Exciting stuff going on these days as the universe continues to revolve around Queens, as well it should. First off, yours truly is scheduled to be on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, 820 on your AM dial, this Friday sometime between 11:25 and 11:40 in the a.m. perhaps even the whole 15 minutes. Truly, we all do get our 15 minutes of fame. We’ll be discussing Queens blogging. I do not expect to be alone (John from About.com? Harpsichordist Meg?), but at the moment, I am severely lacking in details. I certainly hope you got invited, Forest Hills 72 — after all, you’re actually posting stuff.

Second, there’s a new weekly newspaper in town: Forum West, covering Forest Hills, Rego Park and several other areas with which this website does not concern itself. It’s the companion to Forum South, an existing paper focusing on parts of Queens I’ve been to maybe once or not at all. Queens gadfly and Forgotten NY mainstay Christina Wilkinson is the editor and promises less pay-as-you-go journalism and more stories you might actually want to read. I will be contributing a column, and if there’s anything you’d like to see me cover, you know where to find me. No website yet, but stay tuned.

Are we changing the cachet yet?

Got an e-mail from a New York Times reporter today who’s doing a neighborhood profile on Rego Park and wants to talk to people who live there, particularly if they’re “active in the community” or recently moved there and love it. Interested? E-mail me and I’ll send you her contact info. Don’t miss this chance to represent for Rego in the Gray Lady!

I’ve returned from Oklahoma just in time to discover that my home borough has New York City’s largest inferiority complex, though I could have told you that. Apparently the hot new term is “third borough syndrome,” as coined by the Queens Tribune, and surely this is the first time the Trib has ever come up with a phrase that garnered coverage in The New York Times. You know what my favorite thing about third borough syndrome is? The implicit disrespect to the Bronx and Staten Island, which have apparently dropped off the list — if they were ever on it in the first place — of boroughs even worth a moment of consideration. Doesn’t this sorta prove that Queens is now big time? The NYT deigns to mention it in the same breath as Manhattan — ritzy! – and Brooklyn — super hip! The buzzword for Queens is real, as “third borough syndrome” originator Tom Finkelpearl (great name) puts it.

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A few days ago, I unilaterally declared that Central Queens would never be graced by one of Virgin Mobile’s snarky “You Rule” ads that have been popping up in fashionable neighborhoods around the city and proceeded to create my own for Forest Hills.

But shockingly, I spoke too soon! On a spring photography walk through eastern Forest Hills and western Kew Gardens this afternoon, I spotted the specimen at right, appropriately on a bus shelter directly in front of Borough Hall. Full text after the jump.

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Here’s a dirty little secret of mine: Every Thursday, I grab a copy of amNewYork from the preacher-emulating distributor outside my subway station (“Yesssssss!” he shouts as I take it from his hand) and, walking with one eye on avoiding collisions with fellow pedestrians, frantically flip to the City Living section to see if there’s a profile this week of some neighborhood within my sphere of existence. The worst-case scenario is some Manhattan area that’s been done to death, like the Upper West Side. Better is an outer-borough neighborhood with which I’m only glancingly familiar, like, say, Kensington. But the jackpot is one of the neighborhoods covered by this site. As a matter of statistics, this doesn’t happen very often. But today, amNewYork’s Miranda Siegel turns her attention to Rego Park.

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I’ve long been simultaneously amused and infuriated by the shameless, horrible reviews of restaurants in the various Queens weeklies. If you’ve never read any of these reviews, oh, I highly recommend it. Their writers — who either have no standards whatsoever, are on the take from the restaurant ownership, or are under strict instructions from their publishers not to veer from the most unflinching community boosterism possible, and maybe all three — can barely contain their excitement as they stain their pages with endless purple prose about mediocre-to-terrible restaurants. These hacks must be held up to public ridicule. That’s why I’m starting a new occasional feature here at the QC: The Queens Restaurant Review Review.

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Have you heard? It’s Spider-Man Week in NYC. All this week, to celebrate the opening of Spidey’s newest mega-blockbuster, events and promotions are taking place all over New York in recognition of the influence Peter Parker’s hometown has had on the Webslinger’s mythos — and Queens, the home borough of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, is no exception.

A huge Hollywood-style premiere in Astoria! An exhibit at New York Hall of Science! A tribute at the Museum of Moving Image! Yes, everything is coming up red and black — except in the one neighborhood where Peter Parker actually grew up.

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Fascinating article in The New York Times yesterday about how just one small business is transforming Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

I’ve never been to Ditmas Park, but what little I’ve heard about it in the past amounts to this: It’s a cheaper alternative to Park Slope, and there ain’t nothing there. In some ways, it seems not dissimilar to Forest Hills or Kew Gardens — nice, safe, good schools, grand old houses. According to a laughably outdated 2001 article in New York magazine ($675,000 for a nine-bedroom house? Hilarous!), Midtown is “[30] to 40 minutes” away on the Q train, so Ditmas residents certainly can’t lob accusations of being far from the city at us here in Central Queens. And it sounds like we’ve got them whipped in terms of retail and services.

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According to an in-the-know QC operative — yes, we already have anonymous sources — The New York Times is planning a big Queens package for May. No solid information yet as to the content, but of course, we all have much love for Queens cheerleading by the MSM media juggernaut. The NYT has thrown some nice coverage our way before, so we can only hope that this brush with fame will be similarly successful.

Journalistic puffery about Forest Hills is definitely mounting. If you’re not a “there goes the neighborhood” type, it’s tough not to get a little excited.