After close to two decades (yikes!) here, I have tried to come to embrace my neighborhood. Embrace Astoria; it has much to offer. I can’t speak to the rents, since I own, but I believe they’re still competitive. It’s close enough to the city so that I can walk home from Manhattan without fatigue, which would seem to be a dubious benefit, except that I’ve had to do it three times – September 11, the blackout, the transit strike. Ethnically diverse restaurants and food shops, odd pockets of culture like the Museum of the Moving Image and Socrates Sculpture Park, and a sense of neighborhood, particularly during unifying sporting events like a Subway Series or World Cup Soccer.

On the downside – depressing architecture only exacerbated by gentrification, a concept of urban planning no more sophisticated than that of a toddler constructing a Fisher-Price town, the immigration of ancient Balkan grudges, and really hideous music. By which I don’t mean the Greek bouzouki music blasting from cars, or the music coming from the Egyptian hookah bars on Steinway Street -- that music is merely other to me, something my ear was not trained to recognize or appreciate.

No, I’m talking about music that sucks, the Europop with its drum machines and synthetic strings, the crossover leider lite, the “easy listening” which apparently “soothes” millions of adults but which for me conjures memories of elevators, waiting rooms, the radio station my grandparents played in the car while searching for parking at the St. Louis Zoo, and the hopeless plastic furniture of airports. The musical equivalent of bad hotel art.

The local coffee shop is a particularly egregious purveyor of this sound. Of course, there are many “local” coffee shops in Astoria. All of them seem to have been voted the “best in Queens” by the hapless readers of one or another New York periodical, but today, driven from my home by renovations, I encountered the most painful accolade of all. This particular coffee shop is popular because of the incredible convenience of its location. Its coffee is mediocre and its service cliquish (I am in the clique, however, by virtue of my frequent appearances there, notebook in hand, my few demands and my generous tips.) But the music is horrible. Really horrible. In fact, it has driven two of my neighbors three blocks further to another coffee shop, which blares CNN from a television above the counter.

Today, I met this challenge. I came, I wrote, I conquered the music. I asked for the check. It arrived with an advisory written on it, that due to “popular demand,” the music which plays in the coffee shop has been made available as a playlist on iTunes.

Tastes vary. So if you want to evoke the ambience of a Queens coffee shop, if you want to walk around with it plugged into your ears, drop me a line and I’ll send you the link.

Labels: Astoria, Astoria coffee shops, bad pop music, Europop, iTunes

posted by Elizabeth at 8:41 PM