queens borough president seat for 2021 when Melinda Katz vacates. Constantinides, who is serving his final term as council-member, held a fundraiser with a maximum donation of $3,850, the top limit allowed for borough president. A flyer for the fundraiser reads, “I hope I can count on you as we expand upon our legacy and fight for higher office after my current term ends.” If true, this makes the second city council member from Western Queens eying the beep race. It was revealed in February that Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer formed a Queens Borough President exploratory committee.

H/T Astoria Post