Luck

I found a twenty dollar bill at my feet yesterday afternoon. I guess you could say my good luck continued all through the night. I woke up at 8:30am to find that I had left the shower running, and that I had left an electric convection oven burning at 450° all fucking night. The shower water could have overflowed. That very nearly happened a few months ago. The pipe next to the tub is what closes the drain. It very easily gets knocked off its precarious perch. As for the oven, well, any ignitable material within a few feet could easily have started a fire. And the electrical connection was at risk. I don’t plug the oven right into the wall. It goes through an extension cord. It’s a sturdy extension cord intended for refrigerators and air conditioners and such but still, it could have ignited or melted. It is slightly blackened today. I should replace it.

Having dodged those two bullets and found cash cash money on the floor at Key Food I guess I should feel like The Force is with me. The twenty dollar bill was dropped by the person in front of me at the cash register. He was gone from the place before I noticed the bill sitting there, though in the instant of discovery I thought it might have dropped from the cash register next door. But that cash register was unattended. And the bill was folded in the middle, which would not characterize a bill that had fallen from a cash register till. The only reason I saw it at all was because I dropped a plum to the floor, and bent over to pick it up. I did look for the guy who dropped it but he was gone, and what the hell, it’s only a twenty. It’s not like he dropped his wallet or $700 smartphone. I’ve lost a few twenties in my day.

Most of my day was failure in trying to get an expensive scanner to just fucking work. I did not pay full price for this stupid fucking thing but whatever bargain I got is made up for in futility and aggravation. I actually got it to scan a couple of pages today, but only using a very limited scanning software that does but one page at a time. So the thing can work, I just have to understand its needs and aspirations to coax it into action.

…

Thinking about Astoria today. The areas that have changed the most since I moved here are from 31st Avenue up to Ditmars. The closest in spirit to the AsLIC of yore is probably 36th Avenue, and 35th Avenue — two entirely different atmospheres. The only real sign of gentrification on 36th Avenue is a FUSION JUICE shop. That establishment is located in a space which has been a revolving door of businesses. Another sign of gentrification (perhaps) is the fact that Veronica’s has cleaned up its interior, and even offers Wi-Fi. Veronica’s was a dive bar in the classical sense but of late it’s cleaned up its act. Ms. Devine (proprietor) set up shop in the space which had been home to the St. James, one of the most notorious crackholes in Queens history. The MAD DONKEY arrived within the last 7 or 8 years. I have only been there once but from what I hear of it the DONKEY seems like a good fit for the sheisty, old New York vibe of that Avenue. McHale’s was a classic Irish Pub, replaced by Food World, which later became the Key Food where I found that twenty dollar bill yesterday. The weird thing about 36th Avenue and points south of it is the night clubs. The Melrose Ballroom seems to do blockbuster business on weekends, while the REIGN club on 31st Street is something of a mystery to me. The short-lived Purlieu (sp?) was an aberration. I have never entered any of the establishments that inhabited that space at 36th Avenue and 34th Street. A puzzling seafood restaurant was there… but I can’t remember offhand what was there before. A multi-cultural center, the quirky but overpriced APOLLO thrift shop, a bunch of laundromats, I thought of all this today when an awning for the old KENA KATA store was revealed. I remember that awning from forever ago. It was bannered over by another establishment, but that place closed and now the awning is between bannerings. I have a picture of the KENA KATA store from ~1999 HERE IT IS before they removed the Engrish A STORE BELONGS TO YOUR NEED was removed.

35th Avenue is like another city. With Applebee’s and Panera the Steinway Street area feels like Anytown. Yet those Anytown establishments abut an all-nude club which is caddy-corner from a playground. That’s New York. Sunswick, my first “regular” in New York, has remained fundamentally unchanged since the present owner bought the place back in… I think it was 2005. Rest-au-Rant and Snowdonia bring a little bit of hipsterishness to the avenue, but it remains largely dispersed. Rest-au-Rant replaced the Cafe Blue Light, a Yugoslavian place. Before the Blue Light the corner of 35th Avenue and 30th Street had been vacant for a long time, but old timers remember the Irish pub that inhabited that space for generations up through the 1980s.

On balance I think you could say that Steinway Street has essentially maintained its all-world character. One of the first things I read about Astoria before moving here was that Steinway Street was among New York’s largest shopping malls. It is an outdoor mall, obviously, but I found the distinction interesting. Steinway Street was compared only to 181st Street in Washington Heights for its abundance of shops within mall-like proximity. I used to live in Washington Heights, near 181st Street. It’s one of many coincidental reasons the number 181 is my magic number.

Hokay, I could run with this all night but I will let it go.

Going home.