We type these words with heavy heart and heavier hangover, reminiscing of the glory that was 2003. Oh, sweet siren of ages past, bring us peace, and ever-increasing real estate prices! And so, as the last rays of this epochal epoch fade to black, we present Part II of the Second Annual LS.com Lower East Side Awards, following the awarding of Part I yesterday. Here we go...

## NEIGHBORHOOD ##

The George Orwell Award for Information Transparency
To the Surface Hotel, whose embrace by mainstream media as the hippest downtown spot going was undermined just the weeist li’l bit by the fact that the place still isn’t anywhere close to freaking finished. Originally scheduled for a September 2003 debut, the management fell back on promising a “soft opening” in November. Once they realized something that was clear to anyone with eyes—namely, that getting this place open by the end of 2004 is going to be a miracle of Biblical proportions—they released a new projected opening date... tucked quietly at the bottom of a press release titled “Surface Magazine Presents the Sixth Annual Avant Guardian(TM) Photography Exhibit & Gala Reception.” If the place is run with this kind of skill, it's gonna be bigger than Jesus.

The UnSurface Award

To Blue Moon, a new eight-story, 22-suite hotel (Orchard @ Delancey/ Broome) which trumpeted its near-completion with a splashy article in The Villager.

It’s Not Paranoia if They’re Really Out to Get You Award
1. LES last neighborhood in city to have power restored after Great Blackout of 2003
2. FreshDirect refuses delivery to wide swath of LES residents
3. Community activists tempt God and Keith McNally; attempt to revoke Schiller’s liquor license
4. Community board denies our petition to change name of our stretch of Rivington Street to “Dunehampton.”

The Yaakov Spiegel Award for Neighborhood Improvement
Given annually to that citizen residing on the three-block stretch of Rivington between Allen and Essex Streets who has contributed in the most meaningful way to the improvement of our neighborhood, bless his/her soul... To Gizmodo’s Pete Rojas, who installed WiFi in his apartment and in so doing unleased the magical powers of wireless internet to the patrons of Teany.

Remind Me Why I'm Renting Again? Award
Top LES real estate stories of 2003
1. 11 Spring Street sells for $5.5 million
2. Vacant LES Lot sells for $2.2 million
3. Craptacular sprawl-a-thon Avalon Chrystie Place disfigures Houston

Who Do You Trust? Award
Selected critical response to the New Museum to be built on Bowery:
1. Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times: "Sanaa's design encodes that history in urban space. Little lofts. Little SoHo lofts that died and went to heaven. That is one entrancing image that the museum's exterior brings to mind. The contemporary city is a search for the philosopher's stone capable of transforming rust into the life of the mind."
2. Felix Salmon, FelixSalmon.com: "This building would be equally ugly anywhere."

The Inaugural Surface Magazine Award for Innovation in Interior Design on the Lower East Side
To those frisky, fun-loving kids at 39 Eldridge Street, who constructed trendy sliding bookcases to conceal an enormous marijuana farm.

Dark Side of LES Gentrification
1. Dwindling local theater scene in the wake of Surf Reality closing, and the Present Company decamping from its longtime home on Stanton Street (and taking most of the Fringe Festival with it). Of course, the hood did score every performance of Buddy Cianci: The Musical. (Take that, Providence!)
2. Misrahi Realty’s plan to deep-six Ludlow Street stalwarts Barramundi and Collective Unconscious. Bastards.
3. The dawning realization that there are few residents left around here who don't blog.

Hints of a Gentrification Backlash
Graffiti on a Citibank “Live Wisely” ad on Bowery: “Nice Try. Go Die.”

## MISCELLANEOUS ##

Favorite LES Trend/Event in 2003
In which local area bloggers again opine on topics of paramount import, namely: what trend or event on the Lower East Side most moved you this past year?
Catherine: Gotta be the blackout.
Joey: Blackout 2k3 on Ludlow St. Who knew that there were so many bongo-playing hippies on the LES? Who WANTED to know?
Felix: Gourmet coffee shops. One on Norfolk (Del/Riv), one on Delancey (Lud/Ess), one on Grand (Cli), and still not a Starbucks or even a Pain Quotidien in sight. Unfortunately, none of the above has really managed to get it right yet—the last two aren't nearly cozy enough, while the first has way too much attitude. Bizarre parallel trend: coffee shops with really, really bad coffee. Eg Loisaida, Clinton St Bakery. And of course Teany, which has really bad tea.
Ian: Buildings that will never be completed: The Surface_Hotel, the Jewish Forward Building (wrapped in its little burka, it was supposed to be luxury condos years ago), 7 Essex (is that done yet?)
Your Humble Proprietor: Emergence of the BelDel (Below Delancey) scene. Put a fork in the Upper Lower East Side, kiddles—it's done.

LES Photo-Op of the Year

Howard Dean hangs at a Meetup at Essex (Rivington @ Essex)

Runner up:

Rick Ocasic drops by 71 Clinton Fresh Food (Clinton @ Stanton/Rivington)

Catch-Phrase of the Year
The guy on the roof of my building, banging on the door: "Let me in or I'll jump off this roof and commit suicide!"

With the Lights Out, It’s Less Dangerous Award
To the police officer who allegedly told the owner of Rivington Street’s Alife Rivington Club during its blackout looting, “You should be a man and watch your own place.”

## THE FUTURE ##

Fond LES Wish for 2004
Catherine: That someone drops a really, really smart bomb on the future surface* hotel—one that will destroy it but not my apartment building directly next door.
Joey: For Congee Village to close down, so their garbage will stop making my apartment smell like shit.
Felix: Seward Park and East River Park to get makeovers. I want the library reopened in the former, and the riverfront bike/walking path reopened in the latter. A good supermarket—ie something better than Key Food and Fine Fare. Failing that, Fresh Direct finally delivering. Oh, and one more thing: That I win my bet with L. Steele about the hotel!
Ian: a) Sushi, damnit. I need sushi!
b) The reopening of the Grand Street subway station for B + D trains in February.
c) A travel/fashion magazine without an article describing Schiller's as New York's Hot New Restaurant and a newspaper article about the economic effects of smoking that doesn't quote somebody from The Whiskey Ward.
d) A real go-to bar, a la Olde Towne, Half King, WXOU Radio Bar, Galapagos before they had too many "events" and installed the "Welcome, Tourist" ATM.

Three Things We'd Like to See on the LES in 2004
1) Actual rejuvenation of the long-neglected LES waterfront
2) Fresh Direct delivery trucks heading south to Seward Park swallowed up by giant, smoking crevasse on Delancey Street
3) One (1) great new bar.

Three Things We'll Probably See Instead
1) Avalon-Chrystie Place granted permission to cantalever apartments over Houston Street, increasing square footage by 30,000 square feet.
2) Our no-apology hopping on the Fresh Direct bandwagon whenever they finally deign to serve us.
3) 13 Little Devils II: Electric Boogaloo.

Thanks to all who stopped by the Web Presence in this calendar year. We'll catch you on the flip side. Happy New Year!

From the debut of WD-50 to the arrest of the Dell Dude in a drug buy gone awry, the Lower East Side seized the spotlight and refused to leave the stage in 2003. (Whether or not that was a good thing, we leave for you to decide.) Politics aside, the end of this storied 12-month window leaves us little choice but to regurgitate acres of agate for your year-end digestive pleasure. And so: the Second Annual LS.com Lower East Side Awards.

For the purposes of this little production, the Lower East Side is casually defined as "the area near my apartment," essentially comprising the traditional LES plus a chunk of the East Village and the fringes of Nolita and Chinatown.

Today: Food and Drink
Tomorrow: Neighborhood, Miscellaneous & The Future
Bottoms up!

## FOOD ##

Newcomers of the Year
1. Mermaid Inn… From the people who brought the Red Cat to the far-off land of Chelsea comes this homey seafood haven. Jaw-dropping queues (hey, at least you can grab a drink with friends waiting at Frank) prove worth the wait for snazzy shellfish, imaginative main courses, and, of course, free pudding. (2nd Ave. @ 5th/6th St.)
2. WD-50… Probably deserves top billing, but frankly, we can’t afford to eat here often enough to truly fall in love with All Things Wylie. Regrets, chef. (Clinton @ Stanton/Rivington)
3. Hearth… Like that final present tucked so far under the tree you don’t find it until January, the late November opening of Hearth (in the remade Tappo space) closed out the East Village dining scene with a bang. (1st Ave @ 12th St.)
Honorable Mention (West Village): Otto… Outside of the purview of these awards, but nowhere did we have such enjoyable meals this year. The vongole pizza (with clams in shells) is a singular delight. (5th Ave. @ 8th St.)

Meal of the Year
“The Pass” at Hearth… We stumble in soon after sunset on the Winter Solstice, a quiet Sunday night when it feels like everyone has already split town for the holidays. Table for two, perchance? No: fully booked until 10 (!). But, we’re informed after we turn down a seat at the bar, there’s a small counter overlooking the open kitchen that can’t be reserved. Would we like to dine there? We would. Twenty minute wait until the chef’s friends are done with their food, then we settle in for a feast—an ersatz tasting menu, sans supplemental charges, served by the chatty chef himself. “We call it ‘the Pass,’” the hostess tells us on the way out, “because, you know, the chef can pass you things.”

Dish of the Year
Focaccino at Li’l Frankies. Not on the menu per se, but always offered as a special. Life-altering, especially when enjoyed hot from the oven in-restaurant. (1st Ave. @ 1st. St.)

Opening of the Year

Rice to Riches… Opening an architecturally incoherent establishment dedicated solely to rice pudding is one thing. Going about it with this kind of panache, however—well, that's fucking awesome. (Spring @ Mulberry)

Best Kept Secret (That No One Kept)
Kuma Inn… Opened in nearly impossible-to-find digs on the second floor of the building that houses the grotesque grottos of Suba—yet always draws big crowds because of tasty, cheap Philippine cuisine. (Ludlow @ Rivington/Delancey)
Runner-up: Mojo (5th St @ 1st/2nd Aves.)

Biggest Disappointment
‘intoteca… Maybe it was the first night mobscene that rivaled an opening at Rivington Arms… Or maybe it was the breathless write-up as the cool downtown boite du moment in Gourmet… Or maybe it was the fact we got suckered into a $15 ham sandwich… but somewhere in the hype, what should have been a simple, enjoyable neighborhood panino joint became just a little too too for our tastes. Pushing through the sidewalk mobs, we find religion: People, these are sandwiches you’re eating! Stop the insanity!!! We’re looking forward to eating here in 2006, when the roving bands of foodies will have decamped for the "up-and-coming" dining scene in Portland, Maine. (Rivington @ Ludlow)

Edward Gibbon Award
Old favorites that seemed to lose a step this year
1. Lavagna (5th St. @ Ave B)
2. Café Lebowitz (Elizabeth @ Spring)
3. Lucien (1st Ave. @ 1st St.)

Tumbleweed City
Restaurants that couldn’t seem to draw a crowd to save their lives in 2003
1. Tenement… And all the Pianos kiddles so tantalizingly close at hand! (Ludlow @ Stanton/Rivington)
2. Dish… Solid food pedigree, but the room has never warmed up (Allen @ Stanton/Rivington)
3. Petrosino… A charming little spot to wildly overpay for Italian home cooking. We’ll stick to the Olive Garden (Norfolk @ Houston)

Truth in Advertising Award
Les Enfants Terribles (Ludlow @ Canal)

Abbastanza! Abbastanza!
Random new Italian restaurants that saturated our universe—and sent us running to Chinatown
1. Basso Est (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton)
2. Cantinella (Ave. A @ 2nd St.)
3. Cicciolino (4th St. @ 1st/2nd Aves.)

Names Keith Didn’t Name Schiller’s (But We Did!)

1. Schneider’s
2. Prague
3. That Place with the Wack Bathrooms, Yo

Short KKD! Award
The one flavor, one-dollar donuts at Schiller’s.

Rebranding Of the Year
Mooza becomes Café Lika. No worries: it still sucks absolute, total ass.

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…)
1. Rice to Riches
2. Schiller's Liquor Bar
3. 'inoteca
4. Congee Village
5. Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar

Go-To LES Restaurant 2003
In which we solicit the opinions of a quartet of seminal LES bloggers on questions affecting our world, and offer one final correct answer ourselves. Query: What was your go-to Lower East Side restaurant in 2003?
Catherine of Catherine’s Pita: I hate to encourage you, but you are not fooling anyone with this question. You know it's Schiller's. (Side note: I hear, surprisingly enough, that the Mexi place on Essex and Stanton is total yums.)
Felix of Memefirst and FelixSalmon.com: Go-to as in where people in general go to, objectively? Schiller's. Go-to as in where LES people go to, as opposed to UES tourists? 'inoteca. Go-to as in where they SHOULD go to? Tasting Room, if it counts as LES. Chubo, if it doesn't.
Ian of ebway.org: Congee Village or Good World. They're both cheap and reliable, and during the black out Good World had a DJ with a battery powered turntable rig. Oh, and then how can you forget the karaoke rooms at Congee?
Joey of Tale of Two Cities: Kate's Joint, even though the 4th&B location makes its LES location debatable. This greasy-spoon vegetarian diner is like nothing else around. The unbuffalo wings could convert Ted Nugent.
Your Humble Proprietor: Sch—, er, uh, well, we love the Alias/AKA hive mind, they're always tasty, and—oh fuck it, we're not fooling anyone—Schiller's! Schiller's!! Now and forever!!!

## DRINK ##

God Bless The Fourth Estate Award
Tantalizing, if bizarre, media coverage of Lower East Side nightlife in 2003
1. In May, New York Post names the Surface Hotel the hottest downtown party scene. “It’s not even open yet, but the hype surrounding the 120-room, 22-story compound venue created by the main players in the hipster magazine Surface continues to build.” Nine months later, it’s still, uh, building.
2. In September, Time Out New York gives the Surface Hotel pride of place in its Fall Preview Issue, noting the monolith is “scheduled to partially open in November.” Indeed, come November, the hotel remains partially open—to wind and snow whipping through the incomplete front façade.
3. In May, a nightlife reporter from the New York Post is kind enough to give us a buzz. “I just spoke with Wylie Dufresne,” he intones, “and you probably should know that that’s not him posting on your website.”

Go-To LES Bar 2003
Again, we turn to our panel of blogistas...
Catherine: Iggy's. You cannot beat $2 Bud drafts. You just can't. But when it's a night out that you need, with pretense, that go-to bar is going to be Pianos (sorry), for the good music (be it live or DJ-provided) and the cute boys. I like it in spite of myself.
Felix: No doubt that the UES Scenesters have moved from Salt Bar to Schiller's, while LES Scenesters have moved from Adultworld to 151.
Joey: Welcome to the Johnson's. It’s so subtle that it's more like a bar with a theme, rather than a theme bar. There's a difference. This also has to be one of the best happy hours in the city: Lasts till 9 p.m., and everything in the place is $1-$3.
YHP: Lolita. We're creatures of habit. So shoot us.

Best East Side Bars For Red Sox Fans
Tile Bar and The Magician (tie). We'd watched Game 7 of the Sox-Yanks series at West Village Sox fan haven Riviera Cafe, then slipped into the streets when things went horribly wrong sometime after midnight. Walking across the village, car horns and cheering throngs shattering our already delicate sensibilties, we sought refuge. Pulling up stools at the end of Tile Bar on First Ave., the kind bartendress greeted us, told us that her boyfriend is also a Sox fan, and poured us a brew on the house. We've seen her since at Tile Bar sister bar The Magician. Come spring 2004, we know where we'll be doing our ballgame watching.

Catch-All Award
The Magician… As above. Seemingly the default LES bar for just about everyone we know. (Rivington @ Essex)

Random Moral Dilemma We Didn’t Need
Local 138… We’d always liked this bar, so when word came last spring that the place was closing down, we were sad. Two months later, when it magically re-opened with the same name and no apparent changes, we were glad. Then the other shoe dropped: we learned that the owners of the space had refused to renew the lease on the space to the gents who created Local 138, forcing them to decamp to Williamsburg (oh, the humanity!)—while reopening the place themselves. We’re left wondering whether we can continue to frequent this once-gentle bar. Paging Randy Cohen… (Ludlow @ Stanton/Rivington)

Thank God We Live In New York Award
Walking down Rivington with two friends in town for the weekend from Boston, we point out Teany. “That’s Moby’s teashop,” we note. One friend cocks us a glance. “Who’s Moby?”

Poster Child for Smoking Ban Detractors
Whiskey Ward... Journalists seeking quotes on the horrors of the smoking ban need go no further than Whiskey Ward owner Sandee Wright. Back in the pre-ban days of March, she tempted fate by telling the Post, "I can't afford to be known as the bar that calls the police on its patrons." In June, she griped to the Washington Post, "I have a great relationship with my neighbors. But I can't expect that to last." Then, last week, the bar surfaced in an A1 Times story: "Happy-hour sales on Friday nights at the Whiskey Ward on the Lower East Side have dropped to barely $100, from $600, a co-owner says." Sandee, darling—no one likes a whiner. [with a tip o' the cap to ebway] (Essex @ Rivington/Delancey)

Smoking Ban Silver Lining Award
Kush… Whose cheesy Moroccan theme paid off bigtime when it was one of the few in Manhattan allowed to let its patrons smoke indoors. Fire up the hookah! (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton)

Ignominious Closing Award

Swim (Orchard @ Stanton/Rivington)

Bowery, We Hardly Knew Ye Award
Horrible clubs disfiguring a once-proud Lower Manhattan boulevard
1. Capitale (@ Grand)
2. Mission (@ Rivington)
3. Crash Mansion (@ Spring)

It Ain’t Rocket Science Award
Kraziest Bar Koncepts!!! that hit the scene in 2003
1. You know what the Lower East Side needs? A really posh comedy club! (Laugh Lounge nyc, Essex @ Stanton/Rivington)
2. You know what the Lower East Side needs? A German beer hall! (Loreley, Rivington @ Bowery)
3. You know what the Lower East Side needs? A horizontal bar with an interior depth of four feet! (Maradona, Allen @ Houston/Stanton)


New Bar That Will Forever Be Known as the Place Where that “Person” Lost That “Thing” in the Bathroom
Barrio Chino (Broome @ Orchard)

Location, Location, Location Award
1. Café Luise (across the street from Schiller’s)
2. The Living Room (a few doors down from Pianos)
3. Verlaine (downstairs from my apartment)

Favorite LES Newcomer in 2003
Catherine: Sin-é. There can never be too many live-music venues in the hood. (Attorney @ Houston/Stanton)
Felix: Chibitini. (Clinton @ Stanton/Rivington)
Ian: Thank god we have a real cafe on the lower LES. Full City has the basics—you know, coffee, freelancers, leftist reading groups—as well as free and unlimited WiFi access. (Grand @ Clinton)
Joey: Alchemy. Lord, thy name is 16-ounces of "Icing On the Cake." Identity-crises design, but the best coffee anywhere. This even beats my obsession/curse, Tiny's Angels. (Delancey @ Ludlow/Essex)

Sawaryn's Forces Are Massing! Award
Named in honor of East Village activist Anna Sawaryn and her quixotic campaign to put an end to new bars in the neighborhood, this final Food & Drink award is presented this year to the community troops attempting to revoke the liquor license of Schiller's Liquor Bar, which would necessitate much more than a new name (and some new neon). It is in this battle that we will come at last to define who we truly are—and, indeed, perhaps even discover what our generation stands for. (Our guess: gentrification.) Comrades, remember this: we bow to no one!

(Don't miss Part II of the 2003 LS.com LES Awards tomorrow.)

With this post, LS.com is officially on Christmas holiday. We'll return on December 30th and 31st with the Second Annual LS.com Lower East Side Awards to close out 2003. Until then, we bid ye glad tidings and as much joy as you can cram down your stockings.

· The SLNY 2003 Awards (RESY Prize to 66) [She Loves NY]
· Gaping Void Introduces BlogCards (nice work, Hugh) [Streetcards]
· Trust me, prep school really was like this (congrats to Joanna and Alex on the new site) [Two-Twenty]
· Good overview of the ARod Dealings (faith, my good people) [WaPo]
· Holiday Jeer: Catch up with the Discontented Elf [Unpalatable Ball]

Reports on the first two days of the Book of Ages 30 Guerilla Book Tour are up at BookofAges.com. (The final stop has been rescheduled for Monday in Chelsea.) Special thanks to special guests Eliot from Slower.net, Jesse from JCN.com, Jen from Gothamist and (oh, what could have been!) Aaron from 601am. Folks, it's been real. Probably too real, now that I think about it. (Next up: the Virtual Book Tour!)
· Guerilla Book Tour Day 1: A Great Kickoff! [boa.com]
· Guerilla Book Tour Day 2: Always Be Closing! [boa.com]

Walking calmly east on Rivington Street last eve, we observed a well-dressed woman crossing the street from Schiller's. Without missing a stride, she leaned over, vomited on the ground, and kept walking.

Yesterday's Guerilla Book Tour event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble was a smashing, er, rousing, er, interesting affair. Check out JVG's report for all the sordid details (and thanks to Eliot for the snaps). Meantime, here's our favorite moment from yesterday's CNNfn interview:


Caption: Steele's earpiece comes loose as a "Caller from Texas" asks a question about whether one must give up "going to nightlife and clubs" after age 30. (Truly, MUTE was the only way to survive this one.)

Can't get enough? More self-serving shit served up piping hot at BOA.com!
· Guerilla Book Tour Day 1 [bookofages.com]
· CNNFN Update: Grinning Idiots Go National [bookofages.com]

Anyone can go on a regular old book tour, but what happens when one pens a book that doesn't lend itself to dramatic in-store readings, yet one yearns for the soothing embrace of Barnes & Noble shoppers? For the next three days, we'll find out as the Book of Ages 30 Guerilla Book Tour takes Manhattan by storm. Stop by, say hi, watch as we're arrested, and perhaps even take home a delightful holiday gift for you and yours. Schedule and other details accessible by following this handy link...
· Announcing the Guerilla Book Tour [bookofages.com]

Looking back at our first post to mention Gawker, a whole 366 days ago, we noted we were "already addicted" to this new site. Three stints in rehab later, we're still reading the damn thing. Congrats to Nick, Choire and Liz on Gawker's first anniversary.
· Happy Birthday, Gawker! [gawker.com]
· Gawking [ls.com]

Two years ago, ownership of the Red Sox changed hands for the first time since 1933. The leader of the cadre of new buyers, John W. Henry, made his fortune on Wall Street not by betting on stocks but by betting on people. That is, Henry saw that people tend to react in predictable ways on Wall Street when news breaks. He realized that if you could predict their actions—which you could—then you could bet the other way, and beat the market. The insight made him a billionaire.

Henry arrived in Boston and set out to remake the Red Sox in his image: by taking emotion out of the decision-making equation. Ok, so what? Well, at some point in the next 48 hours, the Sox and Rangers will complete one of the biggest trades in baseball history, a swap of Sox outfielder Manny Ramierez for Rangers' shortstop Alex Rodridguez. In the same breath, the Sox will deal their homegrown shortstop and bona fide Boston superstar Nomar Garciaparra to the Dodgers (perhaps via Chicago). So is it the right move? Those who crunch numbers looking for value generally agree it is. But what of those who won't—or can't? Or, to put the question another way, is the core of sports fandom rooting for favorite players, or the team? Two posts at the Sons of Sam Horn message board this week draw opposite conclusions:

> When they make it into October next year there will be a large amount of dissapointment that it wasn't our Nomar bringing us to the promised lands, but the hired guns. Yes, I realize this is baseball... but baseball is the players not the shirts... and Nomar was the player that should have been immortalized in Sox lore for bringing us the trophy.

> If you guys love these stars that much, then go root for them. Buy a Dodgers jersey and a Texas Rangers baseball cap. I want a winning team. This trade will make us BETTER! Think about it....

· BlueJake Heads to Nolita; Buildings Cower (2, 3) [bluejake.com]
· Cool Hunting (weblog from UPOC's project dev head) [joshrubin.com]
· Julie/Julia Project Calls It Quits [J/J via TFS]
· Ken, Please Send These People a Cease-and-Desist Letter Pronto (bizarre wholesale ripoff of our precious, precious content in progress!) [citinest.com]

Big week on tap for Book of Ages 30. It kicks off midday today when JVG and I will appear on CNNfn's The Flip Side. We'll chat about 30-year-olds, their relationship with money, and the quiet pain of human existence. For Time Warner digital cable subscribers in downtown Manhattan, CNNfn can be found conveniently between channel 132 (Fuse, "for the true music fan") and channel 134 (CCTV-9, "Chinese news and general programming services").
· The Flip Side [money.cnn.com]
UPDATE: We wuz Bushwacked! [bookofages.com]

Everyone's quick to parrot the canard that Red Sox fans panic too soon when things seem to be going wrong. In reality, it's usually the media that freaks, not the fans. But the New York media reaction to the the Yankees loss of effete southpaw Andy Pettite to the Astros yesterday puts even the over-the-top Boston media to shame. From Mike Vaccaro's Post column:

Pettitte's departure is one more nudge into the long winter that's been coming for these Yankees for so long, the balloon payment for all the good times. Steinbrenner is back where he used to be, collecting expensive toys and seeing if they can play nice together.

All the while, the core of his team becomes a corpse, lying at the bottom of that bathtub, scalded beyond recognition, right in front of our eyes.

Winter hasn't felt this cold around here for a long, long while.

Usual holiday music at our regular Starbucks replaced this morning with an unusually impassioned instrumental reading of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

AAP forwards further proof that by 2006 the Lower East Side will be no more than a gaping strip mine of architectural ooze. Gentlefolk, meet 165 Eldridge, now nearing completion between Rivington and Delancey. The property description sets a new bar for "mainstream" writing about the LES:

This is a truly unique opportunity to own; “where the cool people want to be”. The Lower East Side is no longer a bourgeoisie frontier but has become the destination for a customer seeking liberation from the confines of New York homogeny. This location will be the address of eighteen highly sought after luxury homes, accessible though a private entrance and in addition offering a “building within a building” commercial unit. With easy access to the Williamsburg Bridge, FDR and the Broadway Corridor, this makes an excellent location for the owner arriving from “out east” or “uptown”. Not to mention accessibility to the existing young and young at heart in this thriving community.

· Hyper-rapid Weblog Deployment Pace Slows at Weblogs Inc. [weblogsinc.com]
· "Cruetly-free shoe store" Moo Shoes opens on Allen [Moby via ebway]
· Pony Up for Gothamist's Little League Team [gothamist]
· Avalon-Chrystie Place: It's ass-ugly! [Manhattan Dan]
· Avalon-Chrystie Place: It's bad, bad, bad! [krucoff.com]
· Goodbye Hipster, Hello Adultster: A Three-Part Investigation of Fleeting Youth [blubox]

Remember when branding was next to godliness? Be the brand! Live the brand! It's all about the brand! Err, wait, actually—maybe it's not:

Three years ago, almost half of the 8,000 shoppers polled by America's Research in the week after Thanksgiving (48%) thought brand names were "extremely important" for choosing holiday gifts. This year, fewer than a third (32%) felt the same way... Many shoppers seem to be dreaming of a generic Christmas.

Yup. Shopped Best Buy or Circuit City lately? Prepare for an onslaught of unfamiliar names mixed in with the occasional Sony or JVC. Used to be you knew to avoid a brand (here's looking at you, Realistic) because when you depressed a button, it fell off in your hand. Now, quality interface design—ahhh, sleek silver goodness—is practically a commodity. Quoth a Circuit City spokesman: "When [shoppers] arrive, they make decisions based on things like tactile experience— how does it look?—and perception of quality." Check that: not quality, but the perception thereof. Long live the brand!
· Brand Names Paying Price for Change in Shopping Trends [nytimes]

Eric Asimov gives Schiller's a positive review in today's $25 and Under column. The last paragraph lodged in our out basket:

While Schiller's is another Keith McNally success, it's easy to imagine that certain factions on the Lower East Side must have dreaded its arrival. Can L'Occitane, A/X and other emblems of homogenized gentrification be far behind? Here comes Schiller's, they must think, and there goes the neighborhood.

Once we got Kazaa Lite back up and running on the home PC (temporarily—more on that below), we were reminded how inferior Limewire is for music file sharing. (Memo to lawyers: our interest in this topic is for research purposes only.) A little research on file sharing portal Zeropaid turned up relatively new Mac fileshare program Poisoned, which taps not only into the Gnutella network (used by Limewire) but also the far larger FastTrack network (used by Kazaa). So we downloaded. Love the name! Interface looks gorgeous! And the icon—a beaker of strange green liquid—genius! The drawback: we can't download a damn thing with it. Maybe your luck will be better. (Silver lining: apparently the next version of Kazaa will work for the Mac.)
· Macintosh Users Join Kazaa Network [news.com]
· Sharman Shows Intense Interest in Poisoned [slyck.com]
· Download Poisoned [download.com]

RELATED: Just as we're getting back in touch with Kazaa Lite (the rogue non-spyware version of Kazaa), Kazaa's parent company Sharman has to go and shut it down on Monday. The fallout is almost too good to be true: "This latest act from Sharman punctuates a long history of hypocrisy that involves the protection of their own intellectual property rights, yet blatantly ignoring the copyrights of others." Riiiight.
· Kazaa Shuts Down Kazaa Lite [theregister.co.uk]
· Sharman Exterminating Kazaa Lite K++ [slyck.com]

Pumped up by the upgrade success at work, we turned our attention to our home tech, where our 1999-era Dell PC has had its guts eaten out by viruses this year. Gentle readers, even Peter Norton threw up his hands. The mere act of opening a web browser often took as long as 30 seconds... which is not why we pay Time Warner Cable $44.95 a month. So, for about $75, we snagged a new 60GB hard drive, and installed it this past weekend in place of the sluggish 20GB model. Now, it's like we've just been given a new computer. Thanks, Western Digital!
· Shop For Hard Drives [cdw.com]

They told us we were crazy. They told us we were insane. But still, last month, our office went ahead and upgraded everyone's Mac from the creaking OS 9 to Panther (OS 10.3). Then—Dear God!—we upgraded from Quark 4.2 to Quark 6. Since its release earlier this year, Quark 6 has taken a pounding from users bitching primarily about the cost (it ain't cheap, though it's tolerable if you're upgrading) and the horrible activation policy (each copy can only be put on one computer—period). The Margulis Color Newsletter captured the anti-Quark sentiment:

I have no intention of getting involved with any such copy-protection scheme for anything short of an operating system with *any* company, let alone Quark. This makes it unnecessary, in my view, to evenconsider what the features of Quark 6 are. I'm not going to buy it; while everybody's workflow requirement is different and you may find this copy-protection less onerous than I do, I hope you won't buy it either.

Folks, we've been geeking out a bit lately. Let's get it out of the system. All today on LS.com, posts about the wide wide world of technology!

"You may not have noticed Soho 25, the nine-story building being built on Houston Street across from the Angelika Film Center," the Post reports in its Saturday Real Estate section. Uh, you mean the looming monstrosity that forces us underneath its Byzantine scaffolding and onto planks of wood every time we scurry west on Houston? Let's just say the paper shows itself a little out of touch in its advertorial article on Houston Street developments Soho 25 and Avalon Chrystie Place. Avalon Chrystie Place, you recall, is the gigantoid 369-apartment building (seen here) that's slated to fill the vast parking lot just east of Bowery. It's a design best suited for a suburban office park, of course, but the Post waxes rhapsodic nonetheless. Actual quote: ""The management is awesome; nothing ever goes unfixed. I mean, come on! What more could you want?" Hmmm. They've got us there.
· Houston Heats Up [nypost.com]
· State Retirement Fund Invests in Apt. Complex [bizjournals.com]

Hidden in white-on-white text at the bottom of Viagra spam received today:

potentiality schoolers exhibiting crackles termini explicitly teams adject tempting schoolgirl exceedingarchimedes balzac tempts teethed testing merits taxied playhouse idiotic territory theaters bombay

access taken boson bong cranny scoops temptress cranks scant achievers braking taffeta exacerbatedidentifies bambi ignoble tensions teletypesetting exhibiting terriers bogy scanners housewife active exclaimers criminals hosting

bookie credential armstrong boycotts countersunk hypothesize powders schnapps polisher brainstembabcock meditates talented schoolteacher saved scabious borosilicate plumpness exacerbate tautly tearful populist horned mentors postmasters pondered taunt

pleasantness teletypewrite midwife 5th antoine technicality crockery poisoning hurtle examines bole bowersbernadine critiques sarcophagus exploding scantier baltimore microprogramming boatman experts boutique illegalities pored baltimore addressers ashland

· Eat Pretzels, Warmonkey. Eliot hits the Welcome, Overlord Bush protest in London. [slower.net]
· Slathered and Studded. Food crit Bill Grimes dishes on his departure from the NYT. [Newsweek via anil]
· While the RIAA Sleeps... Phish's authorized MP3 live downloads site racks up $2m+ in revenues this year; download last night's 20th anniversary show. [boston.com/livephish.com]
· The Dulli Files. Palmermix tracks a bizarre Craig's List debate about Greg Dulli's prowess in the sack. [palmermix.typepad.com]

On the one-year anniversary of his blog, JVG is kicking things up a notch. Ripping a page from the Denton/Dobkin playbook, he's serving as publisher of new website Discontented Elf, which promises "a near-daily update from the trenches of SantaLand, as reported by an actual 'seasonal employee' of a major New York department store." How did he score the plush publisher's gig? We have reason to believe that JVG may know this elf—perhaps even intimately. We dismiss out-of-hand his claim that the spiffy new title "has no real meaning," but we're sure he's being honest when he says it "makes [him] feel important." Regardless, the new site looks like the Christmastime Miracle™ we've been praying for. (We haven't been this afraid of corporate America since, well, last week.)
· Discontented Elf [unpalatableball.com]
· A Winter's Tale [jvg.com]

Some interesting vendettas scoops are popping up in the Below 14th comments this week. A few gems:
1) Regarding Patricia Yeo: "Anyone who has worked for Ms. Yeo knows that she is horrible and her cooking is at times, questionable."
2) Regarding Capitale: "Capitale does not pay their employees on time and frequently cheats them out of money on most if not every paycheck. I know---I work there!!"
3) The penis enlargement spammers are going metaphysical on our ass.

Children, children! Settle down! Tis the season for loving!

Close readers of this website at some point may stumble across the links to the (two) photo albums in the left column. One of the albums documents my travels around northern India and Pakistan in summer 2001. For the Pakistan leg of that journey, I was accompanied by—ok, led around by—my friend Sarah, an Iranian by birth who grew up in the U.S. before rediscovering a fascination with Central Asia in her 20's.

The trip was revelatory—both in the moment and in retrospect. Though we experienced a life's worth of natural beauty in the Himalayas, we felt the grip of fundamentalism in Peshawar, where street vendors hawked Bin Laden t-shirts several months before his face became fashionable in the west, and a young Afghan refugee, who spoke perfect English, talked to us at length about his family's plight. The conversation sticks with me; if I close my eyes, I can hear the inflections of his speech, the tone of voice that spoke unpityingly, straightforwardly, of his life.

It stuck with Sarah too. Taking up at Haas just weeks after the journey, she set to work on a business concept. The idea: create a line of Afghan-inspired fashionwear suitable for the finest fashion circles in NYC that would be made by women in Kabul for above-market wages. (Here's the full story.) The first pieces were ready a year later, and this past spring, after the concept won a national business plan competition, the company—Tarsian and Blinkley—was born.

We've been following the story with rapt interest, but haven't posted about T&B before. Now, though, we get the sense it's ready to break big. They've launched a new website for the holiday season, which includes Sarah's Kabul notebook from August (with pictures, like the one of her here) and her thoughts on getting her products into stores stateside, plus a full product catalog. Apparently, the first deliveries recently sold out at Lucky fave Butter in Cobble Hill*. If you're a retailer, they're looking for more accounts; if you're a consumer... well, you know what to do.
· Tarsian & Blinkley [tarsian.com]
· T&B Catalog [tarsian.com]
· Tarsian's Diary: Kabul, August 2003 [tarsian.com]
· Travels In India/Pakistan 2001 [ls.com]
* not that we read Lucky. Or anything.

Glad tidings: the disintermediation of the Boston Sports Media continues. Last week, we noted that Red Sox owner John Henry has taken to posting on Sox fan message board Sons of Sam Horn. Over the Thanksgiving break, he was joined in that corner of cyberspace by new Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who stopped by the site for a post-3am chat the night before his deal was consumated. What's more amazing is that Henry acknowledged that the passion of the fans on the site helped convince Schilling to agree to the trade to the Sox, and Curt posted to the site, "Don't think for a second that seeing all these threads and reading this stuff didn't leave an impression." Welcome to the future of sports media.
· Thank You [sons of sam horn]
· The Schilling Fields [bostondirtdogs.com]
· Henry on Sons of Sam Horn [boston.com] scroll to bottom
RELATED: Brooklyn-based weblog Information Leafblower earns props for its frequent Boston sports postings. Bruce Allen's Boston Sports Media Watch is also essential reading.

Doing a little LES photoblogging of our own yesterday, we stumbled across the above neon signs on Ludlow Street. Depressives and seasonal affective disorder fans, rejoice! The Un Sun Garden is neigh!

Once and future LES resident Jake Dobkin—who runs an adorable little website we've recently stumbled across called Gothamist—has gone photoblog crazy for Lower East Side tenement buildings. He writes, "For the last three or four years, I've been exploring Chinatown and LES block by block, trying to get a perfect sense of it in my mind. Over the next four or five days, I'd like to show you what I've found." Take a gander, and don't overlook the excellent LES links he's gathered as well.
· Tenements 1 [bluejake.com]
· Tenements 2 [bluejake.com]
· Tenements 3 [bluejake.com]
· Tenements 4 [bluejake.com]