This project forced me to be more aware of my surroundings. I am easily distractable by the constant sensory input of the urban environment; this project required filtering through all the stimuli around me to discern individual events. This was quite painstaking for me as my notes were a jumble of various observations. The outside research mostly corroborated whatever I observed and provided context.
Throughout the project I had an awareness that I was clearly not the first person to study or visit the neighborhood. I wanted to take advantage of prior observations and media about Astoria to contextualize my findings. On an anecdotal level I noticed a lot of street art but I wasn’t sure whether there is a tradition of street art in the area. This video demonstrated that Astoria does in fact have a long history of street art. The epicenter of this tradition is Welling Court, a small side street. Artists from all over the world flock to this otherwise nondescript street to paint murals, turning a local tradition into a global one.
My personal identity as a very loosely affiliated Jew did not really factor into my research much. Many people believe that there is a fundamental tension between Jewish and Arab communities in New York but I did not feel any sense of hostility in the Middle Eastern areas of Astoria. I acknowledge that this may have been different if I were wearing religious garb, but I did notice several ultra-Orthodox Jews who did not seem to feel uncomfortable in the area. I do strongly believe in pluralism and diversity, so perhaps my idealism may have caused me to overlook any ethnic tensions.
This project was not totally novel to me since I took an urban anthropology class last semester. I compared Flushing and Cobble Hill in a research paper. I collected demographic statistics and then statistics on the types of restaurants in the area sorted by cuisine and compared them. I learned that affluent white people enjoy Asian food but not Asian people; the percentage of Asian people in majority-white Cobble Hill is a third of the percentage of Asian restaurants. This methodology of using quantitative facts to uncover demographic truths is already familiar to me.
Taste was a natural choice for me when my group was delegating the senses because I feel taste is a way of traveling on a micro level. There is nothing I love more than travel. Food is universal and the most approachable, undaunting way of experiencing another culture. Food is literally digestible history.
After our research in Astoria, I began to reflect on what makes an area robust and well-rounded. I have always felt that my home neighborhood, Marine Park, lacks something despite its community feel and tree-lined friendliness. My excursions in Astoria clarified this feeling to me. For one, it is only easily accessible by bus or car and not by train. Secondly, its food selection is very sparse. There are only pizza stores, diners and Irish pubs as opposed to the vast cultural selection of Astoria. It does not have a dedicated local produce market (the produce market I shop at is not directly in the area). I believe that a neighborhood must have these amenities in order to be well-rounded and inclusive.
Gentrification is another major issue that must be looked at when studying New York. Statistically, I was unable to make any major conclusions about gentrification in Astoria. This illuminates one of the primary problems with statistics. Although they may be seen as ironclad proofs of societal trends, they are unnuanced and lack complexity. Astoria has always been a primarily white area, according to the definition of whiteness which includes “ethnic whites” like Italians, Greeks and Jews. Because of the census’s broad classification of even Middle Eastern and North African people as white, it was difficult to determine the exact demographics of the area. However, the percentage of whites has basically remained constant within the past decade; this is in contrast to other neighborhoods that had a sharp uptick in white residents after gentrification occurred. Many local news sources insist that Astoria is gentrifying, but because (typically white) gentrifiers would be included in the same percentage as ethnic white “indigenous” residents it is difficult to determine if this is a statistically significant trend.
During my research, I came to realize how many people take the cultural wealth of our city for granted. As a child my mom would take me on weekly trips to local institutions like Met and MOMA in the summer. I did not appreciate these trips at the time but now I realize my life has been enhanced by growing up in such close proximity to these world-class museums. I also realized the cultural wealth of NYC isn’t represented solely by its formal cultural institutions such as museums. Our greatest assets are our people and the monuments they have created to their culture on a small scale. In Astoria, I discovered a small-scale “museum” in the form of Athens Square Park. Mayors of several Greek cities had donated statues to be placed in the park in honor of the Greek culture of the area. This is reminiscent of a park I’ve been to in my mom’s home neighborhood in southern Brooklyn, Sheepshead Bay. It is a Holocaust park, which sounds like an absurd juxtaposition. However, the six rocks representing the six million Jews that died are actually quite a powerful monument. The vibrant Russian Jewish community of the surrounding area is also a testament to perseverance against racism and genocide. Sometimes, the small-scale, lesser-known grassroots monuments and museums to preserve a culture or history are more powerful and evocative than world-renowned landmarks.
Overall, I learned about the value of sitting and observing rather than rushing through a neighborhood without observing my surroundings. This is often forgotten in our hustle-bustle culture. I also learned about how ethnic enclaves are important in the preservation of culture and the creation of a community.
