You are currently browsing the stories about the “Astoria” neighborhood.
The other day I went to Sonbob’s—the long name is Sonnie’s Bits & Bobs—a little neighborhood café on 28th Avenue between 33rd and 34 Streets in Astoria, Queens. It’s my older brother’s favorite spot. I brought him in a wheelchair, because he was tired and it was hot. Sonnie, the owner, pronounced saw-nee, is a Korean woman of 60. She’s [...]
It was a drop, barely. On the busted tile in the kitchen. My floor. The apartment in Astoria. A drop. My feet were bare. I could kick the tile in and out of place with my toes. Like Tetris. I moved the piece with the splash of blood. I was making mac’ and cheese. Nine weeks pregnant and always hungry. [...]
The two apartments I rented, one after the other, in Astoria from 2009 to 2011 were on the same block of lower Ditmars Boulevard in modest buildings, under the faded dominion of the Hell Gate Bridge, within sight and smell of the East River, and across the street from the Kodachrome canvas of Astoria Park. In 2009, I shared a [...]
Treehugger / Sanja Kostic When I stopped dating him twenty years ago, I never imagined he’d end up living up the street from me. We were two twenty-something Brooklynites having cocktails somewhere near Broadway and Lafayette, sometime in the late 90s, when I told him that the date we were on, our third, would be our last. He stared at [...]
As I approached Astoria Park, I was struck by a wave of incongruities. It was a gorgeous day—the trees lush with leaves, a nascent summer sun beaming from a clear blue sky—but I had to keep it at a distance. I wore a mask for protection from the pandemic, which still loomed despite it being eclipsed by current events. People [...]
