Queens Visit Culinary Hitlist

• Blue Bay Diner (chicken scampi over rice with ice-cold iceberg salad)
  
• Amore Pizza (2 slices with pink drink)
  
• Cascarino's (chicken staiano)
  
• Le Cheesecake's brownies
  
• if possible, Chinese Mexican quesadilla with ketchup-based "salsa" (easier to get in Manhattan)
  
• Five Guys cheeseburger with malt vinegar-doused fries

That should leave room for one home-cooked meal.

Homesickness, continued.

I want Amore pizza for lunch (with unidentified pink fruit drink) and Cascarino's chicken staiano for dinner.

Cab Man of Amarillo

He's a big, bearded, Suburban-driving behemoth, whose massive gut kisses the steering wheel during even the most gradual stops and turns. "I spend most of my time at the airport because I hate the fucking people here--that's because most of them are fucking assholes." When pressed, he reveals his roots: "I'm from New York City...Broadway and 225th in the Bronx."

NY

The first crisp-appearing day of autumn, and I miss my hometown. The full range of New York looks fully different in autumn light. I want to stop by and make sure the geography and infrastructure are still there. The people don't really matter. They come and go. They don't know that Manhattan is a borough. They think they are worshipped by their families back in the Midwest for living in Park Slope. They think they are worshipped by pained artists and almost cool kids everywhere for living in Williamsburg. Sometimes I hate my education because it allows me to see these virulent monstrosities that dent the image and my own memory of the city. Working-class Queens life is just one tiny puzzle piece of the "eight million stories" of the city, fodder for the transplants to grab in their grubby hands and make sitcoms of.