After close to two decades (yikes!) here, I have tried to come to embrace my neighborhood. Embrace Astoria; it has much to offer. I can’t speak to the rents, since I own, but I believe they’re still competitive. It’s close enough to the city so that I can walk home from Manhattan without fatigue, which would seem to be a dubious benefit, except that I’ve had to do it three times – September 11, the blackout, the transit strike. Ethnically diverse restaurants and food shops, odd pockets of culture like the Museum of the Moving Image and Socrates Sculpture Park, and a sense of neighborhood, particularly during unifying sporting events like a Subway Series or World Cup Soccer.

On the downside – depressing architecture only exacerbated by gentrification, a concept of urban planning no more sophisticated than that of a toddler constructing a Fisher-Price town, the immigration of ancient Balkan grudges, and really hideous music. By which I don’t mean the Greek bouzouki music blasting from cars, or the music coming from the Egyptian hookah bars on Steinway Street -- that music is merely other to me, something my ear was not trained to recognize or appreciate.

No, I’m talking about music that sucks, the Europop with its drum machines and synthetic strings, the crossover leider lite, the “easy listening” which apparently “soothes” millions of adults but which for me conjures memories of elevators, waiting rooms, the radio station my grandparents played in the car while searching for parking at the St. Louis Zoo, and the hopeless plastic furniture of airports. The musical equivalent of bad hotel art.

The local coffee shop is a particularly egregious purveyor of this sound. Of course, there are many “local” coffee shops in Astoria. All of them seem to have been voted the “best in Queens” by the hapless readers of one or another New York periodical, but today, driven from my home by renovations, I encountered the most painful accolade of all. This particular coffee shop is popular because of the incredible convenience of its location. Its coffee is mediocre and its service cliquish (I am in the clique, however, by virtue of my frequent appearances there, notebook in hand, my few demands and my generous tips.) But the music is horrible. Really horrible. In fact, it has driven two of my neighbors three blocks further to another coffee shop, which blares CNN from a television above the counter.

Today, I met this challenge. I came, I wrote, I conquered the music. I asked for the check. It arrived with an advisory written on it, that due to “popular demand,” the music which plays in the coffee shop has been made available as a playlist on iTunes.

Tastes vary. So if you want to evoke the ambience of a Queens coffee shop, if you want to walk around with it plugged into your ears, drop me a line and I’ll send you the link.

Labels: Astoria, Astoria coffee shops, bad pop music, Europop, iTunes

posted by Elizabeth at 8:41 PM   0 Comments

The other night the New York branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Artists invited their American cousins to a pub quiz at a bar downtown. I arrived with a pair of friends, ready to face the trivia and was almost immediately daunted by the James Bond category.

I was well into adulthood before I saw a complete James Bond movie. As a child, I saw one flickering on the television and I tuned in long enough to see a scantily-clad beauty being drowned in a tank to prove that the villain was evil. I decided to stick with “The Avengers.” The second James Bond movie I saw, I saw on Christmas. There was a character named Christmas in it, a nuclear physicist played by Denise Richards. I had so much trouble getting my head around that that I could barely follow the story, which had something to do with an oil pipe, a French girl with Stockholm Syndrome and the usual explosions, chases, deceptions, quips, and utterances of the word “plutonium” by Denise Richards.

The first James Bond movie I saw was “Dr. No,” and I think that viewing also took place during Christmas, when my friend Chris (of “Chris and Kris and Hyperhedonism” – hello again!) became so outraged by my assertion that I had never seen a James Bond movie that he got into his car and drove to Blockbuster and came back with “Dr. No.”

Hence, my memory uncluttered by a plethora of Bond girls, I was able to name the first one when the question came up. “Ursula Andress!” I cried, to the surprise of my teammates at Table Ten (“Ocean’s Ten,” we called ourselves). For an extra bonus point, we were asked to name the character. “Pussy Galore?” suggested one of my teammates. “No, no,” I said. “It was ‘Honey’ something.” I remembered that all the characters kept singing, “Under the mango tree/my honey and me …” I remembered remarking to Kris how strange it was that everyone on the island of Jamaica knew only one song.

We were denied the bonus point. We had to supply the full name: Honey Ryder. We appealed. With the penchant for petty intolerance that cost them the Empire, the Brits declined our appeal. Although we were never at any point in the evening in the lead in the trivia quiz, we were somewhat undone by the Honey Ryder injustice and began making dumb mistakes: Leslie Howard instead of Trevor Howard, things of that nature.

After we lost, I went to congratulate the braggarts and geeks at the winning table and to apologize for having thrown napkins at them throughout the evening. I examined their prizes: DVDs of “Torchwood” and the other puzzling entertainment offered on BBC America.

If someone could explain to me what’s going on on “Torchwood,” I would be most grateful. To me, it’s as mystifying as a James Bond movie.

Labels: BAFTA, Dr. No, Honey Ryder, pub quiz

posted by Elizabeth at 12:53 PM   0 Comments