11/21/12 3:45pm

Homestead for the holidays in Kew Gardens

Homestead Gourmet Shop is the name of a 65-year old Polish deli and grocery in Kew Gardens that sells a variety of things from sausages, to Black Forest hams, to potato salads, and Eastern European groceries. It’s a great place to pick up some treats for Thanksgiving and beyond. Consider their authentic strudels – apple, cherry or cheese – or their Dutch apple cake, or something savory like their perogies or pastrami briskets. It’s all there, waiting for you.

Pies are coming from TX for Sandy victims

Bud Royer of Royer’s Roundtop Cafe, in Austin, TX is here in NYC, and has brought hundreds of pies with him to feed Hurricane Sandy victims. He originally wanted to send full Thanksgiving dinners, but after some thought decided that pies would be a better choice. The plan is to drive “650 homemade pies to New Jersey and New York and distribute them to relief agencies and soup kitchens.” Hundreds of gift cards are also with the pies. Bud and friends left on Sunday and are now in the area. Thank you, Bud!

The fate of the Rockaway boardwalk food vendors

We looked into the status of the Rockaway boardwalk food vendors, and as you may have guessed, most did not fare well. It’s heartbreaking to read the commentary by some of the business owners (“Caracas Rockaway… totally destroyed as well as the whole peninsula…”) and the photos, like the one below of DiCosmos:

dicosmos-house-and-business-post-hurricane-sandy

Image source: DiCosmos

Rippers seemed to have made it through with just some damage to the building – the lengthy beach in front of it seems to have kept the storm surge from interfering too much. We hope they will rebuild, but the boardwalk destruction adds yet another challenge to the pot. We shall see.

Stuff the Turkey for the Rockaways from NYU

This is a great video of the efforts by NYU students to help the Hurricane Sandy survivors during this Thanksgiving.

The Art of the Rise of the Guardians at MOMI

Rise of the Guardians, a fantastic animated special (in 3D) opens today! We saw a preview of it and it really is something wonderful – great for kids of all ages. Over at the Museum of the Moving Image they’ve installed an exhibit called The Art of the Rise of the Guardians, containing art and artifacts from the filmmaking process. There are a couple of videos playing, too. Over in Bartos Screening Room they are running Creating an Epic (dir. Patrick Hanenberger, 70 mins), a sort of “making of” kind of film, which is really interesting and explaining a lot about the concepts behind the movie. This is definitely worth seeing.

08/06/12 9:30am

NYT-a-confederacy-of-bachelors-astoria-queens

We wrote last week about a married couple, along with their dog, that moved from Midtown to a two bedroom condo in LIC. This week its the NYTimes turn, writing about four men, friends since meeting at NYU in 1991, all creative types, all approaching 40, some with girlfriends, living together in Astoria for the past four years in an apartment they’ve dubbed “Fortress Astoria.” They are not a family in the traditional sense, but they do rely on each other in a familial kind of way, even having a joint checking account. And they did move to Astoria together after having lived as a group in various apartments since college. One thing different about this apartment from their previous ones is that its their first outside of Manhattan. If you are curious, they are on 31st street above a barbershop in a building that does look somewhat fortress-like. (GMAP)