6/20/2002: Below 14th (this little sideblog) is entering its own summer hiatus of sorts (let's call it a siesta) due to my absence from Manhattan over the next few months (LS.com is temporarily coming your way from the second floor of a Bridgehampton office building). But just before splitting town, I did get to try the cuisine at Supper, the third restaurant in the burgeoning Frank empire -- and, by my early judgement, the best of the lot. Eric Asimov sang its praises a week or two ago in the Times; it's well worth the visit.

6/13/2002: Beginning of the end of the Lower East Side's run as NYC's chic hood? Taking shape on the old Baby Jupiter corner at Orchard and Stanton is Charbon, what seems to be a French cafe. I don't object to the concept, but the exterior design -- lots of random French words like tabac, postes, cremerie -- is unctuous in the extreme.

6/10/2002: Checked out the ominously named new bar Gatsby's last night. Located on Spring Street and Mulberry -- right near the groovy store Fresh, where the other CS works -- it signals the imminent demise of NoLiTa. An Upper East Side bar on a cool downtown street. Frat types cheering wildly for the Lakers (!?). Akin, in a sense, to Essex Street's Smithfield (which is, its its dive-like way, a more acceptable watering hole... yet still, beneath it all, an Upper East Side-y kind of place.)