Day 298 - I ♥ Ridgewood!

Ridgewood, Queens (and for that matter, Ridgewood, Brooklyn) have been pre-occupations of mine this spring. A group of friends with whom I do informal walking tours of outer borough neighborhoods came here in April. I returned today. The neighborhood, which straddles the Brooklyn-Queens border, is an amazing mix of sold, handsome housing stock that manages not to be ostentatious. It is mostly rows of 3- and 4-story apartment buildings, uniformly constructed by the same builder around 1931. Blond and deep orange brick face dominate, giving sun dappled streets a warm glow in the late afternoon.

It began as an enclave of German refuges who arrived between the world wars. There is a smattering of Germans left, many of whom find camaraderie at Gottscheer Hall on Onderdonk Ave. This period place has been reinvigorated in the past several years by the general manager Will Osanitsch. On Friday nights there is live music--often of old German influence.

Today, the residents are much more mixed. Poles have moved in over the past few years as they have been priced out of gentrifying Greenpoint. Each street has a healthy share of Hispanic residents, too, though their proportion is greater on the Brooklyn side of Cypress Avenue.

The whole area retains an old-time feel. Stores are entirely locally owned with simple signs that provide basic neighborhood goods and services. Aside from uniformly beautiful brick buildings, the most dominating feature of the neighborhood is the elevated branch of the Jamaica El which passes through here on the way to Fresh Pond Road.

You can imagine this being the next cool place to become hippified. God help us.

Grover Cleveland Park, at the north end of the neighborhood, and nearly in the shadow of the imposing spires of St. Aloysious RC church, is a center of family activity after school hours during the week. Mothers gather in klatches at the edge of the playground while gaggles of kids clamber up slides and swing from monkey bars. If the trees aren't fully in leaf--and if the sun isn't setting in your eyes--you can gaze west, and catch the teeth of Manhattan's skyline beyond the low-lying plain near the mouth of Newtown Creek.

Wander a little east and south from Grover Cleveland and you'll come across the most bizarrely decorated house you're likely to see outside of Halloween. (See pics below.)