Queens Walk

About a month ago, my friends and I took a long, rambling walk through Queens to eventually eat lunch at the Goodfellas Diner. We stumbled upon a delightfully vintage Carvel ice cream shop and so many wonderful storefronts, signage and neighborhoods that we would have never known about had we taken the bus or train.

We made a slight detour to stop at Rudy's Pastry shop, a German-American bakery which has been in Ridgewood since 1934. It had been on my radar for a while, but it was a great place to stop halfway along our journey. We got some treats and admired their wooden display cases, beautiful handpainted signage and large spools of baker's twine hanging from the ceiling.

Ridgewood has been hailed as an "affordable alternative" to more trendy places like Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and I can definitely see why. We walked past some wonderful shops, cute single-family houses and a lot of Polish, German and other eastern-European restaurants. I love finding places in New York that really feel authentic, in a way that can only be created over time and with the right mix of people and ethnicities.

The Goodfellas Diner is located in Maspeth, which is more industrial than Ridgewood, and after lunch we continued north into Woodside where we eventually caught a train. Queens is home to so many excellent cemeteries (and World's Fair history!) that I was already destined to spend a great deal of time there, but this walk only strengthened my love for New York's largest—but often-underrated— borough.