Off to the south, spot the stunted towers of East New York, the city's greatest working-class transportation hub, while at your feet lies a segment of Forest Avenue, once a German street, now populated mainly by Albanians and Montenegrins. Ridgewood as seen from the FOREST AVENUE M STOP is relentlessly bucolic and green, and the best parts of the view are the dusty vacant spaces that contain dogs, discarded furniture and appliances, and haphazardly parked cars of ancient vintage among the well-kept tenements and commercial structures. This is New York at its most relaxed.