Returning NYC ex-pat Michael Jaye sure hopes so!

In about a week, he is opening NY Diamond Boutique, a new fine jewelry store on Austin Street - which happens to be diagonally across the street from Chateau Jewelers! Wow, talk about having big rocks!

While window-shopping on the strip this Sunday, I came across preparations already in progress at his new store. I had a short chat with Mr. Jaye about his store and business on Austin Street. He’s been in the fine jewelry business for 20 years and returned to NYC after business was flagging at his store in the tony Buckhead area of Atlanta, GA — “Where old money lives, new money parties.”

So, nu? Why Austin Street, when other small retailers are closing? Why put up with the high rents? Why so near other jewelry stores like Chateau, Stoa, GemStory?

Mr. Jaye was very relaxed and confident about competing with the other jewelry stores in the area. He told me that, after extensive research, he found Forest Hills to have the best demographic and parameters for his store: lots of pedestrian and street traffic, “buyers, not browsers,” and, in general, shoppers with “Manhattan tastes” who come to Austin Street from all over as a “shopping destination.”

Obviously, we had never met before. [RIMSHOT]

In the name of full-disclosure, I showed Mr. Jaye my engagement ring, which was indeed purchased at Chateau, and it garnered a moment of respectful admiration.

Mr. Jaye expects to open his store around July 1, and you’ll get a free gift that he promises to be “much better than a refrigerator magnet” just for stopping in.

Good luck to NY Diamond Boutique!
P.S. By the way, if anyone else was out shopping on Sunday and was lucky enough to enjoy the sunshine - despite typhoon-like rain predicted - who was that guy next to Giorgio’s who seemed to be selling something, talking up anything that moved? He was a tall, white, brown-haired, middle-aged guy, and his product was a bunch of flat rectangles that looked like packages of lox. He seemed to have a “posse” of 3 or 4 guys hanging on the stoop assisting him (mostly by sitting on the stoop and watching him.) My investigative journalistic energy having been spent, I didn’t take the time to inquire. As our eyes and ears, gentle readers, it’s up to you to gimme the scoop!

Suddenly, it seems like a lot is going on–or, more accurately, not going on–’Round These Parts™:

• That McDonald Park-adjacent Italian restaurant most recently known as Positano is changing hands. Again. The new name, purportedly, will be “Casa Positano.” Creative! The “casa” really adds extra homeyness, don’t you think? I ate at this restaurant the day I looked at my very first Forest Hills rental apartment, back when it was called–oh, who knows. The strange thing is that the owners change but the restaurant never does, and from the table settings I saw when I walked by there today, we might be in for more of the same. But maybe we’ll luck out! I’ll try it anyway, even though I don’t think I ever tried the last two incarnations. Oh, also, the new owners “will not be serving alcohol,” reports Splitting Hairs. Huh?
• Legendary Austin Street pizzeria AJ’s is closed, forever. AJ’s was your ultimate neighborhood polarizer. Some thought it was an embarrassing eyesore, others swore the pizza was great. I have no opinion–I don’t eat pizza (I know, I know) and have never even been inside. And now I never will be. The replacement? Inside sources say a Chinese restaurant. Given the high-rent location, there’s a slight chance that might be creative and interesting, but oh my, I certainly wouldn’t wager money on it.
• Forest Hills 72’s usual intrepid reporting reveals that the Staubachplex may never happen. But is it true? I could go either way on this. On the one hand, the sign advertising it is still up on the roof and I don’t see a major national real-estate company like Staubach just canceling this out of nowhere. But on the other, it’s supposed to open in January 2009 and I sure don’t see that happening what with no demolition having started yet, plus all of FH72’s evidence. The Staubachplex was no architectural gem, but this is somehow still kind of depressing.

Hey! I’ve been gone forever, but what better event to bring me back (besides an extended Mickie T. vacation) than the always-fun Forest Hills Festival of the Artsкомпютри? I was on the scene, and despite being the World’s Worst Photographer™, I took loads of photos. Did you see me awkwardly fumbling around with my hand-me-down Elph?

The FHFotA is one of the events that makes me proud to live ’round these parts. It seems classier than your average New York street fair, with its discount socks and stand after stand after stand after stand selling mozzarepas. (I only counted two at ours!) What I liked most about this year’s FHFotA was its distinct local character, with many local businesses and organizations represented–more, I’d venture a guess, than in previous years. After the jump, a sweaty photo journey down Austin on a humid-as-all-get-out 96-degree day.

A sign of the times at the corner of Church Street and Warren Street in Tribeca, Manhattan.

“Would you like a large Slurpee, Mr. DeNiro?”

A report from the field, otherwise known as “my work neighborhood.”

This large commercial space has been empty since before Sept. 11, 2001. For a while, it housed a closeouts store and a temporary Chirstmas decorations store. Otherwise, this juicy piece of property right above a major subway station laid dormant for over eight years, in one of the hottest, trendiest, most popular neighborhoods in all of NYC.

During those intervening years, in addition to ever-increasing numbers of tourists, the neighborhood has experienced tremendous residential growth (mostly via the conversion of office buildings into luxury rentals), including a massive baby-boom enough to make the sole elementary school in the nabe dangerously overcrowded.

Now that Robert DeNiro’s brainchild, the Tribeca Film Festival, is “Tribeca” in name only, and the WTC site (sorry, “Ground Zero”) is considered “boring” by tourists because it is just a construction site, perhaps the “riff raff” felt they could finally move in. There goes the neighborhood!

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! The new newsstand arrives on a rainy Wednesday evening,

and after-work commuters congratulate Jai on his new home!

See the slide show of the event here.

News stands are a whole social scene!  You should have seen have seen the number of local folks congratulating Jai, shaking his hand, giving him the thumbs up. Many passers-by were pleasantly surprised that the news stand and Jai were coming back. Many thought, like myself, it had closed forever and he had simply moved on. One guy even told him, “When I saw the new cement platform, I praised God that you were finally getting a new place!”

These newsstands will have an upgraded Lotto machine and phone lines.

Just like Weegee used to do, it’s important to be at the right place at the right time, and have your camera ready.

If you go at 11 AM on a gorgeous, sunny Saturday morning, you’ll have the place all to yourselves!

I

As a result of the outcry from late-night QC readers, the news stand is saved!

Just kidding.

As the rest of the world seems to know, local newsstands are being replaced. Here’s this week’s progress.

One day, you’re the lead-off story, next day you’re yesterday’s news.

Last week we were coming home late in the evening and saw the newstand guys cleaning everything up, and we thought they were just going on vacation or something. Guess not.

The curious thing about it is that the newstand was left open and abandoned like so for at least 3 days.

The guys who ran the newstand always seemed to have a great rapport with their regulars every morning. They always seemed to have steady business during commuting hours, even with a supermarket, candy store and subway-based newstand within spitting distance. One of the more comforting phenomena of NYC is the ability of a newstand and a candy-and-newspaper store to co-exist and thrive right next to each other.

To the Queens Boulevard and 71st Road Newstand Guys: I wish you all the best! May you always have many customers, sell lots of candy, and sell winning lottery tickets wherever you are!

As first reported on the forums a couple days ago and confirmed by yours truly on one of my many walks, the former location of Rockaway Bedding on AQUA’s North Side of Queens Boulevard will now be a pharmacy. CVS? Rite Aid? Duane Reade? Sorry–it’s going to be a “pharmacy and surgical supply [store].” Yes, one of those.

Let’s review the tenants of that storefront in the past few years, shall we?

1. West Coast Video: not really cool, antiquated, but at least mildly OK
2. Rockaway Bedding: useless, not OK at all
3. Yet another pharmacy and surgical supply store: completely unacceptable

In case you’re unfamiliar with these places–and if you are, I hope you pay us a visit in Forest Hills sometime–they’re not the kind of pharmacy that has candy and magazines and a blood-pressure machine in the back. They charge five times the going rate for medication and display canes in the window. They will sell you a sitz bath. There are something like three of them within a one-block radius of the old Rockaway Bedding.

A related forum report–same thread–claims the Rite Aid across the street, which I use all the time and is at least a neighborhood hub of sorts where people can run into each other buying Hershey’s Miniatures and Cape Cod potato chips, will be closing to become “a First Med place,” which appears to be a McDoctor’s. I’m reserving judgment on this one until I see or hear solid evidence that it’s true. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m not reserving judgment. This would be the worst thing to happen ever.

“Skip the chain shops lining this popular strip for homegrown stores.”

Austin Street makes it into Time Out New York’s “Best Streets to Shop” feature (Issue 654, April 10 - 16, 2008)! Eight little gems - including our personal favorite, Stoa - get their props in this collection.

“Argh, come visit me at Games Workshop!”

Yes, they mention The Body Shop - a chain, they admit - but despite the dominance of chains on Austin St., they need not rely on them for this article. Look at which stores they had to select for the other shopping strips they feature: CB2, Filene’s Basement, Lush Soaps, Loehman’s! They even give a shout-out to Laytner’s on the UWS. But the Laytner’s on Austin Street? Sorry, didn’t make the cut.