Here in Astoria

A few questions, if you'd indulge me for a few seconds.  Are there absolutely NO architectural guidelines that must be followed before a building is allowed to be constructed in Astoria?.  What is behind the flaming love affair with aluminum siding?  Is it a mandatory part of the construction code?  I mean, do you go to jail?  The neighborhood looks like a wild party of aluminum siding salesman in 1965, were having some kind of contest, using Astoria as their playing field.   It’s an insult to the word “insult”, to hurl this at a potentially delightful, ethnic soup of a neighborhood.  But there you are.

The Greek food is phenomenal, in several restaurants. AND SPEAKING OF FOOD.  I was looking for a spatula the other day.  We needed one here, since not everything that went to the other house made it over here.   Anyway, it was simply an ordinary, commonplace spatula that I was looking for,  the kind one expects to find in any kitchen in the developed world.  So I looked for a spatula.  And you know what?  I might as well been looking for the lost continent of Atlantis.  I walked several miles, with my back the way it is.  I went into seven or eight “housewares” stores.  And you know what?  I did finally find two objects that anyone would call a spatula.   One was part of a tinny set of otherwise unnecessary items, like a ladle and knives - which we already have, and it cost $53 to boot, which was well beyond my budget.   

The other spatula deserves its own paragraph, because it’s the one I bought and  the one which now graces our kitchen, here on 29th Street and 23rd Avenue.  Let me describe it before you stop reading and tear your eyeballs out of your head.   In form and materials this object is every inch a spatula.  But inches are precisely the problem with it.  It looks like the spatula  King Kong or a T-Rex would flip their pancakes with.  The “blade” of this spatula is almost a foot long wide.  It won’t even fit into most of the pans I might want to use it for.  I bought it just so I could stare in amazement at it.

In any case, the two proceeding examples boil down the problem with Astoria in as easily a way as comes to mind, on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon in early fall.   Here in Astoria.