When Queens’ movie studios become assets, workers become scapegoats. 

NICOLAS STERGIOU | nicolas.stergiou@gmail.com

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

For over 100 years, Astoria has helped make movies, television, and commercials.

Before the giant Hollywood sign even existed in California, movies were already being made here in Queens. Kaufman Astoria Studios has survived the silent film era, the rise of television, New York’s rough years, economic crashes, and wave after wave of changes in the entertainment industry.

And somehow, after surviving all of that, one of New York’s most historic studios now finds itself threatened not by a lack of creativity, but by the kind of financial chaos that seems to swallow everything these days. And that should worry people.

When most people think about movie studios, they might picture celebrities and red carpets. But Kaufman Astoria Studios has always been much more than that. It’s part of the neighborhood’s infrastructure. Entire local economies quietly revolve around these studios — crew members, caterers, carpenters, teamsters, equipment vendors, coffee shops, restaurants, and countless other workers most people never even think about when they watch a movie or TV show.

A functioning studio lot quietly supports thousands of working people whether the average person notices it or not. And I’ve seen that world up close myself.

Years ago, I worked on Sesame Street at Kaufman as a transportation coordinator. Part of my job was helping move the Muppets between Jim Henson’s Workshop and appearances around the city, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Yes, that included driving Big Bird around New York — both the giant costume itself and the man inside it. And by the way… you haven’t truly lived until you’ve heard Big Bird screaming curses at Midtown traffic in that iconic voice. (Rest in peace, Caroll Spinney)

I’ve also worked at Silvercup as a Production Assistant. Back then, these studios felt permanent, like institutions that would always be there no matter how much the city changed. You’d walk through the gates half asleep carrying coffee at 6am while crew members smoked cigarettes outside giant rolling garage doors and never really think about whether these places would still exist in twenty years. You’d see posters of old movies and TV shows like Sex and the City and have trouble believing you’re now a part of it.

“And Just Like That”… one day a studio that felt permanent suddenly starts sounding fragile.

Nowadays, the conversation around studios sounds more like Wall Street than filmmaking—Debt, foreclosure, assets, real estate portfolios.

That’s why the recent financial trouble surrounding Kaufman Astoria Studios feels bigger than just another business story. Deutsche Bank recently moved to foreclose on the property after a partnership connected to Hackman Capital allegedly defaulted on a loan tied to roughly $359 million.

The whole thing feels depressingly familiar: once cultural institutions become financial assets, workers usually absorb the fallout first.

Back in 2021, Hackman Capital – a Los Angeles-based, privately held real estate investment and development company — bought Kaufman Astoria Studios as part of a massive push into studio real estate. At the time, streamers were spending billions and investors treated sound stages like gold mines. But from the crew side, you could feel things changing quickly: more consolidation, higher prices, and studios starting to feel less like cultural institutions and more like portfolio assets.

But there’s an important difference between stewardship and speculation. Once studios are treated like investments, suddenly everything revolves around expansion, refinancing, and debt structures that only work if the market keeps exploding upward forever.

Then reality hits — streaming slows, productions shrink, interest rates go up, and suddenly studios aren’t as full as everybody projected. And suddenly the people who treated filmmaking infrastructure like a giant real estate play started running into problems. Meanwhile, workers are told THEY are the issue. That’s the part that really drives me insane. Every time this industry struggles, the blame somehow rolls downhill immediately:

“Union crews cost too much.” “New York is too expensive.” “Film workers are asking for too much.” “Shoot overseas instead.”

That’s usually the first thing workers hear anytime this industry struggles. Meanwhile, from the crew side, it can feel like the people making the biggest financial decisions often seem better insulated from the fallout than the workers whose jobs disappear when things go sideways.

But almost nobody asks whether maybe turning half the entertainment industry into debt-fueled speculative expansion was ALSO a bad idea. The grips hauling C-stands into trucks at 5am didn’t engineer these financial structures. Yet somehow workers are always the first people asked to make sacrifices.

And hanging over all of this is Sesame Street, which has been shooting at Kaufman since 1992.

If you told people twenty years ago that even Sesame Street was vulnerable, few would have believed it. Sesame Street represented permanence. Craftsmanship. Public good. But public broadcasting has also been hit by major federal funding cuts. That alone says something about where things are heading.

That’s what feels depressing about all of this. Not just the financial instability. But the feeling that every institution eventually gets swallowed by the same cycle: buy it, squeeze it, refinance it, then dump the problem on everyone else. Then the people at the bottom get told to fight each other while the people at the top move onto the next asset.

Astoria has spent generations helping America make movies, television, and culture. It didn’t become part of New York’s filmmaking identity by accident. Generations of crew members, unions, artists, small businesses, and working people built an entire ecosystem here long before private equity and real estate firms saw dollar signs attached to it.

And yes, New York has to remain competitive if it wants productions to keep shooting here. But that can’t just mean racing to the bottom by weakening workers while those at the top continue making risky financial bets. It means investing in the infrastructure, incentives, and workforce that made this industry thrive here in the first place. The question now is whether New York still values the people and places that actually make the culture, or if  the land underneath them is worth more.

BY COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com

SUNNYSIDE — Long Island City has transformed into a forest of glass skyscrapers in recent years, but have you ever wondered where all the street cats went?

As Western Queens resident Victoria Koulouris explained at a Queens Community Board 2  meeting in Sunnyside on May 7, street cats live in colonies, and when these colonies are disturbed by developments, the cats, like people, are displaced.

“This is probably one of the biggest impacts that I felt having grown up in Long Island City, is seeing that the colonies that we’ve been caring for for the last 10 years have really sort of disappeared,” she said. “Where do those cats go?”

Recent estimates have put the citywide street cat population at somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million and counting. In response to this booming population, Koulouris founded a nonprofit called LIC Feral Feeders that serves these displaced felines. Her organization has mobilized a team of 170 volunteers that help feed and care for the area’s unhoused cats while tackling their booming population through a trap, neuter and release program (TNR).

“We are going outside and we are finding cats that are in need,” Koulouris said. “Cats that live outdoors that don’t have any services. Cats that are reproducing like crazy and trying to get control over the population in Western Queens and beyond.”

In 2024, LIC Feral Feeders spayed and neutered a total of 240 cats,  a number that jumped to 590 in 2025,  while adoption rates increased too, with 72 adopted in 2024 and 151 adopted in 2025.

“When they look like they are in need of medical help, we bring them to a vet,” she continued. “We also find cats that look like they’re friendly and possibly could be adopted.”

While the organization is growing with the help of groups like Cultural Lab LIC, the ASPCA, Materials for the Arts, the Queens Public Library and others, with growth comes greater needs. Currently, the group has no formal headquarters, relying on partnerships, pop-up events and help from the Long Island City ASPCA. LIC Feral Feeders has primarily operated its foster system out of volunteers’ homes and temporary spaces around Queens, but is  now in the process  of moving into  an already acquired, 400 square-foot space in Hunters Point, which will allow them to expand their services and reach in Long Island City.

As LIC Feral Feeders Director of Operations Jannatul Ahmed explained, the new space will allow the organization to provide low-cost spay and neutering services to cat owners in the community who can’t afford to have their pets fixed.

“So much of pet veterinary care has become privatized, owned by private equity and it’s not good for us, not good for our community members,” said  Ahmed.

“We need all kinds of volunteers, fosters especially, “ she added. “But for this project, we’re really looking for somebody who can lend their expertise, their time, their money. All help is welcomed.”

Diners kind of suck —  and that’s why we miss them when they close. 

NICOLAS STERGIOU | nicolas.stergiou@gmail.com

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

Last week, Astorians watched as Neptune Diner was bulldozed after being forced to close in July 2024 after 40 years. Almost immediately, the photos and videos of remnants started making their rounds online.

I was doomscrolling through AstoriaCentric on Facebook after Neptune Diner was demolished when I saw people commenting about how sad it was seeing old photo frames and pieces of brick sitting in the rubble. Then someone commented: “It wasn’t even good anyway.”

Earlier this week, I also came across another “What Astoria place do you miss the most?” post on the r/Astoria subreddit. The original poster and several comments mentioned Mike’s Diner, alongside nostalgic names like Igloo Cafe and Fatty’s. And of course there was an honorable mention of Neptune diner’s Avgolemono, their classic Greek lemon chicken soup

But I think people are misunderstanding the point of a diner. Diners are not supposed to be “good.” They’re supposed to be THERE. They are part of our neighborhood infrastructure.

No disrespect to diner workers. Hear me out.

Diners were never meant to compete with Michelin-star restaurants or trendy brunch spots with reclaimed wood tables. Diners are “good” in a different way. They’re dependable. They’re open at weird hours. They exist for regular people. They’re fine. A different kind of “fine” dining.

In Astoria, diners have always been part of our neighborhood’s infrastructure. Right alongside laundromats, corner stores, and old timers arguing on plastic lawn chairs about bike lanes. You knew diners would be there after a night out, after a breakup, or during a brutal hangover when your body was rejecting every decision you made the night before.

And when nobody could decide what they wanted to eat, diners solved the problem by saying: “Fine. We have everything.”

As a 2nd Generation Greek-American, diners have always felt culturally familiar to me. Greek families helped shape diner culture throughout New York City for decades. Big menus. Long hours. Fast coffee refills. Places built for workers, night owls, families, and people who just needed somewhere to sit for a while.

Astoria especially became tied to that culture. As the neighborhood grew into one of the largest Greek communities in America during the 1960s and 70s, Greek-owned diners became gathering places for workers, families, late-night crowds, and regulars who treated them almost like extensions of their living rooms. Over time, the classic Queens diner became so recognizable it even appeared in pop culture staples like Jackson Hole in Goodfellas. I think younger generations (my own included) sometimes miss the point of diners because we grew up during the rise of “food culture.” Everything now has to be optimized, aesthetic, and “TikTok ready”. Everyone’s chasing the perfect brunch spot or the hidden gem.

But diners operate under a different philosophy.

You can’t serve pancakes, burgers, chicken, a milkshakes, cheesecake, and breakfast at 3 a.m. and expect every item to taste handcrafted by an artisan chef.

The deal is FREEDOM. (Cue American Eagle “SCREEEEE”)

What if I want waffles with my steak? Or an egg in my burger? Or pasta and a gyro AT THE SAME TIME? Diners let people do that. Beautiful working-class chaos.

One of my favorite diner memories happened after a snowstorm. My partner and I walked through a snowy 23rd Street while almost everything was closed–except Bel Aire Diner.

We walked in freezing cold and ordered pancakes, eggs, bottomless coffee, and chicken strips–because we’re adults. Nothing fancy. But I will always remember it because the diner felt like a safe harbor during chaos. The kind of place that quietly tells you: “Yep. The world’s a mess right now. Sit down. Coffee?”

And nowhere do I see diner culture more clearly than in my own industry.

I work in film production, and film crews here run on diner coffee and a filling breakfast. People glamorize the entertainment industry, but most crews operate more like blue-collar workers than celebrities. We wake up at absurd hours, work long shifts, and often report to a diner before sunrise to catch the company shuttle van to locations nowhere near public transportation.

If we were heading to Jersey, it’s Tick Tock Diner. Long Island? Kellogg’s Diner. For years, if we were heading north, it was Neptune Diner because the Triborough Bridge is RIGHT there. Many days in my early film career started before dawn at Neptune, coffee in hand before a 12-hour shoot day.

Part of my job sometimes is curating local recommendation lists for incoming producers and directors from Los Angeles. My restaurant suggestions often get rejected for not being trendy or upscale enough. It makes me feel defeated as a New Yorker.

But one thing that always stuck with me was working on “The Amazing Race.” The executive producer, Bertram van Munster — originally from the Netherlands — ALWAYS wanted to go to a diner. Not a rooftop. Not a tasting menu. An old-school “Great American Diner.” Something about that stayed with me. Here’s a guy who LITERALLY travels the world and still wants diner coffee in a thick white mug and fried eggs in New York.

I don’t think Americans realize how iconic diners are until somebody from somewhere else reminds us.

Because before a 14-hour workday, people need somewhere to sit quietly with coffee under fluorescent lights while questioning their life choices at 4:30 in the morning.

That’s diner culture. And sadly, that culture is disappearing. In fact, New York City has lost roughly 60% of its diners in less than 30 years. The classic neighborhood diner — once one of the defining symbols of New York life — is quietly disappearing in real time.

There are plenty of places left in Astoria to get a good meal. But there are fewer and fewer places that just let people exist without rushing them out the door.

That’s why watching Neptune get demolished felt emotional for so many people. Not because it had the best food in Queens. But because places like that quietly carry part of the neighborhood’s soul. And when one disappears, you realize diners were never really about the food. They’re about late nights. Early mornings. Coffee before work. Pancakes after heartbreak. Snowstorms. Hangovers. Film crews. Families. The working class.

They’re about New York.

They’re about America.

Enjoy them while you can, Astoria.