Friday, August 1, 2008

Supermarket conversations

From Let's Meet Up in Queens:

While making my purchase, an unusually talkative sales clerk rung me up. I asked where she was from, and she said, "Maspeth." I noted it was a nice neighborhood, and she noted it was beginning to decline.

Brace yourself...here comes the inevitable Archie Bunker story.

She was not pleased with the new elements moving in, "I'm not prejudiced, but I am not happy with some of the new riffraff." She then proceeded to talk of her father witnessing a mugging set up underneath an overpass in that neighborhood - seemingly equating it with ethnic change. She was not happy one bit about the "new" Maspeth.

My answer to this was: "The tearing down of one- and two-family homes with replacement by multi-family homes, combined with the city looking the other way with regard to illegal conversions, combined with a sanctuary city policy leads to an increase in riff raff. As you well know in Sunnyside."

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got something for anyone who wants to try and mug me in Maspeth and they sure as hell won't be happy!!!

Anonymous said...

We need gigantic sized Roach Motel accommodations for any illegal who wants to live anywhere in this country.

Is there any person out there who can invent such an accommodation?

Anonymous said...

Actually, new development stops the riffraff from moving in, by providing places for people to buy and live instead of moving to the burbs, but this uneducated, bigoted Maspeth resident wouldn't know this.

There has never been a neighborhood in the history of NYC that had a market-rate housing boom coupled with decline.

If the neighborhood were in decline, it would be like Detroit, and there would be a glut of existing housing and no demand for new construction. Econ 101, something the Queens Crap readership and blogmaster could probably use.

Anonymous said...

The supermarket guy seems to have injected ethnic B.S. into a story about a mugging. Sounds like he has guilt over something. What the black lady did is unacceptable though.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, new development stops the riffraff from moving in, by providing places for people to buy and live instead of moving to the burbs, but this uneducated, bigoted Maspeth resident wouldn't know this."

You're pretty stupid, son, because Maspeth and most NYC neighborhoods have had plenty of new development over the past few years and crime is higher than ever.

Anonymous said...

"by providing places for people to buy and live instead of moving to the burbs"

The problem is people are moving to the burbs, genius, not staying.

Anonymous said...

"If the neighborhood were in decline, it would be like Detroit, and there would be a glut of existing housing and no demand for new construction."

Uh yeah, that's exactly what's been going on in Maspeth. Condos and houses built but not sold for more than 2 years now. WAKE UP!

Anonymous said...

Not to mention empty factories and warehouses - just like Detroit!

Anonymous said...

"providing places for people to buy and live"

HA HA HA these are being built and rented out to illegals and dirtbags. Are you for real with that line of shit?

Anonymous said...

"Actually, new development stops the riffraff from moving in, by providing places for people to buy and live instead of moving to the burbs, but this uneducated, bigoted Maspeth resident wouldn't know this."
--------

Live two blocks from there - when this was a manufacturing area, it was neglected and started going down hill with the absentee landlords.

Now with the stores, it is still neglected, but its a neglected pigsty. I can clean a sidewalk, go down stairs to get something, and come back and find a chuckie cheeze thing on the sidewalks, and a batch of schrieking loud project people a few houses down, or, the usualy two sisters, and seven kids of assorted sizes stolling down the street.

Oh, yes, even more absentee landlords cluessly changing doors, putting up fences to keep out the Macdonalds trash.

Anonymous said...

There are hords of five year olds running up and down the blocks around there.

Should be lots o fun in about a decade.

Anonymous said...

The area is a horror. You get off the train and see garbage and grafitti everywhere.

The Latin Kings tags are a nice touch.

Then crossing the street where there are buildings right up to the curb, insuring that every inch is developed even if its a limited sight distance and everyone gets a chance to dance with the au-to-mo-biles (the developer's family does not shop there obviously), past all the hallel meat vendors with their operations pumping smoke into the dead trees (the ones with branches still on them have mechandise hung from them)

Oh yes, really high quality of mechandise in the stores, too.

Only thing missing from the shopping experience is mud and chickens.

Anonymous said...

Lucky you can get down the blocks to the stores. Sometimes the sidewalks are all but impassible with garbage and mounds of cans and papers, especially when there is a holiday and the stuff does not get picked up for weeks!

But hey, its immigrant. With the exception of tweeding photo opts, the politicans pretty much let the area rot on its own. City services suck in the area, on both sides of Northern.

But the old Andean and Chinese ladies with the towering shopping carts full of cans are a sight to behold. An iconic image of Queens that should go in every travel brochure right next to the Unisphere.

Ya listin' Terri?

Anonymous said...

The area was in a Rio Rancho commerical back in the early 70s.

They showed Astoria, and a voice overtoned 'Don't you want to go from here' then panned to a new southwest planned development, and continued 'and move to here?'

Where in the f*k was boro hall when these people were poking fun at Queens. Oh yes, wathching and laughing at 'adorable' Archie Bunker episodes.

Boro Hall has always had their head up their ass. A triumph of connections over competence.

Anonymous said...

CB1 the community board from hell!

Anonymous said...

I agree. The housing code especially the CO of a dwelling is no longer sacred. Pack teams of disparite families in a single family home - the city does not respond to violations of the CO as they did years ago.

Now that the ecomomy has tanked, folks are losing their homes or keeping them by packing renters in their garages and basements.

Many illegals are hard drinking druggy, single men whom are not always perfect neighbors - many have criminal backgrounds (already criminal by being illegal) and the mindset is that it can't get worse for them, only you the law abiding citizen who lives here.

In Elmhurst, the empty condos are a blight and yet more are being built on Queens Blvd and B'way - go figure! Crapification of Elmhurst has brought an influx of legal and illegal immigrant that for the most part could not care less about noise, garbarge, parking or greenery. I can't leave - I wish I could.

Anonymous said...

Actually, new development stops the riffraff from moving in, by providing places for people to buy and live instead of moving to the burbs, but this uneducated, bigoted Maspeth resident wouldn't know this.

There has never been a neighborhood in the history of NYC that had a market-rate housing boom coupled with decline.

--------

Umm, check out the history of Harlem. All histories treat the place like it emerged from pre-Camberian rock in 1905 just at the time when the blacks moved in, but in reality, it was the product of a speculative overbuilding boom. Buildings sat empty until - you guessed it - they started to move in multiple families into single family townhouses.

No wonder they don't want us to read history in this city.

Anonymous said...

Well, these comments pretty much give an overview of the Queens Crap readership.

According to these brainiacs, the NYPD 85% decrease in NYC crime is fabricated (and crime has actually increased from the 1970's, LOL), the Census showing that NYC is growing and Long Island is shrinking is also made up (yep, all those Dempgraphy PhDs are wrong, but Vito posting on Queens Crap is right), and the Jews that dominated Harlem from 1900-1930 were actually African American, and they moved to Harlem because it was in decline because the brownstones were built...

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Truman Harris said...

No one here said crime has increased from the 1970s. But we know it has increased from the Giuliani years. No one said NYC is shrinking, but it certainly is not growing at the rate that Bloomberg wants it to (1M by 2030 a completely made up number) and as for Harlem - LOOK IT UP. Sorry, we don't drink the Bloomberg-media Kool-Aid here as we are supposed to. We realize it must irk the shit out of certain people.

Queens Crapper said...

"Small groups of black people lived in Harlem as early as 1880, especially in the area around 125th Street and "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street. The mass migration of blacks into the area began in 1904, thanks to another real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of a black real estate entrepreneur named Phillip Payton, Jr. Harlem experienced another real estate bust in 1904-1905; after the collapse of the 1890s, new speculation and construction started up again in 1903 and the resulting glut of housing led to a crash in values that eclipsed the late-19th century slowdown. Landlords could not find white renters for their properties, so Philip Payton stepped in to bring blacks. His company, the Afro-American Realty Company, was almost single-handedly responsible for migration of blacks from their previous neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), and Hell's Kitchen in the west 40s and 50s."

Anonymous said...

Crime hasn't increased from the Guiliani years. Where did you get that from? Crime is up, slightly, from last year, in certain areas. Crime is still extremely low in NYC relative to historical standards and relative to every other big city in the country.

Queens Crapper said...

Wrong. Crime is "down" because the cops do everything possible to dissuade people from reporting it. When the person who is supposed to help you acts like they're not interested, then that's a BIG problem. Get your nose out of the phony stats and out in the real world.