Sunday I went to ESparks Café on Roosevelt Ave @ 59th Street. It turned into a beautiful day as I sat there grading papers. I left the house on a grey Sunday looking for a quiet place to get some work done away from the kids. I got a decent cup of coffee and was treated well by the "barrista" (an awful and pretentious name for a coffee-clerk). There were people in the café on a Sunday afternoon, which made me happy since it is the first "bourgeois" amenity in this part of Woodside. I want this place to thrive, because it is the first place like it in Woodside. Now, I've tried drinking Coffee at Mango Café on 61st St and Woodside Pizza on 60th and 44th Ave and, while they were kind enough the vibes were all wrong: they are restaurants not a cafés, where you can "camp." (La Flor Café, an excellent spot, is just a bit too far away for me to grade, and it is a brunch joint on Sunday afternoons.)
I asked the guy who came by cleaning the counter near me how to pronounce espark's: is ot "e-Sparks" or "Esparks?" Because all the workers that day looked latino I thought it might be that the addition of the "e" to the dipthong "sp," because in Spanish they don't usually start words with s-dipthongs, my brother's name often suffers from that and he becomes Estaffor (for Stafford). Rather, the name is because the Parks started the café to sell Espresso (where the extra "s" went to, I don't know). A Korean-American cafe, peopled by latinos and Asians, serving coffee and cakes to JOJ Irish people pushing fancy strollers, is exactly why I love Woodside Queens.
I had a great day scrapping through six student essays: sinceI only turned the page sideways to write SUMMARY alongside of three paragraphs it was a good day. I had a nice stretch of window counter facing out at Evangeline's Filipino bakery and restaurant. It is so-so according to the mabuhay cognoscenti: Tito Rad's over by PC Richards on Queens Boulevard and 59th is what my Filipino friends like. As I looked up there were almost always people out on the street, families and delivery people mostly, kids licking cones from Carvel and a couple of drunks staggering by with the colors of African Liberation wrapped in their blonde dreadlocks. I think I admire the working class whites that haven't fled the neighborhood as much as anyone, I'm glad I'm allowed to feel comfortable here now.
As I graded the third paper I looked up and jackets were suddenly tied around waists and the sun was streaming down through the Elevated, looking something like the venetian blinds in a noire film. But as the skate punks stood aside to let the families and retirees stream out of St. Sebastian's around the corner after mass I started to see why I am so happy to have moved to Woodside. I am glad to live in a neighborhood where EVERYBODY fits in.
I just have to say watching the three scooter delivery guys from the Chinese restaurant around the corner was a welcome diversion for me. It seemed each time I had to stop to write "¿thesis?" they'd be headed out or back or both. I love seeing delivery guys work out how to stack the goods on the scooters and joke between deliveries around the fur-mittened scooters with the duct-tape holding them together. It is a reminder of my younger days messengering. I miss the esprit de corps of delivery riders, even if they don't have the cachet of the track-bike-messenger I was in the 1980s; it is the same gig. (I'll bet we have the same brakes: none!)
The coffee was good and Esparks had the welcome and welcoming vibe of the corporate megafauna, but I was avoiding the corporatization of Queens. I have to say that when I lived in Sunnyside I liked the two Cafes there "The Grind" @ 39th Pl and Queens Boulevard and Café Aubergine on Skillman and 50th, but now they are too far away, so here is where I'll have to tipple my joe. Woodside lacks the intimacy of Sunnyside gardens with its painfully cute houses, gardens and trees, but Roosevelt Ave is as nice a "high Street" as there is in New York. Esparks is a damn fine addition with all of the comfort and ambiance of any café, well it is a bit bourgeois and neat, not like The Grind or the Mission Café's of San Francisco, but it is a great meeting place in Woodside.
59-02 Woodside Ave Woodside, NY 11377
http://www.yelp.com/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esparkscoffee.com&src_bizid=5_S4tBhVm7s7kCgDslKmbw
I just learned that they have another branch that was favorably reviewed other places, And if I was a reviewer instead of a romantic I'd tell you the important things that those other reviews included like ireless access and baked goods and the like. I hear they are hiring. I'm glad I already have a job.
