Knish Nosh

It’s back open, friends. Got an e-mail from the owner this a.m., since I’m hoping to load up with their stuff for an upcoming gathering.

Missing Dot

What am I missing in this story today from NBC’s Web site? A 51-year-old captain flashed a 20-year-old guy at the Union Turnpike Station. The young guy says he’s had an “ongoing relationship” with the captain, and yet he called in the complaint. I’m wondering what went on between “ongoing relationship” and phone call to get the creep away from him.

NYPD Transit Captain Charged with Public Lewdnes

NEW YORK — A New York City Transit Captain has been arrested and charged with public lewdness, police officials said.

Captain Jeffrey Klimas, 51, was charged with the misdemeanor Tuesday. According to news reports, Klimas was accused of exposing himself to a 20-year-old man at around 8:30 a.m. in the Union Turnpike station.

The reports said the victim, who alerted police of the alleged exposure, told investigators that he has an ongoing relationship with the captain, who is assigned to the Transit Bureau’s Special Operations District.

Malakov Update

A reader forward this to me (hat tip to you-know-who-you-are). Nothing too new here, other than that it’s moving along. This is from last week.

Malakov case consolidated
Ex-wife and her uncle face fall trial in Forest Hills dentist murder

Mazoltuv Borukhova and her distant uncle, Mikhail Mallayev, never once looked at each other when they faced a Queens judge for the first time together Tuesday, but prosecutors contended that the duo were very chatty in the weeks leading up to the shooting murder of Dr. Daniel Malakov in a Forest Hills playground.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert Hanophy formally consolidated the pair’s separate indictments on first-degree murder and conspiracy in the Oct. 28 shooting of Borukhova’s estranged husband. As the two defendants silently entered the courtroom, nearly 24 of Malakov’s relatives cursed and shouted at their kin’s accused killers.

Joseph Berger to Speak

Nice coup for the Y! Joseph Berger is terrificly smart and interesting, definitely someone to make time for, if you’ve got the time.

New immigrants continue to transform the face of New York City today, making it a crossroads for the world, the most cosmopolitan and most polyglot city on earth. New York Times reporter Joseph Berger will speak on the new immigrants to this city and the ways in which they are continuing to change it today, on Tuesday, June 3, at 1:30 p.m., at the Central Queens YM&YWHA in Forest Hills. Joseph Berger is the author of The World in a City: Traveling the Globe through the Neighborhoods of New York.

Affluent Douglaston, as well as Flushing, in Queens have both seen heated controversy over Korean language signs. Forest Hills and Manhattan Beach have experienced tensions over newly constructed “McMansions”, as older homes were torn down by Russian and Bukharan immigrants. Yet, in spite of the tensions among neighbors, what Berger found is that most new immigrants and long-time residents have adapted surprisingly well to rapid and dramatic change. From the former pushcart knish vendor on the Lower East Side, who now caters to his customers via the internet, to the recent émigrés from former Soviet republics to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach and Midwood, whose arrival saved the furrier trade from certain extinction Berger found that New York has become a kaleidoscope of nationalities co-existing surprisingly well in small villages within the city. Each virtually self-reliant hamlet is a micro-city, representing specific nationalities and even specific cities and regions abroad. Today, for the price of a subway ride, you can visit Ghana, Bangladesh, or the Philippines.

Joseph Berger has been a columnist, reporter, and editor for the the New York Times for the last 22 years. He is also the author of Displaced Persons, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a memoir about his own experience as an immigrant to the city. For more information, call 718-268-5011, ext. 151, or email pkurtz@cqyjcc.org.

Look What the Wind Blew In

Got back today from a long weekend in Chicago. We had a fantastic time—meeting up with some family and friends—but man, it is good to be home. Being away from Forest Hills/NYC, especially in another city, tends to bring out the snooty New Yorker in me. Simply, I find it hard for most other cities to compare to this one. There are things about Chicago that I love—yards and yards of public green space, extroverted people who seem fairly well adjusted to the concept of having a little body fat, and some top-draw children’s activities—but all of it glares hypocritical in the sight of many panhandlers, including a few teenagers, and disabled vets who are looking for handouts. Chicago is a lot like New York now, where the wealth is in everyone’s face, but so is the unfairness of how that wealth has skipped over the lives of so many others.

Anyway, back to what a snoot I am. One of my favorite friends from college lives in a neighborhood in northern Chicago, and he picked me up on his Yamaha and gave me a tour of much of downtown. He started on that whole “Look at our architecture” shpiel, which I tuned out because (1) I’ve heard it before (you can’t be in Chicago for more than a half hour without hearing about it), and (2) New York has as much and much-much more by way of interesting architecture. But I will give Chicago this: it’s got it’s own Franky Gerhy-designed amphitheater and something called the Cloud Gate (locally referred to as “the Bean”), which was designed by Anish Kapoor. Both are in the newish Millennium Park. The way the Bean reflects the city’s skyline, including the impressive Smurfit-Stone sky-grazer, is truly a wonder.

Really, all of it was great. But I definitely felt my heart race as the plane neared La Guardia and I could see the 3 Birchwood Towers jutting up like dominoes. “Forest Hills,” I breathed to the guy sitting next to me, who had coaxed me through the anxiety attack I started to have once the plane hit the storm sent via Chicago to New York. “Terra firma!”

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

I’m taking a much-needed hiatus from blogging, work, and all other deadlined activities to throw myself into a long weekend of family- and friend-visiting.

I hope everyone enjoys his/her long weekend!

While there’s plenty do do this weekend in Queens, including attending the parade below, it’s always great to leave New York on long weekends like this, even if just for a day trip (Hamptons so not necessary) via Metro North. A chance of scenery can often go a long way toward helping you appreciate where you live.

Forest Hills Memorial Day Parade

Parade starts at 11 a.m., May 25, 2008, at Ascan and Metropolitan Aves, along Metropolitan to Trotting Course Lane, ending 2 p.m. at Remsen Park.

• Remsen Park is a small cemetery, the final resting spot of Colonal Jeromus Remsen who led Kings and Queens County militia in the Battle of Long Island against the British.

Kids ‘R Us

SI, QNS Are Top Kid Spots

By RITA DELFINER

May 22, 2008 — The three top communities in the city with the best conditions needed for children to thrive are Tottenville in Staten Island and Bayside and Rego Park/Forest Hills in Queens, according to a new report.

In contrast, the three “highest-risk” communities – those with more barriers or “risk factors” that affect a child’s well-being – are Mott Haven and Morrisania in The Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York said yesterday.

“Children . . . are doing much better than they did in years past,” said CCC executive director Jennifer March-Joly.

Forest Hills Chamber Players

Their Web site is not particularly up to date, but there’s enough on it to know that the Forest Hills Chamber Players are a lovely facet of our neighborhood. The FHCP has two upcoming concerts you might want to check out:

Thursday, 5/22, at the Queens Museum at 3:30pm (flute & harp program)

Tuesday, 6/10, at the Benjamin Rosenthal Center, 45-25 Kissena Blvd, Flushing at 3:30pm (FHCP trio with a soprano guest)

Snagged

From today’s Metropolitan Diary in the NY Times:

Dear Diary:

While walking to an appointment on the main shopping street of Forest Hills, Austin Street, I was attracted to the Victoria’s Secret window showing mannequins in scanty underwear. After gazing for a minute, I started to walk on.

Hearing two short car beeps, I looked across the street to see a police vehicle with a policewoman wagging her finger at me. But she wore a big smile.

Howard R. Budner

Heads Together

I had lunch with two super-smart Forest Hills women last week, and when the conversation rolled around to the environment, recycling, and what any of us can do, it was pretty productive. I’d say this was in large part because all three of us give this subject a lot of thought on an ongoing basis. I bet many of you do too.

_____

Some of the things we discussed:

Catalog Choice is a Web site where, after signing up, you can quickly scan through the site’s list of retailers and indicate which ones from whom you no longer want to receive catalogs. It really works. I no longer get unsolicited catalogs from the likes of JCrew, Lands End, LL Bean (all of which I can easily access online if I want to make a purchase), and I was able to file a semi-complaint that Anthropologie was still sending catalogs, even though I’d checked it off. I’ve blogged on this before and can’t tout it enough.

Similarly, there is Direct Marketing Association’s Preference Service, where you can opt out of all direct mail solicitation. Definitely a good thing, but one caveat: just before you finish signing up, and because this is the DMA after all, you get this message:

Are you sure you want to proceed?

The average household can save $1422 dollars per year from marketing offers. By eliminating all mail offers not only will you miss out on these savings, but you’ll miss out on at least 80% of all commercial offers and discounts!

And you will miss the environmental benefits of shopping at home rather than driving to the mall!

By replacing just two shopping trips to the mall each year with shopping by catalogs or direct mail, DMA estimates that Americans could:

• Reduce the amount we drive by 3.3 billion miles.
• Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 3 billion pounds.
• Save more than $490 million on gas costs.

If you can resist this last-ditch effort to tap into your compulsive consumerist tendencies, you should be able to save yourself much more than $1,422 in purchases you don’t need (maybe just want) and skip the mall altogether. Really, most of our effort needs to be directed at using less, doing with less, and certainly buying less.

Another idea on the table was not to use paper towels as much or anymore. Wow, that would never have occurred to me, but the logic of it has convinced me to give it a try. Instead of running through countless rolls of Bounty—which is expensive and requires a lot of energy to get into my hand—I now use one washable, reusable cloth each day to accomplish what up to 20 sheets of Bounty would do. Some might argue that the energy used to wash the cloths equals, perhaps outweighs, the energy that goes into producing and shipping Bounty to Walgreens, but given how small a wash cloth is, I find this hard to believe.

Recently I heard about a site called Fake Plastic Fish. The site’s “mission statement” reads: “Welcome to the fish tank. Swim around for a while and get your feet wet. Please don’t go without leaving a comment! I need your ideas, opinions, suggestions, advice about how we can eliminate unnecessary plastic, dramatically reduce our plastic waste, and live responsibly with the rest.” So I’ve been swimming around, getting great ideas, like foregoing the use of produce bags, because as site writer Beth Terry asserts, “What are we worried about? That our produce will touch other produce? I think the apples and broccoli can get along without killing each other. Or is it that the produce will get dirty? Hey, it grew in the dirt. and we’re going to wash it anyway, right?” The site is filled with many nuggets like this, thus it is definitely worth taking the swim.

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If you will take a moment to contribute your ideas, I will happily create a master list of suggestions and make it accessible to all readers.