Astoria Characters Day

THERE WILL BE NO ASTORIA CHARACTERS DAY IN 2020.

Astoria Characters Day 2019: The 10th Anniversary is a free, public event that celebrates the accomplishments of the people profiled in this blog, which runs every week in the Long Island City/Astoria Journal’s print and digital editions as well as on this website, which includes the archives. The annual event, started in 2017, attracts about 200 people.

Details: Sept. 15, 2019, 2 to 4 p.m., Variety Boys & Girls Club, 21-12 30th Rd., LIC 11102

On Astoria Characters Day 2019, you’ll:

  • Meet the characters and their friends and families. Let the characters entertain you – there will be comedians, actors, dancers and other artistic folks who take the stage. The 2019 lineup includes Natalia ‘Saw Lady’ Paruz, Guitar Guide Guru Mike David Papapavlou,  comics Ben Rosenfeld and Michelle Slonim, uke/guitar player Masafumi Sakai, Salsa In Queens dancers, Queens poet laureate Maria Lisella and activist Brendan Fay.
  • The 2018 entertainment lineup included the Long Island City Ballet, Violinist Marina Fragoulis, Comic Ben Rosenfeld, Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella, Simona Rodano (The Italian Fairy), Harpist Tracey Horst, Broadway Dance Studio and Performance Artist Audrey Dimola.
  • Greet your neighbors and get to know the people who live on your block and subway stop.
  • Eat lunch (burgers, veggie burgers, fries and onion rings) compliments of Bareburger. (You read that right: This fabulous food is free!)

Read all about 2017’s Astoria Characters Day.

Read all about 2018’s Astoria Characters Day.

Astoria Characters Day Sponsor

The Story of Astoria Characters

Astoria Characters, the weekly blog that was published in the HuffPost from September 2009 until mid-January 2018, profiles the people in my Queens, New York neighborhood.

It continues to be published in the digital and print versions of the Long Island City/Astoria Journal and on this website, which includes the archives.

Astoria, which Archie Bunker and the Steinway & Sons piano factory call home, is the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in New York City, and when I moved here in 2005, I became fascinated with the people, nearly 50 percent of them foreign-born, who were walking up and down my street. I wondered what their stories were.

In September 2009, in the tradition of Mark Twain, I, a transplant from the “Show-Me” state of Missouri, assumed the role of an “innocent abroad.”

I set out to paint a portrait, in words and photos, of the actors in this wonderfully eccentric working-class neighborhood, where the same old ladies who throw cardboard pizza cartons into the street rush out with their brooms at the first blush of spring to save the pavement from the kiss of falling rose petals.

It was my intent to create a vibrant documentary-style tableau vivant that would serve as a historical snapshot of life in Astoria in the first decades of the 21st Century.

My premise was that every one of the 182,000 residents in this northwest Queens neighborhood 15 minutes from Bloomingdale’s flagship in Manhattan has a singular story that deserves its own 15 minutes of fame.

I’ve told the stories of people who come from all over the world – Argentina, Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Greece, Guyana, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Trinidad and Tobago and Turkey – and around the country — nearly every state in the union from New York to California as well as Hawaii and Alaska.

Each of them, from the 101-year-old wheelchair-bound woman who lives for each new day to the man from Mexico who makes his living as a clown, has been a revelation to me.

I assumed that Astoria Characters would appeal to people who live and work in the neighborhood, but the stories I’ve been told – of hard luck and hard work, of determination and dreams – have resonated with readers around the world.

Astoria Characters also has accomplished something I never expected: It has made the community of Astoria closer.

I’ve watched people who never paid much attention to each other greet each other on the street.

They truly feel like neighbors because although they come from different countries, they’ve told me that they now know, from reading Astoria Characters, that they really are very much alike.