New Year's greetings from the Lower East Side. Today, we present the second installment of the LS.com LES Awards for 2002, following yesterday's awarding of the Food and Drink trophies. Time's a-wasting for 2002, so let's get right to it.

### THE NEIGHBORHOOD ###

Three Big New Things in the Neighborhood, 2002
1. V Train… This generally useless appendage of the subway system goes all the way to 2nd Ave. and Allen Street, making its empty cars the ideal LES commuter express.
2. W Hotel… Construction continues on the 18-story behemoth across the street from my apartment on Rivington (seen at right as it looked in June). At least I can see where I live from anywhere below 14th now.
3. Sunshine Cinema… The LES’ new movie house instantly made the cramped, small screens of the Angelika obsolete, even if they did run Y Tu Mama Tambien for 38 consecutive weeks.

Strangest Daily Experience, Rivington Street Edition
So here’s the deal with the new Lower East Side W Hotel, told to me by an insider. Apparently, Starwood (the parent company) doesn’t actually own the structure that’s going up in the heart of the LES. The plan is that, once this massive structure is complete, the developer (one "Downtown LLC" by name) will go "bankrupt" and Starwood will "just happen" to purchase the property. As a result, the place is being built with non-union labor. Sub-result: Every morning this year, I've stepped outside to find (a) a group of striking laborers; and (b) their 25 foot inflatable rat looming over me.

Three LES Secrets You Probably Already Know
1. The Alife Sneaker Store on Rivington… Will the era of ooh-we're-cool-no-sign-out-front come to an end in 2003?
2. The Secret Phone Number to Milk and Honey… Okay, we know it’s posted on Craig’s List at least twice a week, but it still helps us feel in-the-know
3. The signless location of the LES' hippest new spot, Adult Space... You do know this one, right?

The George Orwell Award for Information Non-Transparency
The MTA closed down the north side of the Delancey Street station last winter and put up a sign: CLOSED UNTIL 5/24/02. It's a royal pain in the ass to cross the busy traffic of Delancey to use the station, but so be it. May 24 came and went and the barricades stayed. Soon we noticed the sign had been changed to read: CLOSED UNTIL 9/15/02. Come mid-September, and one day the signs say: CLOSED UNTIL 10/28/02. Would you believe they’ve changed the signs twice more since then? We tip our cap to the unknown graffiti artist who took pen to sign a few months back and scrawled “LIARS!!”

Your Friends and Neighbors Award
Three unusual weblogs, each apparently run from the LES [via nycbloggers]
1. Cosmic Rust... "The latest and greatest news from the world of Transformers"
2. Story Poems... "Story Poems from the Lower East Side"
3. France Watch... "Spotlight on French Extremism"

Most Awe-Inspiring Natural Phenomenon
Eldridge Street Hot Springs... On the first snowy day of the season, we were walking down Rivington when we chanced upon what appeared to be a steam vent. Approaching it, we realized it was a large pool of melted water, warmed by pipes running just under the sidewalk, producing copious amounts of steam. Now, on every wet or snowy day, we pause to admire nature's wonder on the northeast corner of Eldridge and Rivington. John Muir would be proud.

LES Throwbacks Not To Lose
1. The Matzo Factory… Walk past and check out the matzo coming off the conveyor belt, and the old Jewish men packaging it up. Better than fresh donuts at Krispy Kreme (Rivington @ Suffolk/Clinton)
2. Economy Candy… A bona fide tourist attraction, this old school candy store sells in bulk. A must-see. (Rivington @ Ludlow/Essex)
3. The Kosher Wine Mural on the wall above Essex and Rivington…. Lord, don’t let them replace it with a Miss Sixty billboard

Five Signs of Creeping LES Gentrification
1. Jennifer Convertibles opens LES store (Delancey @ Allen)
2. Age-old kosher deli landmark Ratners closes to expand increasingly cheesy cocktail haven Lansky Lounge (Delancey @ Norfolk)
3. Moby opens overpriced teashop Teany (Rivington @ Orchard/Ludlow)
4. Apt. buildings for I-Bankers sprout ("Gotham Court" on Essex, that big-ass place on Bowery @ Spring)
5. This weblog

### MISCELLANY ###

Alarming Things Seen in NYC, 2002 Edition
1. Growing Tourist Influx to the LES, drawn by the Tenement Museum and miscellaneous foreign guidebooks, threatens our sanity
2. Imminent Smoking Ban threatens that smokey, smoked-up aroma of an evening out. Another brick in the wall... and we don't even smoke
3. Sale of the New York Press, our favorite weekly read, and the imminent firing of editor John Strausbaugh threatens to turn NYC’s best open forum for no-holds-barred writing (sorry, Craig’s List) into just another boring weekly paper

Great Things Seen in NYC, 2002 Edition
1. The Pillars of Light (seen from my roof, right)
2. Pact reached to preserve community gardens
3. Mark Green walking down 43rd Street this fall, still with that shit-eating grin on his face

Bodega Name We Liked So Much We Almost Named This Website After It
The Neon Food Corp. (Ludlow @ Rivington/Delancey)

Best Moment of Pure Poetic Justice
Standing on our roof with a friend looking down on Rivington, we're talking about the Mexican restaurant across the street. "The only person I know who's gone there got food poisoning," he says. Right then, an ambulance pulls up in front of the place and two paramedics rush in.

Most Overplayed LES Media Trends by the NYTimes, 2002
1. Restauranting of Clinton St.
2. Gallerying of Rivington St.
3. Boutiquing of Orchard St.

### THE FUTURE ###

Three Things We'd Like to See on the LES in 2003
1. Whole Foods buys the lease on Essex Market, opens giant LES Food Emporium
2. 'Elita' Neighborhood (the area around Happy Ending) stays off mainstream media radar so we can find a nice apartment there
3. After endless scouring of Siglo XX and Las Venus, I finally find the perfect coffee table for my apartment

Three Things We'll Probably See Instead
1. First LES Starbucks (and/or First LES Pret)
2. New York Times writes breathless article on Elita
3. Me still using the same damn gray plastic coffee table

Resolutions for This Website, 2003
1. More photos
2. No trolling for Gawker hits Responsible trolling for Gawker hits
3. Movable Type (FictionalCompany will get it done, right, JCN?)

Thanks to everyone who read, emailed or asked “what’s the deal with your website?” in 2002. We hope to bemuse and confound in equal measure in the new year. Until then, Aloha.

Welcome, one and all, to the year-end gala at the Web Presence. For your digestive pleasure, we've compiled our Best of the Lower East Side Awards for 2002 in two batches, served hot today and tomorrow. For the purposes of this little production, the LES is casually defined as "the area near my apartment" (on Rivington @ Ludlow/Essex) essentially comprising the traditional LES plus the bottom of the East Village and the fringes of NoLiTa and Chinatown.

Today: Food and Drink.
Tomorrow: Neighborhood, Miscellaneous & The Future.
Bon appetit!

### FOOD ###

Three Great Things about Li’l Frankies Pizza, The Best Thing To Happen to the LES Cuisine Scene in 2002
1. The back room. Demand to sit there
2. Autographed photograph in bathroom: “To Li’l Frankies, the best pizza! Yours, Hollywood Hulk Hogan”
3. They deliver to Rivington Street

Restaurants Where We Consistently Love Our Food
1. Alias (Clinton @ Rivington)… Spare and a bit pricey; when it works, yum
2. Supper (2nd St @ Ave. A)… Another Frank gift to the region
3. Lucien (1st Ave @ 1st St)… Love those nicotined walls

Edward Gibbon Award
Empty tables spotted at prime dining hour at 71 Clinton Fresh Food (right) two weeks ago.

Good LES Brunch Place Now So Overrun That It Makes Queuing at Habana Actually Seem Like A Viable Option
Clinton Street Baking Co.… Repent, repent… and do brunch on a weekday, when nobody’s there. (Clinton @ Houston/Stanton)

Good LES Brunch Places Where You Can Actually Get a Table
1. Rivington 99…. God’s gift to hangovers. N.B. Currently closed for renovations (Rivington @ Ludlow)
2. Good World… As mellow at noon as it is untenable at midnight (Orchard @ Canal)
3. Rialto… Grilled corn nearly as good as Habana with none of the crowds (Elizabeth @ Houston/Prince)

Three Low-Key Places on Clinton Street We Like
1. Punch and Judy… Order the Lobster Club (Clinton @ Houston/Stanton)
2. 1492… For the back garden in summer (Clinton @ Stanton/Rivington)
3. WD-50… Well, low-key until it opens (Clinton@ Stanton/Rivington)

Kiss the Architect, Kill the Chef Award
Suba… Psychedelic “moat room” (right) with barrel vaulted ceilings is as otherworldly as anything we saw this year. The food? Equally bizarre. (Ludlow @ Rivington/Delancey)

Botched Opening of Year, Runner Up
Smith... Brian McNally opens a new joint on a block replete with culinary success stories (Prune and The Tasting Room) to fanfare, feuds with partner, tries to close it down after only a few months, partner refuses, McNally leaves, partner closes back dining room for awhile, changes name and menu to overpriced comfort food, continues apace. We stopped in last week... The mood? "Death-like" isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind. (First St. @ 1st/2nd Aves.)

Botched Opening of Year
Tenement... Planned all the press notices for mid-November, finally opened the doors in early December, fucked with us on the reservation line, then decided to close down until after New Year’s. Ingenious way of building buzz by reducing supply? (Ludlow @ Stanton/Rivington)

Banned Establishments List 2002
1. Cafe Charbon… For crimes against French architectural design (Stanton @ Orchard)
2. Mooza... For crimes against exterior signage (and cuisine) (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton)
3. Le Pere Pinard… Something about it creeps us out (Ludlow @ Houston/Stanton)

LS.com Zeitgeist Report
Restaurant names showing up most often in this site’s referrer logs since September (e.g., people at Google searched for…)
35 Apizz
24 Clinton Street Bakery
17 WD 50
12 Teany
7 Tenement

Best LES Moment Like You’d See On A Reality TV Show
Just yesterday, we’re cruising down Rivington Street with MOP. We pass Teany, the trendy teashop. Who should MOP spot sitting on the stoop… chatting it up… keeping it real? The proprietor himself: Moby. We genuflect.

### DRINK ###

Bars that Were “Cool” 5 Years Ago And Now Must Be “Avoided At All Costs” on Friday and Saturday Nights if You Value Your “Sanity”
1. Kush (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton)
2. Rivertown Lounge (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton)
3. Lansky Lounge (Norfolk @ Rivington/Delancey)

Best Indication that Citysearch Users Are Drunk
8.5 "Best of" Rating for Rivertown Lounge, 7.6 "Best Of" rating for Kush.

Old School Bars We’ll Hit Without Embarrassment
1. Local 138 (right) (Ludlow @ Stanton/Rivington)
2. Barramundi (Ludlow @ Stanton/Rivington)
3. Butcher Bar (Stanton @ Orchard/Ludlow)

Newcomers We Frequent, Frequently
1. Lolita… Just because (Broome @ Allen)
2. The Magician… Because it’s next door (Rivington @ Essex)
3. Tile Bar … Because MB and CS like it (First Ave @ 8th St)

Saddest Death Knell for a Bar We Used To Love
Lotus Club… Ken spots a rat sitting comfortably on the shelf, then watches it scurry behind a toaster oven. With it went our patronage. (Stanton @ Clinton)

Would You Upper East Siders Kindly Stay There, Please? Award
Gatsby's... The horrific Spring Street drinking establishment that consistently garners half a dozen hits a month for this website since we trashed it back in June.

Obligatory Bar Praise, a.k.a. "Thanks for All the Free Drinks!"
Grace... It's in Tribeca, but we love the barkeep, and JVG's hosting the 10th annual NBNYE there tonight. See you there!

· Don't miss Part Deux of the LES Awards
· Catch up on the 2002 Eating and Drinking news with Below 14th

### 30 ###

As of this post, LS.com is on Christmas holiday. We'll be back for a last hurrah in 2002 with the First Annual LS.com LES AWARDS, coming December 30 and 31 to this space. Happy days to you and yours.

Finishing up our Christmas shopping yesterday, we stopped by Avenue B's TKNY, the coolest retail experience available today in Manhattan. A micro-boutique that's more museum of advanced technology than actual store (many products, including a portable device we wanted to buy that turns any surface into a speaker, are out of stock), TKNY stocks gadgets and doodads (many from Japan) that are just slightly ahead of the curve. One that caught our eye: the High Speed Condom, which promises to reduce the "30 to 40 seconds the average condom takes to unroll" to a more pleasurable three seconds. The secret, it seems, is in the packaging. Stop by the store for a demo on the anatomically accurate display case.
· The High Speed Condom [compact-impact.com]
· Compact-Impact Christmas Gifts 2002 [compact-impact.com]
· TKNY [tkny.com]

JVG's report on our Saturday night is the Gawk of the Town... or something.
· JVG's Saturday Night [gawker]

He of Lightningfield, David Gallagher, posts spectacular subway photos... and our holy grail -- old subway maps.
· NYC Subway Historical Maps [nycsubway.org via lightningfield]

Congratulations to DC herself and all the LS.com chums at Darrah Carr Dance, who reports: "Darrah Carr Dance just pulled the biggest coup in recent modern dance history -- beating out a mortgage company and a fine shoe store to sign a lease on an adorable (and affordable) storefront rehearsal space in Williamsburg!!! We are thrilled and giddy." So are we. Always.

Catching up on our NYC news after a week away, some very welcome news: the Bloomberg administration is embracing the plan to turn the elevated railroad track in Chelsea (the "High Line") into greenspace. This is the second major neighborhood environment coup by the mayor, following the September agreement to protect community gardens. Hurrah!
· On West Side, Rail Plan Is Up and Walking [NYTimes via Gawker]
· Ending a Long Battle, New York Lets Housing and Gardens Grow [NYTimes via, er, NYCP]

Back from Palm Beach. An entirely odd place captured well by Simon Doonan in the Observer a few weeks back:

Though formerly very Gay 90’s (all the men were gay and all the women were 90), the median age is now creeping downwards, and New Yorkers of all persuasions who can no longer cope with the raucous sleaze of Miami Beach are calling Sotheby’s realtor du jour Alan Stenberg and snapping up jolie-laide 70’s condos in the SoSlo area (South of Sloane’s curve), then filling them with bargain furniture from the incredible antique stores in West Palm Beach.

I'm heading south on business until the end of the week to a scary place with no Internet access. But we'll pretend it's tomorrow and direct you to check out Gawker with all due speed. It's the latest fruition of Nick's Thin Media concept. I've watched Gawker in beta this week and already become addicted. It's Romenesko for everyone who cares more about New York City doings & gossip than media doings & gossip (though Gawker's got its share of that, too). Full launch is set for Wednesday. Hell, Jeff Jarvis has already given it his thumbs up. This will be big.
· Gawker [gawker.com]
· What is Gawker? [capitalinflux.com]
· On Gawker [buzzmachine.com]

The elevators in my midtown office building have LCD screens that flash quasi-news and helpful health facts. I try to ignore them, but this morning limbic slavery won out. What if I had missed this?

Captivate.com Poll: Have you been naughty or nice?
Nice: 68%
Naughty: 22%
Go to Captivate.com to vote!

JVG is off to a flying start with his weblog. He's posted scans of documents related to his birth in New York City in 1974, including a series of threatening letters traded between his mother and the hospital.
· Documents Relating to My Birth [jvg.com]
· Fourth Estate Closes In at Two Months [jvg.com]

Speaking of the Times, it doesn't get pushed much further over the top than today's bizarro world take on the Phish subculture, part of a series (for real) called Thou Shalt Not in which (no joke) Phish represents idolatry. It (the band, that is, not the deadly sin) is something with which we have more than a passing familiarity, so we can report, alas, that there's far more fantasy on the paper's pages than in any of Phish's actual music. (UPDATE from ABL: "The piece was written by a Columbia j-school professor." We're shocked, shocked.)
· A Quest for Rapture Leads a Phish Head Astray [nytimes.com]

From the Times correction column yesterday:

Magazine An article on Nov. 10 about animal rights referred erroneously to an island in the Indian Ocean and to events there involving goats and endangered giant sea sparrows that could possibly lead to the killing of goats by environmental groups. Wrightson Island does not exist; both the island and the events are hypothetical figments from a book (also mentioned in the article), ''Beginning Again,'' by David Ehrenfeld. No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats.

Sunday Styles A front-page picture in this section last Sunday with an article about the increased number of Europeans frequenting Manhattan nightclubs was published in error. While it showed the club Pangaea during a party largely attended by Europeans, the young man prominently shown holding a glass and leaning across several people was not European. He was Robert Denning of Greenwich, Conn.

It's been quite the week for TPM and Josh Marshall, the lefty who Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan concurr "owns the story." True enough: he's pulled Lott scoops out of the ether on a daily basis, making him one of the real reporters of this realm -- and making me almost tolerant of his odd prose stylings. Was it a mere decade ago he was teaching me about history? Perhaps so. Meantime, we note that another Brown boy, he also a former BDH columnist, has his own burgeoning web presence.
· Southern Partisan Article [talkingpointsmemo.com]
· The Window Is Closing [jacobtlevy.blogspot.com]
· Bloggers Versus Lott [stevenberlinjohnson.com]

Of all the wacky new shit from Google Labs, Froogle looks like a real keeper.
· Froogle [froogle.google.com]
· Google Labs [labs.google.com]

A new season, a new lead photo for the Web Presence. View looks east down Rivington Street from the block between Orchard and Ludlow. Previous lead photos now have their very own archive page.
· LS.com Front Photo Archive [ls.com]

Everyone in this city has a horrible landlord story. Yet somehow, I've ended up on the other side of the coin. It all started back in 1998, when the landlord for 619 East 5th Street spent two months tracking me down to make sure my $800 security deposit was returned to me. "Who does that?" one friend asked at the time... But things didn't get really weird until a few weeks ago. I was on the phone negotiating rent with my current Rivington Street landlord. We're chatting it up, getting along famously -- he's even agreeing to cut $100 from my monthly rent because of the weak rental market -- retroactive to two months ago! But this is not even the weird part. By the by, he's telling me, real estate is only a side occupation for him. His main gig is running an intimate apparel company called Intimo. We continue:

Him: You're a writer?
Me: Well, writer/editor, what-have-you...
Him: Have you seen the Intimo website?
Me: No.
Him: Are you in front of a web browser?
Me: Yes.
Him: Go to Intimo-dot-com.
I surf over and confront quite the ab six pack.
Me: Good looking site.
I click on some of the female intimate apparel. The photography is, shall we say, somewhat less intimate than the male apparel.
Him: ...You know, I like the look of our site, but I've always thought our copy could read better. You know, more like that catalog guy from Seinfeld...
Me: (slight disbelief in voice) J. Peterman?
Him: Right! J. Peterman! Do you think you could write something like that?
Me: I could try.

All of which explains how I came to be pondering Intimo this week, working up some trial copy. So tell me... what kind of copy would make you spring for some intimate apparel? All ideas welcome. No idea too intimate.
· Intimo [intimo.com]

Stop the presses! The newly blogified jonathanvangieson.com is live! This will become a daily stopping point on our tours of the world wide web. Huzzah!
· Jonathan Van Gieson dot com [jvg.com]

Looking for a one bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side? The unit directly below me has just opened up. Contact me for details.

JCN and Karen -- these two crazy kids -- are traveling around the globe from London to NYC by way of St. Petersburg, Bangkok and Tokyo, among other stopping off points. Check in with them now before the good times are over and they're back in NYC resuming their "professional" lives.
· My Trip Around the World [pith.org]
· Tofu Mania [pith.org]

The award for most overwrought writing about snow goes to... Peggy Noonan!

But it's in the city that snow does its most obvious magic. It heightens beauty, covers flaws, softens hard angles. It makes a row of trash cans a craggy white wall. It gives wholeness back to rusty fences and heightens the dignity of plain things like stoops and elegant things like steeples. It makes us see again what we'd been forgetting to notice.

They're spamming the neighborhood with their posters, so we thought we'd check out the Pratique Guide to Soho/NoLiTa. Surprised to find a very attractive website with actual, up-to-date information (sample sale today at Calypso, and they're hip to the Agent Provocateur opening everyone's talking about). Many store listings are incomplete (odd, considering the book is obviously done), so consider this site a work in progress. We remain big fans of the store (...and restaurant and bar...) listings compiled by the folks at TrendCentral -- pithy, current and usually on the mark.
· Soho/Nolita Pratique Guide [pratiqueguide.com]
· TrendCentral NYC: What People Are Talking About [trendcentral.com]
· TrendCentral Nolita Guide [trendcentral.com]

From the best photo weblog in the five boroughs, some snow snaps from Park Slope.
· Park Slope, Brooklyn [lightningfield.com]

With the Lower East Side ankle deep in snow and slush, our vehicle sits safe and sound, parked streetside a few blocks over on Norfolk Street. Blessed be, the first snow of the season has coincided with an unprecedented four-day suspension of alternate side parking regulations. It's a Christmas miracle!
· New York City Street Cleaning Rules Suspension [orchardst.com]

An email from my aunt in British Columbia: "I don't understand a lot of what is in your website, however, I enjoy the musings that I do understand. " Our new motto!

It's a chatting about Dylan afternoon. (UPDATE: JA emails: "I was amused to read that exchange seconds after hearing VOJ on my ipod. Serendipitous!")
· Ain't It Just Like the Night [palmermix.com]

Sometimes folks ask me why I maintain a personal website. My answer has always been that there's no real reason -- or, rather, that it's a project thrown out in public space to determine its own reason for existence. In the last month, I've come up with an answer. It's all about promoting serendipity. There's the example posted right below, of course. But even its magic does not compare to the wildly cosmic forces that were at play when I posted a random comment about Ikea that MBS exchanged with an unknown woman in a one-minute conversation at a bar we never go to. Two days later, I received an email from an address I didn't recognize with the following message: "I believe he actually said, "what do you think of Ikea coming to New York?" I responded, incredulous but thrilled, and she wrote back:

yesterday I was looking around for some info on Apizz because I have a plan to dine there. Your site came up via Google (which it had several months ago when I was looking for info on The Magician). I had liked the site then, but immediately forgot about it. Yesterday I remembered that I liked it, and promptly began browsing around. Imagine my surprise when I read about my very own B-Bar encounter.

Nick linked and Rebecca visited this space and I linked the party for the book and as if by magic we all ended up in the magazine. Wow.
· Unmarried Bliss [newyorker.com]
· Stealing Stories [nickdenton.org] for more metatextual pleasure