Claret?

Claret, that's the name of the new wine bar on my corner. You may recall, a few months ago I tried to come up with a name for it (see, here). I had lots of good options, for example: The Bloody Virgin, Stems, The Cellar Door, The Crimson, etc. Apparently, none were good enough because Claret it is. Sure, they don't have a sign, but the menus all say Claret, the AM New York blog says Claret, so, that's that, it's Claret.

It's a cool spot. Brand new touches all around. When you step in, you'll never believe that it used to be a run-down pharmacy. Frosted glass tiles in the bathroom, smooth metal bar top, fold-in, retractable windows, deep, dark wood floors, similarly dark wood furniture shipped from Indonesia, 70+ bottles of wine at your disposal, roughly 30 by the glass, beer on tap, beer in bottles, classic sodas in miniature glasses, artwork by local artists adorning the walls, lots of dark places for doing dark deeds, and the part-owner is a personal friend. He's also my barber. He's been cutting my hair for over 4 years, and when I found out he was opening a wine bar in the neighborhood, I thought, great, I finally know a bar owner. I always wanted to own a bar so I could drink there for free. This is almost as good. I can drink there. Just not for free.

As far as I know, it's the first wine bar in Sunnyside. In other words, Sunnyside, is officially on the map. Astoria has its beer garden. We have a wine bar. Astoria has tons of wine bars. We have a wine bar. Astoria has lots of great ethnic food. Did I mention that we have a wine bar? From now on, whenever someone asks me where I live, and I say, Sunnyside, I fully expect them to know that Sunnyside is in between Long Island City and Woodside on the 7 line. I fully expect them to know that Sunnyside is immediately southeast of Astoria. I fully expect them to be jealous and wish they were me. I fully expect them to know that we have a super-duper retro art-deco arch, a 24-hour White Castle, and a wine bar. It feels good to get in on the ground floor of these suburban, outer-borough bubble explosions. It's like being the first guy to move to Bushwick and a week later everyone started calling it East Williamsburg.

So get on the train, come to Sunnyside, and go to Claret. Who knows, maybe you'll want to stay.

Jared

P.S. To get to Claret, take the 7 train towards Flushing-Main St., get off at 46th-Bliss St., walk north from Queens Boulevard two avenues to Skillman Ave. Claret is on the southeast corner of 46th and Skillman.

P.P.S. Maybe I'll stop by and take some pictures and upload them so you can all see what I attempted to describe.

P.P.P.S. Thanks Bogdan.

Sucked Back In

Life sometimes gets in the way of blogging about life. For instance, I went to Boston with Girl a couple weeks ago. We walked the Freedom Trail in freezing weather, ate a lot of food, and slept on an air mattress. We had fun. When we returned, I was set to blog all about it. I even had the perfect title (read: the first, semi-creative title that popped into my mind) for that post:

One if by land, two if by sea, three and a half hours by train.

Sadly, said post was never written. But if you re-read the third sentence, then you have a pretty good idea of what I would've spent at least 5 paragraphs elaborating on. In fact, I was all set to just abandon Sunnyside Lowdown. Please, don't cry for me, Sunnyside Lowdown reader. The truth is, if you wait long enough, you lose the desire to do anything. This post proves, however, that if you wait even longer than that, then you will regain that desire. In essence, what goes around comes around and this just took some more going around. Also, I received a comment on my Jonathan Ames post ("Mr. Ames, I Presume") saying, if I may paraphrase, that I'm awesome. Getting a positive comment certainly helps to push things along. It makes you feel wanted, needed, and who doesn't get off on that? So thanks to Lola, whoever you are, and as Randy Quaid said in Independence Day, "Hello, boys!!! I'mmm Baaaaaaack!!!!"

Back with what? Wouldn't we all like to know. I could tell you about how I'm watching Outbreak right now. I DVRed it. In fact, I own it on VHS and have seen it at least 8 times, but I don't have a VCR so I'm playing it back on TV. It's a good movie. Underrated, even. Great cast: Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, and Patrick Dempsey pre-being relevant again. Now that's a cast. In fact, I just finished watching The Day After Tomorrow on DVR. I must really get a kick out of doomsday films, although in Outbreak the entire Northern Hemisphere wasn't completely covered in ice. But I doubt you want to know more about that. I suppose I could inform you that Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon is a big stinking turd of a holiday movie. I'll even waste ten minutes of my life coming up with a Haiku Review:

Reese Witherspoon looks
like a gremlin in a dress.
Don't see this movie.

My aim is not impress you, but that Haiku took less than four minutes. Please allow yourself to be impressed.

Uh oh. Patrick Dempsey just released the smuggled monkey, which is carrying the deadly Motaba virus, into the wilds of California. Sounds like trouble to me. Patrick Dempsey isn't looking too good. He looks ill. Umm, he's dead. Okay, back to the post.

Well, I think I know what you all want, and, by you, I mean Lola my favorite commenter ever, and that's more poems. Sure, no problem, I happen to have a few more just laying around. Without further ado, I give you:

The Rain-

Walking home from Junior High
it was raining.
I was about to pull out my umbrella,
but I saw this girl walking ahead
with no umbrella.
She was singing.
I kept my umbrella in my backpack
and
listened.

Fly-
There's a fly flying around my apartment.
I've seen it
for four days straight.
When it gets too
close
I shoo
it away, sometimes clapping my hands to flatten it,
but I always miss.
I like to think that my heart is just not in it.

Weightlifting-
Went to the gym
tried to lift
100 lbs. with
one arm
Couldn't do it.

That's it for now, back to Outbreak.

Jared.