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The Crap-O-Sphere ("Crappy")
Artwork by Jerry Rotondi
The official mascot of Queens Crap
The Crap-O-Sphere ("Crappy")
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May
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- Mob tries to prevent ICE from arresting burglar
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- Enjoy these old photos of Ridgewood
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- It's Joe Crowley's world...we just live in it
- Council members think terrorists are heroes
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- Tenants want overseer for torched building
- Mayor announces crackdown on parking placard abuse
- Council Land Use Chair is stealthily tweeding
- The wait at Elmhurst Hospital is a killer
- MTA sued over peeling lead paint
- It's who you know
- Majestic Ridgewood church seeks tower repair funds
- Poop continues to flow into Bergen Basin
- Ron Kim's wife is challenging Peter Koo
- Is this the way to fix transit?
- SROs: not just for poor people anymore!
- Cuomo's patronage mil is pricey
- De Blasio makes up reasons to support terrorist
- Senator Pothole
- Crowley, the hypocritical liberal
- Unacceptable traffic situation
- NYCHA builder is big de Blasio donor
- BDB congestion plan is not all that
- Think tank's bright idea for Sunnyside
- Monserrate to challenge Ferreras
- Lefferts Blvd station still under repair and cover...
- RKO Keith's will be encased in glass and not all t...
- That's some pile of trash!
- DOE parking placards ripe for abuse
- The USCIS agents weren't even "turned away"
- Fearmongering mayor caught in big lie
- Rosedale flooding is out of control
- Are ticket quotas a thing of the past?
- Flood barrier need questioned
- Contractors abandon Centreville sewer project
- Steinway Mansion gets new windows and a gut reno
- Joe Crowley keeps his campaign money in the family
- Elizabeth Crowley admits she's got a strong opponent
- Ponte out at DOC
- Construction company owner charged with manslaughter
- Owners of illegally subdivided homes face steep fi...
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- Going after AirBnBers is tough
- LPC rejects Dulcken House
- Human Rights Commissioner got boyfriend a contract
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- It's all legal...technically
- Inside crash pads
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- Avella Suspends Mayoral Campaign
- Samaritan Village can't pay for Pan Am kitchens
- AG comes up with bogus reason for mall support
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21 comments:
George,
You sound just like my wife
She complains when I don't do something
And then complains even more when I finally do the job
Sometimes you just can't win
This message circulating around the community on www.facebook.com/astoriahistory and www.facebook.com/steinwaymansion:
Link, share, broadcast this message: A general shout out to the Astoria Community: please attend the next community board meeting on May 16 at the Astoria World Manor, 25-22 Astoria Boulevard, 6:30 P.M.(On occasion time may vary, please check agenda.)
1. Ask them why the Dulcken House and Steinway Mansion are not tourist destinations generating revenue for the Astoria community, education centers for Astoria's youth, or performance spaces for Astoria artists.
2. Ask them why the schemes of a handful of developers are placed ahead of the needs of 200,000 Astoria residents.
Friends of Steinway Mansion Posted This:
For the record, everything was in place for the Friends of Steinway Mansion to do the fund raising needed to purchase and restore the mansion.
Everything was in place with people ready to support us, the preservation community of NY ready to offer assistance, as well as encouraging support from Albany and Queens Borough Hall.
The Astoria based politicians refused to return our calls or emails. That lack of local political support stopped us.
With that in mind, we wanted to share with their constituents these pictures of the house's interior piled up as garbage. Photos from the intrepid 'George the Atheist.'
Enough of this. Its time our community works together.
We already have a standing request to speak to Costa Constantinides on this and the Dulcken House. He has the ability to save both. If we get the opportunity to talk with him we will share information with you.
We would love to get the Steinway Mansion in someone else’s hands,” City Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Astoria) said. “Since I was elected we’ve been looking for a real partner to work with and protect the mansion as a substantial part of the community. I just don’t have that partner that would be able to help balance the cost. Right now that entity just doesn’t exist.”
He added that city agencies such as the Parks Department, the Historic House Trust and the Department of Cultural Affairs had studied purchasing the mansion when it was for sale but passed. “There is no city entity interested in it,” Constantinides said. “We’re dealing with the real world here. It would be a monumental undertaking, with costs of $1.5 million to purchase and another $3 million to renovate to make it a community space. You can’t do that with City Council budget dollars.”
OH, BUT WE CAN BUILD AN UNNEEDED $120 MILLION SANITATION SITE BECAUSE WE WANT TO DEVELOP 21 STREET - T0 SAY NOTHING OF A FEW DOG RUNS FOR A MILLION OR SO!
Lauren Cornea of Amorelli Realty, who represented both the seller and the buyer in the deal, along with brokers Paul and Christina Halvatzis.
"The property is landmarked on a federal, state and city level, so it cannot be knocked down. It can't even be altered without permission from Landmarks, so it is heavily protected," she said. "It will always remain the Steinway Mansion."
A big thank you to Halvatzis Realty for misleading the public. Looking forward to the seminars they want to conduct with the community on rezoning, how about you?
"Saying goodbye to a family homestead for almost 90 years is very sad, and I hope the mansion lives on forever," said Michele Kazarian, daughter of late owner Michael Halberian, who said the new owners have promised to "maintain the integrity of the house."
"That was a key issue for me, and they said they would," she said.
oh..... okay.....
Its called bullshitting your community:
City Councilman Costa Constantinides said he has met with the mansion's new owners, whom he described as "two local guys," who grew up in Astoria.
The owners pledged to preserve the landmarked house but may eye part of its sprawling grounds for development, officials say.
Constantinides will follow the lead of Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, NY State Senator Michael Gianaris, and State Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, who have been working on saving the mansion for many years, to pursue the necessary funding from federal, state and local authorities.
Constantinides believes the new buyers will work with the community and public officials and he believes the process “will have a good result. They’re very interested in working with the community to see this property become part of the fabric of the neighborhood,” he said
“The Steinway Mansion is an integral part of our neighborhood’s rich cultural history. Like many of my neighbors in Astoria, I hope that whoever made this purchase has an appreciation for the Steinway Mansion’s importance to the community and, bearing that in mind, finds a way to allow public access to this neighborhood landmark,” Gianaris said.
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The community board and local representatives are also in the dark as to what the owners specifically have planned. "There are things happening there," City Councilman Costa Constantinides told the Queens Chronicle. "There are things that government can't control."
Anonymous #1:
Who's complaining? I'm just taking photos objectively about what is transpiring to this historical edifice in this God-forsaken neck-of-the-woods of Queens.
"Sad." - Donald John Trump
In Dix Hills Long Island, there is a landmarked house used as a museum where the legendary jazz musician John Coltrane lived and composed most of his later music on the impulse label, notably the masterpiece A Love Supreme. Visitors around the world visit there and the place does yearly concerts and events. The home has survived in spite of the real estate industrial complex because of the efforts of people who genuinely care about preserving history and inspiring creativity.
https://www.thecoltranehome.org/?gclid=CjwKEAjw3drIBRCOwfC-_qqyjQ8SJADvoWQppCfA4WSpq24BY8TzWfZNi3GmNsSUKuIw-YHKk1pMQxoCv3Pw_wcB
What is going on at Steinway is an botched abortion, a massacre by all those overseeing it, the "caretakers", and enabling it, the sell out elected officials. That dumpster with the guts and soul of the mansion is one of the most devastating pictures I have ever seen. It just makes no sense to do this to a place with a legacy that has named a major avenue and is so immediately identifiable in the borough, while John Coltrane's house has been a mainstay for the past decade.
The mansion, at the expense of the taxpayers, is going to become a luxury lifestyle venue only accessible by the supposed elites of this city. To be used for cross promotion events obscuring quid pro quo exchanges when it won't be catering upscale wedding receptions.
They are doing to this mansion like they already have done to most of the parks all over the city, it's happened in Brooklyn, it's happening in community gardens and pedestrian plazas in NYC, it happens every september at flushing meadows, and it's about to happen in Riis Park too as I previously mentioned.
But this is supposed to be progress right? From progressive minds right?
Cheap white PVC plastic windows on a stone building ?
And you cant paint these type of sealed up double pane windows also. What a huge mistake are these people crazy or tasteless.
Progress my ass !
They tossed all the original windows and sill components in the dumpster. That can now NEVER be replicated or replaced !!
I bet the wood floors and 100+ year old carved oak fireplace mantles have been pulled up and sold.
This is historic rape, its as if all these animals like the mayor want to erase everything!!
It looks like in my rage I called steinway st. an avenue. Apologies for the error.
I thought there was something about the windows. Is that really PVC? The same crap I see used for Mcmansion gates?
..its as if all these animals like the mayor want to erase everything!!
WTF does the mayor have to do with this - or anyone else outside of Astoria? Its the fault of the stunted Vallonia culture of those Mediterranean Hillbillies: the real estate hucksters, their appointed community board of mostly non-residents, all the local media and cultural groups on their money trough that bought their silence, and a special place reserved in infamy for the elected office holders of Astoria: Vallone Jr, Costa Cconstantinides, Averella Simotas, and Michael Gianaris who do not serve the interests of the community but the agenda of their puppeteers.
But above all, Patron Peter Vallone Sr. who could have stepped in. Hell, they would have called it the Vallone Mansion if he did.
This community was played by a violin by at most about a dozen people that stole a good part of the future of several hundred thousand Astorians - and did this brazenly in plain sight to all. And this is not written by who you think.
The building can be fully restored whatever these clowns do to it. For Paulson to get involved and bring this house back would be a weekend's romp for him.
But he seems not to care about the legacy and this is ominous.
The real victim here may be Steinway for refusing to safeguard this building. That will come back to haunt them because their competitors will be all over this telling anyone and everyone whom would listen that the company is trading on a reputation that stopped caring decades ago.
When that happens you are looking at 40 acres of development real estate - even if the 21st Street Sanitation garage gets moved next to the factory.
Steinway ?
They will soon be out of business or cut down to near nothing because they didn't adapt to new technology's used in the entertainment industry
Companys like Yamaha and Korg who had 30 year head starts are killing them.
Very few buy acoustic pianos, they are going the route of wagon wheels. The theaters do not want to pay the up keep and tuning and extra stage hands and equiplmet to move these 1/2 ton things around.
Only 1 in a million hard core classical music fans and musicians (dying breeds) can hear the difference. I think only one or 2 guys run around the city tuning these things, its very expensive.
Steinway ?
They will soon be out of business or cut down to near nothing because they didn't adapt to new technology's used in the entertainment industry
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Tell that to the 60 million KIDS in China that are learning classical music. US what? 4 million? Just because modern liberal upbringing never instilled in our snowflake brats good culture means that it is dying or on the way out. This country does have a serious cultural problem in music, and this includes serious theater - only on B'way do the hipshits go to musicals or stuff like Even Hansen and the like.
But we were country rubes once and look how things changed once we got involved. Never underestimate the American people, even when they have their collective heads up their arses.
Today classics are alive and well. Check out Youtube videos of the great concert halls in Europe - like the Chinese, they still stand by the classics. We are the odd may out. In this country you cannot watch anything on TV even during the Holidays - Xmas carols are ruined with endless repeats of 'Santa Baby' and the Fourth has scarcely a rousing Sousa March with all the hillbilly and ghetto patriotic selections.
Things go in cycles and Steinway has a lock on good instruments and the artists that play them. Things ebb and flow. The classics will come back.
The poster above has a good point - in today's world you cannot afford to get too confident or throw any advantage away - but the smart money has always been on Steinway. I would never want to get in a card game with that outfit.
Have a funny feeling that sooner or later they will be asked to get involved with the mansion. They are the only ones that can pull it off.
I like the idea that this will become a catering hall for the movers and shakers. In LLC happy Astoria that will be a romp with all kinds of funds getting channeled through and into accounts in those local off-brand banks that no one has ever heard of.
That should last for about a year until they realize the the real elite - no not the set that donates money to Joe Crowley and the like - but the real deal will have nothing to do with the local set - and without that element the catering place will fail.
The you will get those break-ins that will threaten to destroy the building.
Hopefully the adults will step in, bang the knuckles of the local talent until they drop out, and Steinway will be asked to take it over.
As a professional who works in historical reconstruction/cultural heritage and an author of multiple articles and books on architectural value and community, I judge this to be a historically significant building that warrants preservation on the basis of:
1) remaining architectural detail/form that far exceeds that in surrounding areas of Astoria while also still gesturing in important ways at original detail;
2) cultural importance of the structure's history/owner/ownership chain
3) future benefit for the Astoria community currently being inundated by lousy architecture/crowded streets/predatory developers.
Thank you,
John Collins, PhD
> They tossed all the original windows and sill components in the dumpster. That can now NEVER be replicated or replaced !!
> I bet the wood floors and 100+ year old carved oak fireplace mantles have been pulled up and sold.
> This is historic rape, its as if all these animals like the mayor want to erase everything!!
Time to go dumpster diving and put the good stuff on eBay or CraigsList.
how's Kodak doing?
Kodak would be doing fine if film cameras were being used by the millions in China.
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