02/17/08

In Manattan

New York is a city of neighborhoods.  The term “melting pot” has been over-used, and it isn’t really true – elements that melt together lose their separate identities, and that doesn’t happen here.  Not yet, anyway – though the more giant chain stores I see, the more I wonder!

Many of the “ethnic” neighborhoods are outside Manhattan, but not all.  Most of us know about Chinatown and the rapidly-shrinking Little Italy, but there are areas in Manhattan where you can buy saris (Lexington Avenue in the 20’s) and cheap, delicious Indian food (6^th Street east of 2^nd Avenue) – though most people from India do their shopping in Jackson Heights – or have a Korean lunch at any one of half a dozen restaurants a stone’s throw from Macy’s.

Then there are the commercial districts. The Diamond District (47^th Street and 7^th Avenue), where orthodox Jews dressed in black make their way through the crowds into glittering stores and up narrow stairs.  They are reputed to carry thousands of dollars’ worth of gems in their pockets, but they are rarely if ever robbed. 

The old Flower district http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4759  (around 6^th Avenue and 28^th Street), is largely gone, though the wholesale market is still there, hidden from the public.  A couple of tatty-looking stores remain – still great places to buy silk flowers, by the way.

One of the “districts” that I find most useful is the area around 6^th Avenue and 38^th Street – the home of the trimmings/buttons/buckles stores, especially the enormous M&J Trimmings http://www.mjtrim.com/?CMP=KNC-tt-trimmings .  They are part of the Garment District, which now likes to call itself the Fashion Center. http://www.fashioncenter.com  This is the neighborhood where traffic slows to a crawl as packed garment racks are wheeled through the streets, and trucks double-park to unload their merchandise.

The problem for ethnic neighborhoods is an obvious one – the price of real estate in Manhattan.  The Lower East Side, once heavily Jewish, is now being overtaken by developers.  Harlem now has the same huge chain stores as everyone else, along with some famous soul food restaurants (and Bill Clinton’s office).  And while the predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in upper Manhattan are still there, more and more young career-starters are moving there for the relative bargains in real estate.

My neighborhood was once German, but most of that has gone (See “Gone but not forgotten.” A little further down is the Hungarian area, where some older people still live, the Hungarian grocery store sells dozens of different kinds of sausage, and travel agents specialize in inexpensive fares to Budapest.

Outside Manhattan

Most of the truly "ethnic" neighborhoods are outside Manhattan.  Many of them are now being discovered by the young, attracted by lower prices and not concerned about feeling "different" in the neighborhood, as they once might have.  Will these areas lose their ethnicity as time passes? We'll have to wait and see.

Astoria, Queens, is well known as a Greek neighborhood, but a lot of other immigrant groups move there as well.  It's popular with Czechs and Bangladesh, among others.  Once, last summer, we followed some music, and found ourselves in an immense Bangladeshi festival - gorgeous clothes, music, fun. Astoria is on the N or W subway line, or the M60 bus - either way is an easy ride from Midtown.

If you ask any Irish bartender or waitress in Manhattan where they live, chance are they'll say Woodside, Queens.  We discovered the Irish bar/restaurants in Woodside a year or so ago - many of them warm, friendly places with hearty food and good beer, and sometimes music.  To get there, just hop the Q32 bus (it starts on 32nd Street, near Macy's), goes up Madison Avenue and across the 59th Street Bridge.

Brooklyn has a number of ethnic neighborhoods too - Borough Park is Orthodox Jewish, Bensonhurst is Italian, among others.  A long time ago, I discovered Atlantic Avenue, where Middle Eastern bakeries, groceries and music stories occupy block after block.  The open-hearth oven at Near East Bakery has great meat pies and pita bread.  And a couple of years ago we finally took the subway to Brighton Beach for lunch at one of the many Russian restaurants, on the beach and the avenue (and took home bags of frozen pelmeni - tiny dumplings you serve with vinegar and sour cream - yum!)

Speaking of dumplings - the best ones I know are made at a tiny hole-in-the-wall place on Allen Street near Delancey, called, appropriately, Fried Dumpling.  They have another place now, but it's still a place where you share tiny tables wherever there is space.  And the price is amazing - 5 dumplings or pork buns for $1 - two of us usually get all we can eat for $3, $4 if we're really hungry!  And you can buy bags of 30 (frozen) to take home.

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