It’s Just A Matter Of Time Until We Get Indian-Scandinavian, Indian-Ghanaian And Indian-Lithuanian

I think this whole Indian-fusion thing may have gone too far:

Talk of the Town opened about a month ago, and offers the familiar flavors of India with a twist. You’ll find classic staples of Indian cooking on the menu, such as lamb vindaloo, chicken curry, and aloo gobi, as well as tandoori offerings. But Talk of the Town goes a little further than even the expansive breadth of exotic flavors that characterize India’s broad culinary palette, blending Chinese, Italian, and even Irish cooking into the menu.

If you aren’t quite in the mood for Indian cooking, Talk of the Town makes an Irish lamb stew, which is cubes of carrot and potato in mild Irish flavors. They also serve up a chicken a la Roma — chicken sauteed with Marseilles wine and topped with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese.

With A Booming Economy Back Home And Anti-Illegal Immigration Demagoguery Here, No Irish Need Apply

The Queens Chronicle reports that the Irish immigrants of Queens are returning to Ireland:

Martin, 29, an illegal Irish immigrant who has been here for seven years, has had enough. He came to America looking for a better life, but has not been able to obtain legal status in this country. He will soon join the growing trend of Irish immigrants moving back to Ireland, where they can reap the benefits of a booming economy and legal citizenship.

“I’ve had enough of being a subject here. I have to find a life somewhere,” said Martin, who requested his last name be withheld.

Statistics show Martin is one of many Irish immigrants who are opting to return home as a result of the current immigration situation in the United States and the burgeoning economic state back home. According to Ireland’s Department of Social and Family Affairs, 132,000 Irish have returned since 2001, with more than 61,000 returning between 2002 and 2004.

In Queens, the flight of Irish immigrants has become very apparent. Neighborhoods like Woodside and Maspeth, formerly known as predominantly Irish enclaves, have taken on new identities, as Hispanics, Filipinos, and Koreans move in.

Maria, a 22 year old Irish immigrant who also requested her last name be withheld, is a bartender in Astoria and plans to study nursing at LaGuardia Community College. She came here a year and a half ago because she wanted to travel and see the world. She knows, however, that many who came to America for similar reasons will end up moving back.

“People are moving to Ireland because of the legal system in this country. The government doesn’t want to give us any legality or citizenship,” said Maria, adding that the irony of the situation is that, “there’s no such thing as a true American and I feel like this government has forgotten its roots.”

The article adds that that whole “Leave No Paddy Behind” thing hasn’t worked out so well:

Siobhan Dennehey, the executive director at Emerald Isle Immigration Center, said that while many immigration reform movements have lobbied to legalize the Irish, their exhaustive work has gone unanswered, possibly because the Irish are often overlooked as an immigrant population.

“The automatic assumption is that if you’re Irish you don’t have an immigration problem, which is quite far from the truth,” Dennehey said, adding that her colleague once told her, “our Irish ancestors helped build this country, build the roads, but we can’t drive on them, we can’t reap the benefits of which we’ve sown. That’s the Irish story.”

Dennehey also said that the public protests and marches supporting the legalization of the Irish have possibly done more harm than good, uncovering undocumented workers who had previously lived under the radar. “There has not been any positive sign,” said Dennehey, who cites the lack of improvement in legalizing immigrants and the Irish economy’s success story as reasons for the mass migration back across the Atlantic.

If You Want My Hookah Pipe You’ll Have To Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands

It’s amazing that three years after the smoking ban went into effect, Astoria hookah shop owners somehow are still limping along:

Borhane Charif, the first customer of the day at Elkhaiam Café in Astoria, knew he was doing something that wasn’t exactly legal. The shisha he smoked from a hookah pipe was made from tobacco, and banned from indoor public places by order of the city. But he loves the fruity tobacco, and the newly touted legal alternative, Soex Herbal Hookah, wasn’t an option.

It would be “like you used to drink coffee from Starbucks, and then all of a sudden, you buy coffee off the street,” he said.

“If they stop serving tobacco, I’ll stop coming,” Charif added.

There are 10 more or less identical hookah cafes along Steinway Street in Astoria’s Little Egypt. Similar establishments are sprouting up throughout the rest of the city as well, run by anyone from Jordanians to Israelis to Albanians.

You might be wondering how hookah shop owners stay in business:

Soex, a medley of sugar cane and molasses, is the most recent initiative taken by hookah café owners to avoid getting summonses from the city’s Department of Health following the passage of the state’s Clean Indoor Air Act of 2003.

According to its package description, Soex contains no tobacco, tar or nicotine. The city Department of Health is currently testing the product to determine if it contains any tobacco, in which case it would be prohibited indoors, like all other tobacco products.

But Middle Eastern smokers might beat the health officials to it. Soex has gotten such negative feedback from customers that many cafés serve tobacco at the risk of getting ticketed for violating the ban. Otherwise, Charif said, “These places will lose 80 percent of their business.”

However, paying fines is hardly a viable option for the café owners. This year alone, Labib Salama, owner of the Egyptian Coffee Shop, said he has received eight tickets totaling $3,800 for illegal indoor smoking. Adel Krayem, who owns Alzaeem Restaurant and Café a few doors down, said he had to pay $9,000 in fines. “They’re killing the business,” Salama said.

I think that’s the idea, actually . . .

But assuming Soex passes muster, hookah shop owners may discover a new audience:

In Manhattan’s East Village, Mohammed Bashir, owner of the Horus Lounge, said he can get away with serving Soex shisha to his customers: Most are Americans and can’t tell the difference. Besides, he said, “Americans appreciate everything you do for them, like if I give a beer on the house, they are so grateful,” he said.

Bashir still frequents Astoria’s hookah cafés to relax and feel at home. “There are millions of places like this next to each other in Egypt,” he said, reclining amid a cloud of strawberry caramel hookah smoke at the Egyptian Coffee Shop on Steinway Street. “People can get together and play dominos and backgammon and watch the soccer games. This is the place to be private, away from the kids and wife, to be alone.”

For people like Bashir, the right to smoke hookah is worth fighting for. “This is what we grew up on,” he said. “Customers have asked me to stop smoking hookah. I said, ‘Okay, but only if you don’t have wine with dinner or ketchup on your burger.'”

In The Venn Diagram Of Deviancy, “Comic Book Guy” Increasingly Overlapping With “Sicko” And “Perv”

Everybody loves exposing pervs on the subway, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly urges caution, noting that some pervs may not take kindly to the act:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly recently issued a statement warning straphangers to use extreme caution when trying to catch subway flashers on cell phone cameras. Kelly acknowledged that such photos have assisted investigators in bringing the flashers to justice-but warned those snapping the sickos to consider they may be putting themselves in danger by doing so.

Kelly reminded the sharpshooters to think about how the flasher might react when he realizes he’s been caught in the act.

Kelly’s remarks on the particularly satisfying form of vigilante justice come after a particularly pervy perv was caught in the act on the 7 train*:

The same individual who exposed himself to a 15-year-old in March is alleged to have flashed a second woman on the same No. 7 line on May 5. Both times the pervert’s victims snapped cell phone pictures of him.

Cops released both images to the press, asking for the public’s help in catching the serial flasher.

Police said the latest victim, a 22-year-old Queens woman, was riding the No. 7 with a friend and her mother when she spotted the pervert-exposed and peering at her over his sunglasses.

When the woman snapped photos of him, the man tried to cover his face with an Archie comic book, police said. After she was certain she had a clear photo, the woman tried to embarrass the man by shouting to other straphangers that he was exposing himself, police said. The man quickly exited the train.

*Isn’t May 5 like six months ago? Who cares when you have Archie!

This Just In: Something Perhaps Happened

A novel way to report the news:

North- and southbound traffic on the Steinway Street Bridge over the Grand Central Parkway was to resume on or before yesterday, October 31, the city Department of Transportation announced.