New York Restaurants - Soleluna

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said,
   This is my own, my native land!

         - claptrap poetry by Sir Walter Scott

Back in my old neighborhood, Sunnyside, Queens. It still has a hold on me. Quiet when you get off Queens Boulevard; safe, unpretentious, plenty of services and very close to Manhattan. When I grew up it was a mix of Irish, Jewish and Italian. Now it's Irish, Jewish, Italian, Vietnamese, Colombian, Korean and I don't know what.  It's still just as pleasant. 

Wouldn't it be nice to have a small apartment there, a pied-a-terre so we could visit New York more often? So I looked online for one bedroom apartments. A fully rehabbed one-bedroom costs well into the 300's. That's thousands of US dollars. Sigh.

So to console ourselves, we went to our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Soleluna. Very tight storefront Italian place with just delicious food, wonderful people and good prices for NY. They have a gumball machine out front, which I think is charming. We got acquainted with the people at the next table, whose story is too long to repeat here. It was the third time I've been there in the last year, once with the family and once with Olivier. We may return when we are back in town in July.                 

Queens

I have been in New York City for seven hours as I write this and have not left the Borough of Queens. (Tomorrow will be different, of course.) The first two pictures look east along Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, the neighborhood where I grew up. Mon bon ami Olivier Perrin is on holiday in the city and met me here. We walked through the area, took some pictures of my old apartment building and dined at my favorite local restaurant, Soleluna,

Back to the hotel to edit. The bottom photo is the view from my window. (My little Olympus camera just doesn't do low light as well as my big Canon, but that's too heavy to walk the streets.) Tomorrow Roosevelt Island, The High Line, the Whitney Museum and, if time permits, the International Center of Photography. Dinner at a French cafe and wine bar in the West Village.     

Four Boroughs

Didn't get anything of Brooklyn on this trip except for the bridge shot already posted. Otherwise, from top to bottom:

Queens - Silvercup Studios in Long Island City. When I was young Silvercup was the major brand of white bread (which everyone ate) in NYC. When our family drove back to Sunnyside on Sunday nights after visiting my father's family, the air would be full of the aroma of fresh baked bread as we passed. Now it is an enormous film, photography and television production site. 

Manhattan: a halal street food trailer outside the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Street food in the city used to be mostly Hebrew National kosher hotdog carts. Now things are more ecumenical. Note the worker wearing the soccer jersey of the Argentine (and therefore presumably Catholic) Lionel Messi. 

The Bronx: nothing needs more explanation. I went to high school in this borough.

Staten Island: floor mat on the ferry.

NYC political nomenclature is confusing. There are five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. But each of them is also a separate county of the State of New York, sometimes with different names. Manhattan is New York County. Brooklyn is Kings County. Staten Island is Richmond County. It's just to confuse the tourists. 

Back To Queens

Ellie on the way for her first trip to New York. There were thunderstorms, LaGuardia was closed for a while, and we spent an impatient hour in Richmond, Virginia. Got there just in time to hop in a taxi and go directly to the restaurant we had booked, Soleluna in Sunnyside. It was fabulous. Narrow storefront, superb, fresh Italian food and lovely people. A great NYC experience.

Queens Boulevard is the main thoroughfare of my old neighborhood. The convenience store next to the restaurant had a coin-operated kiddie ride. This stretch of the Number 7 line has graceful concrete arches, not the usual steel girders. Note the Empire Sate Building in the background of the last picture.   

The Old Neighborhood

Arial view of Sunnyside, Queens, the neighborhood where I grew up, taken from a plane approaching LaGuardia (obviously in the winter). There are a few labels in the photo. We may see this vista later today. The area is a short train ride from midtown Manhattan.  

It was, and still is, a solid middle-middle class area although housing prices have gone up at an alarming pace. The family plans to have dinner there tonight. 

STL DPB In The Air: Home

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Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays, Perry Como sang years ago when the family gathered around the black and white television. I got some of it on Christmas Day, flying from St. Louis to New York's La Guardia Airport to join my family for the weekend. My youngest sister, the only one left in the area, still lives in the New Jersey suburb we emigrated to when the family left Queens in 1966. The plane descended right over Sunnyside, my old neighborhood. Click the link for a picture of PS 150, where I went to school through third grade, when Queen of Angels parish opened a Catholic school. Times change: the church is still there but the school closed two years ago.

The picture above looks toward Manhattan over Newtown Creek, which forms the western part of the border between Brooklyn and Queens.

Below: - Midtown Manhattan, from the Empire State Building on the left to the United Nations on the right.

- Sunnyside. Note the location of Queen of Angels and my family's apartment building. CDBP veteran Ming the Merciless lived in the same block until he relocated to Bangor, Maine.

- Sunnyside, looking at the graceful concrete arches of the Number 7 line that runs down Queens Boulevard. The station at the lower right is where this picture was taken a year ago.

It feels good to be home.

BY THE WAY: Gateway is back - finally!

STL CDPB On The Road: Queens

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On Saturday, my nephew and I went to the Sunnyside neighborhood of Queens, the part of New York City where I grew up. More about that soon. Later, we drove a short way to Long Island City, the district across the East River from the United Nations in Manhattan. I ran some of these pix by a CDPB colleague, who told me I should use this for today's post. But my favorite is the one below. No idea what was going on between those two but my title for the picture is "I'm Leaving."

WHAT'S ON FOR SUNDAY: my nephew and I are going back into the city and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan, cameras in hand. The rest is left to fate.

TOMORROW: Pssst, Mister. Wanna buy a bridge?