I will never forgive the city (or state for that matter) of New York for naming that neighborhood at the end of the 7 train in Queens "Flushing". What kind of a name is that? And why have I still not learned to put any other mental image in my head other than a toilet or pipes?
Friday night was potluck family dinner with the fam at Betsy's: a veggie tray, enchiladas, red velvet cupcakes and white wine... all over the trashiest of trash straight-to-$5 DVD bins DVDs that are the result of middle school kids getting their hands on a camera and a no-name production company agreeing to make it for NO good reason other than the economy was probably slow. Chatterbox and Minor Details. And by the way, we never did find out what a Chatterbox was.
On Saturday I overslept a brunch date (oops) and relegated myself to Ronnie's plans of me going to Forest Hills and us walking from there to Flushing together! It was a shockingly beautiful walk with the balmy 54 degrees (I think?) around the lake and through Flushing Meadows.
This Instagram picture may have even destroyed the original view, it was so gorgeous there! Who would believe that this was New York City?
We walked all through Flushing Meadows, where you will see here what the New York Queens residents do for a skate park:
And we walked right to the Flushing Meadows Globe outside the US Open venue and across from Citi Field where the Mets (and my high school friend Lucas Duda!) play
By the time we got into the crowded Asian streets of Flushing, we were starving and stopped in a dumpling restaurant where a plate of 10 pork and leek dumplings were only $3.50! Two orders of that, noodles with minced meat sauce, and boba was our meal. I was literally the only white person there and so out of place. I had ordered the first plate of dumplings for us to share and when they called the order there was 1 white plastic fork laid on the tray, for 1 little white me. I asked if I could also have 2 pairs of chopsticks, and she took the fork away and replaced it with the 2 cellophane wrapped chopsticks. I shrugged it off, but when Ronnie and I were eating the dumplings, I dropped one onto the plate, and we had covered them in soy sauce and hot peppers and sauce so that when I dropped it, the soy sauce splattered all on the front of my WHITE lace top. Ronnie said that the woman serving me probably put a dragon spell on me for refusing her fork. I have no proof to suggest otherwise.
After that we wandered around the streets and malls and mused about how like Asia it was. We were in a mall on the second floor with a glass wall over looking the streets and I really felt like I was in some backroads of Shanghai or something. Tiny, bright, green and red signs all in Asian characters, tiny streets and huge hustling crowds of little Asian people, dumpling and noodle shops with windows open the sidewalk, boba cafes and Hello Kitty stores EVERYWHERE, and markets with huge slabs of fish heads, cuts of swordfish with the innards still inside, wooden baskets of still-live crabs... you really could convince yourself that you were somewhere else.
This is what Flushing looks like by day
In one Hello Kitty store we were looking at some calendar of some Korean actress or something, who really was beautiful. Ronnie says she was on a show where she played the ugly sister, so there was an even-more-beautiful Korean girl in the show. "Wow" I said. "Well, it's Korea" Ronnie replied. "Beauty is abundant." I don't think that was a biased response but what do I know.
Lastly, on Ronnie's Flushing Bucket List was a Flushing bar that he INSISTED we have a beer at and make it our new place. I was insistent that bars didn't exist in Flushing. We saw a light for a Kelly's Pub down the road and I thought it was a perfect sign but it was so shady with 1 closed wooden door that we just kept on walking. At a corner, Ronnie exclaimed in frustration "Where are the bars around here?!" and some random man said "Oh you look for bar? Just right here, then left, then you are there." And who doesn't take advice from random strangers? So we ended up at an empty Korean Beer House and each had a Tsingtao beer. All in all not bad.
By the end we came to the conclusion that, based on the Flushing neighborhood, Asians care about only 3 things: food, bakeries, and Hello Kitty. And Ronnie is Asian so he is allowed to say this, I am only reporting this. I feel legally obligated to make this distinction.
