LIC rocks!

IT’S got sushi bars. A teahouse. An upscale grocery store. A cocktail lounge where the word “mixologist” could reasonably be uttered. Multiple options for doggy day care. It’s one stop from Manhattan, the views are fabulous, and, joy to the world, there are no alternate-side parking rules.

With all that and more, has Long Island City, 30 years after it was first labeled “hot,” finally become a self-sustaining neighborhood?

The evidence that this semi-industrial section of Queens is approaching some kind of critical mass is growing. More than a dozen new and converted condominium developments have opened in recent years, and several are sold out. And while thousands of housing units have appeared, a huge number of others — 5,000 or more — are due to be delivered by both public and private enterprises in the coming years.

Prices are rising, too, having mostly recovered from a dip during the Lehman Brothers slump. Though values for condos have not approached the levels of those in sister neighborhoods across the river in Manhattan, it’s not uncommon to pay more than $700 a square foot in Long Island City. Rentals in new buildings aren’t cheap, either; monthly lease rates in some ascend to heights of $3,000 and beyond (but come with unfettered vistas of Midtown, of course).

Perhaps more important for the new residents paying those prices, the list of local amenities is far longer than it was five years ago. Psychic changes are afoot, too.

Consider the great McDonald’s scare of 2010, wherein the blog liQcity.com posted an item about the Golden Arches’ landing a spot on Vernon Boulevard, the main drag. The response was swift and, tellingly, of the type you might expect in a place like Park Slope or Northside Williamsburg.

“Be prepared for fat lazy people discarding their burger wrappers on the street as they leave the restaurant,” one commenter wrote.

“Please let this be a joke,” said another, repeating the thought three times for emphasis.

It was indeed a joke — the blogger, Nancy Verma, quickly informed her readers that they were all April fools. But back in 1980, when New York magazine labeled Long Island City the city’s “next hot neighborhood,” it would have been impossible to conceive of coordinated neighborhood scorn for fast food. Heavy industry was the rule then, with residents mostly living in town houses and small apartment buildings.

Longtimers like the Cerbone family, which runs the well-known Italian restaurant Manducatis on Jackson Avenue, now share the neighborhood with the still-growing crop of condos. It’s difficult to turn a corner without seeing a new building like the Solarium on 48th Avenue or the Murano on Borden Avenue.

The Citylights co-op tower, which sat alone on the waterfront for years, now has a cadre of sleek, glassy neighbors. At the base of one of those buildings, you can buy $13.79 teriyaki swordfish kabobs and truffled Gouda for $25.99 a pound at Foodcellar & Company, a Whole Foods-like grocer that opened in August 2008. (It was followed by a Duane Reade next door, with $23 shampoos and Belgian ales on display.)

“Five years ago when we moved here, all around us it was just, like, warehouses and fields,” said Yulia Oleinik, who lives in the Arris Lofts building with her husband, Logi Bragason, and works for Unicef across the river. “Now there is all this variety of buildings and the infrastructure is coming big time. I just feel that the neighborhood is very much alive, and growing.”

Ms. Oleinik has tapped into the active artistic community that predates the condos, often taking in plays at underground theaters and shows at small art galleries. She and Mr. Bragason sample cuisine at the annual Taste of Long Island City event and loll by the waterfront in Gantry Plaza State Park, which continues to expand northward along the East River.

Yet like others in L.I.C., Ms. Oleinik is worried about the events of the past two years. Around the time of the Lehman Brothers crash, businesses along Vernon Boulevard started to close, prompting residents to wonder whether they were living in a bubble that was about to burst.

“We go through major amenity cycles,” said Ms. Verma, who has lived in the area several years. “The fall is always an upswing for retail, but in the winter there’s always a little decline. The year before last, I feel like 10 businesses went under.”

Today, an empty retail space at the foot of a new residential building is a common sight, as are “coming soon” signs, like the one on the waterfront advertising a library that remains a vacant lot for lack of financing. Other basic services are missing, as well.

Still, as some lights go out, others go on. A space on Jackson Avenue at 11th Street is to become Natural Frontier Market, a health food store. Over on Center Boulevard, the brothers who run the Michelin-anointed restaurant Shi are planning a Mexican place called Skinny’s Cantina across the street.

“It’s not a neighborhood to move to if you like the status quo,” said Jake Atwood, a charter resident of the Citylights building who runs the Web site QueensWest.com. “It is constantly evolving, in fits and starts. There are times when it looks like buildings are being built every five minutes.”

The price of entry has come up some, but not quite back to the highs of the pre-Lehman era. Eric Benaim, the president of the real estate firm Modern Spaces and a partner in the new comfort-food restaurant El Ay Si, said that prices began to rise around March 2009, when they had a starting point of around $500 per square foot. Today they have moved into the $600s and $700s.

What is more, the concessions and incentives that buildings were offering to new buyers in late 2008 and early 2009 have been scaled back.

“Before, they were really throwing everything at you,” Mr. Benaim said. “Now it’s not as many as last year. People are out there now. We do have a lot of real buyers, and it’s busy.”

In terms of actual prices, listings with Nest Seekers International for the Vere condominium, farther from the waterfront on Jackson, range from $389,000, for a junior one-bedroom, to $1.199 million for a two-bedroom penthouse with two terraces. Units at the Powerhouse, a converted factory on Fifth Street, range from $475,000, for a studio, to $1.325 million for a two-bedroom two-bath corner apartment.

The finishes there, as in other buildings, tend toward the luxurious.

“It was like, ‘Oh, was there a fire sale on Bosch washers and dryers?’ ” said Todd Smith, who was impressed by the amenities at the buildings he surveyed with his partner, Ethan Jones. They settled on the Powerhouse and moved there from Riverdale in the Bronx earlier this spring.

Some of the newer buildings have sold out completely, like 5th Street Lofts, a Toll Brothers development that sold the last of 118 units in winter 2009. Prices started in the upper $300,000 range for a studio; a unit with 1,600 square feet of space went for around $1.5 million, according to Scott Avram, a senior project manager at the company. Sales started in February 2007. And at the Arris Lofts, where sales have been completed, Hanifa Scully of Corcoran Realty closed a deal for a three-bedroom in March for $1,275,000.

“I’ve never been so busy,” said Ms. Scully, who also lives at the Arris and said she had seen some prices pass $800 a square foot. “Since last September, I’ve seen a tremendous change. It’s very hot.”

There are plenty of new rentals, too, with prices to match. At 47-05 Center Boulevard, built and marketed by the Rockrose Development Corporation, one-bedroom units start at $2,600 per month; a studio with 490 square feet of space across the street at 47-20 Center, marketed by TF Cornerstone, rents for $1,925.

Brian Hennessey, who moved into the 5th Street Lofts in 2008 with his wife, Verena Arnabal, and their new daughter, Maya, made the jump to Long Island City from Murray Hill and hasn’t looked back. The couple shop at the Queens Costco when Foodcellar gets too pricey, and on weekends they hang out with a laptop at the teahouse, Communitea, on Vernon Boulevard.

“They just have the right recipe for success here,” he said. “It’s very easy to get to Manhattan. It’s at the right price point. It’s got all the luxury amenities that people want in the yuppie crowd, and it’s got a good community feel to it.”

Still, Mr. Hennessey is clear-eyed about what the neighborhood needs. Parking is a problem: when friends come to dinner, he has to help them find spots. The service interruptions on the No. 7 train are annoying. He wonders if facilities for dogs will ever come to be, as they aren’t allowed in most of Gantry Plaza State Park and there are few other places to take them.

Those issues may intensify in the coming years. The city’s Economic Development Corporation plans to develop up to 5,000 waterfront units at Hunters Point South, 60 percent of them as middle-income housing; construction should begin next year, said Gayle Baron, the president of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation. And Rockrose, which has already built several waterfront towers, has the rights and plans to build several more.

“I can only imagine that we’re going to wish these days would never end,” Mr. Hennessey said. “When the people come, I can imagine this becoming a very busy part of town.”

Standing over a cappuccino at her restaurant’s counter, Ms. Cerbone-Teoli is circumspect. Some of her regulars are old-timers, but some are new arrivals, and business is good.

As the neighborhood continues to find its way, she hopes that some kind of centralized planning will prevent overdevelopment and disorganized growth. But leaving all that aside, she’s tired of hearing that her home is becoming a happening place to be.

“People think it was just discovered,” she said reprovingly. “But Long Island City was always a great community. It didn’t just now become great.”

It's a great neighborhood, but it has unfortunately been overrun with rampant plagiarist.

Just messing w/ you, LICC, I'm sure you were excited about the article. It's good to see an article about the neighborhood.

Good point nada- I thought it would be obvious that I posted the NY Times article.

Thanks!

What benefits does LIC provide, that would make someone move there? Very difficult to understand, how anyone can justify paying to live there. It's almost like the New York Times pays people to interview. Any article can take a few happy people, but I drive in and out of the tunnel everyday, and it still seems like no man's land. At least Brooklyn is BROOKLYN....

I'm glad they ran this article ... NYT certainly needs the huge amount of display advertising that LIC developers pay for (heavy marketing being absolutely required), so it would be a shame if they walked.

I'm surprised, though, that they didn't reference the Duane Reade. It hasn't closed already, has it?

(Not so surprised they didn't mention the huge amounts of toxic heavy metals and carcinogen plumes.)

In next weeks addition:

Luxury Rentals in Port a Prince! We're really shaking up the market-ooh-lala!

I knew a bitter, jealous comment from alan would be coming.

JP drives in and out of the midtown tunnel, so obviously he knows everything about LIC. Of course.

Nice article LICC, still need to visit and I owe you a beer.

LIC is a dismal neighborhood, ugly by day and unsafe at night. The only thing it's got going for it is its proximity to Manhattan. Even that is as unreliable as a 7 train.

I know just enough to not put all my money in to a down payment in no man's land. For now, I'll continue to be a HAPPY renter, and keep myself liquid, and buy on the dips. I find it hard to believe anyone who bought a condo in LIC will ever(next 15 years) make a positive return on investment. But if you're happy there, that' all that really is important. Enjoy!

C worst, No. 7 best in annual subway report

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/c-worst-no-7-best-in-annual-subway-report-1.1330191

drujan is completely clueless. Just saying.

JP, thanks for the clarification, so everyone can evaluate how dumb your comments are.

I enjoy the 7- train to go to Citi Field, very convenient. You are correct. But thanks for calling me "dumb." Much appreciated.

Which is better LIC or Hoboken?

Hey moron, I live on No. 7 line, LOL.

Just yesterday coming from work I had to wait 40 minutes (!) on Grand Central station for a train to show up, because No. 7 trains were not running due to their usual "signal problems".

Every morning I catch a cab on the Queens Blv. instead of the train, because I simply have no patience for No. 7 piss poor crowded and unreliable service.

At least unlike LIC captives, I have the option of taking N/W to Queensborough Plaza and then a bus, if 7 breaks downs or is closed during weekends (happens regularly several times a year, for weeks at a time)...

I take the 7 to commute every weekday. I hardly ever have any problems getting on a train or waiting long.

JP, without any provocation you came on here and insulted the place where lots of people make their home. I think that is dumb.

Apology accepted. No worries.

As soon as I saw the lead story in the NYT real estate section I groaned, "oh boy this is going to be hot potato number one on SE today".
I'm fairly neutral on the LIC issue, wouldn't care to live there but no more so than anywhere in Brooklyn for example. Think if I HAD to leave Manhattan I would go to the Bronx, near my beloved Stadium, or to Hoboken/JC. At oTne point there were tax advantages to living in Jersey and those places always struck me as just more outer boroughs with the PATH being no different than a subway. Aod and economics willing however, I'm securely planted in my "forever" (or at least until assisted living) apartment in Gramercy Park.

Had I chosen to invest in LIC I would defend it to the max...it would only make sense to do so.
And besides, the same section features the West Village as its "Living In" focus with the headline "What Price Paradise?". Today's West Village is about as close to my idea of paradise as Port Au Prince, as proven by the fact I chose not to live there despite owning a large apartment at a fairly ridiculous price. Different strokes as they say...

Alan, I don't disagree with your assessment of the NYT's agenda in running the LIC article (the RE section has never been subject to the same "church and state" rules the news organization supposedly abides by). As I posted before, RE once a cash cow for the NYT has most likely become a break even proposition at best. (The profitable segment being the glossy spreads in the magazine from 535 WEA and other over the top developments that appeared regularly during the boom). But they do reference Duane Reade "pride of LIC".

I feel a limerick coming on ...

LIC or Hoboken?
Which is better?
LIC....hands down.
It does remind me of which is better high blood pressure or diabeties?

Why do people who don't live in LIC have such strong opinions about it? Its just weird. I mean, LIC isn't for me, but if it is good for others, great. I don't care to consider living in Harlem, Dumbo, WIlliamsburg, anywhere in Queens, the east side from 14th Street to the 50s which has always seemed a no-man's-land of nondescript ugliness too me, the 1940s/50s middle-income developments on the far east edge of Manhattan below 23rd St. Lots of people love living in these areas. I don't see everyone bashing them on here. Why LIC? I just don't get why its such a hot button for so many on here. The second "LIC" is in the title of a thread some of my fellow regular posters just go berserk. Frankly it's a little weird.

kyle I think because people have called it up n coming for the last 20 years, those that have invested there have a big intrest in defending it as is evident and those that cant imagine living there love to push their buttons. Now a question those of you that live there do you have any concerns with the environmental issues?

But what is the pleasure in pushing someone's buttons, as you say? Just to make them feel bad?

I'm with kylewest but for his obsession with Core Group.

OMG! Don't get me started. I just showered and just reading the name makes me feel oily and dirty. Why, oh WHY did you ahve to push that button!

Grow up

Button pusher!

I currently rent at The View in LIC. Been here one year and am looking forward to my move to Williamsburg in June. Yes the views are fantastic but there are too few eateries of any quality, bars suck and the hood is largely dull and soulless. Feels much like Battery park city here, a warehouse for Manhattan workers. I don't see much potential for the the area as well. I think most residents probably stay/go to Manhattan for dinners and bar hopping.

Exactly, wannabuy. And the empty promise is that a full menu of restaurants and other signs of life will follow when more brownfields are redeveloped, but really it will never even approach the level of Battery Park City ... it will be, as you say, efficient worker-warehousing like Jersey City.

I guess wanna never walks two blocks to Vernon Blvd and never sees the crowds of people in Madera, Testaccio, el ay si, Bella Via, Tournesol, Cafe Henri, etc.

kyle is right, mention LIC, and the jealous haters like alan just can't help trying to knock it.

Williamsburg is entirely different from LIC. Most people who choose to live in LIC wouldn't even consider living in Williamsburg. Not that one is better than the other, they are just very different.

Why Long Island City Hasn't Happened; Once, the Neighborhood Was Hailed as the Next SoHo. But Can You Build a Bohemia From Scratch.

By RICHARD WEIR

Published: November 7, 1999

ONE Saturday morning last month, Ann Schaumburger and eight other artists tidied up their studios above a Long Island City furniture factory, hung their paintings and collages, chilled bottles of white wine and set out platters of Brie and grapes.

Then they waited for visitors to climb the three rickety flights to Independent Studios 1, a Queens loft shared by a group of artists and known locally as I.S. 1. During the afternoon, a few dozen people did trickle in to the sun-soaked spaces. But it was nothing like the ''open studios'' held a decade ago -- a time Ms. Schaumburger called ''the heyday'' -- when rented school buses shuttled several thousand visitors to the five art-studio complexes that had sprung up in this gritty industrial neighborhood.

Nor did it resemble an event Ms. Schaumburger had attended the previous weekend: the third annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn. The three-day extravaganza, which featured work by 375 artists and included a film festival, a fashion show, jazz and a ''parade of concept,'' attracted 20,000 visitors. ''People were coming in a mile a minute,'' said Ms. Schaumburger enviously.

How did this happen? How did Long Island City, a neighborhood once hailed by writers and speculators as the next SoHo, stumble, while Williamsburg and to a lesser extent Dumbo leaped ahead to become epicenters of the shifting art scene?

The answer is complex. Real estate forces, transportation access and geography all played roles in hobbling Long Island City's emergence as an artist community. But intangible forces, like the self-driven nature of a bohemia, also had a hand.

''Artists create their communities,'' said Ester Fuchs, director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia University. ''And they create them very much separate from what the powers that be might try to understand and predict.''

Two decades ago, the prediction was that Long Island City, or more specifically, Hunters Point, the riverfront section, would become the catch basin for artists beginning to flee SoHo as a result of rising loft prices.

In 1980, in an article titled ''The Next Neighborhood: Long Island City,'' New York magazine described what it called the ''SoHo-ization'' of the community. It came on the heels of the opening in 1976 of P.S. 1, a nucleus of artists' studios in an abandoned schoolhouse on Jackson Avenue.

Longtime residents prepared to cash in. One was Bill Blessinger, the proprietor of a tavern who, the article said, had marketed his house by planting a ''for sale'' sign proclaiming the neighborhood ''NewHo.''

A triangle bounded by Newtown Creek, the East River, 44th Drive and Jackson Avenue, Hunters Point, the area's residential heart, was (and remains) a working-class neighborhood of well maintained brick row houses and tenements pressed up against factories, warehouses and auto-body shops. Its quiet streets and low-lying buildings gave it an almost bucolic rural charm. It seemed supremely ripe for development.

Although a proposed $67 million performing arts center never got off the ground, similar efforts did. Isamu Noguchi, the internationally known sculptor who had opened a live-in studio in Long Island City in 1960, took the bold step in 1985 of turning a former photoengraving factory on Vernon Boulevard into a garden museum devoted solely to his work. Up the block, the sculptor Mark di Suvero set up a studio in an old brick plant and led a campaign to remove garbage and abandoned cars from a vacant riverfront tract on the fringes of Long Island City. It eventually became Socrates Sculpture Park, an outdoor gallery where the Manhattan skyline provided a striking backdrop for towering wood and iron structures.

Meanwhile, P.S. 1 had evolved into a contemporary art center with a global reputation. By 1989, Emily Fisher Landau looked to Long Island City to exhibit her collection of 900 artworks, turning a former parachute harness factory just north of the Queensboro Bridge into an Art Deco showcase.

But while P.S. 1 and its sister institutions have garnered acclaim and brought hundreds of thousands of visitors across the East River, they have yet to bring a perceptible art scene with them. The area has one informal gallery, opened in 1995 by a Texan, Eugene Binder, in a third-floor walk-up apartment on 50th Avenue.

''Even though P.S. 1 is here, Long Island City never really took off,'' said Karen Shaw, a painter who teaches at Princeton University, as she visited the open studios at I.S. 1. ''Brooklyn has much more cachet.''

Ms. Shaw now lives in a loft in Dumbo. But in 1978 she was among eight artists who, after stints at P.S. 1, decided to create their own. A block away on 46th Avenue, I.S. 1 was the neighborhood's first cooperative artist studio. Others soon followed.

But that momentum had fizzled by the early 1990's, when the buzz of the next new bohemia centered on the Northside of Williamsburg.

Comparing Williamsburg to SoHo in the 1960's, Christian Viveros-Faune, a director of the Williamsburg art gallery Roebling Hall, said: ''It was the artists who made the scene here. It wasn't the arts infrastructure. There was none to speak of.''

As with SoHo, artists were drawn to Williamsburg by its cheap loft space. As the real estate market bottomed out and manufacturers left the city, Williamsburg's hardscrabble streets became saturated with vacant, often abandoned buildings. What emerged was not simply a colony of struggling artists homesteading in empty warehouses and factories, but an underground night life, and later a true artists' community. A derelict mustard factory on Metropolitan Avenue housed itinerant nightclubs featuring elaborately staged parties with performance artists and art installations.

Yet in Long Island City, there was no void for the artists to fill.

''This is a part of the city that never lurched into near abandonment,'' said Alanna Heiss, the founding director of P.S. 1. ''It's a stable community with stable commercial rentals.''

A Short Hop From Anywhere

One reason for Long Island City's commercial stability is its extraordinary transportation. Trucks have direct access to Manhattan via the Midtown Tunnel and the Queensboro Bridge. Commuters can board the Long Island Rail Road or hop on one of six subway lines, some stations of which are only a stop from Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The factors that ultimately made the Museum of Modern Art decide to merge with P.S. 1 -- a marketing firm timed the museum-to-museum ride aboard the E train at seven minutes -- also encouraged many companies to relocate their back office and light manufacturing operations to Long Island City's former factories.

''In Williamsburg 7 to 10 years ago, you could not give those buildings away,'' said Marjorie Seaman, managing director at Insignia/ESG, a real-estate brokerage in Long Island City. ''But Long Island City has always been a premier industrial area because of its immediate geographic relation to Manhattan.''

Its proximity appealed to Citibank, which in 1989 completed a 50-story office tower at Court Square, and to city and state agencies, which now occupy nearly a million square feet of office space in the neighborhood. Printers squeezed out of lower Manhattan are also heading there.

But even when entire buildings sat empty, most local owners were reluctant to rent to artists who want to live where they work, as is common in Brooklyn.

''Putting people into a place illegally is a sign of desperation,'' Ms. Seaman said. ''There is no desperation in Long Island City on the part of property owners.''

Instead, the hope has long been for a bright future hinging on redevelopment.

''This area is going to be the Metrotech of Queens,'' predicted Jerry Wolkoff, a developer of office parks and warehouses, shortly after stepping out of his gray stretch limousine in front of 22-42 Jackson Avenue, a building he owns a few blocks southwest of Queens Plaza, the transportation hub of Long Island City.

Mr. Wolkoff, president of Heartland Business Center, has big plans for the site: a million-square-foot office tower. The City Planning Department is studying a proposal to rezone a 36-block area around Queens Plaza to allow high-rise towers like his.

On a blustery Friday last month, Mr. Wolkoff had come to inspect a more modest project. He recently converted two empty floors of a former water meter factory into 30 artist studios. Rents are $300 to $500 a month.

For Donna Evans, a printmaker who moved to one of the studios from Greenwich Village to save on rent, an attraction was the spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. But she had to agree to use the space only for work. ''This is only a stopover,'' Mr. Wolkoff said. Though he could have made more money by winking at illegal residential use by artists, doing so could tie up his long-term plans.

The scarcity of housing in Hunters Point, the area's more residential section, also makes it hard for artists to find apartments. It has fewer than 450 residential structures, mostly one- and two-family houses.

The Studios Stay, The Artists Return Home

Because Long Island City evolved as a daytime area rather than a round-the-clock community for artists, the neighborhood is largely a workshop for commuters like Ms. Schaumburger, who lives in Greenwich Village, or Tobi Kahn, who returns to his Upper West Side apartment after working as much as 14 hours in his studio.

''The artists around here are working artists,'' Faye Hess said. ''They are not hanging around drinking coffee.'' Ms. Hess is an owner of Long Island City Brick Company, a cafe off Vernon Boulevard on 49th Avenue. Last year, she and her husband, Jonathan Stirling, opened what they hoped would be the neighborhood's first coffee bar, with mosaic-tiled tables, ''Buena Vista Social Club'' CD's and homemade baked goods. Ms. Hess wanted to attract the type of people who would lounge about sipping imported coffee while discussing art.

But with her business struggling, she began serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. She also knocked on the doors of local businesses and handed out cookies and menus. Now, a contractor with suspenders over his flannel shirt or an elderly factory worker clutching a cane is as likely to wander in as a young artist sporting a soul patch, a trendy small goatee.

According to Ms. Schaumburger, whose paintings inspired artwork at several city subway stations, the typical Long Island City artist is someone like her: 40 or older, with an established career.

Mr. Kahn, who teaches art at the School for Visual Arts and lives with his family on the Upper West Side, usually arrives around 8 a.m. He unpacks his yogurt, turns on the public radio station and hunkers down for the day, rarely leaving his five-room studio until it is time to go home. He cannot afford to. He is working on nine projects, including a Holocaust sculpture garden for the city of San Diego, and nine landscape paintings for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

Strolling down Vernon Boulevard, the main street of Hunters Point, he relished the small-town feel of what he called ''this real old-fashioned neighborhood.'' He stopped to remark on the quaintness of David's Barber Shop, with its striped pole.

''I like that there is not a juice bar, a coffee bar and a boutique,'' Mr. Kahn said. ''When I'm here, I am making art. I am not a coffee bar guy. I don't even drink coffee.''

Some people are sorry that Long Island City lacks an artist culture, with smoky cafes and bars and gallery openings.

''I would love it,'' said Jim Byrne, a painter who moved to Long Island City three years ago. He does not crave some chichi place ''where the people are filled with pretensions.'' (Mr. Byrne is the sort of artist who served Cheez Whiz at his I.S. 1 open studio.) He just wants a local joint where artists go.

After locking up his studios on a Saturday night, his options were few. The gates of the Long Island City Brick Company were drawn. Farther up the nearly deserted Vernon Boulevard, at McReilly's Pub, an occasional writer or artist may stop in for a drink, along with truck drivers from the nearby Pepsi plant. But there were no artists there or at Stephanie's Vernon Cafe, an Italian restaurant where men at the bar watched televised horse races and Elton John played on the jukebox.

On Jackson Avenue, at the newly opened Shannon Pot, an Irish pub with a handsome wood bar and a neon Budweiser sign in the window, three set designers who work at a nearby art studios stopped in for a pint after work. When they left, three diners and a nursing mother were left at the bar.

A mile and a half away, Williamsburg bustled. Customers lined up to buy CD's at Ear Wax and smoothies at one of two juice bars on Bedford Avenue. Crowds in 70's clothes spilled out of L Cafe and Vera Cruz. Outside Planet Thailand, taxis from Manhattan dropped off diners, who sometimes wait three hours for a table.

A block away at Galapagos, a former mayonnaise factory, identified only by a blue light at the entrance, scores of the young and hip drank Pilsener and merlot as glowing candles lighted a pond made from a loading dock. Dozens of people had paid $7 apiece to hear Sxip, a performance artist, produce haunting sounds on a what he called an industrial flute.

''This is where everybody sent me,'' Jeff Amon, the drummer, said of the neighborhood. ''All the artists I met around the country said Williamsburg's the place.''

The art crowd drawn to Williamsburg -- musicians, poets, filmmakers, dancers and the owners of two dozen established and makeshift galleries with names like Pierogi 2000 -- ''humanize and fill out the scene,'' said Robert Elmes, an owner of Galapagos. He credits the L train, which links Bedford Avenue, the Northside's only subway stop, with Union Square, as the catalyst.

It's So Popular, No One Goes There Anymore

But many think Williamsburg's success spells its downfall among struggling artists. It now attracts young professionals who work in Manhattan but crave an artsy life. When the police recently locked the doors of what they asserted was an illegally converted loft apartment building on Kent Street, those evicted from $1,600-a-month apartments were mostly Internet executives and commodities traders in their 20's.

Long Island City is once again the talk among artists.

''Williamsburg is supposed to be the hip place to be,'' said Miles Bellamy, whose father, Richard Bellamy, owner of Green Gallery in Manhattan, opened Oil and Steel in Long Island City in 1986. Miles Bellamy recently opened a bookstore, Spoonbill and Sugartown, in Northside. ''But,'' he added, ''it has become so hip that the real artists, i.e. the people who don't have a lot of money, are going to Long Island City. And Williamsburg -- I don't want to knock it too much because I like it -- is now for the rich kids.''

Robert Kingston, 45, a painter, has left Williamsburg for Long Island City, where he found a lenient landlord who let him live and work in a 2,000-square-foot-studio flooded with light. Williamsburg, he said, is ''less about art, and much more about the hipsters moving into the neighborhood.''

''Everyone there is so supercool, it makes you feel like you want to be ordinary,'' he said. ''And that's part of the appeal of Long Island City.''

The questions remain: Can Long Island City absorb more artists like Mr. Kingston? Will building owners go in for the lucrative but illicit rents of live-in lofts, which in Williamsburg fetch upward of $20 a square foot a year, considerably more than back-office rents in Long Island City?

At the moment, the answer is no.

''I get calls each week for live-work space,'' said Natalie Hurwitz, managing director at Sholom & Zuckerbrot, a Long Island City brokerage. ''But I've got no place to tell them about.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/07/nyregion/why-long-island-city-hasn-t-happened-once-neighborhood-was-hailed-next-soho-but.html?pagewanted=all

Typical idiotic steve logic. Counters an article from this week with one from almost 11 years ago.

Sure sounds like the people in this week's article on LIC much rather live in LIC than in a dumpy rental building on 52nd and 8th.

walked through lic and hobo recently: lic better hands down

atmosphere, lifestyle and people far better

still not like manhattan...but deserves its own recognition

found article to be very interesting

LICComment: you are one of the crazies, too. Look at what you wrote: "kyle is right, mention LIC, and the jealous haters like alan just can't help trying to knock it." Not liking LIC doesn't make you "jealous." I don't care for it and I can't imagine in what stretch of the imagination I am "jealous." I live in GV. Yours is just the sort of retort/rhetoric that fuels what you call the "haters." If you were more temperate in your responses (or just ignored the bating altogether) there would be less incentive for the button-pushers because they would have the satisfaction of so predicatably getting you to froth with their every posting.

"Williamsburg is entirely different from LIC."

... LICcomm is absolutely right about that. Williamsburg, like Hoboken, is an organically-gentrified area that people move to and invest money in because they like what's happening with their neighbors. Long Island City's gentrification, such as it is anyway, is a top-down master-planned community, and like all top-down master-planned community fails to create an enjoyable community, and will always do so.

And any comparison to Battery Park City, a semi-failure regarding community and sense of "real" place, is pure marketing rubbish and totally aspirational, and even the developers know they're shooting for Newport JC at best.

By the way, I'm sure it's lost on very few who saw it that the PRINT edition version of today's NYT article is headlined ... wait, wait, are you ready for this ... okeh okeh ... ready? ... "Hey! Get a Load of Long Island City"

What a Load of ... Long Island City! Hey!

kyle, you didn't insult LIC just because someone posted an article about it. Not liking it, in your opinion, is far different from making up facts and insulting it. Sorry, but some people are just bitter haters when it comes to LIC.

alan, that is another lie and you know it. The long-time residents in Williamsburg complained plenty when the newer residents moved in.

Hey!

I don't know anyone that WANTS to live in LIC. I know people who work in publishing or at non-profits and live in Astoria or LIC because it is more affordable - but these aren't the kind of people that would buy a fancy unit. And for them living in LIC is much easier if they work in the city than if they lived in Jersey or say Greenpoint. This article is as ridiculous as they get.

A great movie that features LIC is Chop Shop. Fantastic.

I always enjoy these LIC arguments because of the personalities. Wasn't there a whole poetry corner dedicated to it? As I've said before, there is a plus to LIC which comes with its disadvantages. Precisely because of what people call a no-man's land, there is relative quiet in the streets of that corner of LIC where the most highrises are, Hunt's Point. I'm not sure about the noise level around Aris (sp?) lofts, but near the waterfront it is quieter than anything it's being compared to, Wmbrg, Hoboken, JC. So although it is not where I would live as my first choice, and the critics have described it very well as a "top-down gentrification" or as a warehousing of Midtown office workers, there will be some who will take the trip out there and not be disappointed in the lack of a hopping bar scene, who will notice that it is a bit of a traffic cul-de-sac where people can only move about as quickly as the Newtown Creek's water. And some people would like to live in something that looks like The Jetsons, without spaceships.

sorry, I guess it's Hunter's Point - getting LIC confused with the South Bronx again.........

LONG ISLAND CITY, NEW ARTISTS' HAVEN

By PHILIP SHENON (The New York Times); Weekend Desk

August 24, 1984

From across the East River, Long Island City looks like the industrial center it has been for more than a century, a place where bread is baked, steel is welded and cloth is sewn. Within its borders are more than 500 factories. Train tracks and highways....

steve - is that the article which said something like, "But now people are gazing across the river through telescopes at Long Island City and seeing something else.... the next hot area"???? It sounds so familiar

You can go back to today's papers, or 1899's: they all say the same thing: "Someday, Long Island City will be nice."

Someday....

Steve, that doesn't even rhyme.

BTW, we need a limericist for the mixer this week.

steve already won the poetry award for his moving depiction of something like a duck-billed platypus struggling through the muck in Newtown Creek - how did that go?

Always strive to surpass, lowery. I suspect ah was encouraging Steve to attend. if so, I agree. maybe after a few faux sidecars we could compose some limericks, possibly communally. only those so inclined obviosly.

ar - I don't know if steve's Newtown Creek limerick could ever be topped - that's one reason I thought switching the weapon to haiku was in order - I also recall alanhart's poetry having a certain visceral quality to it, though perhaps his talents are more in the prose vein - this LICC argument, though, provides great entertainment - steve with his Queensbridge Houses needling and Newtown Creek and Sunnyside Yards, LICC's ripostes, the poems, the arguments, the anecdotes - it's the best - a Williamsburg argument, on the other hand, doesn't get people riled up nearly as much, nor arguments about the state of the market in Harlem - most shocking to me, though, is that everyone rags on Stytown and PCV, yet no one gets righteously indignant about it!

"JP, without any provocation you came on here and insulted the place where lots of people make their home. I think that is dumb."

Flipping out because someone made comments about a neighborhood? Really? Sheesh.

"has Long Island City, 30 years after it was first labeled “hot,” finally become a self-sustaining neighborhood? "

Btw, an article noting that LIC MIGHT have become a self-sustaining neighborhood does not bode well for $700 psf.

Btw, they're selling new condos in LIC for under $500 psf now.

I think the reason why LIC is going to be the hot neighborhood now compared to before is that we've had an unprecedented housing bubble that brought a lot of new development and retail to the area between '04-'09 to LIC allowing for a "critical mass" such that the potential for continued growth is very high. For the past 30 years there was not this bubble to allow for the ground-work of a true neighborhood to take root - now it has and LIC is now very liveable and very yuppi - kind of like a scaled down park slope - and can only go up from here on out.

lowery, are you making fun of me, and it was on mothers' day no less?

hell, i'm well aware of the limitations of ST/PCV. i'm happy to start a limerick/haiku thread for the complex i call home. but RS calling it the "projects" and ph41 expressing false concern that the elderly will be having heart attacks in non-repaired elevators, while funny on a certain puerile level, are comments i find myself compelled to address.

but mainly i don't care, because i'm cheap and happy.

Build it and they will come
From the nouveau riche to the nouveau bum
Desirable? Let me be frank
Not much help was that Citibank
Because Long Island City - it's one big slum.

LICman: "a scaled down park slope"--say you been smokin rope--you dope

AR - exactly why is expressing concern for elderly people possibly having heart attacks in non-repaired elevators "funny on a puerile level" and "false concern"? That possibility is, to you, "funny", and obviously wouldn't concern you at all.

How DID you manage to inject my name into a thread to which I didn't even post?

because your concern was just about as real as you are. phony, phony, phony.

they just replanted the flowerbeds the other day, it's lovely.

steve, good one.

Here is a poem:

Roses are red, violets are blue . . . I'm so happy that I don't live in a rental in a dumpy building on 52nd and 8th.

ar- Happy Mother's Day (a day late). What are your thoughts on the Kagan nomination? Some liberal commentators think she is a risk because she does not have a long published record of her views.

LIC, the sentiment shone through, but you need some work on style.

I'm happy with Kagan generally. I think it's probably a very good choice politically.

I agree. I prefer more conservative justices, but obviously Obama is going to select a liberal. Given that, unless something crazy comes up in the vetting process, Kagan is about as good a choice as can be. I was worried Obama was going to try to go far left wing with his choice, thinking that this is his last chance for that kind of a nomination before the Dems possibly lose the Senate later this year.

I don't need poems.

A picture paints a thousand words. Long Island City:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/queens/images/queensbridge_houses_8feb04.jpg

Views from dumpy building on 52nd and 8th:

http://www.ellingtonnyc.com/views.html

HAHAHAHAHA!

> Views from dumpy building on 52nd and 8th:

Yes, hopefully your apartment is high enough that you can see some better neighborhoods than yours.

Up Newtown Creek without a paddle
Flora, fauna, poisoned, addled
Long Island City - dissolved
Nothing there has evolved
The dead remain, the quick skedaddle.

I think I'm going to nominate myself for National Poet Laureate - for having raised the limerick to a new form of art.

:0

Wow, Steve is delusional in three different categories now. Housing, finance, and art...

Don't know, SWE: I think that's a mighty fine poem.

Been 100% right on housing.

Don't expect today's relief rally to last. Go back to the rally in December 2008, then tell me what happened by March 2009.

The economy is still on government-supplied morphine. Unemployment still 9.9%. Greek debt crisis stanched by more - DEBT.

Spain!

I'm going to nominate myself for National Poet Laureate

You have my vote!

> Been 100% right on housing.

Funny, I didn't notice Manhattan 50% down yet, did you?

And if you're claiming you were right on those two (even though you weren't), sounds like you are admitting you were wrong on stocks again... (at least as much as you'd admit any mistake)

steve, what was more painful for you - waking up saturday/sunday morning and seeing the NYT article praising LIC, or waking up Monday morning to see your stock shorts shooting up in your face?

LICC - you're not following the rules. We said limerick. You know the rules. Don't be a liberal and try stretching the meanings of the rules and relativizing everything.

Try this:

Rose are red.
Violets are blue.
Clinton is ugly.
Just like you.

Before you get angry, "you" in my suggested revision to your competition entry is meant to refer not to LICC, but to the presumed object of your argument, and the only person submitting limericks who admits to living in Clinton is steve, the more or less Poet Laureate of Streateasy Insult Trading Forum.

Now that you have idea, please rework your above entry to conform to guidelines for proper limerick composition, It must be CONSERVATIVE to be considered.

Steve, your comparison of photos is invalid. The link you posted to 52nd and Eighth is a montage of parts of photos assembled by a marketing/web design team to show your building in the light most favorable. The Queensbridge Houses photo looks like the Queensbridge Houses. To be fair you need to find a photo taken from a level about 8 stories above the ground and it must include most of the facade of the Ellington, but also include street level detail as well as facades of other buildings immediately adjacent.

Other than that, that WAS funny, but you're still comparing the wrong section of Long Island City for purposes of your argument. Newtown Creek, for instance, is not even arguably in the same vicinity as the Queensbridge Houses, yet it is your Newtown Creek barbs which are most memorable.

And you still haven't mentioned that lovely corner of LIC visible from the 48th Avenue/Hunters Point Avenue bridge. I think it's called Dutch Kills or something like that. It makes Newtown Creek look bucolic by comparison, and is a short walk from the Arris Lofts, I believe.

aboutready, I didn't realize you had been defending Stytown. I have read the obnoxious comments by others about what had been the Holy Grail of decent, affordable, convenient housing for the middle class in Manhattan up until its alleged conversion to luxury status.

I apologize for Steve's typo. He meant to write:

http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/queens/lic/hunterspt/newtowncreek/blissville/index.htm

http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/queens/lic/hunterspt/newtowncreek/borden/index.htm

"what was more painful for you"

Neither was painful. Anybody who wants to shill for Long Island City is welcome to - just like the article says, they've been trying it for 30 years. The only difference now is there's doggy daycare.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Stocks: not a problem. Short squeeze. Let it ride.....

> Neither was painful

Yes, steve is already used to being wrong and losing money... it doesn't hurt anymore.

Had I lost any money, SWE, then maybe it would have hurt. Not making as much today as I did yesterday doesn't bother me. Not the way to invest.

As I said, I was right on housing, and will be right on the stock market. Short squeezes don't bother me.

And - my poem was pretty good. :)

> Stocks: not a problem. Short squeeze. Let it ride.....

Actually, doesn't Steve sound just like the RE bulls he despises?

'well, the market might be [down], but I don't HAVE to sell... and I can absorb the loss...'

How about looking at the pictures in the article?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/09/realestate/20100509cover_ss.html?ref=realestate#1

Waking up in a rental in a dumpy building on 52nd and 8th is probably plenty painful in and of itself.

steve was right on housing? He called for 50-70% declines and we haven't come anywhere close to that. He grades himself on one hell of a curve . . .

Buy some more stock, SWE, if that's what you think you should do. I'm sure we're on our way to Dow 20,000 with 10% unemployment.

HAHAHA!

A hoary old hamlet, Dutch Kills
Rezoned, they paved over landfills
Air pollution is rife
Smog cut by a knife
The denizens, stricken, all ill.

Nice pix, AH: I think LICC's hovel is in one of those shots.

Well, he's also the guy who congratulated himself on calling dow 6500 one month after he said "I DID NOT say the dow would go to 6500".

"Hey!"

Why did the NYT post stock photos of Chicago for their LIC article? Wasn't their photographer willing to go to LIC to take local pix?

"Hey!"

There steve goes with another of his idiotic arguments- says LIC is polluted when the neighborhood where he lives has FAR GREATER RATES of sickness than LIC.

HA!

why someone wants to buy over 1/2 million dollar condo in LIC, famous for industrail polution and LIRR noise

to be fair, Steve should use this picture.

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf8&ie=UTF8&q=52nd+street+and+8th+avenue+nyc&fb=1&gl=us&ei=aznoS7vAA4L2M9nC4YEN&ved=0CBgQpQY&hl=en&view=map&geocode=FZcAbgIdWBOX-w&split=0&sll=40.763543,-73.985192&sspn=0.000000,0.000000&hq=&hnear=8th+Ave+%26+W+52nd+St,+New+York,+10019&ll=40.768094,-73.975496&spn=0,0.02738&z=16&layer=c&cbll=40.763204,-73.985438&panoid=BoqJ2q1PbssGFnbdUbqs_w&cbp=12,131.96,,0,-23.21

LICcomm, your argument is more than a little disingenuous, no?

Dead people don't get sick.

SWE, that pizzeria makes some great slices! Fortunately I don't live in that building - like all of Manhattan there are old buildings all about - but the Chipotle next door is also good.

And the Starbucks diagonally across the street.

Of course Long Island City now has "sushi," though why anybody would eat fish that comes from the East River is beyond me.

"he's also the guy who congratulated himself on calling dow 6500 one month after he said "I DID NOT say the dow would go to 6500"."

You really need to stop conflating what I said over the course of several years. My first statement was that we were "headed towards" Dow 6500, and that I wasn't sure whether we would get there or not. Months later when someone else brought up the subject I said that I thought we would make it, and we did.

Markets do change, you know. Down 1,000 in one day, up 400 in another.

My position is summed up as:

"ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- There no doubt will be some who will argue that the stock market's extraordinary rally can be entirely explained as a rational reaction to underlying fundamentals.

But they'll have a tough time supporting such an argument."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/plunging-sentiment-made-rally-likely-2010-05-10

Funnier still, now LICC is trying to convince people that midtown Manhattan is more polluted than the Newtown Creek or Dutch Kills.

Please, LICC, get back to reality. The smog is choking your oxygen supply.

> Markets do change, you know. Down 1,000 in one day, up 400 in another.

Yes, we know... and you are on the losing side prettty much all the time. Congrats!

> You really need to stop conflating what I said over the course of several years.

Nope, Steve, I posted it... black and white!

> My first statement was that we were "headed towards" Dow 6500

and then the dow went UP 1000 points

> , and that I wasn't sure whether we would get there or not.

Yes, you said that AFTER. Its called "backtracking" after you called down, and it went up.

ROTFL.

> Months later when someone else brought up the subject I said that I thought we would make it, and we
> did.

Nope. Steve, you're lying again!

try, try again steve. There is probably noone on record with as many stock market mistakes as you here.... actually, forget probable, I'm sure of it.

> SWE, that pizzeria makes some great slices! Fortunately I don't live in that building - like all of
> Manhattan there are old buildings all about - but the Chipotle next door is also good.
> And the Starbucks diagonally across the street.

Pizza, chipotle, starbucks. Wow, Steve, you're really putting LIC to shame. Did Clinton get its duane reade yet, too?

Now steve is becoming the liar clown again. You posted the data on sickness rates a few months ago and bjw called you out on how much of a fool you are because it showed that LIC is far healthier than where you live. Do we need to find that thread and post it again?

"How about looking at the pictures in the article?"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/09/realestate/20100509cover_ss.html?ref=realestate#1

WHAT A RACIST PHOTO SEQUENCE! Not ONE person of color in the entire series - all HAPPY WHITE PEOPLE!

Exactly who lives in Long Island City.

RACIST. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

"because it showed that LIC is far healthier than where you live. Do we need to find that thread and post it again?"

Go ahead. Morbidity isn't the index you need to look up - it's mortality. Morbidity rates are higher among people with INSURANCE, because they go to the doctor. The indigent merely die.

"Now steve is becoming the liar clown again. You posted the data on sickness rates a few months ago and bjw called you out on how much of a fool you are because it showed that LIC is far healthier than where you live. Do we need to find that thread and post it again?"

LIC, when the guy confuses "up" with "down", "is" with "is not", perhaps arguing more won't get you anywhere...

"WHAT A RACIST PHOTO SEQUENCE! Not ONE person of color in the entire series - all HAPPY WHITE PEOPLE!"

Steve, are you blind or dumb? (don't answer that)

An Indian guy isn't a person of color?
The nancy chick also doesn't look very white.

Uh, and... the asian kid on bike, next to the black kid on bike, next to the hispanic kid, next to some white kids.

And this it out of, what, 20 people total in the pix?

btw, is this a new technique.

Steve loses an argument so badly, his last resort is yelling "RACISM"

this is getting really, really funny.

steve, thanks for all the amusement.

The pictures clearly have people of different ethnicities, but steve just screams they don't. This is just like all his other arguments- factually incorrect and overall idiotic.

its actually gets funnier. I actually forgot about this.

"Nor did I say that we would go to 6,500 on the Dow."
same month:
"Stock indices rise to Dow 11,000 as the effects of the write-downs wear off, and all the new liquidity added into the economy takes hold."

then dow goes under 7k

"Dow Below 6,500! Y ou laughed when I said it!"

leave it to steve to lie his face off.