Queens Is The Bestest, Better Than All The Restest . . . Borough Of Dreams: Queens

The Not For Tourists Guide to Queens book-release party makes Talk of the Town:

The partygoers sprawled across the SculptureCenter’s gravel courtyard, picking at pieces of fruit and cheese. Many of them hailed from Manhattan or, disproportionately, from the newly trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, just across the Pulaski Bridge. Michael Sendrow, a twenty-nine-year-old Sunnyside resident (and brother-in-law of one of the guide’s editors), gave a possible explanation for the party’s inter-borough popularity. “It was posted on Myopenbar,” he said. (Myopenbar.com is “your guide to free booze’ in New York. “Queens is full of good shit,” the site’s notice for the N.F.T. party had said. “The Astoria pool, Indian gold by the pound, men with mustaches, strip joints . . .”) “Terrible,” someone chimed in. “I’m telling you: they’re all hipsters, here for the free beer. Cheats.”

Insofar as other Queens residents could be found, they, too, were wary of outside interest in their borough. Bryan Kimpel, a lifelong Astorian, confided his concern that Queens was on the verge of an invasion by exiles from pricier parts of the city. “I was just telling some of my friends about Water Taxi Beach, and then I was going, ‘Oh, jeez, I better not tell too many people.’ Because we’ll have to wait in line.” Cathy Albright, the one local who expressed unqualified enthusiasm for the guide, had moved, just a year earlier, to Astoria from Texas. “I’ve been waiting for the Queens edition to come out,” she said, clutching her complimentary copy. “The addresses are so screwy here.”

. . .

By eight, the party was winding down. Revellers had begun spilling out onto Jackson Avenue, some in search of the E, G, and 7 trains, others in the general direction of the nearby L.I.C. Bar. A dozen more loitered on the sidewalk in front of the SculptureCenter, apparently uncertain of their next move. Sendrow said, “I imagine that these people, who probably don’t know where they’re going, get a Queens guide and have to look at it in order to get back to wherever they’re from.”

What a wag . . .