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Neighborhood Chat / Re: Why did you move here?
« on: July 02, 2018, 04:29:27 PM »
Show your working please, mr "I assure you". Dozens of regular commenters on this board wax lyrical about both delicious authentic existing POC-owned-and-run businesses.......and are hopeful for newcomers to broaden the experiences available in a walkable neighborhood that has something for all its residents.
to quote you: We are rooting for you to provide something that will afford under-served people in the neighborhood a classy and delicious restaurant with a grown-up atmosphere, and will provide you joy, satisfaction and a good living!
You might not hear it, but I do. "under-served"? lol wtf? like I've said, GO LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE IN NYC if you feel under-served. Stop.
You seem to think this is a zero sum game, that one attendee at a new place=one less attendee of an existing restaurant. This is not the case. People who want excellent thai food won't go to the queensboro when 79 or ayada exist. People who want a glass of wine and a bistro experience won't go to 79/ayada now that the queensboro exists.
You are spinning or a story about today and tomorrow. I'm talking about 5-10 years from now. . Again quoting you, reading about this 'under-served' demographic reads to me like parody. White people have places to eat, they are not under-served.
Also i've tried to move the focus away from food and on the the general rhetoric of this message board.
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Opining: I think you're a traumatized gentrification victim, who is trying to absolve themselves from guilt at being part of the problem.
It's silly for me to allow you to assume what I am, if i'm trying to make a point. So instead:
I am a second generation NYer, born to immigrant parents (from Dominican Republic and Ecuador), in Corona NY. I went to JHS in East Elmhurst. My grandmother still lives in the house I was raised in. My other grandmother lives in East Elmhurst. My familial roots are literally planted in the neighborhoods that are and surround Jackson Heights.
I am not a traumatized anything, and the fact that you would use the word absolve makes me think as a gentrifier you have a deep ridden guilt. Alternatively, I consider what I have as a responsibility to be respectful.
As I move I understand fully that the privilege my parents and their parents before have afforded me. So when I moved to Jackson Heights from Harlem, as I understood there, I knew I had a responsibility to respect the neighborhood as it was before I came. Note that this was a journey, at first I thought maybe halfway the way people on this board think, but I've since realized the place of privilege I come from and my thought process has changed.
Never have I felt under-served in Jackson Heights because if I wanted something it didn't offer, I know it's easy enough for me to hop on a train or bus to get to it. The idea that I as a resident am under-served is preposterous.
Newsflash: if you move to a neighborhood and buy or rent an apartment because you are priced out of an existing one....or if you move to a neighborhood where you have higher than the median income, you are participating in a process which prices out existing residents. Other than leaving the city, there's no way to fight this on an individual level. This can only be addressed with serious political will, and is likely beyond the scope of sniping on this board.
I understand the POV of the last part of this quote, but I disagree. I think social media has a power people don't yet understand, although i'm not sure why on account of what it's doing to out the awful people in this country.
I also grew up on message boards so I know that for every loud mouth like you or me, there are just a few people reading who can be swayed in either direction.
I love the idea that OP might actually think anyone has been enlightened by OP's deep thoughts.
Case in point, freddie.
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The reason that The Queensboro was brought up, which i've tried to move away from, is that I have no issue with a restaurant like it existing. i DO have an issue with mediocrity, something a lot of people in the world don't have.
As an example, someone in this thread literally reached out to Panera bread to open in Jackson Heights. WHAT?!
And so when you come here and take up space and are not even that good?
(again, the pizza. it wasn't good. it doesn't need to exist. If you're trying to argue with me about this point, let's agree to disagree)
And for the record, I have no issue telling everyone here that my 'reverse racism' gives all minority owned businesses a handicap. So when they open it doesn't even have to be good. I just hope it serves the purpose of 'putting food on the table', so to speak.
When the Queensboro opens, all bets are off.