"Astorian" April: Er, miscellany?

Uh...so I guess we're almost halfway through April, and my plans to visit a lot of places in Queens/Astoria this week have gone somewhat awry. Part of the problem is that most of the events and places I want to go to are more weekend things. Also, I had every intention of doing a little "neighborhood spotlight" post on Forrest Hills, but then I found out I'll have a meeting coming up in Forrest Hills, so I decided to put off the train trip until then. But enough of my excuses! In the meantime, I thought I could post about my top 5 places in Queens. Places that I've already been to. See? Still in keeping with the Queens theme, but requiring a fraction of the effort. (Contrary to what the numbers would suggest, these are in no particular order)

5) Rockaway Beach

I almost hesitate to put this as a Queens location because, the easiest way to get there for those of us who don't have a car is to trek on the A train through Brooklyn. However, since it is in Queens--I'm claiming it! This is one of my preferred beaches because it's less gross than Coney Island and takes less time to get to than Long Beach. And, of course, because of my incredible Queen's pride

4) Corona Park, World's Fair Site

It harkens back to that bygone era (the 1960s) when Queens was given its due.

3) Queens Museum of Art, New York City Panorama

I've seen some interesting exhibits at the Queens Museum of Art, but my favorite thing is always the large New York City Panorama. I've heard they sometimes do trivia nights at the museum where they highlight certain sections of the panorama and ask questions about landmarks and neighborhoods of the city. Despite my love of trivia nights, I think I would be really terrible at that, which is why I haven't gone.

2) Socrates Sculpture Park

This has become one of my daily walking spots when the weather is nice and I want to go out on lunch. The sculptures change regularly, and in the summer they show movies and have workshops on everything from felt making to urban chicken raising.

1) Museum of Moving Image

Another one I can walk to. I used to think the Museum of Moving Image was really lame because it was only open for about 4 hours a day in the middle of week days, so it was impossible to ever go. However, after the re-vamp, they want to show it off, so it's open on weekends like a regular museum. They also have a couple of movie theaters where they show both old and recent films. I particularly enjoyed their recent retrospective on the Muppets.

I'm not actually sure if these are my top five favorite places in Queens or maybe just the first five I could think of. At any rate, I'm going to discover more in the coming weeks--no more excuses.

Also, totally unrelated, but I've spammed everyone though every other possible format, so it's time I take it to the blog. I'm trying to win a trip to New Orleans. If you're reading this and would like to vote for my entry (you can vote daily!), I would be much obliged. Here's the link.

Like a regular Sunday but with more cheese dip

Yesterday, there were highs in the mid-40s, so I got up early and went to the beach. Admittedly, mid-40s is remarkably toasty for February in New York; however, it is still not exactly beach weather. That said, Long Beach was more crowded than I have ever seen it. I was there for the annual Long Beach Polar Bear Club Super Bowl jump. The Long Beach Polar Bears started out as just a couple of guys who thought it was fun to go for a dip in the ocean on Super Bowl Sunday. However, tragically one of the original polar bears lost a child to illness and thus the event evolved into a huge fundraiser with all proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I volunteered to walk the boardwalk selling bracelets for the cause. I'm not much of a salesperson, but people were definitely in the giving spirit, so I still ended up doing okay. I also got to sport an official Make-A-Wish Foundation Volunteer blue vest, which apparently made me look official enough that countless people would ask me where to find bathrooms.

I did not make the actual jump myself (because I am less giving of my personal comfort than I am of my time...and frankly I was cold wearing 3 layers and a thick hat), but hundreds of others did. Here's a picture of the beach during the jump:

Full disclosure: I did not take this photo. However, I did take the ones below:

This was the beach when I arrived at 10 in the morning (the jump was at 1:30) to set up. Very peaceful and more empty than I've ever seen it. You know, like a New York beach normally would be in February.

Part of the spectacle of the Polar Bear Jump is the number of people who dress up in costumes. There were penguins and polar bears as well as people in brightly colored body suits and santa outfits. There were also a lot of people inexplicably wearing bikinis. And, given the day, more than a number of people who were simply painted blue or otherwise decked out to show their Giants fandom.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I made it back from the beach just in time to make some pretzel bites and cheese dip and some chocolate dipped strawberry footballs (basically regular chocolate dipped strawberries but with a white chocolate lacing to make them look more like pig skins) and head out to a friend's place to watch the Super Bowl for the first time since...actually I can't remember ever watching the Super Bowl in its entirety before. It was a nerve wracking game for those who were emotionally invested, but in the end I was happy to see the Giants triumph. Regardless, my favorite part of the night was undoubtedly my friend's awesome cheesecake:

This put my strawberry footballs to shame!

Hope everyone had an excellent Super Bowl Sunday, even those of you who, like myself, generally find your lives pretty unaffected by such things.

Hamptons holiday

This weekend, I traveled eastward on Long Island to visit some friends in their summer house in East Hampton. By virtue of generally being friends with people in my own tax bracket, weekending in the Hamptons at someone's summer house is not something I generally do. Luckily for me, one of my friends is working as a production editor on a movie (I won't go into details, but it may or may not be the sequel to Men and Black II), and the director wanted to do the director's cut at his summer house. Naturally, as would explain the large expense that goes into making big studio films, room was found in the budget to rent houses for the staff to live there for the summer. Columbia Pictures' largesse is my gain. I might even repay them by spending the $15 to go see the movie in the theater. Then again, by Memorial Day 2012, my Hamptons tan will undoubtedly have worn off, and I might not feel so magnanimous.

So what are my impressions of the Hamptons as seen through the eyes of someone who regularly summers in the same place I winter, spring, and fall? East Hampton is quite a lovely small town with very clean beaches, huge houses, and a not so subtle air of entitlement wafting through the summer breezes. It's also very dark there, making for excellent star gazing. On Saturday, we went to the beach at one of the nearby state parks. Apparently it was one of the few beaches that didn't involve some expensive permit to set foot on. That said, you still needed to pay $400 a summer to park there. We chose to park in town and walk the mile or so instead.

Thanks to the shade of this beach umbrella and some SPF 45, I was came away from this beach experience unburned.

My new favorite New York beach. That said, if I had millions of dollars to invest in summer real estate, I'd probably get a place on the Riviera.

Isn't that quaint? They even let you rent bath houses. For the hoi polloi who don't have houses right on the beach, that is.

After returning from the beach, we'd considered going to a polo match apparently held every Saturday afternoon in East Hampton. None of our group were particular polo aficionados, but it seemed like a very Hamptons pastime. Unfortunately, not all of us could fit in one car and they charged by the car to park. We considered parking in a nearby K-Mart parking lot (I'm as shocked as you are that a K-Mart could be within walking distance of a polo field or allowed by the zoning laws of East Hampton all together). However, despite being in close proximity, it appeared on google maps that the walk entailed crossing some train tracks and possibly wading through a shallow marsh. In the end, we forewent polo in favor of an evening of grilling, eating mass amounts of potato salad, drinking vodka lemonades, and playing board games.

In the rental house, we found a game called Identity that was made in 1988. Basically, you get a card with a the name of a famous person (that is: a person famous prior to 1988). You have to get the other players to guess the name of famous person by answering questions they ask you. These questions range from the fairly obtuse "If you were a doctor's medical speciality, which would you be?" to the query-on-a-1980s-personal-ad-video "If you were a message in a bottle, which would you be?" All questions were formed with the grammatically rigid "which" as if there are a finite number of messages in a bottle out there and you simply have to pick one. Based on the level of dust on this game, we suspect we are the only Hamptons house renters to attempt playing.

On Sunday, after the most delicious pancakes I have ever eaten, we decided to try another upper crust Hamptons activity: croquet. There was a set in the basement, so it seemed logical to dust it off and stick some wickets.

Part of the rules of our croquet game was that the shooter had to wear this straw hat. Don't let my superior croquet form here fool you, I came in second to last.

Most of the weekend was spent grilling food of some sort. Everything tastes better on a BBQ, and it is one thing I sorely miss about living in the city and not having a backyard. Above are some delicious kebabs being made. Not pictured, but also consumed this weekend: hamburgers, loaded baked potato salad, spinach stuffed shells, breadsticks, 3 bags of potato chips, cookies, cucumber salad, one rainbow cheesecake, pancakes, bagels, and a number of s'mores. These things are what I truly miss about the Hamptons.

Now I'm back in the city listening to the rain and thinking about how even if the clouds were to clear, I could not see the stars. Much thanks to my friends for a lovely weekend away! Also, thanks to Barry Sonnenfeld, without whom, none of this would be possible.

Apologies for writing under the influence of eggplant parmesan and a couple of glasses of wine

I might not be doing the same amount of writing here for the next month or so because none of my readers pay me and my freelance employer does. More importantly, they except me to turn in 23,000 words on subjects ranging from rising ocean levels due to climate change to Wikipedia founder and technology mogul Jimmy Wales in the next month or so. (And by "ranging from," I really mean just those two things).

But really what is my writing but empty words trying to express experiences much better captured in images? To that end, here are a couple of photos from my beach weekend. Well, not so much weekend as a single summer Friday followed by two days of clouds and rain. Which really was fine by me because I was (mostly) confined to my keyboard penning lines from what will become the definitive biography of Jimmy Wales. And I know it will be the definitive text because there are currently very few sources in existence in the New York Public Library system devoted to the man from which I might draw my research. My only recourse has been to pore over various interviews Wales has given over the years. Through which I've determined he's kind of insufferable. So this is going to be a long 15,000 words. But that is my cross to bear. At any rate, enjoy these photos from Long Beach, NY--the jewel of Long Island.

The fact that there isn't broken glass on the beach make it worth the $11 for beach access. The beauty is just a bonus.

I'm only this carefree and looking at the world through rose colored glasses when on the Long Beach boardwalk on my way to BBQ legend Swing Bellys

See that sky? Talk about blue!

Taking photos of the platform did not make the train back to the city come any faster.

Also, I promise not to blog while drinking in the future. It might not help my writing much, but it certainly makes reading quotes from Jimmy like "I make the Internet not suck" easier to stomach. Until next time, readers!