Scheduling problems—namely, our inability to get our shit together—have forced the postponement of the interviews phase of the Surface Hotel report to next week. As our last act of photoblogging, we leave you with an evocative image of the hotel from Avenue A, where it serves up a metaphorical middle finger to the East Village.

Good buddy AK of the Times-Picayune emails from New Orleans, "This should explain where I've been for the past year." (We'd been wondering.) Good reading about one of the few states that gives Rhode Island a run for the corruption crown.
· Special Report: Shell Game [nola.com]

Color us amped about the big Red Sox–Diamondbacks trade. It's a good excuse to plug the relatively new weblog run by the folks at Diamond Mind, who offer baseball tidbits for hardcore fans. If OPS is your cereal of choice, you'll enjoy their analysis. (Tom on the trade: "I think [the Sox] come out ahead, both in the short run and the long run.")
· Kim for Hillenbrand [diamond-mind.com]
· Time is of Essence in Trade [boston.com]

Dammit, the Sole Writer continues to intercept our reader mail about 11 Spring Street. To wit:
· It's a famous street art location! [gawker.com]
· It's got a photographer! And Blue Man Group! [gawker.com]
· It's an expensive warehouse! [gawker.com]
· It's the ice house! [gawker.com]

Choire hits WD-50 for dinner and meditates on the New New LES:

I love it "down there," but in many ways the new Lower East Side leaves me a little cold. Where I grew up, the poor neighborhoods and towns stayed poor. If you wanted to change class, you packed up your Dodge Dart and got the fuck out of town. But on this island, a small group of ambitious real estate agents can disrupt communities and tantalize foolish landlords into untenable positions with the snap of taloned fingers. My point again being: you can cut the class tension on the L.E.S. with a Wusthof-Trident knife.

War or no war, let's let the good times roll with Part II...



Rooftop access in Manhattan is a God-given gift to the spirit and, in our case, the inner photojournalist. Beginning in early 2002, we snapped away as a strange structure began rising just to our south. Would it grow past five stories? It would. Seven? Yes. Surely not 10? But why not? For that reason, why not 20? And so it would be. We kept snapping and the damn thing kept growing. Now, they have a shiny new hotel and we have... these pictures.



Yesterday: Views from the Top
Today: Building the Hotel: A Retrospective
Thursday: An Architectural Review
Friday: Questions and Answers (Email us your questions. No question too banal.)


February 2002... Humble beginnings for the hotel-to-be. The killer duplex apartment on the right enjoys its last minutes of actual sunshine. (N.B. Prayer flags didn't work.)


March 2002... Growing like a weed (metaphor, mere metaphor!).


Late March 2002... The view from further back on our roof. Surely the topping off starts soon?


May 2002... Or not.


June 2002... View from the corner of Ludlow and Rivington. By now, we're frightened of the building and insist on staying back at least 100 yards.


June 2002... Still, when the sun's in your eyes, there's a raw beauty about the whole undertaking.


September 2002... Inner walls going in. It's either going to be a hotel or a jail with really small cells.


November 2002... A moment to cherish—the building's first snow.


December 2002... Topping off complete with the installation of the gun turret.


March 2003... Sporting a new yellow coat for spring.


May 2003... Yellow gives way to greens, blues, and translucense.

Tommorrow: One of the hotel's two architects attempts to answer the question, "Is 'translucense' a word?"

At long last, the wait is over...



In late March, as detailed in the preview to this report, we found ourselves boarding the service elevator and rising 19 floors to the top of the Surface Hotel. Well, it wasn't quite the top—there's a second floor to the duplex penthouse we couldn't make it to—but the views are magnificent, largely because the building is taller by half than most everything else in the neighborhood. So now, finally, we present to you the first part in our four-part series on the hotel that is changing the face of the Lower East Side, whether we like it or not...



Today: Views from the Top
Wednesday: Building the Hotel: A Retrospective
Thursday: An Architectural Review
Friday: Questions and Answers (Email us your questions and we'll have them answered by the right people)

Now, read on to see the Views from the Top...

Our journey started on the moist ground floor, a level below where the lobby is slated to be. Here's the tenement view diners at the glassed-in ground floor restaurant will enjoy while noshing on nibbles.


Looking up the back of the hotel as installation of the glass facade begins.

Then, we began our rise. First stop, 7th floor...



Two views from the 1,000 square foot outdoor terrace on the 7th floor that will be accessible to two private suites. "It uses the city as wallpaper," says hotel architect Amador Pons.


Looking up the un-glassed front facade from the 7th floor terrace.

After touring several model rooms on the 7th floor, we moved twelve floors up to the 19th floor... the penthouse...


Architect Pons and Surface Hotel concept man Will Candis ponder the view from the top. The leaning steel beam will support two-story windows for the penthouse, which looks like it will be a charming spot for a party.

And then there were the views...


View from the 20th floor, looking northeast across the Lower East Side, past Clinton Street into the East Village.


Straight up the LES into the East Village and beyond. That's Ludlow Street heading north on the left, Essex on the right.


Zoom-in view up Avenue A, past the Red Square apartment complex on the right.


Close on the corner of Ludlow and Stanton.


Dazzling view northwest towards the Empire State Building.


Across Soho to the Hudson.


Looking south across the penthouse-to-be.


... and down at your humble correspondent's roof.

More tomorrow...

LA Times reporter Geraldine Baum fills the West Coast crowd in on the Surface Hotel and its developer, Paul Stallings. Looks like everyone's keeping it real:

During a tour of the $250-a-night rooms at the Surface, a woman in a housedress emerged from her apartment in an adjacent tenement and began hanging her laundry on the fire escape. "That's what we want people to experience," said Amador Pons, the 28-year-old hotel architect, first pointing to the woman sunning her laundry and then sweeping his hand across a cityscape of tenement rooftops and East River bridges.

1) Most important fashion trend for younger ladies (judging by the crowd at Belle's East Saturday night): Hair extensions! For older ladies, the "kimono thing"
2) Most important fashion trend for gentlemen (ditto): Striped shirts, which officially have hit a saturation point
3) Leather flip-flops (and yes, Ken, anything by Converse)
4) Hot tubs
5) The first-place Boston Red Sox

Well, they're saying maybe the clouds will part Sunday afternoon, and CL came through big yesterday with a Monday afternoon Sox-Yanks ticket for us. (We'll be rooting against the Texas Con Man, but we'll applaud him if he does ring up #300). Closing up shop here and hitting the road. Happy days.
· What's New on the Hamptons Dining Scene [hcandg.com]
· The Not-So-Sweet Tale on Ben & Jerry [hcandg.com]
· Hamptons Events Calendar [hcandg.com]

It's Bowery day on LS.com! (At LS.com, one=trend). Why, you ask? Because just steps from the Bowery (and the Jen Bekman Gallery on Spring), Jen herself informs us that a neighborhood landmark is newly up for sale. The building, with the comely address of 11 Spring Street, has inspired conspiracy theories, fear, loathing and—in the pages of the New York Times—utter perplexion.

The reason for all the attention: in an area of Nolita where apartments trade hands for millions and shoestring retailers are forced out to make room for the C. Ronson's of the world, this building has no ground-level retail and, near as anyone can tell, no residents. Yet every evening the windows glow with candle-like light, reflecting an ethereal glow upon curtains hung just so in every window. So what's really going on behind closed doors? A year ago, a Times Arts reporter endeavored to find out. (We've burned one of the precious credits from our Times Archive 25-pack to hook you up with the following excerpt from the story, dated June 14, 2002):

But it is not celebrity and cinema that lend the street its true shimmer; it's rather the street's good-humored mysteries, chief among them the building on the northeast corner of Elizabeth and Spring. Everyone agrees it was once a working stable for the horses that pulled wagons of fruit, ice and coal, but no one agrees on what goes on there now.

No one can explain why the three floors of the building have identical white curtains gathered low, just above sill level, and illuminated by tiny Christmas-tree bulbs. Nor can anyone account for the gigantic image of Mao on the building, done by the last Commie or the latest Warhol wannabe?

Sitting in the newly opened Café Lebowitz on the opposite corner, I eat a tasty lunch of borscht and schnitzel when I spot an odd-looking person emerging from that odd-looking building. I run to ask him the obvious question: What goes on in there? Shaking his head, which seems not be so much bald or shaved as hairless, he slips into his car, saying, ''They all wonder.''

Yes, we hate ourselves. Yes, this is all just a cheap tease. Next week, Tuesday through Friday: the complete report.
· Scaling the Surface Hotel Preview [ls.com]

Cue endmusic. It don't get better than this.
· JVG recognized by Tina Brown [gawker.com]
· The Problem with Being Nice [timesonline.co.uk.]
· Tina Brown Revealed [jvg.com]

· "It's the Lower East Side. Everyone drinks beer down here." [ebway.net]
· Darrell West has a weblog! [insidepolitics.org]
· All the Ladies in the House [choiresicha.com]
· Below 14th: How Shebeen? [tobacco.org]
· 601am Bows Snazzy Redesign; Website Implodes [601am.com]

Dear God. Beer pong, anyone?

Decent story in the Times today on Red Sox fans in NYC, spotlighting the Riviera Cafe in the West Village as a Boston baseball haven. Stop by tonight to share Contreras jokes.
· Red Sox Fans Recoil in Yankees' Backyard [nytimes.com]

Recently single and never wanting to fall more than six months behind the curve, we've manned up for Friendster this week. MM is tracking the progress of our posse over on CohabNat.
· Friendster, Day 2 [cohabitationation.com]

To the new visitors who have discovered the Web Presence in the past few days, we promise you that -- with the unfortunate exception of this sentence -- you will never read the word "limn" on this website.

More and more, it seems the four most exciting words you can find on a book cover are not "New York Times Bestseller" but rather "Reading Group Guide Inside." Just finished Life of Pi, newly out in paperback, and turned the final page to find -- yes! -- a reading group guide inside. For those unlucky enough to own the hardcover, some choice questions to ponder that you may not have come up with in your reading group (unless, of course, a second grade teacher sat in):

· "Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?"
· "What event marked your coming of age?"
· "Pi defends zoos. Are you convinced? Is a zoo a good place for a wild animal?"

· Got Radiohead? Ever-savvy Rivington neighbor Catherine beat us to the punch by snapping a shot (scroll to Friday's entry) of the massive new Hail to the Thief grafitti art-vertisement now gracing Ludlow just north of the Pink Pony. Gives us the bends creeps. Really.
· New LES Blog Alert! From East Broadway comes the promising two-person blog of Cintra and Ian, ebway.org. Already they've got the scoop on smoking on Elizabeth Street, a Bar 169 review, and the Chinatown Buses war. (We're making the massive mental leap that this is business writer Ian Mount, whose work we've enjoyed. If it is another Ian Mount, we welcome you too, sir, to the neighborhood's virtual space.)

Yes, we're checking the weather forecast obsessively, too, in advance of our first weekend in the Hamptons this year. Yes, our magazine is having its one year anniversary party this Saturday... outside. Yes, we're bitter.
· Memorial Day Weather [choiresicha.com]
· Bridgehampton, NY Forecast [weather.com]

Does this mean we have to stop making fun of Sunday Styles?

We're out of town for a few days, but in our absence, we're prepping a major report for next week. Yes, brace yourself, because at long last it's time for...



Loyal readers know that we have a rather strange obsession with the Surface Hotel, the monolith rising mere leagues from our front door. A little over a month ago, Will Candis, the man behind the Surface concept, led us behind the curtain for a view from the top... And now, finally, we're ready to present the full story. Raw and unretouched. Brace yourselves for the true tale of how a young architect turned a plan for a 20-story pink stucco apartment building into a hotel the NYPost has declared (perhaps the tiniest bit prematurely, given that the place isn't even waterproof yet) the hottest thing on the LES...

Beginning this Tuesday on the Web Presence:
Part I: Views from the Top
Part II: An Architectural Review
Part III: Building the Hotel: A Retrospective
Part IV: Questions and Answers

In the meantime, a brief review of our coverage to date:
· Surface Hotel Update [ls.com] 5/7/2003
· Hotel Update [ls.com] 2/26/2003
· Surface (The Hotel) Update [ls.com] 2/20/2003
· That Hotel Across from Me Update 2/13/2003
· Hotel (The LES) 1/6/2003
· LS.com LES Awards 2002 12/31/2002

And okay, for those who can't wait for some snaps, peek inside for a preview of the view from the top...

Views from the 20th Floor of the Surface Hotel:


The view from the 20th floor, looking northeast across the Lower East Side, past Clinton Street up into the East Village.


Looking north up Avenue A, past the Red Square apartment complex on the right.

Much more to come...

Fun afternoon activity: join coworkers staring at the Chrysler Building and the person apparently scaling its needle as these words are typed.

A corollary: Among certain denizens of the Uptown (and, it must be said, even the Downtown) universe, there is no Lower East Side. "Where do you live?" people inquire. "Rivington and Ludlow," we reply. "Ah, East Village," they confide, knowingly. Always knowingly.
· Lower East Side geography [gawker.com]

Felix tackles Raising Victor Vargas, and in so doing, confronts a perceived LES class divide:

It's set in what all the film reviews insist on calling the Lower East Side, although nearly all of it takes place north of Houston Street. Still, the moniker is fair: what we're seeing is Loisaida Avenue, not Avenue C. (For those of you who don't live here, they're physically the same, but conceptually very different: the former is old-school Hispanic; the latter new-school yuppie.) The big divide in this (my) neck of the woods these days is not Houston Street so much as it is disposable income: there are many poor families living on welfare and clipping supermarket coupons, as well as bars with $2,000 bottles of champagne and a new hotel which will charge up to $2,500 a night.

For us, it was a quiet weekend of brooding and mulling at our Rivington Street apartment. Less than a block away, however, strange times were being had by the folks from PsyGeoConflux. In the image at right, according to a caption in The New York Times, "Sal Randolph was a pawn who captured a white knight, Steve Duncan, on Sunday in a human chess game at Ludlow and Rivington Streets on the Lower East Side." The chess game, using real people set on the LES street grid and directed by cell phones, was only the tip of a much larger iceberg. An iceberg, it must be said, we're sorry we didn't slam into.
· Street Artists, Fighting Over Gentrified Streets [nytimes.com]
· Psychogeographers Navigate New York City's Changing Landscape [villagevoice.com]
· Psy.Geo.Conflux [glowlab.com]
· psy.geo.conflux.news [glowlab.com]

We're so proud of JVG. Seven years removed, he still can't get enough of Providence, RI. In commemoration, he's bringing a Taste of Providence, so to speak, to the Fringe Festival this summer. The production, "Buddy" Cianci: The Musical, promises to be as thick as the Mayor's Own Marinara Sauce. And 10% less illegal.
· Announcing "Buddy" Cianci: The Musical [jvg.com]
· Offical Website [buddyciancithemusical.com]

Sign you've chosen your garage well: the $440 payment due is cash only.

Sometimes people say to us, "Lock, when are you going to broaden your purview beyond the Lower East Side?" To them we say, as soon as events like this little gathering no longer plague our Great Uptown.
· Today's Party Pictures [newyorksocialdiary.com] thanks margit

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, because you're all reading it already, Where is Raed? just gets better and better. Today in Baghdad:

The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel. Heaps of cheap RAM (stolen of course) is being sold beside broken monitors beside falafel stands and weapons are all available. Fights break out justlikethat and knives come out from nowhere, knives just bought 5 minutes ago. There are army sighting thingys, Weird looking things with lenses. And people selling you computer cases who tell you these are electric warmers, never having seen a computer case before.

Well, it was inevitable. For guys who can't stomach the femme fashion of Daily Candy or the frilly twilly from Julib, there's a new NYC email newsletter launching soon called Double Agent. The concept: "For men, by women." Maxim in your inbox. We're faint with joy.
· Double Agent [doubleagent.com]

So Liz gets to read the infamous spiked Atlantic Monthly Eggers story. Lucky bitch.
· Eggers, Eggers, Eggers! [gawker.com]

MOP has an important announcement.
· Important [palmermix.com]

Hey, lookee. The Times gets with the times and writes up a businessy blurb on the Surface Hotel. Nothing new, but serves to remind us that we owe y'all a post with some photos. We'll get our shit together one of these days.
· A High-Rise Hotel on Old Rivington St. [nytimes.com]

Selective re-imagining of New York Mag's Best of New York 2003 winners from the Lower East Side: Hip Sneakers Fifteen Seconds Ago: Alife Rivington Club. Cheap Night Overcrowded Fire Hazard: Pianos. Wine Bar Mellow Spot Now Sure to be Overrun: Punch & Judy. Lasagna Goopy Glop from Wood Oven: Apizz.
Best of New York: Lower East Side [newyorkmetro.com]

For the Old Man of the Mountain. Joseph McQuaid, publisher of the gonzo-conservative Manchester Union Leader opines in an editorial:

It is somehow fitting that, apparently, no human beings were witness to the Old Man’s end. Thank God there was no advanced warning, no time for “reality TV” or a macabre “televised countdown to the end.” It is comforting to think that his was a death with dignity and solitude.

   But not in silence. Oh, no. We would like to think that the Old Man came crashing down with a great shudder and roar that split the spring night in Franconia Notch and caused Echo Lake to carry news of his demise back, back to Stark and Webster and Ethan Allan Crawford and the rest of those for whom he truly was a sign that here, God made men.

After spending Saturday afternoon watching Pedro Martinez turn in a vintage 12-strikeout complete game from Fenway, it's clear that subscribing to Extra Innings on Time Warner digital cable is hands-down the best $139 spent this year. I'm even becoming strangely enthralled with the upbeat music that plays when the game's over and the screen informs you (even at 3:30pm) "Goodnight!"
· Again, Ace is All-World [boston.com]
· Extra Innings Schedule [indemand.com]

It was brought to our attention this weekend by an acquaintance that our Web Presence made an appearance in the New York Post last week. Had we seen it? We had not. And a shame, because the Jared Paul Stern piece (detailing the rise of the almighty dollar on the Good Old Lower East Side) namedrops with panache: Arshile, Capitale, the Surface Hotel, Schneider's, WD-50 (with a quote from the WD-50 thread, even). There's even the token "neighborhood activist," John Penley, who offered this point of view:

"On the weekends it's like Cancun around here -- lots of young, white college kids walking around, dressed all the same, shoving people... I'll take the old Puerto Rican drug dealers who used to be here over the college kids any day. They were a lot more fun and I wasn't scared of them."

It seems this whole Movable Type thing is catching on.
· New Features [jvg.com]