photo by Shravan Vidyarthi courtesy New York Observer

• “Downtown is effectively melding into one neighborhood,” said Jason Pomeranc, co-founder of Thompson Hotels (which includes the Smyth), in a New York Observer profile. Also of note in the article: “Famed” French restaurateur Frederick Lesort will “reopen the Jour et Nuit brasserie [in the Smyth] this spring.”

• Maslow 6, the new wine shop on West Broadway, is celebrating Halloween with Three Days of Decadence: sweet wines and white chocolate cookies on Thurs., Oct 29; sherry and Guittard dark chocolate on Fri., Oct. 30; wine and milk chocolate brownies on Sat., Oct. 31.

• Residents of 6 Varick are disturbed by the 24-hour lighting of the new New York Law School building. (Downtown Express)

• Joe Wightman, owner of the Mail Boxes Etc. on Greenwich St., appeared on WRXP 101.9FM to talk up the Hour Children clothing drive, which benefits kids whose mothers are in New York prisons. (Tribeca resident Wickham Boyle persuaded Joe to have a drop-off box at his store.)

• Anyone hoping for a break from filming in the neighborhood will be sorry to hear this: The U.K.’s Pinewood Studios had hoped to build a $332 million addition that included “offices and permanent film sets, including re-creations of San Francisco, New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, New Orleans, Venice’s Canale Grande, Berlin and Montmartre in Paris plus 1,400 homes, all on 110 acres,” but the local planning authority put the kibosh on it. (Variety)

• A New York Times profile of Augusten Burroughs focused on the memoirist’s apartment in the troubled 225 Rector Place building.

• Grub Street asked famous chef Alain Ducasse to rate various restaurants’ French fries. The Harrison‘s duck-fat fries came in third (“It’s less French, but more true New York”), after the ones at Pommes Frites and the Breslin.

• “I live in Tribeca now. The only thing that changes here is which corner the scaffolding is on and which building they’re tearing down to put up a different one. That’s the only difference. Everything else is exactly the same. Oh, except the Quiznos across the street closed, which really bums me out because that’s where I would eat lunch every day. I knew that Quiznos was not long for the world when I’d to go there at noon and try to open the door and it would be closed. I’d knock on the window and they would look at me like ‘What?’ and I would say, ‘Why are you closed? It’s noon.’ And they would say, ‘We forgot to order bread.’ This happened four times. It’s a sandwich shop.” —comedian/musician Stephen Lynch in an interview with the A.V. Club.

• The Tribeca Trib reports that the filming of a rainy scene for Matt Damon’s upcoming movie The Adjustment Bureau may have discouraged people from attending the Duane Park Loft Tour.

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