Goodbye To All This

It was a good run, but all good things... and so to bed for Below 14th. Thanks to all who visited, read and commented over the last two-plus years. The archives remain here for those who want to catch up with old friends, though comments have been frozen in time. Please join us at our new site, Curbed, where we carry on with all things food and drink related on a broader Manhattan scale. At this URL, posting on all matters of absurdity continues unabated on the LS.com homepage.

BREAKING: The End of Below 14th

As just announced on the main blog, this will be the final week of operation for Below 14th. Join us all this week, won't you, as we relive two-plus years of joy and rage in restaurants across downtown Manhattan. Because Wylie would have wanted it this way.

Stacked Deck

A couple of days ago, the good folks at City Shuffle messengered us The Diner's Deck. (Full disclosure: We love getting free stuff.) It's a cool concept: a deck of 52 cards, each worth a $10 discount at an area restaurant. Tuck a card in your wallet, head to dinner, and—so long as you spend more than $20—redeem your card for the discount. Of course, the concept would be worthless if the represented restaurants were crap. Good news: the Lower East Side Deck (which also features Grammercy, the East Village and Nolita) includes LES spots like Alias, AKA Cafe, Paladar, Petrosino, 1492, Crudo and, in the EV, Il Buco, Tasting Room, Prune, Industry (Food), and Starfoods. There's $120 we'd save right there! (Kidding, kidding—we'd never actually dine at Starfoods.) The Lower West Side Deck (uh, Lower West Side?) looks similarly stacked. Both are priced at $29.95; find a store that's all Decked out.

The Spirit of Local 138

Stopping by Ludlow St. watering hole Local 138 last night (as chronicled in the main blog), we noticed frantic work underway in the dark back room, seemingly to brighten it up. But otherwise, the bar has changed little since the original owners were evicted back in the spring. Serendipitously, a tipster emails today: "After the owners of Local 138 were evicted by convicted felon Mark Glass' (who is still in the pen) son, two of them ventured into Williamsburg and opened another bar, Grand Press (on Grand Street, in an old printing factory). I went to the opening party last Friday, and damn... it's got everything: 40 foot bar, 10 beers on tap, pool table, great backyard space, brick walls... and very homey feeling." After the way their brand has been exploited since their eviction, karma demands that this place take off. We're hoping.

Blogs for Breakfast

Promising new NYC food site The Food Section is worthy of a moment of your time. Also, we're quite taken with the mealtime photoblogging that Alaina's got going on over at NYC Eats. Other newcomers we've missed?

Second Date Update

There goes the New York Post again, copping our style with a roundup of good second date places. Okay, we like Bar d'O and Art Bar in the West Village, but we'll take the list our Posters put together here over the Post's open-Sheckys-to-a-random-page methodology. [via gothamist, which has some ideas of its own, not to mention hot lips] UPDATE: See also today's horrendous Post roundup of Orchard Street

Free Candy!

We've got to hand it to Daily Candy. They came through like rock stars after the purloined photo incident, mailing us a box that contained the following:

· Daily Candy postcard (3 count)
· Daily Candy mini notepad (5 count)
· Daily Candy lollypop (12 count)
· Daily Candy temporary tattoo (6 count)
· Daily Candy sticker (round) (3 count)
· Daily Candy t-shirt (size: XL)
· The Real World: Las Vegas (book)
· Soccer Mom notecards (12 count)
· Rocamojo baseball cap and t-shirt (size:small)
· Li'l Romeo kids t-shirt (size: tiny)
· L'eau Sephora spray (2 count)
· Neat Clip nail clipper

It's hard to know what to make of this kindness. In any case, at least one person in NYC has a cleaner cubicle.

Also: Tattoos for everyone!

Black Hearts Restaurant Reviews

In honor of V-Day: restaurant reviews from the Black Hearts Party.

EatLA Weblog Debuts

Hey hey kids, rock and roll. MC Palmermix himself, Michael Oates Palmer, is bringing the Below 14th (a.k.a. "this sideblog;" also answering to "The Vertical Presence") concept to Los Angeles (a.k.a. "L.A.") with a new food-and-drink weblog, eatLA. Looks terrific. So go, tell all your L.A. friends. They need to know this stuff.

JVG Does Alcohol Reviews

JVG is now offering alcohol reviews. First up: his father's scotch of choice. Can an online beer log* be far behind?
*failed LS/JVG project, circa 1994

French Laundry Review

Stepping afield of downtown Manhattan for a moment... God smiled on us and somehow we found ourselves ensconsed at the French Laundry in Napa Valley for lunch on Sunday. We're not sure what we did in a previous life to merit a special 14-course tasting menu (we'll deal with it our next time in the Bardo). Meantime: Digestion.

Night on Town with JVG

JVG does our dirty work today, summarizing our "night on the town at semi-fashionable one-syllable bars" yesterday eve.

William Grimes Returns

The great William Grimes made his return to the Times yesterday after having gone "on leave" at the start of the summer. The crowd at egullet weighs in on his return. Posters are less impressed with a New York Public Library Exhibit that Grimes curated: "It could have taken a month at most." Still unanswered: where the hell was Grimes all this time? (Bonus Below 14th gift idea: Grimes' book about his bird.)

Below 14th Hiatus Ends

I'm back in NYC, so Below 14th resumes... now! (Well, okay: sometime this week.)

Below 14th Summer Hiatus

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.