Corona Plaza

[Sneakeater]

On 9/7/2022 at 8:53 AM, Anthony Bonner said:

My last two meals at Park Side have been post friends parents funerals on LI where I drop off my childhood best friend in Jackson Heights - so we saw the scene but weren't really in the mood to do it up.  Maybe I gotta do a Mets game with AB^2 and said friend and go there afterwords.  Is it an evening or daytime scene.

Since you asked . . . .

You walk down the stairs from the 103rd St.–Corona Plaza 7 train el stop* and you emerge in . . . Mexico!  You think you're in Tepito or something, not Queens.

The Plaza -- its official name is National Plaza, after one of the streets that border it, but even the MTA calls it Corona Plaza like everybody else -- is ringed by food stands.  Mainly tacos:  Pueblan, Oaxacan, others.  There are also other Mexican stands, and at least one Ecuadorean.  They frankly aren't as good as the Red Hook Ball Fields food trucks used to be -- but maybe that’s just cuz we've gotten used to having good Mexican street food since then.

It's the scene.

But what makes this scene so great is that sometimes it's a total party:  bands, dancing, speechifying, the works.

The problem is, I haven't been able to suss out when (or why) that happens.  Often, it's just the food and whatever the Mexican word is for tchotchke (txoxke?) stands.  There's no pattern I can discern.  (Not that it isn't worth it just for the stands and the crowd.)

Life being what it is, I've only been there for early dinners.  I have a feeling that's prime time.  It doesn't seem to keep going so much after dark (which is getting depressingly earlier every night).

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* Be sure to take the 7 express (demarcated by a diamond-shaped line insignia rather than a circular one), changing to the local at Junction Boulevard, one stop before 103rd St-Corona Plaza.  It's amazing how fast it is (and how many stations it skips).

[joethefoodie]

So is it really like a continuation of what has been going on on Roosevelt Avenue for quite some time?

[voyager]

1 hour ago, Sneakeater said:

The problem is, I haven't been able suss out when (or why) that happens.  Often, it's just the food and whatever the Mexican word for tchotchke (txoxke?) stands.  There's no pattern I can discern.  (Not that it isn't worth it just for the stands and the crowd.)

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Do you not describe that serendipitous moment we occasionally encounter?     Not planned, not expected and not defined to the point that it is replicable?     

 

[Sneakeater]

1 hour ago, joethefoodie said:

So is it really like a continuation of what has been going on on Roosevelt Avenue for quite some time?

Much more intense.  

[Sneakeater]

Roosevelt Avenue isn't a party.

[Sneakeater]

And Roosevelt Avenue isn't a plaza.

[AaronS]

this reminds me I never got to the night market that was happening not so far away pre covid.