According to the always-informative Visionary over at the Queens Boulevard Restoration Group, for the past few weeks

city agencies have blitzed the Continental Av street vendors with summonses for everything from unsanitary conditions of the fruit stand, including holding produce in an unrefrigerated truck, to the halal guy dumping his grease down catch basins near Queens Blvd; to expired permits, to over-limit sidewalk occupation.

Vis believes this to be a great example of civic responsibility by concerned citizens in action. But being pro-street vendor, I’ve got a very different take. This sudden, intensive series of summonses strikes me as a calculated campaign of harassment from up high. Melinda Katz and the local bigs are on record as being anti-vendor, and using the long arm of the bureaucracy is an old political trick that would be an efficient technique to financially pressure delicious, sweet pralines to get the hell off Continental.

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Walking down Continental into the Gardens early this afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice that the signage for minuscule falafel-and-shawarma purveyor Pahal Zan is completely missing. Being Sabbath-observant, Pahal Zan wouldn’t be open right now anyway, but the total lack of any evidence of the shoebox-sized restaurant’s existence isn’t really a good sign. I almost never went to Pahal Zan, but if it is indeed gone, that’s too bad — the food was pretty good, it was something unique ever since the other Israeli shawarma place in town closed a few years back to become underrated Greek joint Corfu, and I can’t even imagine who else would be willing or able to take over such a small space. Was this the doing of the evil halal cart?

EDIT (7/8/07): Whoops! It’s still open. (Thanks, Hockey Steve.) But what’s with no sign? Doesn’t seem like a very good way to run a business, especially not one so inconspicuous.

Sorry about the lack of posting lately — things have been incredibly busy in all corners of my life. Don’t worry, all good. In any event, I just took a drive in the usual borrowed car down Metropolitan to get to Home Depot — hey, it’s closer than I thought! — and noticed that the mysterious restaurant near Ascan looks just about to open. What’s more, it’s got signage: “My Kitchen Restaurant,” it says, “since 1980.” Google doesn’t do much good on this one because around 20 percent of all restaurants are called “My Kitchen,” but I’m assuming it’s not this place. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to deem the name of the restaurant and the silly, amatuerish font in which it was was displayed Officially Not Promising.

In other probably belated news, 7-11 is up and running, and construction on the exterior of the new Trader Joe’s location looks just about complete, though there’s no sign of the long-awaited TJ’s yet — to an uninformed observer, it looks like a giant Michael’s.

For a few months now, Manhattan-style street vendors have been setting up shop on Continental Avenue selling lamb-and-rice platters and Nuts 4 Nuts, and predictably, the natives are restless — namely the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce and their allies in Melinda Katz’s office. The vendors are legal, it turns out, but The Man is fighting hard to change that. Why? I don’t know, maybe because street vendors are the kind of thing those classless proles in, say, the West Village tolerate. With Katz in the midst of the world’s longest campaign for city comptroller (what does the comptroller even do — comptrol things?), I would remind everyone of this: Any enemy of Nuts 4 Nuts, one of New York’s finest institutions, is not worthy of your vote. Oh, yeah, we all just hate delicious pralines so much, especially when they cost a whole dollar.

Forest Hills 72 has also weighed in on this and is similarly unoutraged by the vendors’ presence. Where are all these people who are allegedly furious?

Still in Oklahoma, but I had to take a break and relate the news that the former giant CompUSA on Queens Boulevard in Rego Park will now be a Loehmann’s, so you’ll no longer have to go all the way to Chelsea for your headbands and stretch pants. I was a little worried that the store would have a hard time finding a new tenant due to its size, but it got rented in no time flat. With Century 21 set to move into the new Rego Park II mall project, it looks like Rego Park is becoming quite the home for top-tier discount retail.

Well, that was fast. Heard a rumor this past week that a Chinese bakery would open in the recently closed Le Croissant Shop and sushi location on Queens Boulevard near Continental, which had to shut its doors due to terminal disgustingness. According to Forest Hills 72, it’s already there it’s set to open soon. This is the third location for Fay Da, which already has locations in (Manhattan’s) Chinatown and Flushing, and it’s right next to the Chinese bank, which I think officially creates what must be the smallest Chinatown in the entire world. It’ll be interesting to see who patronizes the new Fay Da — will it be almost entirely the local Chinese populace, or will everybody be interested in their steamed buns and almond cookies? Should be interesting to see what develops.

The Forest Hills Festival of the Arts this past Sunday was kind of a pleasant surprise — I must say I really enjoyed myself. It was a street fair, yes, but it seemed just a little classier, a little more community focused and a little more fun than most of your New York street fairs. I didn’t see a single sock for sale (UPDATE: There were indeed socks for sale, but at least they were the world’s softest; photo courtesy LarryB), and it certainly kicked the theoretical ass of last month’s grungy Rego Park street fair, not to mention FoHi ArtsFests past — if I’m remembering those correctly, which maybe I’m not. Bullet-pointed highlights (and lowlights) after the jump!

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A couple of months ago, one of Forest Hills’ many, many cell-phone retailers shut its doors in, frankly, a great location: Queens Boulevard on the edge of AQUA, steps from Ascan, the same block as Trade Fair and cheap-sushi mainstay Chikurin. I’m always happy to see a cell-phone place close, because cell-phone places are lame. Not so lame as banks, but pretty lame. For whatever reason, I didn’t have high hopes for the storefront, but I figured that whatever opened there couldn’t possibly be anything less than a lateral move from the cell phones. Right? Right?

As usual, wrong. In fact, it’s something much lamer than a cell-phone place: a button wholesaler. Not only that, a button wholesaler with an ugly-as-sin white awning. It’s not even open yet, but already, here are two indications of the professionalism of these particular button purveyors:

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I know what most of you have thought countless times over the years: Gee, I really like Forest Hills, but there just aren’t enough banks. I mean, really, you know? Everybody needs a place to deposit money and, uh, withdraw money, but not everybody wants to go to Citibank or Chase or Bank of America or Washington Mutual or Astoria Federal Savings or Commerce Bank or FSB or M&T or HSBC or Roslyn or North Fork or Sterling or Ridgewood or Emigrant or Apple Bank or that Chinese place on Queens Boulevard near Continental. Sometimes you need some variety – this isn’t the Soviet Union, after all, despite what appearances might suggest.

So I’m sure everybody will be thrilled to know that according to eateryROW’s Jon Parker, the former Cold Stone Creamery on Austin Street, which I believe is the only Cold Stone Creamery ever to go out of business in the history of retail ice cream, will now be a First Central Savings. Cold Stone was really wasting some of the primest of prime retail space in Forest Hills with pointless, stupid activities like selling delicious ice cream with Kit Kat bars in it, so needless to say, it’s great to see an attractive business come in and bring something important to this underserved community. “We Offer a Real Choice in Community Banking,” the bank’s website says. You can say that again, First Central. Fear not, Forest Hills bank fans — your problem is solved!

Just a reminder that the annual Forest Hills Festival of the Arts shuts down Austin Street this Sunday for eight solid hours of socks, pickles and fried Oreos. Oh, yeah, and “arts,” though I’ve always felt that the Festival could be a little heavier on the screen printing and a lot lighter on the zeppole. Still, it’s a street fair and it’s a good time and it’s a lot classier than the Rego Park version I attended last month. And if it’s art you seek, you just might find a few diamonds in the rough.