SHOPPING
••• Duane Street antiques shop Mondo Cane has added almost 100 new items to its website. I don’t actually know if this $3,500 Bauhaus telephone, from 1930s Germany, is new—but I couldn’t resist posting it.

IN THE NEWS
••• New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer weighs in on the turmoil at the Battery Park City Authority: “The chairman abruptly stepped down on Tuesday. The vice chairman, who was one of the founders of the authority in 1968, says that it no longer needs to exist, and certainly not with a budget of nearly $30 million. But his term is up, and he will probably soon be replaced. The authority has $400 million in funds that normally would be available to the city. The governor wants half for the state budget. The mayor is negotiating. So is the city comptroller. Hovering above these cosmic matters is a yearlong investigation by the state inspector general into what, apparently, were many false accusations about executives at the authority, including a classic showstopper: that they rented a two-bedroom “love nest” at a cost of $50,000 a year. In fact, the apartment was a working model for green technologies, with all entries logged in a book and recorded by surveillance cameras in the hallways.”
••• Speaking of green technologies…. The New York Times also looks into eco-sensitive shared workspaces, such as Green Spaces in Tribeca (on Broadway, between Walker and White): “Plants are everywhere, the sunlight streams in, and everyone washes his or her own coffee cups.”
••• The City Council held a meeting in which locals voice opposition to the 9/11 trials being held around here. (Tribeca Trib). Related: In today’s New York Times profile of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Holder says that the Obama administration is looking at the three attack sites—New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—as possible venues for the trials.

COMING UP
••• This week at Barnes & Noble Tribeca: Drucilla Cornell, author of Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity (today, Feb. 15); Laura Day, author of The Circle: How the Power of a Single Wish Can Change Your Life (Feb. 16). Both are at 7 p.m.—and if that time isn’t convenient for you, maybe you can wish for it to be rescheduled.

SLOW NEWS DAY
••• In Search of Gina, a blog devoted to actress Gina Gershon, has a photo of her from January 15 in which she “tries to hide her face with her cup of ice cream as she enters Tribeca Beauty Spa” (on Harrison). No, I don’t really care either but this roundup was on the paltry side, so….