The New York Times visited Houdini Kitchen Laboratory, a restaurant in Ridgewood. Since you get to it by taking the L train to Halsey Street, this happened:
Of course, there are now artist studios upstairs, and a free tattoo party may be in swing down the street. But to a first-time visitor, clutching a MetroCard, the scene is desolate. You are 10 stops out of Manhattan on the L line, in the borderland where Bushwick, Brooklyn, blurs into Ridgewood, Queens. (Welcome to Quooklyn.)
Emphasis ours. Quooklyn. Makes you want to swallow your tongue out of shame after hearing yourself say it. You know, because if a place is near Brooklyn it must secretly be part of it. Every non-food sentence in the review is a masterwork of uncomfortable outerborough visit purse clutching, but the biggest question for us is why you’d be still be holding your MetroCard by the time you got to the Halsey Stop. Don’t you pocket it when you get on the train?
Previously in awful new neighborhood names: RAMBO, Bedwick, Parkwanus
View Comments (6)
That's interesting. I long ago dubbed the New York Times "toilet paper."
Cantinflas is my favorite person
One (?) word: ProCro
This is awful. It even feels like you might barf if you say it out loud.
Why do people feel the need to change the neighborhood name just because they have now taken residence there? Is it to mask the fact that before you moved here, you more than likely referred to any place that wasn't Manhattan as "the ghetto". We like the names of our streets, neighborhoods and communities, so just move in and call it what it is, in this case "Ridgewood", stop acting like you've just discovered a new place.
so iconic