On 51st Ave btwn Vernon & 5th st, there’s what I like to call “The Cursed BBQ Place”. It’s no longer a BBQ place, and every restaurant I’ve seen in that spot has failed miserably (including the BBQ place). I will say I was not sad to see the neon lights of Smokey’s BBQ go dim… and was actually excited at the prospect of a new restaurant that’s not BBQ pop up in its place. As we all were. Hunters Point needs all the restaurants it can get until that glorious day when we get a full-fledged grocery store.

Turns out the new restaurant, Lucky Mojos, is sort of a BBQ place in disguise: Tex-Mex and Sushi. Yeah, sounds like a strange combo, and from the word on the street (the ACTUAL street), the union is not necessarily a marriage made in heaven. Lucky Mojos, I truly had high hopes for you…but that damn curse is a force to be reckoned with. (Aren’t they all?) Smokey’s BBQ brought a carnivorous, drunken crew to the hood, but Lucky’s touts itself as a family oriented place - which is GREAT. I’ll give them that much. 1 point for LM. But that’s all they get. »

Looking South from Hunters Point, Long Island City

Nice chunk of LIC news today. Looks like those parking workshops actually listened to the people that showed up. In conjunction with the famous Congestion Charge Plan, the DOT (Dept of Transportation) is proposing a Residential Parking Permit plan for a few specific neighborhoods that could be adversely effected by parkers trying to avoid the charge. LIC is one of them of course. Though, if anyone has tried to park in Hunters Point between the hours of 6am and about 4/5pm, you know it’s impossible anyway, so those new drivers coming to park here are SOL. It will be nice though to have residential parking. All hoods in the RPP plan will be treated on a case-by-case basis involving determination by community boards etc.

It seems the allocation for the new library suddenly jumped from $20M: “…$40 million for the build-out of a new Library Services Center in Long Island City in Queens.”

Water Taxi Beach is feeling the heat before the summer begins. Urban retreat or community nuisance? Seems the board meeting controversy had more to do with the Waterfront Crabhouse upset about WTBeachers rowdily trying to use their bathrooms, but for those of us who live in the pathway from WTB to the subway… I’d say there’s definitely a community issue. Some solutions offered by WTB were to shorten hours on Sunday night and provide additional portable bathroom facilities.

• Residential parking permits for Long Island City? [Streetsblog]

• NY Public Library $1B plan includes Long Island City [Library Journal]

• Water Taxi Beach draws ire at local community board meeting [Queens Gazette]

• LICBDC gets update on Queenswest project [Queens Gazette]

• Review of Lucky Mojo’s [Daily News]

• Behind the scenes of Bjork’s ‘Wonderland’ screening [NY Sun]

• Third-generation magician’s factory makes wonders before your eyes [Daily News]

Very heavy real estate weekend. I went to the Infofest thrown by Hunters Point Condos on Saturday at Lucky Mojo on 51st Ave. Unfortunately, I missed the speakers so I can’t tell you anything about that, but there was a strong attendance which was very well catered to by LM. Most of the sushi was gobbled up by the time I got there - for those of you who made cracks about free sushi - but I did finally get a chance to sample some of the BBQ and I will say that it was quite yummy.

On Sunday, the Puck building played host to what I’ve been calling the Condo Festival. Really it was the Observer’s Luxury Living Showcase, where the latest condo developments showed us their stuff. It was PACKED. Chaotic. Brokers everywhere. Booze before noon. The booths threw tons of free stuff at us, all emblazoned with the condo logos. Most notable was a new development offering their own condo branded hot sauce.

I have to say, I’m a little generally disappointed by the new breed of architecture. Most of the developments were barely indistinguishable from each other. An overabundance of big glassy towers. And not just in LIC… but all over the boroughs. NYC is getting buried in glass. There were a few nice brick developments, but that’s it.

The View at East Coast by Rockrose was the only LIC development on hand. And they were definitely under assault by throngs of brokers. I heard lots of questions about how one gets to LIC… and are there any restaurants there yet. Haha. Isn’t that the question of the month?