This morning I found Yiorgos (George) Haridimou in his auto repair shop barbecuing two huge skewers of pork with friends and customers.
George is from Cyprus. But even though it was Greece’s independence day yesterday, 25 March, he said the barbeque wasn’t in honor of that. “We just have a barbeque once in a while. Maybe we’ll have another one tomorrow, to mark independence day!”
George is an avid supporter of the Athens-based AEK soccer team. He’s a president of the AEK Fan Club of USA and was proudly wearing one of its sweatshirts when I spoke with him (he’s third from the right in the photo).
He moved with his family from Cyprus to New York in 1982, growing up first for a few years in Yonkers before moving to Astoria. He wanted to be a mechanic since he was a boy. He started the business 25 years ago, and bought his building on 30th Ave near 12th Street in 1998.
“I set up the business here because the zoning laws allowed you to start up an auto-repair shop,” George says. “It was more industrial. Now it’s starting to become more residential.
“That’s a good thing. The neighborhood is much better than it was before, even than 10 years ago. There used to be a lot of crime. It wasn’t the nicest part of town. 21st Street was like the boundary, with the bad area on this side of it.
“Some of the old industries have gone. There used to be a lot of marble places that you don’t see around any more. And next door, there used to be an electrician’s. Now it’s an apartment building. But I’m going to stay here, this is my own building. I’m not going away.”
The seasons are clearly on the cusp along 30th Ave. Spring’s trying to come through but one night last week there was a snowfall. The next morning, the statue of Athena in Athens Square Park was lightly dusted with white.
On an NYC Govt. webpage about the park I learned that it was first designated as a playground in 1963. Then with an injection of city funds in 1990 it was redeveloped with the central “amphitheater” space, benches for gathering (and chess-playing) along the perimeter, and playgrounds on two sides, which are still there now. The community group that promoted its renovation, Athens Square Inc, said its intention was to create “a little bit of Athens in Astoria.”
The same webpage says that before it became Astoria, this part of Queens was known by the Native American Algonquian name of Sunswick, derived from Sunkisq, meaning “woman chief.”
Khaled Shallah is from Arwad, Syria’s only inhabited island. He trained and worked for many years as a boat mechanic. His work on container ships took him to “all the places you can imagine,” he says, from South America, to Europe, to Asia, to Africa.
The boats he worked on carried all kinds of things. One had a shipment of live lambs from Romania.
Khaled says that he enjoyed life at sea, being far away, and close to nature, and beginning to feel like wherever he was, was home. But eighteen years ago he came to settle in the US. He started a new life from scratch. He worked at a cousin’s restaurant in Manhattan and for a while in another restaurant in Texas. Back in New York, eight years ago he set up Pita Hot on 30th Ave.
His inspiration for Pita Hot came from a combination of seeing the cooks preparing food on the boats he worked on and his cousin’s Manhattan restaurant. The menu includes falafel, hummus, lamb- and chicken-filled pita pockets. All the food is things that Khaled likes himself. “If there’s something I don’t like, I don’t sell it, seriously,” he says. “If I don’t accept it for myself or my kids I won’t sell it.”
Pita Hot’s small space is filled with the sound of sizzling on the grill. The walls are densely decorated with postcards, calendars and ornaments from the Middle East. Customers take their food out or eat it at one of the small café tables. For each waiting customer, Khaled or one of his co-workers dunks a small piece of pita into a jar of hummus on the front counter – a Pita Hot signature gesture.
Khaled doesn’t work fixed hours. “I usually come in to open the shop, to make sure that everything’s in place. Then I come back and forth during the day, and we stay open late.”
He says that if you stand in the shop for just a couple of hours you could see people of 40 different nationalities pass by. “From Syria, I just know a couple of kids. The Arab community here is mainly Moroccan, Algerian and Egyptian. There are some Tunisians, Yemenis, Palestinians and a few Lebanese. That’s in addition of course to others – Greeks, Italians, Russians, Yugoslavians…”
He has never had any trouble in his shop. “People are so friendly here. For some reason Astoria people are nicer, better than in Manhattan. If you have ever worked in Manhattan, it’s very different. When you approach someone there, they think you want something from them. Here the culture’s much more relaxed. Much more European.”
Despite feeling completely at home in Astoria, Khaled says that in an ideal world he would have brought his kids up for the first years of their lives in Syria, moving with them to the US when they were a bit older. In the US they go to school too young, he says. They go young, but while there they learn much less than if they spent that time with family and friends during their early years.
Khaled does not know how long he will be in Astoria. Maybe one day he will move to the Midwest – the space and nature there appeal. “This is New York,” he says. “Does anybody know how long they will be here?”
Natalia Paruz has lived just off 30th Ave since 1998, and in Astoria for longer than that.
The saw
“My name is Natalia Paruz, but everybody calls me the Saw Lady because I play the musical saw.
The saw has a very angelic sound. A lot of people say that it reminds them of the sound of an opera singer. I like it because the sound is so ethereal and spiritual. I also like the visual. Not only the fact it is a saw, which is kind of jarring because people don’t think that a saw would make such a beautiful sound. But also because when you play a saw the entire instrument moves in the air and makes a sort of wave shape.
I got into saw playing by chance. About 17 years ago my parents and I were in Austria. We went to see a show for tourists and in it there was a guy playing a saw. That was the first time I had encountered this instrument and I was mesmerized.”
Natalia had found what that she wanted to do. Previously she was a professional dancer, but her dancing career was cut short when she was hit by a taxi in New York. She had been at a loss as to what to do, until she saw the saw player.
“I went backstage to ask if he would give me a lesson. He said no. So I was forced to be self-taught. That turned out to be a very good thing because I can say that I did it all on my own.
I came back here to Astoria and I borrowed a saw from somebody who had been using it for woodwork. I discovered how to make a sound with it. But it could only make six notes because it was an old and rusty saw. So I went to the hardware store that used to be on Broadway and 44th Street, and bought a new saw. Sure enough, the new saw had no rust on it so I was able to get a whole octave of notes.
Throughout the years I have collected more and more saws in my quest for the ultimate-sounding saw. Finally I got the one I use now, which was made in France. It’s quite long, 32 inches, which means it has about three and a half octaves altogether.
Astoria
I moved to Astoria because my boyfriend Scott – now my husband – lived here. When I first moved in with him I didn’t know anybody beside Scott. At first I felt kind of lonesome because most of my friends were in Manhattan.
Then I picked up a local newspaper that was given out for free in banks. I opened it and realized there were all these events taking place in Astoria. I went to an event organized by the Greater Astoria Historical Society. All of a sudden I started meeting people and had friends.
I fell in love with Astoria because it feels so much like a small village where everybody knows everybody. Now I have so many friends here that I hardly ever bother going into Manhattan any more, except for my busking.
Subway busking
I once tried busking in a subway station in Queens. But I was approached by the police almost immediately and was told that I can’t do that. So the police are not as nice to buskers here as they are in Manhattan.
I know another busker who tried busking at the Steinway Street subway station. It just so happened that at the same time there was a murder right there. That sort of put people off wanting to play at that station. It was just a coincidence. It’s not like people get killed here all the time.
Busking on the New York subway is so much fun that it’s addictive. The people, the proximity of the people is intoxicating. I get so much energy from all the people who come to talk to me. If I play on a stage, I’m up there in the lights and the audience is down there in the dark and I don’t really get to see their faces and their reactions. So it kind of feels isolated for me as a musician.
On the subway I see the transformation on people’s faces as they are watching me, listening to me. And they come to talk to me, to ask me questions, or tell me about themselves. There’s this exchange of energy. It’s as if the music is the impetus for communication.
Subway encounters
Sometimes I might be playing in the subway and someone who’s a little scary-looking might be approaching me. I will think oh no, he might be trouble, perhaps he’s going to steal from me. And 99.9% of the time the scariest looking people end up being the nicest, kindest people. Playing in the subway really taught me not to judge people by first appearances.
There are so many encounters every day on the subway. I put them on my subway music blog. If I was to describe just one really striking encounter it’s this one. I was playing at Times Squares subway station, and there were a bunch of people around me. On one side of me was a blind man. He had a cane and you knew from his face that he couldn’t see anything.
He was listening to the music. His face transformed into a big smile and you could really see that he was enjoying himself. On the other side there was a lady, who had nothing to do with the blind man. She noticed how he was enjoying the music. She came to me. She bought my CD. She went over to the blind man and she put the CD in his hand and she said to him, ‘this is the music that you’re listening to right now.’ That was so incredible. The lady didn’t know him or owe him anything. She did this act of kindness to a total stranger.
A musical mother
I was born in Israel, though as a child we traveled a lot. My mother was a concert pianist who gave a lot of concerts in Europe. And my father was a research scientist, so he had to do research in different universities around the world. We lived in different countries for a year here, two years there.
As a concert pianist, at first my mother kind of frowned upon my playing a saw. She especially frowned upon the fact I was teaching myself. She thought that you can’t just learn music by yourself. You have to go to a proper school.
One day her agent was coming over to our house to work with her. I asked my mother if she would mind if I played for the agent. She reluctantly agreed, because she was so sure that he wasn’t going to like it. I played for him and he LOVED it! Right away he said ‘oh, we must incorporate you into your mother’s concert.’ He was so enthusiastic about my playing and that changed her approach. I was a part of one of her concerts and the audience just went wild.
Musical saw festival
Nine years ago I started the Musical Saw Festival in Astoria. When I started it there were four other saw players beside myself, and three people in the audience. The festival has grown over the years to include 55 saw players and more than 400 people in the audience.
A huge part of the growing factor is the local community. All the neighbors come. When the time comes in July you’ll see my flyers everywhere – all the store owners around 30th Avenue agree to put the flyer in their front window. Round the time of the festival last year I went to the Key Foods supermarket and the cashier was asking me, “so how many saw players do you have this year?” Everybody is enthusiastic about it in the neighborhood, which means a lot to me.
Bells
The saw is my main instrument but I also play the bells. They’re a lot more difficult to carry! I play a set of 65 pitched cow bells. I lay them on an eight-foot long table and there’s a special foam that goes on top of the table. I play mostly ragtime music on those bells. They have a very happy sound that lends itself very nicely to ragtime. And I play a set of English handbells, which belong to Trinity Lutheran Church here in Astoria. I play those as a soloist and also with their group.
I can totally see myself staying in Astoria. We’re not going anywhere. We love it here.”
Vasilios Ioannou: “This was the first fruit shop along 30th Ave.”
Bobby:
Bobby Kartsagoulis helped to set up Eliniki Agora Fruit and Vegetable (otherwise known as the 30th Avenue Fruit Market) in 1972. He had moved to the USA from Greece in 1963, living first in Canada before he moved to New York.
The store sells fruit, vegetables and nuts, primarily from the US: from California, Georgia and Florida. Bobby’s own favorite fruit is oranges. “They were everywhere in Sparta,” he says. “They are the king of fruit.”
He says the Greek community in Astoria may be getting a bit smaller but it is still strong. Many of the people he knew when he first moved to Astoria still live here.
The neighborhood has “changed too much,” he says. “When I arrived most people were Greek and Italian. Now there are people from all over.” He says he continues to enjoy Astoria for its cafés, and the fact that you can easily find Greek food products.
Frank Arcabascio owns Redken Saloon Salon, on 30th Ave between 36th and 37th Streets. “Saloon” is in the name because the color bottles at the back of the salon are stacked like drinks behind a bar.
“I knew very young that I wanted to be a hairdresser,” says Frank. “I used to work at my cousins’ barbershop over near Our Lady of Mount Carmel church. It’s called Joseph’s Hair Place. It’s actually still there. I used to sweep the floor and clean up to make tips, I used to shine shoes. I knew early on the power of a good haircut.
That salon was a very blue collar barbershop. You would see men walk in filthy dirty. Many of them construction workers. I’d wash their hair. Then from the neck up my cousins would transform those guys. Between trimming their moustache, their beards, their haircut. And they’d walk out looking amazing. The idea of transforming a person is so powerful. They’d come in looking oh, terrible and they’d walk out looking like Clark Gable sometimes.
My cousins were very early in the field with the unisex thing, and always going to seminars. And they kept progressing. As a young kid I was like ‘yeah, let’s go to a different hair show in the city today, or visit other salons.’
I like working on long hair. Now I can give people long hair. In the past you could only cut hair. That kind of transformed my career. About 10 years ago I took courses in Great Lengths Hair Extensions. We were one of the few businesses doing it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we started getting outsourced by the salons that didn’t want to loose their clients, so we developed accounts for doing hair extensions. We have over 18 accounts now.
You don’t just work on hair you work on a person. So it’s fun to ask a person what are the highlights of their hair, what they like, their best haircuts, their worst haircuts, what’s going to make them happy now. And achieving those things. I can see someone’s head of hair and you immediately see what you can do on it. But that’s what I want to do. Sometimes the person wants a fantasy idea that they don’t have the hair for. That’s where you learn diplomacy and tact.
I’m in Manhattan now two days a week – four in Astoria and two in Manhattan. If I were in Manhattan only I’d go nuts, and likewise if I were in Astoria alone. I’d go nuts in Manhattan because they have a lot of money, they are very high-powered career people and are very demanding. That’s not the problem itself exactly, because I like clear parameters. But on 30th Ave in Astoria you’re considered an authority. It’s more of an even playing field. When you’re in the city you’re more of a service person, unless you’re in one of the top places. I think we’re all equal and we just choose to do different things.
My own kids aren’t that interested in my business but my nieces do work here. I was brought up in Jackson Heights but now live in Long Island, and that’s where my kids grew up. So even though I grew up near here, started a business here and now work here 4 days a week, they didn’t grow up here.
Two of them are going to college. They’re probably going to go into the corporate world and jump into Manhattan. But they want to live in Astoria. I own this building and they’re going to take the apartment upstairs. So they don’t want to work in Astoria, but they do want to live here.
The thing that comes first into my mind when I think of 30th Ave is the salon, of course. But also the business community more broadly. The people. And the cafés. That’s the new thing. It’s a fun place to be. In ’93 when I opened the business here there were no cafés. There were a lot of delicatessens and dry cleaners. You know, just that’s the way New York was then.
Recently I was in Central Park, on the West Side by Strawberry Fields. And we came out of the park and wanted to find a café to sit down and eat outside. We didn’t find any. I started to realize. I thought since when does 30th Avenue beat Columbus Avenue, or Amsterdam Avenue? I want people to be proud of how many nice things we have and how down to earth it still is.
If you cannot afford to live in Manhattan you eventually find your way to Astoria. That’s the life of the neighborhood, it’s the young people. It’s always been this way. People think oh, all of a sudden people from Manhattan are starting to live in Astoria. I’ve been working round here since 1971. There were always people living here who couldn’t afford Manhattan. Actors, actresses, artists. Now it’s just become a little more commercial with the cafés. A place where someone from Manhattan might come and visit and hang out. Years ago it was only people living here, who went to work in the city.
There have been previous incarnations of the 30th Avenue Business Association but the current one started in 1999. The way it started was we wanted to have holiday lighting in the streets. Everybody was asked to chip in, but not everybody would contribute. So we organized a street festival. Everyone who sponsors the festival pays around $6-7000, and we use that money for the holiday lights.
I am currently president of the association, and was also its president from 2002-4. At that time I called up Barnes & Nobel and asked them about putting one up here on 30th Avenue. They said they can’t. The stores are too small. They need 10,000 square feet. Two thousand, which is the largest size along here – many of them are 400 or 500 square feet – most mom and pop stores and family businesses operate in that space range. The franchises want a much larger space range. So in many ways it’s the size of the stores that will ‘save’ the street, if you will.
That’s not to say you don’t have to do the newest and latest. Like we use Facebook and Twitter. You have to embrace the new technology but it’s still a family business embracing it. I use a brand – Redken – to get the attention, but I’m still a family business. Redken themselves would only be on Fifth Avenue, I brought Redken to 30th Ave. A franchise has a corporate bureaucracy. A family will bring in new ideas, trendy ideas and can change on a dime.”
I spoke with Martha Heredia and her nephew Elvis Raymundo in Grand Avenue Laundromat. Martha works there. Elvis had dropped in to see his aunt on his way to play football nearby.
Martha:
I came here from Mexico in 1990. For 15 years I worked in clothing factories – six years in Manhattan and nine near Queensboro Plaza. The factory owners were Korean but they spoke Spanish perfectly. That’s why I’ve never learned English. [We had this conversation in Spanish].
Then the one for whom I had been working for nine years got tired of living and working here. He sold the factory and went back to his country. The work changed and I didn’t like what they did so I left.
I had a baby girl and took a bit of time out. Then I got work in a laundromat, where I was trained on the job. It was a big laundromat, and good work, but I didn’t like the way the managers were. That was when I thought of asking in here for work, in Grand Avenue Laundromat. I had moved to the neighborhood when I got married, after spending three years living in Manhattan. I lived for a bit on Crescent Street but the apartment there was very small. Then I found my current apartment on 35th Street that I love. I’ve been there 18 years now. So I had always come here to wash my clothes but till then it hadn’t occurred to me to ask. I got the job, and now I work five minutes from my home.
I have a sister who lives in Mexico but my other four siblings and my parents all live here. I’ve only been back to Mexico twice in 21 years. There’s no need because practically all my family is here.
Elvis:
I live on 36th Street. I’ve got two more years to go in high school and then plan to go to culinary college. I’d like to be a chef. Not necessarily have my own restaurant, it’s hard to manage a restaurant. To be a chef. My favorite food to cook is Mexican and Italian.
This is a peaceful neighborhood. There are no problems except sometimes when people from other parts come through, that’s all. Generally it’s peaceful.
Martha:
There weren’t so many businesses here 18 years ago. The cafés and things are recent. It’s nice during the summer when the street is full of people. And in the night time you don’t have to worry about things. We close at midnight and there are still businesses open, people in the street. When my girl was small we would walk out here late at night (we slept late in the mornings, so she’d be up late), and she loved it.
Everyone knows her round here. We know the business owners and the workers alike. Some of the young people come here to live while they study and then they leave. But most of the people in the neighborhood I have known for years and years.
When I did the first interview on this site, with Vesta’s Giuseppe Falco, my journalism skills were rather rusty. One thing I asked was a put-you-on-the-spot question, “can you think of three words or phrases you would use to describe the neighborhood?”
Giuseppe came up with a fabulous first word, “devoted”. But I didn’t continue the thread with a follow-up question. “Why devoted?” “Devoted to what?” etc.
Now I am glad that the word devoted stands on its own, un-elaborated and unqualified. The rest of the interviews on the website will fill out the answer by themselves. They are already doing so.
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Giuseppe’s other two phrases were “close-knit” and “arts-oriented”. At first I was surprised that he didn’t mention Astoria’s ethnic diversity. Of course one of the most interesting things is that he didn’t mention diversity.
Astoria may be among the most ethnically-diverse neighborhoods in the world but that is not first and foremost in the minds of many people who live here. It’s so much part of the fabric of the streets that people take it as a given or, as Teofila Cambeiro said, “feel like I am all nationalities.” Many people are a mix of several ethnicities and feel American above anything else. Or for some others, their own immediate community is so extensive and yet close-knit that there isn’t a need (or time) to explore beyond it other than for interactions in the shops and on the sidewalks.
There are also so many different types of diversity at play. That is what makes the neighborhood work well as a whole. There is, at the moment, diversity of age, of income, of profession, of interests. Long may it stay that way.
Heather Petruzelli is a singer and voice teacher who has lived in Astoria since 1998. Singers have gravitated towards Astoria, she says, because it is relatively close to mid-town and the Upper West Side where a lot of concerts and shows take place. And it is affordable. Or was – rents now are going up and up. For the same reasons, many others live in Inwood and Washington Heights. “In 1998,” she says, “It was just starting to be the place where people would move instead of Brooklyn.”
Heather was brought up in New Jersey. Her step-grandparents lived in the West Village – she was mesmerized coming into the city in the 70s and 80s and always wanted to live in New York, even though “of course it’s not the same city as it was then.”
She resolved to be a singer from early on, but despite her trips into the city was not exposed to a lot of live music. “You would think that being this close to New York I would have been, but sometimes being the suburbs people just kind of get stuck. When I went to college to study voice all I knew was some musical theater and some things I had sung in chorus. When I did move to the city though, I went all the time. I was like a sponge.”
Heather teaches singing at Cap 21 and AMDA, as well as private lessons in her apartment. Before she started teaching at the two institutions it was hard to find students. “There are a lot of voice teachers. And sometimes people just don’t realize how easy Astoria is to get to. Especially if they live in Manhattan they don’t want to go to the outer boroughs. They think it’s like going to Connecticut or something, when in fact it’s just four stops.”
She teaches students from all over, drawn to New York as a musical center-of-the universe – though the tough reality of how few get anywhere near to realizing their dreams is drummed into them from day one at college, she says. Last year her students included people from Colombia, Ireland, Israel, Norway and Peru.
Sometimes she teaches up to 34-35 hours a week. She enjoys seeing her students’ potential, problem-solving with them, and helping them achieve what they want to achieve. The more she got into teaching, “the less I was driven to be in the rat-race” of performing professionally. “There are not a lot of opportunities for opera and I’m about ten years older than most people who are auditioning. Plus you have to have so much money and determination to be singing full time.”
When Heather does perform she loves Puccini. “That’s where my voice likes to go. There’s that kind of heart-on-your-sleeve thing going on. We don’t get to behave that way in real life. Story lines aside, there’s the music itself. It takes you on a ride that I don’t experience with other things when I’m singing. I love singing Strauss as well.”
Her top 30th Ave haunts are the Indian restaurant Seva, SAI Organics, Grand Café and the fruit and vegetable stores on the corner of 33rd Street. Like so many who live here she says the neighborhood is changing fast. “In the last five years you’ve seen the change, even more so just in the past year. The storefronts have changed dramatically. There used to be a lot more Greek-dominated businesses. Now there are more 20-30 somethings’ hip places. Like Sweet Afton, Mexi-Q and others. The area will become more homogenized and super-white. Unless the fish-markets and places like that can really hold their ground I think it could become like another Williamsburg. God I hope not.”
Listen to Heather singing Tess’s Lament by Matthew Harris, with Astoria Symphony. The performance was at St Joseph’s Church on 30th Ave, Dec 18, 2011. The conductor was Adam Eggleston.
Olga Oukacine, Director, Raíces Astoria Senior Center
Olga Oukacine, Director, Raíces Astoria Senior Center
“We have one participant of 92, another of 93,” says Olga Oukacine, Director of the Astoria branch of the Spanish Speaking Elderly Council-RAICES, on 30th Drive. Up to eighty participants attend the center each day, though some have found it harder to make it recently because of the cold weather.
“We have people from Dominican Republic , Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador,” says Olga, who herself is from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The council is funded by the NYC Department for the Aging. It provides advice on immigration, English classes, health check-ups, and activities like bingo and zumba exercise. The council throws monthly parties for everyone who has had a birthday that month. But the most popular activity of all, says Olga: “Es bailar. Merengue, salsa…”.
Olga moved to New York in 1974. She first lived in Corona, Queens and moved to Astoria seven years ago. She started working for RAICES as a volunteer at their Corona center. “I really enjoyed it, and learned so much. The first position that came up –I got the job. From there I’ve carried on learning, learning. I feel good when I’m helping people.” She worked a year at one of RAICES four centers in Brooklyn and started working at the Astoria center in 1999. She loves Astoria for its “tranquilidad”.
Many of the new participants find out about the council through word of mouth from existing ones. They are also referred after making 311 calls. Once they have found it, a lot of them attend every day.
Olga says that the challenging part of her job is that, “hay algunos de los participantes que son un poco difíciles,” – some of the participants can be a bit difficult. “They think that things should be just as they want them to be. Carácteres fuertes.”
The most satisfying aspect: “When most of the participants first come here they are depressed in some way. Some of them may be alone, others are living with family and may have problems with their son, or the husband of their daughter…different kinds of problems. When they come here they forget those problems. Their depression goes away.”
Teofila Cambeiro is one of the participants who comes every day. Teofila is originally from Spain. As a young woman she used to come on vacation to New York. On one visit she met and fell in love with her soon-to-be-husband, who was also Spanish but lived here. She moved to New York 50 years ago and for 49 has lived in Astoria. “Me encanta vivir en Astoria,” she says. “Es como que fuera mi casa, mi barrio, mi gente.”
When her husband died two and a half years ago Teofila started coming to the council, which happens to be on the same block as her apartment. “Yo me quedé sola. Realmente es lo mejor que me ha podido pasar.” “I found myself alone. This is really is the best thing that could have happened.
“I come all the five days that it opens. If it opened seven days a week, I would come seven. I may be the only Spanish person here, but I feel like I’m all nationalities.”
