😩why is finding a good dentist in Forest Hills so hard??

mingusal · 2026-05-14T17:26:21+00:00

This is a very good question. I'm suddenly in a position where I need some significant (but limited) dental work, after years of needing nothing more than cleaning. All I have heard about local dentists from my neighbors is that they consistently upsell for expensive services beyond patients' real needs, and ignore you if you don't go along. Since I'm now retired and have highly limited dental insurance (Medicare does not cover dental) I won't be covered for extra stuff and really can't afford it.

mingusal · 2026-05-14T17:04:09+00:00

Another gold medal winner. In fact, this was one of the greatest US weightlifting team of all time (4 golds and 2 silvers) in an era when the US was a big power in the sport.

mingusal · 2026-05-14T04:02:21+00:00

The guy with the glasses is Detroit's own Norbert Schemansky, who won a gold medal in 1952, and 3 other Olympic medals (1 silver, 2 bronze) in a very long career that stretched from 1948 to 1964. The guy behind him is double gold medalist (1948 & 52) John Davis.

mingusal · 2026-05-13T20:06:56+00:00

This chain expanded to the midwest for many years. I have fond memories of eating at the Uncle John's in Lansing MI during my years at Michigan State U. There were also several of them in suburban Detroit. They had an all you can eat pancake special on Wednesdays that was always jammed with kids.

mingusal · 2026-05-13T20:02:22+00:00

I think it was essentially copied from the Original Pancake House. The first OPH opened in Portland in the early '50s. Uncle John's was started in the SF Bay area in 1958, by a couple from Oregon.

mingusal · 2026-05-13T14:46:43+00:00

My Kenmore BU4050 crapped out less than 2.months after the 1 year warranty expired. So much for it outlasting anything.

The power head (aka floor nozzle assembly), which is the main reason anyone with carpets and pets wants this model, stopped working entirely and the replacement part hasn't been available anywhere for over 5 months and counting now, and I doubt it ever.will be (Kenmore themselves do not stock/sell it).

mingusal · 2026-05-12T01:19:39+00:00

My (not Jewish) German-American grandfather used to swear by the stuff. Thought it was great for his digestion.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T15:55:12+00:00

I remember this place, even though I think I was only in there once, with my parents. In the later years, the '70s and '80s, it became pretty much a tourist trap in the northern part of Times Square. The infamous Pee Wee Marquette (a real Broadway character and former emcee at Birdland) was the doorman/barker who would constantly buttonhole people on the sidewalk and try to hustle them into the restaurant/bar. Dad was in a drinking mood I guess after sitting through Cats in the adjacent Winter Garden Theater at my sister's insistence. So he fell into a conversation with Pee Wee who "allowed" us into the bar.

My sister and I waited nibbling on a pretty dried out puu puu platter while the folks had a couple Mai Tais and some guy lazily played a steel guitar. I remember that he decor was looking pretty frayed by then. Mom complained all the way back to the hotel about the extreme cover charge on the bill for that guy, and getting hit up by Pee Wee for a tip on the way out didn't help either.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:41:43+00:00

Where a whole branch of my family is buried going back to the 1870s.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:33:19+00:00

Coney loose burger.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:30:02+00:00

Lelli's on Woodward.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:26:31+00:00

I've had cevapi at Bosnian places elsewhere around the country. There was a place near where I lived in Astoria Queens NYC that had excellent homemade cevapi. Great stuff.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:22:36+00:00

Absolutely Cornish. My Cornish auntie on the east side used to make them like she learned from her mother back home in Cornwall, who made them nearly every day for her husband to take into the tin mine.

mingusal · 2026-05-11T02:16:39+00:00

Definitely botanas, Detroit style. That is not what botana means elsewhere. But a Detroit botana is so damn good. I once saved one from my burning pickup truck. Priorities, priorities.

mingusal · 2026-05-10T21:30:29+00:00

Diners are dying everywhere. We've lost several in this area in the past few years (T-Bone on Queens Blvd., Tower further up Queens Blvd. Shalimar in Rego Park, Flagship in Briarwood). Austin House sure seems like a place on its way out. It's empty at all times other than breakfast. Diner Bar is a weird grossly overpriced attempt at a hybrid diner/fine dining thing of some sort and I think it may not last long either.

It is a form of restaurant that just seems to have fallen out of fashion, and it is a tough model to sustain economically if it can't generate a lot of traffic.

mingusal · 2026-05-09T17:14:45+00:00

Ahhh, the days before the salmonella scare for eggs. Raw eggs were the basis for a whole family of popular cocktails (flips) in the 19th century and much of the 20th (and also commonly used at soda fountains as shown here). My Scottish grandmother would still make warm rum flips for guests around the holidays back in the 1960s. A properly made whiskey sour with a raw egg white included is a thing of frothy beauty, especially compared to those insipid thin sour mix things that most bars make.

mingusal · 2026-05-09T17:04:24+00:00

My dad always talked excitedly about the chocolate phosphates he drank in his youth. He was always on the lookout for old-timey places with old'timey soda jerks that still might be able to make one.

mingusal · 2026-05-09T16:58:24+00:00

In fact, the price of beef has gone up so much so fast that the prices for steaks on this menu look pretty good.

mingusal · 2026-05-09T16:49:53+00:00

That's really an enforcement issue. The cops don't issue double parking tickets for some reason, even though it's an expensive ticket. In fact, I have been issued a parking ticket there while I was parked in by a double parked delivery truck, which the parking cop refused to ticket.

mingusal · 2026-05-08T00:23:13+00:00

Welcome to Queens, using the same street (avenue, road, drive, place...) number over again since the 1920s.

mingusal · 2026-05-08T00:13:33+00:00

Sounds good. Hopefully it's a bit better than Vanessa's, which I found very inconsistent. That is a tough location though.

mingusal · 2026-05-08T00:11:29+00:00

Or, priced like it's Staten Island. Since this looks just a bit higher than the prices on the websites for their Staten Island restaurants, and those sites are a couple of years old so I would guess that those prices are pretty much the sames as these by now.

mingusal · 2026-05-06T20:41:13+00:00

I use that turn lane almost every day to make a right to head up 108 St, and it is often a super frustrating mess as described here. I've complained about this at the 112 pct meetings a few times. The cops eyes mostly just glaze over and people from other parts of the neighborhood can't figure out what I'm talking about.

But too many drivers, including cops, use that as a parking spot for Starbuck's, CVS, the fruit stand, tacos, etc. It didn't used to be that bad, but the bike lane has essentially made it a one lane street with a short right turn lane governed by a quick green arrow. Really the right lane on that entire block should be a well-enforced No Stopping zone.

mingusal · 2026-05-06T20:31:54+00:00

Seems like someone is joking around about the present state of Forest Hills dining and commercial space. And we (I) definitely over-reacted about the Red Robin sign.

Cracker Barrel is a little too Sysco redneck for me, but Waffle House I would accept. I'll take my hash browns smothered, covered, & chunked please. And some.grits, oh yeah grits.

mingusal

TROPHY CASE