Spinning Plates in Queens

The Queens Theatre, tucked in next to the mind-blowing and desolate New York State Pavilion, makes an excellent venue for watching plate spinning, one of the many stunts we witnessed at Saturday's 4pm performance by the Russian-American Kid's Circus. We also saw these Brooklyn-trained acrobats between the ages of 6 and 16 perform lots of impressive juggling, balancing, clowning and unicycling. Where better to observe unicycling than the theatre in the park, a stones throw from the Unisphere?

Those weren't the only parallels of the day, though. The circus began for us when we decided to take the three kids on public transportation instead of driving from S. Brooklyn. The F to the G went fairly smoothly, but we ran into trouble when there was no train service on the 7 at Queensboro/Court Square, so we had to switch to a shuttle bus. The payoff for that was a moment of intense cognitive dissonance when I found myself walking behind a moustached woman with the longest hair I've ever seen, matted into one thick flat dread lock that reached down to her thighs. I didn't know if I was at a freak show or suddenly lucky enough to be standing in front of a work by (geniuses) Anne Hamilton or Kiki Smith. The hair made me sick, but it took me into a frightening and powerful place somewhere deep in human history. It felt a little like I was just waiting there on the platform for the subway standing next to a mummified Egyptian.

The next production was the antics of the adorable trolley, waiting there in the Shea stadium parking lot to give people a lift over to Corona Park's attractions. Just as we approached it, it drove off and all our shouting didn't catch the driver's attention. So we had our second chance to practice patience. Later the trolley came back and the driver was kind enough to call the Queens Theatre and tell them to send their "limo" for us, which was a green taxi that we all managed to fit into the back of. In the front seat next to the driver sat a woman who'd just celebrated her 72nd birthday, who like us had decided to make the circus the focal point of her day. Her leopard print pant suit matched her hat band.

















Last year when I went to Queens for a day trip that was too ambitious I wound up PITCHING A BITCH, but this year I never lost it. I spun my plate the whole time. It wasn't so hard because the kids were amazing for some reason. The hardest part came when the restaurant where we hoped to eat, Joe's Shanghai, turned out to be about 20 blocks away from the park instead of the 3 I'd been told. And I WANTED FOOD. Then when we got to it at around 6:45, the wait for a table was an hour. So we had to wonder off aimlessly with growling stomachs to find another place, which seemed harder than it should have because we simply don't know Flushing's Chinatown very well. We found a Vietnamese place which worked out fine although we just had Vietnamese last weekend, at a place right next to the Staten Island Hotel.

Just as we were leaving Flushing at sunset we found a really good part, a row of restaurants lining a street behind St. George's, and across from them an enormous purple and pink karaoke place. I looked up at the sign for the Sunway restaurant, baskets of dim sum floating effortlessly on a yellow background, as constant as those plates that looked like they would never fall off the tiny sticks the Russian American children had balanced them on. Too bad, I wouldn't have minded much if the dumplings had fallen into my mouth.




We got back to Brooklyn at 10:30, the 6 year old passed out in the 3-year old's stroller, the 3 year old awake and exclaiming "It's like Halloween!" because she never gets to go out in the dark, the 10-year old hoping to stay up late and watch movies with her dad.

Even though it's so far, I really like the Queens Theatre, and thanks to the Commerce Bank for sponsoring the Circus. The Theatre was just renovated and I think I may have been the first person to use the revamped women's bathroom. I like the tile choice very much.

I wish Prospect Park had an indoor theatre like that. Oh well, I hear we may have something called a "music island" soon. I'll take what I can get.