Leveriza's last night in the city. A quick bite at Adrienne's pizza bar on Stone St., then drinks at Fresh Salt.

Leveriza and Laura are in town.

Shannon, Izzy, Ken, and I meet them at Zanzibar, which is to nobody's liking, so we decide to go low-key at Marseille instead.







Afterwards, we end up at the Irish Rogue around the corner.













We have no idea who this guy is.



And then things get a little crazy.

Doug, Chinatown.

It's a bit blurry, but that actually is Shannon and Jeni there.

Surface magazine party, Ultra, Flatiron district (coincidentally, right next door to that fish-fry I was at last Thursday).



Bernardo and Tim (and Nick).



Linda and Gail.



The view from the "VIP treehouse".


Random "pretty people".

Meet up with Josie, Emily, and Jimmy at Pigalle before heading off to find some dinner. We end up at Bann, a Korean bbq in World Wide Plaza.







For the price, you get bigger portions and more sides at the Korean bbqs in K-town ($3 for garlic? $3 for lettuce and a tiny bowl of daenjang? Where do you think you are, World Wide Plaza??), but the food was very good and for dessert they had this sort of Southeast Asian variation on patbingsoo: all the usual red beans and fruits and jellies and syrups and stuff, but with coconut shave ice and coconut ice cream instead of the normal plain ice and milk. I like food.

Amusingly enough, our Josie is not the only Josie in the room - who do I see over in the corner but Josie from this season's Top Chef, on Bravo? She was one of the top contenders this season in my book until she and partner Marisa made this one ill-conceived prickly pear and coconut soup at the Jennifer Coolidge dinner that everyone said looked like Pepto Bismol, and was sent packing. Fast forward two months and there she is, sitting with a couple friends at a fancy Korean bbq, having the time of her life. Yay her.

Scott.

Jimmy invites Emily, Kathleen, and me to a "soft opening" for Black Pearl, his friend's cool new fish-fry in the Flatiron District. A soft opening is a sort of pre-opening only for friends, family, family of friends, friends of family, friends of friends, etc. etc.

Save room for the key-lime pie, which is so good, I wish I was eating it right now.

Is there an expression one uses to properly wish somebody good luck on a restaurant opening, something along the lines of "merde" or "break a leg"? Harold suggested "break an egg", which is ridiculous.

Holidays over. Today, in a scene I'm sure echoed at the Seaport, Bowling Green, Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, that weird glass teepee building on E.58th between 3rd Ave. and Lexington, and in apartments citywide, they took away the Stock Exchange tree.

For some reason I had always pictured in my head that they just sort of loaded the thing wholesale onto a giant flatbed, lights and glass balls and all, and just carted it off like that, possibly to like orphans or something (it's always Christmas somewhere, isn't it?). But no, turns out they cut it up first.



Makes sense. Don't know why I never thought of that.





They took away the wreath, too:



It's literally 72 degrees out today.

New Year's Eve...





...at Ellie and Lloyd's apartment, Hoboken.