The Astoria Monday Club poses with Astoria’s favorite waterfowl, the Gotham Goose.

Shore Boulevard, a.k.a “The Strip,” still brings people together.

NICOLAS STERGIOU

Producer, Social Media Manager, labor Organizer, and Unofficial “Astoria Street Spectator.”

nicolas.stergiou@gmail.com

I don’t usually make plans on Mondays.

For years, Monday was my recovery day. Working twelve-hour film shoots during the week and social media events on weekends meant Friday and Saturday were usually my busiest and most social nights. By Sunday I was recharging, and by Monday I was already back at work, thinking more about the week ahead than going out again. If someone had asked me a year ago what I was doing on a Monday night, my answer probably would’ve been, “Absolutely nothing.”

Then I came across an Instagram page inviting strangers to play Uno at a coffee shop. On a Monday.

I actually laughed at first because, if I’m being honest, voluntarily going out on a Monday sounded a little much after how I typically spend my weekends. But Astoria Monday Club kept showing up on my feed, and every week it was something different. One week is board games. Another week is karaoke. Then charades in Astoria Park or simply grabbing coffee and learning a new card game. There wasn’t a membership, there wasn’t a networking angle, and nobody seemed to be trying to sell anyone on a startup or side hustle.

It was simply: “We’re meeting Monday. Come if you want.”

As someone who jokingly calls himself a “native transplant,” these meetups caught my attention. I was born in Queens and my family has always been here, but I grew up in California for those formative years that native New Yorkers (no, not the Lenape) consider what counts in being a New Yorker. When I moved back to Astoria at eighteen, I had family, but I didn’t have the lifelong neighborhood friendships people assume come with being from here. Like anyone moving somewhere new, I had to build a social circle from scratch, and I quickly realized making friends as an adult isn’t nearly as easy as it was when school or work naturally threw people together.

I’d tried Reddit Meet-ups, but Monday Club felt different. It wasn’t really about neighborhood online gossip. It was just about Monday.

Curious how something this simple had gained such a following, I reached out to the club’s organizer, Jay Singh. I expected some carefully crafted mission statement about “community building”—the kind I’d heard before from much larger non-profit organizations in Astoria—but his answer was surprisingly simple and relatable.

“The Monday Club was started due to burnout and Sunday scaries,” he told me. “I wished there was a club that did something fun and different every Monday.”

That simplicity is probably exactly why it works.

Jay explained that he intentionally steers conversations away from the question every New Yorker seems programmed to ask: “So, what do you do for work?” Instead, he’d rather people talk about what they actually enjoy outside of work. Every Monday has a different theme—karaoke, trivia, board games, movie nights, coffee, bad art, or simply hanging out somewhere in Astoria. In a city where conversations often feel like networking opportunities in disguise, that was surprisingly refreshing.

Eventually the group held one of its meetups at Karaoke Shout, one of my favorite places in Astoria and somewhere I had previously done social media work. I figured I’d finally stop making excuses and show up.

I expected the usual awkward introductions before everyone drifted back toward the friends they had arrived with. Instead, people mixed naturally, conversations happened on their own, and nobody cared what anyone did for a living. It wasn’t really about karaoke. Karaoke just happened to be what brought everyone together that week.

A few months later the club organized a game of Heads Up in Astoria Park, which is basically my backyard, so I invited a friend and figured we’d play for an hour before heading home. Instead, after the game ended, several of us wandered over to Shore Boulevard and kept talking.

One member unpacked several different teas and began explaining where each one came from and what made them unique. It felt like a wine tasting, except nobody was pretending they could detect hints of oak or blackberry. He was simply sharing something he enjoyed with people who were interested enough to listen.

Then, because this is Queens, a rat sprinted directly through our tea party.

We weren’t doing anything particularly special—but it was. We were just sitting outside together on the strip. It reminded me of being younger, when you’d meet friends somewhere with absolutely no agenda beyond hanging out. Somewhere along the way adulthood convinces us every outing needs a purpose. Dinner becomes networking. Drinks become catching up. Everything has to accomplish something.

This didn’t.

Growing up, I’d always heard older relatives talk about Shore Boulevard before it closed to traffic. Every generation seems to have its own version of what “the Strip” meant. Some remember cruising with muscle cars. Others remember walking with friends on warm summer nights.

Sitting there that evening, I realized Shore Boulevard is still serving the same purpose it always has. It’s a place where people gather. That’s never changed. The purpose is still there.

I’m not saying those older memories weren’t special. They clearly were for some back in the day. But neighborhoods aren’t museums. If Shore Boulevard helped create memories for one generation, maybe we should be happy watching the next generation create theirs too. Whether it’s muscle cars, late-night walks, or strangers drinking tea while trying not to spill it because a fearless Queens rat just crashed the party, people are still coming together.

We spend so much time talking about development, politics, bike lanes, restaurants, and whatever neighborhood debate happens to dominate social media that we sometimes overlook what actually creates a community. Not civic engagement—which is something I care deeply about—but regular engagement. Neighbors sitting together, talking, laughing, and making room for someone new.

The Astoria Monday Club isn’t trying to become the biggest organization in Queens, nor is it pretending to solve loneliness. It’s simply one person who decided Mondays didn’t have to be boring and invited strangers to join him. It seems to be working. The friend I invited to play Charades ended up going back the following Monday without me. That’s probably the biggest compliment you can give any social club.

I enjoy talking to people who’ve just moved to Astoria because, as a proud Greek Astorian, welcoming newcomers has always felt like part of our culture. My family came here once too. These days I find myself recommending bagel spots, explaining neighborhood traditions, or sharing little pieces of Astoria history they might not know. For example, Astoria was originally called Hallett’s Cove before local developers renamed it after wealthy fur merchant John Jacob Astor, hoping he’d heavily invest in the neighborhood. He did not. Then someone who’s only been here a few months will tell me about a café, bookstore, or weekly meetup I’d somehow never discovered myself. It goes both ways. The people who’ve been here longer help preserve a neighborhood’s history, while the people who’ve just arrived remind us that its story is still being written.

As I approach forty, I sometimes catch myself thinking I’ve probably already met everyone I’m supposed to meet. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe there are still a few Mondays left.

If you’ve recently moved to Astoria, if your social circle has quietly gotten smaller over the years, or if you’ve ever found yourself staring at your phone on a Monday wondering what to do, I’d encourage you to check out @astoriamondayclub on Instagram.

There’s no membership, no pressure, and no expectation beyond showing up.

Sometimes that’s all a neighborhood really needs: regular engagement at the start of the week.

The German-American Bund marches in Manhattan in October 1939. (Photo: Library of Congress)

BY ALAN ARICHAVALA

news@queensledger.com

The United States in the 1930s was defined by the devastating effects of the Great Depression: widespread unemployment, job scarcity, homelessness, economic inequality, and growing political polarization. Although there were already Marxist-inspired political movements present in the U.S. since the 19th century, which played a significant role in the rise of organized labor, the 1930s was marked with far-right movements, modeled on European fascism.

The Klu Klux Klan — which had experienced a dramatic resurgence during the 1910s and 1920s — saw rapid decline outside of the South thanks to a series of violent scandals. That, combined with corruption infighting and mounting public backlash caused membership to plummet from approximately 4-5 million members to just barely 30,000.

On Memorial Day 1927, approximately 1,000 Klansmen marched in Jamaica to protest of what they claimed was the growing influence of Roman Catholics, particularly the

Irish, within the New York Police Department who “targeted hardworking Protestant families”. The demonstration was met with fierce opposition from local residents, eventually erupting into a riot. Police arrested seven men, including real estate developer

Fred Trump, the father of Donald J. Trump, who was detained for refusing to disperse, although he was later released with no charges filed.

But with the Great Depression in full swing, new extremist organizations began to fill the void. Groups such as the Silver Legion of America, otherwise known as the Silver Shirts, modeled their political philosophy after German National Socialism and eventually  gained a modest following. None, however, would become as prominent or influential as the German-American Bund, the most visible pro-Nazi organization in the U.S. before the Second World War.

Established in 1936 the Bund was a successor to the Friends of New Germany and the Free Society of Teutonia, both of which were early attempts by the Nazis to establish an American counterpart of the National Socialist German Workers Party as early as 1924. Among other goals, the Bund aimed to infiltrate established German-American organizations, including the Turnvereine, or Turner movement, a network of German-American gymnastic and social clubs across the U.S. In one notable incident, members of the Friends of New Germany stormed the offices of the German-language newspaper New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, demanding that it publish pro-Nazi articles. They also sought to counter the Jewish-led boycott of German goods that began after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 in protest of Nazi antisemitism.

Following years of initial disputes, the German-American Bund was organized under the leadership of Fritz Julius Kuhn, a German-born naturalized American citizen and First World War veteran of the Royal Bavarian Army.

The Bund established its national headquarters at 178 East 85th Street, the heart of the German community of Yorkville, Manhattan, but its influence extended throughout the Northeast and Midwest, with chapters in Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other states. It also operated youth summer camps intended to indoctrinate children and teenagers with Nazi ideology, the most prominent of which was Camp Seigfried in Yaphank, Long Island.

By 1938, the Bund had an established presence in Astoria, where a local chapter was organized under the leadership of Herman Schwarzman. The chapter frequently held meetings in neighborhood beer gardens and meeting halls. These activities drew the ire of Rabbi Joshua L. Goldberg of the Astoria Center of Israel and one of the Bund’s most outspoken opponents in Astoria. According to ACI’s historian and lifelong member of the congregation, Mitch Blas, one of the alleged venues used by the Bund was the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden on 24th Avenue. Goldberg was said to have admonished the owners of the beer garden for even thinking of allowing the Bund to use their space.

Goldberg would later achieve national distinction as the first rabbi commissioned as a U.S. Navy chaplain during World War II, the first Jewish chaplain to attain the rank of Captain, and the first to retire after a full career on active duty.

On the evening of November 18th, 1938, the Bund held a meeting at the Astoria Turnverein Hall, located at 44th Street and Broadway. The gathering was met by approximately 250 demonstrators, who formed double-file picket lines outside the hall in protest. The New York City Police Department deployed ten sergeants and one hundred patrolmen to keep the entrance clear for the approximately 450 Bund members attending the meeting. As attendees passed through the police lines, they were met with jeers and boos from the demonstrators. Fritz Kuhn attended but avoided confrontation by arriving at the hall an hour and a half before the picketers assembled. In addition to Kuhn, Astoria attorney Herman Roth made an appearance, as did Bund publicist William Kunze, who delivered speeches attacking Jews and attempted to justify the Nazi regime’s racial persecution in Germany in the aftermath of Kristalnacht, and condemning American sympathy for the victims of Nazi policies.

Outside, the demonstrators held their own street meeting, identifying themselves as members of the Anti-Nazi Council of Astoria, the German-American Club of Astoria, and the American League for Peace and Democracy.

The beginning of the end for the Bund came on the evening of February 20th, 1939, when the organization held its largest and most infamous rally at Madison Square Garden.

Although Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia strongly opposed the gathering, he allowed the event to proceed, believing that the spectacle would further discredit the Bund in the eyes of the public. Approximately 20,000 people attended the rally, including Bund members, sympathizers and curious spectators. Outside Madison Square Garden, thousands of protestors–many of them First World War veterans, Jewish New Yorkers, and members of the Socialist Workers Party–demonstrated against the event. They were prevented from entering the venue by a heavy police presence of approximately 1,700 NYPD officers.

Following the rally, the Bund experienced a sharp decline in membership and public support. By 1942, the organization’s last leader, George Froboese, was subpoenaed before a federal grand jury but committed suicide. By that point, the Bund had ceased to exist. Some of its most committed members, however, left for Germany and enlisted in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. It is unknown if any ever returned to the United States, but the far right ideology of the Bund would continue to fester in the U.S. in the coming decades.

Stan Morse speaks at Queensbridge. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

“It can be only pothole politics and snow shoveling,” said state Assembly candidate Mary Jobaida at a recent rally asking the mayor to fund much-needed repairs. 

BY COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com

“Mayor Mamdani, you are a socialist,” said public housing organizer and NYCHA resident Stanley Morse, at a rally at the Queensbridge South public houses Thursday evening.

“So how do you support the privatization of NYCHA?”

Morse, who grew up in Brooklyn NYCHA housing and has dedicated his life to public housing advocacy, had come to Queensbridge to stand in solidarity with residents who’ve been facing gas outages since the early spring, and to call out elected officials for what he described as a failure to adequately engage with residents of NYCHA, the City’s public housing agency that houses some half a million people and whose buildings have faced widespread decay for years thanks to money troubles and bureaucratic mismanagement.

Morse and others also criticized Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his support of the controversial RAD/PACT program — in which the City partners with a private company that pays for repairs while pocketing residents’ subsidized rent — as a means to address NYCHA’s massive repair backlog, questioning its efficacy and criticizing it as contradictory to the Mayor’s ostensibly democratic socialist politics.

“The worst landlord is public housing, NYCHA,” Morse said, addressing the Mayor,  “so for you not to put that at the top of your priority, and for you just to talk about affordability and all of those things, and you’re not in the forefront as a socialist, about the fully funding and keeping public housing public—to me, it’s a betrayal.”

Mamdani, for his part, released his ambitious “Block by Block” housing plan in late May, which pledges $5.6 billion to NYCHA improvements over the next five years— what’s been described as the largest NYCHA investment in recent history. Though he has not visited Queensbridge since his inauguration, Mamdani has visited several NYCHA complexes over the past few months, including Woodside Houses in April — where he pledged to transition 20,000 NYCHA apartments from outdated fuel-based heating to more efficient systems.

The mayor proposed financing tools like RAD/PACT, as well as the Public Housing Preservation Trust — in which a public benefit corporation takes over NYCHA buildings — to address the Authority’s $78 billion repair backlog. 

As far as engagement, the Mayor’s “NYCHA in Your Neighborhood” event series — also launched in May — seeks to bring NYCHA residents together in neighborhood-wide discussions about the issues facing their buildings.

“We will deliver the transformative investments that public housing has long needed but not received,” Mamdani said at a press conference in May.

“NYCHA began as a testament to something great: that government can not only imagine a better life for those it serves, but that it can fulfill that vision,” he continued. “And yet that conviction has become a relic of the past. After decades of disinvestment, NYCHA tenants have come to expect that no matter who is in office, they will be overlooked. Their concerns will be ignored. That ends today.”

Still, attendees at Thursday’s rally expressed frustration that the Mayor had seemingly not given the same attention to NYCHA tenants as he has rent-stabilized tenants — hosting several “Rental Ripoff” hearings and getting involved in litigation with some of NYC’s largest landlords — while NYCHA remains the City’s worst landlord, with an average of about 560,000 open violations across its 177,000-unit portfolio. In attendance were about two dozen community organizers, Queensbridge neighbors and NYCHA residents. It was organized by State Assembly Candidate Mary Jobaida, a Bangladeshi immigrant and LIC resident who drew attention to gas outages at Queensbridge back in May, when a CBS news crew followed her as she toured several apartments.

“We want Zohran to come here and explain it,” Jobaida said. “He is the best at talking about the dreams of the city, but it cannot be only his pothole politics and snow shoveling. It should also be about how our NYCHA neighbors are living and the dreams that are dying here.”

Gas outages were first reported this year on March 19 at Queensbridge North, while outages at Queensbridge South were reported on March 30, per NYCHA’s outage database. NYCHA did not respond to the Ledger’s requests for comment by press time.

“I have nine people in my family that I’ve got to cook for every day,” said Gedeon Pierre-Louis, a Queensbridge resident. “It’s hard to do that on a hot pot, just one. It’s very difficult. I shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

The City has long struggled to keep up with NYCHA repairs.  In 2024, an independent federal monitoring program led by Bart Schwartz of Guidepost Solutions released  a NYCHA report card, which attributed the agency’s troubles to institutionalized incompetence and mismanagement— not just  money problems.

“Funding is not the worst of NYCHA’s problems,” wrote Schwartz in his report. “It is the lack of effective governance, ethics and accountability that prevents NYCHA from achieving comprehensive, sustainable improvements within its current financial restraints.”

But despite increased investments brought by RAD/PACT, the program has been criticized for its apparent failure to totally address maintenance issues. A 2025 investigation by The City found more than 14,281 HPD violations across 25,000 NYCHA apartments that had been converted to RAD. In 59 RAD buildings, HPD had to hire third-party vendors to address repairs.

“I’ve been in several buildings that have been converted to RAD/PACT,” he said. “They’re worse. There’s no oversight on that whole entire program. The repair issues are still the same.”

He added that NYCHA’s publicity campaign to convince residents to vote for RAD/PACT privatization can be misleading.

“The way the story goes, NYCHA gives you all this stuff— do you want to stay the status quo?” Morse said. “Meaning, messed up apartments. Or do you want this beautiful oasis that they’re gonna create? Which is a lie.”

Lashawn “Suga Ray” Marston — a writer and activist who grew up in Queensbridge and now lives in Brooklyn — called on NYCHA residents to unite and organize  together to spur government action.

“Don’t be embarrassed that you may be going through it,” he said. “Somebody else in your building, on your floor, across the street, is having the same or similar experience. So, talk to each other, that is the solution to the problems.”