As it is for most who work in midtown, lunchtime means a trek to one of several uninspiring food sellers. If it's Thursday, it must be Cosi. Our local outpost of this bread-purveyor is notable for the inspired somnolence of the staff; it's possible that these people know how to form words, but we've never independently confirmed it. Hence our surprise when, waiting in line to pay, we overhear a large, boistrous man behind the counter. "Where are the napkins? Why don't we put the napkins out?" he inquires to a fellow staffer. "It's crazy, isn't it? You'd think napkins were really valuable around here the way we guard them! We gotta put some napkins out!!" As we hand over card for a stamp, he's still on a roll. "Your card is full! Free sandwich for you tomorrow!" And then: "Here you go! Napkins!"

Conversations in this city follow unexpected paths. One last night led us to intel on the octopus graffiti blanketing downtown Manhattan. More at S/FJ, from whom we jacked the above image.
· The New Cephalopod in Town [S/FJ]
· Breaking Octopus Graffiti News [S/FJ]

UPDATE: Trevor checks in with some octopii analysis: "His earlier stuff was a little on the weak side but I've started to see some more original stuff. He had one huge piece on the Citibank (Chase?) wall on Broadway and Prince that lasted for about a day before it was painted over. It's quite a long wall so picture a big red heart painted in the middle with about 20 octopus guys to the left and right of it, all eyes looking toward the heart. I went back the next day with a camera but it was painted over already."

He did, however, snap this gripping image:


Go ahead, give in. The octopii shall not be denied.
· Random Manhattan [NYCArtCollective]

UPDATE II: For sheer breadth of octopii news, it's hard to beat The Octopus News Magazine Online, "Your Octopus, Squid and Cephalopod Information Center." With robust discussion forums to put even Gothamist to shame.
· The Octopus News Magazine Online [tonmo.com]

UPDATE III: Jed emails: "i always thought they were the ghosts from ms. pacman."

From today's DailyCandy:

resigoo:
(n.) The residual stuff stuck to you after a bikini wax.

Must now chill out with man-centric beauty tips at DoubleAgent to wipe the, er, resigoo off the mind.
· Lexicon VII [DailyCandy]
· How to Wear Cologne [DoubleAgent]

Everyone's favorite anti-bar party girl, Anna Sarwyn, is back in the papers today. "It's a step in the right direction. The SLA should take this resolution seriously," she says of the resolution passed last night by Manhattan Community Board 3 to ban any new bars on certain over-saturated East Village and Lower East Side streets. This dark "SLA" Sarwyn mentions? The State Liquor Authority, which has the power to ignore the Community Board's resolution—and, apparently, enjoys doing just that. God bless the capitalists, every one.
· Village Board: Bar Any New Bar [NYPost]
· Drink Up Fast in the East Village [Gawker]
· Downtown Bar Blackout [LS.com]

Our humble promise: this shall be our final mention of FreshDirect—well, this week. For those new to the wonderful world of home delivery, Amy Langfield has rounded up her favorite FD chow ("three-potato salad - perfect for hangovers, and hangover prevention") and that best avoided ("frozen chocolate-chip cookie dough, fish cakes and some crab legs"). Weee-hula!
· Best and Worst of FreshDirect [Amy's NY Notebook]

Catching up with the ol' neighborhood...
· Felix Salmon on more FreshDirect LES delivery absurdity ("In other words, in order to deliver to 206 Rivington and 210 Rivington, the only way that the FreshDirect trucks are going to be able to get there is by driving north up Pitt Street from Delancey. Yet none of the buildings on Pitt between Delancey and Rivington (like 65 Pitt and 67 Pitt) get delivery either. Meanwhile, all the buildings on Ridge Street get delivery.") [FelixSalmon.com]
· Meanwhile: The FreshRegret Conspiracy rages on [The Other Page]
· Corn chip fans rejoice: The Hat (El Sombrero) re-opens [ebway.org]

Last week, two months after depositing the princely sum of $8,600 in my Citibank account, the money appeared as part of my balance. Why the delay? As it turned out, the deposit was credited to account *****55, instead of my account, *****33. As I fought an increasingly heated—and seemingly futile—war with the folks at the other end of the Citifone™ 24-Hour Banking line, it was impossible not to recall Gilliam's Brazil, when stormtroopers raid the apartment of Harry Buttle (shoe repairman) and arrest him instead of their intended target, Harry Tuttle (illegal freelance Heating Engineer). The culprit? A fly falling into a typewriter causes a misprint. As in real life, the problem proves impossible to rectify, even by those working inside of the system.

The upshot of my experience? Mom gets to crow that she's been right all these years "not to trust ATMs"; I feel empathy for all who have been through identity theft, which much be a hell of a lot worse than this; and, at long, long, last, I can balance my checkbook again.
· Brazil Quotes ("This is your receipt for your husband ... and this is my receipt for your receipt.") [scififlicks.com]
· The Tuttle/Buttle Mistake [Melbourne Indymedia]
· More Buttle/Tuttle Errors [whump.com]

Back in December, we wrote about Tarsian & Blinkley, the Kabul-based fashion outfit that our friend Sarah Takesh had just gotten off the ground. Yesterday, they scored a nice profile in Fashions of the Times, including a report on what's hot in Afghanistan fashion this spring: "A year ago they were silent and tense, and clung to the all-enveloping burka out of fear and insecurity. 'This year is very different,' she says. 'They look better.'"
· Silk and Human Kindness [NYTimes]
· Tarsian & Blinkley [Tarsian.com]
· About Tarsian & Blinkley [LS.com]

When we reported yesterday that FreshDirect had ended its Rivington Street delivery ban, we were speaking from the heart—our heart. For, though these good moving grocers have indeed put LS.com Headquarters "on the map," it's evident that FreshDirect is not yet done toying with the minds of our LES brethren. Please reference Figure 1 (below):



To create the new map, we fed addresses into the FD delivery engine. Results are approximate, natch, but first-hand reports back up our findings. In the southern LES, over into Chinatown, correspondents report no organic grocery love. GS: "Just an update—no service to 23 Rutgers Street. Bastards." MM: "No Fresh Direct at 41 Division Street. Please, let us all know what it is like." Moving up towards Delancey, if you're not in the Co-Ops, you're still out of luck. JA: "Alas, 96 Orchard is still starving." BI: "49 Ludlow (b/n grand and hester) is unfortunately still in the freshdirect dark zone. Apparently I have to move to 99 Ludlow or above to get service!"

As fucked as this is, it's north of Delancey that things really get trippy. Residents of Forsyth and Eldridge (the kind of streets Shecky's refers to as "inconvenient") live in a corridor of deprivance, with FD trucks cruising past on both sides. In the LS.com Headquarters zone—hereafter "God's Country"—everyone is good to go. AK: "The only address that matters, 125 Stanton, has been green-lighted!" DZ: "oh sweet lord, our prayers have been answered. my new 2-week-old abode on Clinton has the GREEN LIGHT." Heading east from there, however, chaos reigns. Consider the report from BB:

I live at 202 Rivington and am excluded from the bastards' delivery area. However, my neighbors to the east, such as 212 Rivington including those on Pitt St., can receive deliveries. Even parts of Columbia St. are included in their irrational, diabolically drawn zone.

· Yanksfan vs. Soxfan ("A Yankee fan and a Red Sox fan battle it out in the blogosphere." Genius.) [via information leafblower]
· Another must-read weblog: Patent Pending (the inner mind of a corporate lawyer) [patentpending.blogspot.com]
· My Dinner at Per Se [Chowhound]
· Chinatown bus war crackdown?! [East Broadway Ron via ebway]
· JVG's ongoing attempts to craft the perfect sentence (someone, please, lend him a hand) [JVG.com]

Could it be? Could it be? Oh Dear God, yessssssss!!


It appears the long neighborhood nightmare—one so bleak that the Times felt compelled to throw us a bone—is over. FreshDirect is delivering to Rivington Street a month ahead of their promised start of delivery to the area. Other LES residents, let us know if it works for you, and we'll see if any are still out in the cold. (Thanks to Greg G. and Chris S. for the tip.)
UPDATE: Alas, dark zone reports rolling in. 203 Rivington, 49 Ludlow, 82 Rutgers Slip—we feel your pain. New map soon of the LES's forgotten people.
· FreshDirect [Fresh Direct]
· The FreshDirect™ Conspiracy [LS.com]

Grant Barrett's World New York has long been one of the best websites about New York City—largely because, hey, this guy can write. And, he was doing so regularly when this site was a once-a-month outlet for drunken nonsense. (Progress: Now, a several times a day outlet for such nonsense!) Alas, all good things & c, so change is afoot at WNY: "In June, I’ll try something else here. Nothing fancy, nothing super-secret, nothing you haven’t seen before. It’s simply an acknowledgement that I am developing a new area of expertise." We'll be watching. Godspeed.
· World New York: Iteration IV [WorldNewYork.net]

Knock off the whining, save the gloating, and put us squarely in the Bring It On camp. The baseball season of our lives draws neigh. Four days til pitchers and catchers report!
· Bill Simmons [sptguy33] and Curt Schilling [gehrig38] weigh in on A-Rod deal (Simmons: "I don't ever remember looking forward to a season more than this one. This is unbelievable. It's a Cold War. They should just start bombing each other.") [Sons of Sam Horn]
· Happy Truck Day! (equipment leaves Fenway for Florida tonight) [Boston.com]

This week's sign of the apocalypse: Community Board 3 has drafted a resolution to stop hearing applications for liquor licenses in parts of the Lower East Side and East Village. (Translation: NO NEW BARS—and no new restaurants other than BYOBs.) Anytime we reach for our map-making tools, you know it's going to be bad news. The proposed blackout zones:



That's right: no new liquor licenses would be granted for the entirety of Avenues A and C; the stretch of Rivington from Schiller's to Orchard; Clinton Street from Houston to Rivington; and miscellaneous "over-saturated" blocks in both neighborhoods, like the seven-establishments-in-a-go stretch on 6th Street between Avenues A and B. (Bonus Quiz: quick, name all seven.) Threats like these have been made before, but this time, these people actually sound, like, serious. It's up for a vote on February 24. We're reconvening the East Village Bar Project team tonight for an emergency hearing. Someone pick a bar on, oh, I dunno, 6th Street?
· Bar Saturation Has Gotten Out of Control [The Villager]
· The East Village Bar Project [LS.com]

Friend of LS.com Andrew Butters sends along this Valentine's card of his recent tennis outing in Baghdad. "P.S. I apologize for sending this electronically, but the Iraqi postal system is not what it used to be."

Fielded an intriguing phone call this morning from my friend Leah in Los Angeles. "Do you know anyone who wants to be president?" she asked. Turns out she's casting for this summer's Showtime series American Candidate, which promises to bring the "She Bangs" innocence of American Idol to our nation's electoral process. The idea would be easily dismissed as gimmick was the executive producer not R.J. Cutler, the documentary filmmaker behind The War Room. And—great news!—the Federal Election Commission issued a "positive advisory opinion" last month saying that the show does not violate federal election laws. Awright! That's more than most campaigns can say!

Now's where y'all come in. According to Leah, the producers are specifically seeking qualified applicants from the media and Internet realms. (Genius. Pure genius.) If you're over 35, and you've got political power and media mojo in your veins, apply online or drop a line and I'll forward along more info. (UPDATE: Bears mentioning that non-media types are welcome, too. You know, like, normal people.)
· American Candidate [Showtime]
· Showtime Greenlights American Candidate [NYPost]
· Your Competition: School Board's Haas seeks to compete on reality TV show [St. Louis Post-Dispatch via sirlinksalot]

We'll admit that even we traveled north this weekend to meet our new mall overlords at the Time Warner Center. Seems TK made the best call by closing his restaurant off from the space as much as physically possible. Additional notes/commentary:

· Nice overview/pics of the Time Warner Center Whole Foods Market [karlo.org]
· Upside: "Oh, the produce was pretty" [Walker New York via Food Section]
· Downside: "It also seems to have been designed by a madman" (plus some excellent observations about urban retail in general) [Felix Salmon]
· LS.com correspondent Jed B. forwards on a hyperactive email he received from the Jamba Juice folks in California regarding NYC expansion plans: "Yes, and yes!!! [ed note: Yes!!!!] We're in New York!!! Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We did open the first store in Whole Food located in Columbus Circle this past Saturday. We have plans on our new store development calendar for Union Square; unfortunately we don't have a scheduled open date yet. Jamba is very happy to be blending into your community. Have a terrific rest of the day." Jed notes that she's probably talking about the new Union Square Whole Foods, opening spring/summer in the old Bradlee's space. Yes!!!!!

Tonight, check out inexpensive photography from the likes of Eliot, Jake, and Laura at Jen's gallery on Spring Street in Nolita. This will be fun.
· Pin-Up Show at Jen Bekman Gallery [JenBekman.com]

· For the Newly Stylish Man, Magazines off the Rack [NYTimes]

· The real Time Warner Center story: NYC's first Jamba Juice! [NYPost, graf 14]
· Confirmed: American Apparel moving in at Orchard/Houston (take that, GAP! And: don't miss Trevor's stunning photos of the big fire on Avenue B a few weeks back) [NYCArtCollective]
· Repairs to start on LES/EV East River promenade (will open in stages; first chunk in summer '05) [The Villager]
· "A group of 20 somethings are looking for somewhere to eat on Saturday near Essex and Rivington" (this should be rich) [Chowhound]

Chef Thomas Keller of Napa's French Laundry and soon-to-open, hey-have-a-laugh-and-call-212-823-9335 Time Warner Center restaurant Per Se is a noted control freak. But, with his new place only about a week away from opening, he's taking it to the next level. Time Magazine reports:

Keller has... set up an eclectic six-member advisory council to mentor him on the expansion of his business: two bankers, an attorney, a restaurant consultant, an accountant and a psychologist. (Chefs are a little crazy, as anyone in the restaurant business will tell you.) He has increased staff training to reassure himself that the pursuit of perfection will be maintained even when he is not in the kitchen. And, as insurance, he is installing a live video link between the kitchens of the French Laundry and Per Se so he can eyeball the day's squid preparation or vegetable selection on a large plasma screen.

At the end of the story, Keller acknowledges there is one thing he can't control: the Time Warner Center itself. "So the thing is, will the building fail?" he wonders aloud. But hey, that couldn't happen... could it?
· Chef's Surprise [Time Magazine via nyceats]

Back from a brief vacation, Ian at ebway.org has been en fuego this week, posting up a storm of excellent Lower East Side-related links. He notes that LoHo Realty—which brokers many of the deals in the LES Co-Op Village—has launched a re-designed web presence complete with high-end touches like (watch out, Elliman) sliding photographs. One sad note: judging from the prose on the new site, the realtor apparently has abandoned its quixotic quest to rechristen the Lower East Side as "LoHo." A moment of silence, please, as we pay tribute to the death of a dream.
· Open Houses [LoHo Realty]
· LoHo Realty [LoHo Realty]

When your favorite team resigns your favorite player from when you were 12 years old... it's destiny, baby!
· Ellis Burks Returns to Boston [boston.com]

N.B. High self-referentiality quotient herein. You have been warned.
· After several months slumber, Palmermix is back! [Palmermix.com]
· Blubox bows BluQuotes [BluBox]
· Krucoff's Young Manhattanite Interview: Dannielle Romano [Gothamist]
· Jake's snaps from Will Ryman's artshow on the Bowery (thanks, KDunk) [Bluejake]

It's been awhile since our last Surface Hotel update, so we're gratified that Rivington Street resident Kevin Gregor sent along this snapshot of unidentified late-night doings in the unfinished structure. Dawn of a cult? Coming of the Antichrist? We quake.

· NYMag anoints the "New West Coast" (We'd do a point-by-point comparison with their "Lower West Side" cover story a few years back, but hell, what's the point? Here's all you need to know from this week's article: "You’re seeing a lot of your typical Upper East Side buyers moving downtown for something hipper, cooler, with better views and new modern buildings." Awesome.) [nymetro.com]
· The Ageing Manhattanite Interview [Eurotrash]
· Happy first birthday to MUG (N.B. self-referential plug, natch) [MUG]
· Delicious Chinatown market photos (now w/bonus fish!) [bluejake]
· Best Romenesko headline ever: "Journalists Shouldn't Use Friendster as Reporting Tool" (UPDATE: Memefirst weighs in) [Romenesko]
· Free Republic: Is it Time to Boycott Heinz? (bonus cooking tips: "Personally—and this has nothing to do with Teresa Heinz—I think ketchup ruins food. So I don't use any ketchup at all. Or any condiment for that matter. Except olive oil, which enhances the foods it is poured on instead of drowning out its flavor") [freerepublic.com]

For those who envision the coming uprising starting somewhere deep on the Lower East Side, baby, you ain't seen nothing like the shit going down in Florida. From this month's Vanity Fair:

"Palm Beach is the epitome of everything that's gone wrong in America. Because it's all based on money, not accomplishment anymore... Look at the courts of Europe—Versailles, or Russia—they became out-of-touch, and it created revolutions... Do you realize you cannot buy a sweatshirt in Palm Beach?"

We're back from a midwinter jaunt to Palm Beach. Lest you've read this month's Vanity Fair and assume we've joined the new South Florida "intelligencia," let it be known: (a) we were there on business; and (b) two out of three days it rained, and the day it didn't, temperatures hit 49 degrees. More to come on this. But first, a catch-up from the fun we've been missing on our home isle...

· The struggle is on for reservations at Thomas Keller's Per Se ("There was a glimmer of hope at 10:05, when I actually got a ring. The line rang and rang, for a full minute ... and then disconnected. That was the best minute of my day..." from Frost Street, "the culinary adventures of a New York lawyer") [froststreet.net]

· Email Newsletter Smackdown! DailyCandy publishes item on online game Penguin Smack-down '04; MUG's Charlie Suisman fires back a stern retort ("Here's a hilarious fact: 40,000 penguins die each year along the coast of Argentina as a result of oil pollution.") Related: Double Agent said to be considering using lingerie-clad models to slaughter penguins on Canal Street. Stay tuned.

· A moment of silence, please, for reality TV pioneer Mary-Ellis Bunim [MTV.com]

· At last, it can be told: Behind our sordid relationship with the rock outfit Phish. That's just one of the thoroughly pointless tidbits we dish as Gothamist pairs with Lower East Side bon vivant Andrew Krucoff to introduce the Gothamist Interview. We have it on good authority that they started with us to set the bar nice and low. To all the Young Manhattanites to follow, we accept your thanks in absentia.

And yet, let's face it: there's must-see TV, and then there's the Lingerie Bowl. Conveniently, it wrapped just in time to catch the end of the Jackson/Timberlake performance. A halftime for the ages.
· Lingerie Bowl 2004 [lingeriebowl.com]

It was, as forecast, one of the great television days of our lives. Patriots over the Panthers in the Super Bowl, followed by Boston Rob taking to the beach in Survivor: All Stars outfitted in a Red Sox cap. All in all, a proud day for the people of Massachusetts.
· Boston Globe front page: Champs Again [boston.com]
· Patriots Day I [LS.com, 2/4/02]