ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

First of all, lets not kid ourselves. This website is…PERHAPS (most likely) one of the most popular on the web. LITERALLY, what? dozens upon dozens of people visit this site daily? Yes, it’s true… it’s true… … (sigh). Anyway, here’s an interesting article.

Page 1
Page 2

Listen, I’ll vomit some thoughts about some things relating to, mostly NOT relating to this article, and then what you can do is read the article for its educational value.

Here’s the thing about Flushing. I walk through that area EVERY day. I have to, it’s part of my commute. It’s a mix of Chinese people and Korean people. I think the third category of light-skinned Asian people, the Japanese, feel like they’re too good for the area because in the what? 14 years that I have lived in the borough of Queens, I have not once seen a Japanese person in Flushing. Maybe a few might have wandered into Flushing by accident but most likely they probably come out of the subway station and rush right back in while grunting “MA-JA-DAY” (something like that, it’s like “damn” in Japanese. Someone told me, I don’t remember).

They call Flushing, Chinatown II, but my inkling is they probably call any Chinatown in the boroughs outside of Manhattan, Chinatown II. I have no doubt there are a bunch of people in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, or part of Elmhurst, Queens, calling their little Asian-concentration, Chinatown II. Nobody wants to be third.

Anyway, here are a few staples of Flushing. You’ve got the half dozen Chinese bakeries that are derivatives of chain bakeries from Taiwan, mainland China or Hong Kong. They’ve usually got a few mid-life ladies working there and a wide variety of shiny (glossy) baked bread selection, which are their best sellers, along with a small selection of cakes in an array of colors that are, by the way, all within an EXTREMELY reasonable price range (lowest .60 cents to small fancy cakes of up to 2 dollars). Their busiest times are usually during the morning rush from home to work and during the weekends when everyone is off. This is actually a very common staple of any Chinatown so it’s not that special of Flushing, but because it’s such a large portion of what comes to mind when I hear the utterance of “Flushing,” I mention it.

There’s all these afternoon-tea places that serve dim-sum. There are a variety of restaurants to eat at: Vietnamese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Beijingnese, Dirty knees, etc. I’m not much of a gastronome so don’t ask me to differentiate between them. Okay, I’ll try. Shanghainese food is very oily but the Shanghai people seem to have very good skin regardless and like to talk out loud in public and really don’t give a shit if you’re in their way -they’ll walk right through you. The Beijingnese. I don’t know how food in the north tastes like but I’ll just assume there’s a lot of lamb and chili peppers involved, and oil, because it’s cold in Beijing and well, I don’t know anything, I’m just guessing here (lot of Beijing duck, I guess). The few Vietnamese places are pretty good but I think there are a bunch of them run by Chinese people so they’re not too authentic. You want Vietnamese food, there’s this Pho-Bang - spelling? - place in Elmhurst that’s great and authentic. Vietnamese consists of a.) hot bowl of rice noodles w/ beef and other internal cow parts or b.) cold bowl of rice noodles w/ beef and/or other internal cow parts. Bare with me now, I am clearly making generalizations here for the purpose of simplifying the imagery in your minds as you read this. Taiwanese food… Hmm… I’m just going to say Taiwanese food is Hot Pot, because that’s what they’re known for, right? Hot Pot? and Koreans have their barebeques, everywhere.

Okay, what did I say before? I’m no gastronome. Let me tell you something about ME now. There was a whole period of just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during my college years and guess what? Absolutely loved it. I would eat them breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have been to my fare share of fancy restaurants, while working in marketing a few years back, but my indifference to what I shove into mouth is what made me the great man I am today (applause). Thank you, please sit down.

Anyway, let’s go on. Flushing has the central Queen’s library branch. For some reason, a few years back, they decided to build this huge structure in the busiest part of Flushing. I think, and this is probably completely inaccurate, but come on, you’re not here for accuracy anyway, but I think it’s because of Councilman John Liu, who, wanting to fulfill his obligation, no, DUTY! to his Taiwanese descendant, probably pulled some strings and pushed for it to be in Flushing county. Now, the Flushing branch of the Queen’s library chain is the most grandiose of all Queen’s public libraries. Have you ever been to the LeFrak branch of the Queen’s public libraries? It sucks.

There are a bunch of supermarkets that sell a variety of Asian goods. What’s interesting about these supermarkets is that they’ll also have maybe one section of general American foods; for Heinz Kethchup, Coca Cola, potato chips or cereal -which I find amusing because it makes it sort of like the Bizarro Superman of American supermarkets. Sometimes you’ll find in regular American supermarkets an aisle/section designated Asian products, right? Anyway, these Asian supermarkets sell random cultural things, like red papers called Hell money to burn for dead ancestors. Uhmm… What?

Did you know that Chinese people did this? I don’t really know exactly how this works. When you go to these Asian supermarkets, you’ll walk around and eventually find a very red area (there will be lots of red colored items) that’s displaying all these candles and incense and stacks of fake money labeled “Hell money” that is meant for burning for ancestors. Nobody ever explained how this worked to me but years ago I saw something about it on TV. What you do is you buy stacks of Hell money in these ridiculous denominations of say 1 million Hell dollars, each bill is 1 million Hell dollars, and on some random day out of the year you’ll have to burn the fake money in order for your dead ancestors to receive it. This is particularly popular in Hong Kong. When I worked in Hong Kong, I saw that they did not only burn Hell money but they also burned Hell mansions, Hell cars, Hell playstations, Hell whatever-you-can-think-of. Literally, it would be a mansion made of paper or a car made of paper and the idea behind it is that when you burn it, it’s supposed to magically/spiritually transmit it to your dead ancestors, in heaven. As I said, I saw this thing about burning Hell money on TV once and they were trying to interpret how it would look like in the afterlife. It was pretty funny. There was a stage or a set with all these ordinary looking, but dead, people walking around with a smoke machine running, making it seem like they were walking on clouds, and large things of gold just appeared out of nowhere. Assume that after you have just burned a Hell car, in heaven, your dead ancestor is walking around and all of a sudden - POOF! - a car appears in front of him. I thought it was funny. I guess you had to see it. Whatever, believe me, it WAS funny.

Okay, so, Flushing… Flushing has many many banks. According to some crap I read a while back, Flushing has the largest concentration of banks in one area, in NY, or in the US, I don’t remember. Apparently Asian people like to save their money in banks and collect interest. If you get a chance to read the article I uploaded, you’ll note that the Chase Flushing branch is ranked as one of J.P. Morgan Chase’s best performers. That’s probably a cultural difference.

(I’ll add some more later)

There’s a mall in Flushing called the Flushing mall. It’s not very interesting.

Okay, enough blog vomit. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep. Was this interesting? No? I don’t care.

I just want to thank wordpress.com for increasing my upload limit to 3 gigs. Come on, is that not amazing? You can literally use this website for nothing but a place to host your digital pictures now. That’s pretty wild cause a few months back, I used up the entire whopping 100 megs that they originally alotted me.