What Tha EFF??

Much has been written lately regarding the ongoing suburbanization of New York, including a book by that very title. I've been ranting about it for years. It was the subject of several of the first poems I started taking to the mic at Bowery Poetry Club. It's almost become a cliche at this point. And by now most New Yorkers seem to be either resigned to it or just too overwhelmed to muster even another ounce of disgust.

For a long time, the worst of it seemed to be relegated to Manhattan. The idea, I guess, being that the best way to reward tourists for making the trek to the big City was by making sure they were never more than a block or two away from some little reminder of home. You know, in the event that they overdose on culture and experience and differentness while they're here, they can at least be comforted by the fact that there's a fucking Applebee's and a Starbucks and a Gap JUST AROUND THE CORNER. In case the four days they have before they go back to Ohio are just too goddamn long to wait to shove some Baja Potato Boats into their fat goddamn faces.

Well, until recently our little section of Astoria has been pretty devoid of this kind of lame Midwestern pandering. After all, Queens has never been much of a tourist destination. And even though the neighborhood has had quite a renaissance in the 10 years I've lived there, the new businesses that have come along have been largely independent. Great new resaurants and bars like Cup, Sunswick, Island, Locale, Cafe Valverde, Arepas Cafe, Aces and (before it got too big for its own britches and moved over to Ditmars) Bistro 33. All are new additions in the past 10 years, all provide great food and drink, all are independently owned.

So, imagine my dismay when I recently noticed the following signs on the corner of 38th St. and 35th Ave...

Um... Wha?

I mean, Applebee's is Applebee's. They're all over the friggin' place and they continue to spread like bird flu. Soon they will be in every corner of the globe and it will no longer be just us lucky Americans who have the privilege of partaking of such aggressively mediocre crap. But there's something even more unsettling about having one in my neighborhood.

Panera was a place I'd never heard of until a trip to Omaha a few years back. My mother loves to take me there for lunch whenever I'm in town. (Although, I only agree to do that after we've already been to Jim & Jennie's at least once.) I don't find it as offensive on the whole as I do Applebee's, etc. And, there's something acceptable about going there when I'm in Omaha, because I'm in Omaha.

But this isn't Omaha. Or Ohio. OR Manhattan.

This is fuckin' Queens, dammit.

At least for the time being...