A taxidermist and a delicatessen

Traffic is the byword. In fact, it seems to be an area-wide affliction. Not one of the joys of living in New York, but a condition. Worse, depending on the time of day, or not as bad, if luck smiles on one.

Today I set out on an afternoon trip into central Queens. In fact, I went to Middle Village. I set out this hot afternoon, first, to my local QBPL branch, Mitchell Linden, to return a book and pick up three others; I also printed an article I look forward to reading again and again, In the Hudson Valley, a Drive Back in Time.

Ah, yes, the Hudson Valley and history. Suits me fine.

I avoided taking the Van Wyck Expressway, which my maps app showed in red: heavy traffic. But New York ain't easy; I took College Point Boulevard, and ran into traffic anyway.

Remember, that's Wyck as in like, not as in wick.

I know the ways and byways some, and with that app, I can weave and find a different way; not to avoid traffic, nor to outfox it, which are impossibilities, but to mitigate it. Not getting onto the highway, I took something called the Meadow Lake Road West — not that there's a street sign so identifying it, but the online map does — dodged that heavy traffic crawling on the Van Wyck, waited three traffic light changes, and turned right onto Jewel Avenue (well, 69th Road). Crossing Queens Boulevard, the street name changes to Yellowstone Boulevard, and the character of the architecture changes from houses to large apartment buildings, stacked one after another.

Before reaching Woodhaven Boulevard, I veered left onto Selfridge Street, and stopped at the Ian Maclennan Garden in Pebblestone Triangle (bounded by Selfridge, Manse Street and 68th Avenue), a pleasant oasis which afforded my a respite in a spot of shade.

Turning onto Metropolitan Avenue, I headed west, past Woodhaven Boulevard, with parts of St. John's Cemetery on each side (somewhere in there, John Gotti is buried, he who once was known as the Teflon Don). Turning onto 73rd Place, I hit the jackpot: a parking spot in the shade (my car thermometer read 90º and the sun was hot).

A local dance company.

Getting to be lunchtime, I looked for the local public library; I needed a water closet and to sit a few minutes and use the public wifi.

Where is it? To the left, an industrial building; straight ahead, a private building advising people there is no parking for the library. Yet, off to the side, there it is:

 That narrow entrance gives way to a deep, long library; its air conditioning was quite welcome.

Reflecting the neighborhood demographics, as libraries do, this little curio:

Mary Higgins Clark in German.

After lunch, I walked over to All Faiths Cemetery. It is not well maintained. I saw mausoleums dated 1903, and graves from earlier, as I have in other cemeteries, but this one was sadly neglected. Its interesting feature are its rolling hills.

On my walk back to my car, I caught sight of this store; I could not believe was seeing it:

Under its canopy, a still discernible sign reads Delicatessen. The possibilities made me shudder. It was quite a hot day. But I know I saw that.

Two QBPL branches, and a cemetery, of course

On a humid Friday I set out to find a book by Molly O'Neill, who, alas, died last Sunday. I saw her obit in the NY Times this morning.

Ms. O’Neill ushered in an era of food writing in the 1990s that was as much about journalism as deliciousness, built on the work of writers like M. F. K. Fisher, Richard Olney, Elizabeth David and Craig Claiborne, the former food editor of The New York Times. “I wanted to be all of them,” she wrote in 2003, “with a slice of Woodward and Bernstein on the side.”

I well remember her, and remember reading and enjoying her writing. Then time passed, and I lost track of her. She moved onto other endeavors, and I started watching food shows on television.

With American food writing today including many voices and cultures, it is easy to forget that Ms. O’Neill was doing so long before the globe-trotting Anthony Bourdain and the Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold were household names, at least in food-centric households. “This is exactly what Tony Bourdain was doing, and nobody gave her any credit for it,” said Ruth Reichl, the author and former Times restaurant critic.

I don't know how she was personally, if she had Bourdain's extroverted personality, or whether she appeared on the food scene early, and Gold and Bourdain reaped the glory of her pioneering work — or if her being a woman and those two and others being men had anything to do with things, but it does dangle there in the ether.

I went onto the QBPL website, and searched for her The New York Cookbook, but its three copies were (already) reserved. I found her One big table at a couple of QBPL branches, including Briarwood. There I decided to go.

Briarwood is a weird neighborhood; well, its location (though I suppose Briarwood residents mightn't think so). It's on the southern end of Main Street, which in downtown Flushing is a big, busy thoroughfare. It's right off Queens Boulevard, up the block from the County courthouse, with the Van Wyck Expressway right there (remember, that's Wyck as in like, not as in wick).

Spaghetti of highways; in the afternoon traffic abounds — if you were to look at traffic on a map of central Queens, there'd be a lot of red. I was in some of that, on the Van Wyck and on Union Turnpike on the way to the library. I've been in traffic other times: there is a perpetual construction project to widen the highways, which seems a losing proposition, though I do  see some progress (after fifteen years, and more).

I found a parking spot on Queens Boulevard, across the QB from the Library, and crossed that thoroughfare carefully (this is the same Queens Boulevard which further west has six lanes in each direction, and is considered one of the most dangerous streets in New York City (not just in the outer boroughs, but in all the boroughs).

85-12 Main St, Briarwood, NY 11435, constructed in 1957. I was there at 2.45 in the afternoon. Busy. Lots of people at the computers. I used my QBPL app to find the Dewey Decimal number of Molly's book (641.5097 O), took it from the shelf (carefully; it weighs in at 846 pages), and perused it for a while.

She was 66, my age. Twenty five years ago the comic George Burns used to joke most people my age are dead, a line which always got a laugh. Some times the laugh was wistful; it is more so now. 66 seems young. Too young, anyway.

After some time, and many vegetable recipes, I decided it was time for me to leave and get lunch. Ah, modern times: I searched Yelp, and found an entry for a food cart mere yards away from the library. I am a fan of street food, yet I wondered, for a long moment, if that would be my choice today. I decided that, yes, it would.

There it sat, beyond the entrance to the E and F trains of the IND line (do people still refer to IND and IRT? Yeah, I think so). I ordered a lamb gyro. I saw the man inside the cart grab a pita and toss it on the grill, heard him chopping at the grill, and smelled and saw the spicy meat I would get if I'd ordered a plate, but I stuck with my choice. Yes, salad, I said, please. Yes, sauce, and some spicy sauce, too, and a bit more. Five bucks, a bottle of water included.

I walked across Queens Boulevard (yes, carefully), and sat at a public space. There is a dearth of public seating, benches where one can sit down and have a snack or a quick meal, and linger for a while, and not just in New York. Why is that?

In this spot there were benches and what I suppose are metal sculptures, which are quite ugly, as well as litter: plastic bags with paper wrappers, an empty beer bottle, empty coffee cups filled with (I suppose) rainwater, all of which in part answer my above query: why aren't there public spaces where one can sit and linger? Because people are slobs, expect someone else to clean up their crap, and the city doesn't have the money to spend on public amenities. People are the same way on the road: they do not let another driver go first, rush to be ahead, cut in line, and behave piggishly.

Yet I enjoyed my food. The lamb was delicious, chunks of meat nicely cooked; the tomatoes were tasty, a deep red and juicy, and the sauces were an amalgam of goodness, just spicy enough plus a bit more. Thoughtfully, the man in the cart had given me a big handful of napkins, and I needed them. Pita is the perfect bread for this juicy goodness, too.

Queens at one of its best. Street food after a visit to the public library, outdoor seating, green all around me. Across Queens Boulevard, parkland, to my left, Maple Grove Cemetery. A sunny day, rain finally ended, getting warm, summer started.

I dropped Molly's tome in my car, and walked into Maple Grove. I saw two names I recognized when I scanned a QR code of one of its signs: Jimmy Rushing, the jazz singer, and John Sutphin, a Queens man after whom Sutphin Boulevard is named. I sat for a bit, and headed out. This little critter was enjoying the Queens afternoon's offerings:

Stopping at a supermarket at the corner of Main Street and Union Turnpike, I was in a different neighborhood then, away from Kew Gardens and Briarwood, into the fringes of Kew Gardens Hills. I think the name is a bit of an affectation, but I don't live there. Over the last twenty years the neighborhood has become heavily Orthodox Jewish, Modern Orthodox.

I parked and went into the QBPL branch. Approaching it, I was surprised:

When I was in Library School, in one class we were given an assignment to visit a local library (we define what local meant), and speak to a librarian about the library's issues. I chose the Kew Gardens Hills branch of QBPL because it was close to Queens College and I knew the neighborhood (as few classmates, if any, did). The branch was utterly different then, smaller, far more modest, perhaps dowdy. Today's library is quite different. I'll leave it at that for now. But it is worth considering, and investigating, why certain libraries are remodeled or replaced, while others aren't.

Laurelton QBPL

On a rainy day I headed to southeast Queens, had a delicious Jamaican lunch (jerk chicken, though with a sweet sauce; sweet was a surprise, and a bit much), then went to the Laurelton branch of the Queens Borough Public Library.

Built in 1953, it stands on a side street, just south of Merrick Boulevard. That was 66 years ago, a long time back. Surely the community could use a new library. WHy there isn't one is a question I can not answer.

Inside. it is bright, a large, open room with a couple of subdivisions. It seemed well used. A librarian and a clerk were talking to each other, and theirs were the loudest voices in the room.

I sat for a good half hour and leafed through a couple of print newspapers, rare as that is these digital days, while outside waves of rain fell. I could hear the rain hitting the windows. It was quite very pleasant to sit in the dry indoors and read.

Libraries remain oases.

Hair and beards

Three weeks ago I happened upon the movie Gettysburg, and decided to watch the first hour. Well, the movie is about three and a half hours long, and once I started watching it I wanted to finish it. I didn't that night, but I did get it from QBPL, and watched the last two hours.

Tom Berenger and Jeff Daniels were great. Martin Sheen had the thankless task of playing an idealized Robert Lee. All three of them, and many others, suffered from having to wear ridiculous hair on their heads and faces. I mean, my goodness, Hollywood can create alternate universes and impressive flying objects, blue beings and all sorts of superheroes with impressive skill sets and great costumes, but a decent beard? Apparently not.

The film is from 1993. The dialogue is from a plethora of books imagined to know what was said in 1863. It doesn't hold up very well. Of course it's my opinion; this is my blog. Lee is portrayed as some sort of spiritualist, and seems ridiculous. I do believe I read and/or heard every line of his dialogue in my years as a Civil War buff.

Robert E. Lee was a traitor to his country. So were Longstreet and Hill and Hood. At least Longstreet had the good sense to reform himself. Of course, that made him a traitor to the people who continued to believe in the purity of their cause: upholding slavery and feudalism under the guide of states rights.

We should move onto the XXIst century, all of us. Of course, some don't agree. They think Jefferson Davis was a patriot, some do. Factually, they're wrong. But one can take a horse to water ...