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

Went to The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen tonight (their motto: “By Hammer and Hand All Arts Do Stand!”) to attend a lecture on the piano. A piano technician was supposed to take apart the Society’s Weber piano and compare it to a Steinway. This didn’t quite happen, but it was entertaining nonetheless, and I made the acquaintance of a few researchers who may help me in the quest that began when I found a piano on the street last spring. It is a 1927 Sohmer upright. Sohmer was a good reliable German-made line, beloved by Hoagy Carmichael, Al Jolson, Rudolph Valentino. When Irving Berlin wrote “I Love a Piano,” he wrote it on a Sohmer.

Two weeks after I found (and adopted) the piano, I learned by web-surfing (see how useful web-surfing is?) that the building (ten blocks from my apartment) which had housed the factory in which the piano was born had been declared a historic landmark. My neighborhood is lousy with retired tuners and piano builders; it’s Astoria, home of Steinway. A piano technician, ML, lives just down the street. I called him in to have a look at my Sohmer, daffily optimistic that I just needed a tuning, and was told that the extensive water damage on the soundboard would require $5,000 in repairs. Another $3,000 in cosmetic repairs would restore the creature to its former glory – it’s solid mahoghany, which someone at some point saw fit to cover with black paint.

Oh, but its action, oh, but its tone! I am in love and cannot let it go. And so it has sat in my living room since Groundhog’s Day, occasionally singing “Sheep May Safely Graze” when I ask it to, but refusing the “Moonlight Sonata.”

I had hoped, tonight, that the lecturing technician would cheerfully agree to come and take a look at the old girl, and heartily refute ML’s crazy estimate: “Water damage? What water damage? That green on the felt isn’t mold – it’s just green felt!” But alas. More daffy optimism. But when I mentioned ML to tonight’s piano technician, he all but genuflected. Apparently, I had had the rock star of piano rebuilders in my living room, drinking my coffee, giving me the bad news, petting my ill piano. “No point in my looking at it, if ML’s seen it.”

So what to do. Can’t let go, can’t afford repairs; piece of New York City history, instrument that cannot be duplicated if the same amount of money were spent to buy a new one. (“Maybe a Chinese piano,” spat ML, and this was before the toy recall.) Well, it was a miracle that I found the piano, that morning when I had just been wishing for one, so all I can do is wait for another one. Another miracle, or another piano.

Labels: Astoria, piano, piano technician, Sohmer

posted by Elizabeth at 9:47 PM   0 Comments Links to this post