••• Reader Dan sent along this item from Streetsblog New York City: “CityBench, a product of PlaNYC 2.0, will bring 1,000 shiny steel benches to locations across the five boroughs” and “the primary aim of the initiative is to make streets and sidewalks more accommodating to seniors and the mobility-impaired”; they’re like the one on Greenwich, between Warren and Murray, that I noticed back in July.

••• Langdon Florist’s Joe Rizzo is quoted (and pictured) in a Bloomberg Business Week article on a “gay-wedding windfall for New York.”

••• Tribeca-based actor Russell Brand shared some bloggy thoughts about his visit to Occupy Wall Street: “Brianna who is seventeen, pagan-pretty and dusky, is attending college by day and occupying Wall Street by night like some heart wrenching cross between Pocahontas and Batman, said that young people are entitled to an education without being bound to a lifetime of debt. Whilst ‘Messiah’ (there’s a lot of those names flying about, go with it; it’s a small price to pay for Utopia) literally danced into the conversation and self consciously, but touchingly, divided up and shared a stick of gum in a “Sermon on the Mount” brought to us by Juicy Fruit. You might think, that given her name, that was the least she could do, but we’re talking about a sixteen-year-old girl here.” —Perez Hilton, but I’m not linking there (I don’t read Perez Hilton reguarly; it came up in a Google alert)

••• “Zuccotti Park has become a haven for the homeless. Enticed by the allure of free food and a community of open-minded people, increasing numbers are leaving New York’s shelters to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters. ‘I think this is a better situation to be involved with,’ said Matthew Maloney, 49, who was released from prison on Sept. 30 after serving time for a probation violation.” —New York Daily News, whose website, I should mention is getting increasingly stupid (“Celebrity Lookalikes: Can you tell them apart?”); I have a theory that over time every website, in order to keep growing, must get dumber and dumber, until they have no choice but to run slideshows of celebrity abs.

By Evan Sung (courtesy the New York Times)

••• Interior designer Thierry Despont of Harrison Street loves his Russian globe. —The New York Times (which also mentions that “‘Cabinet de Curiosités,’ a lavish and unusual show, which sets sculptures by Mr. Despont and works by two other artists, Manolo Valdés and Claudio Bravo, in lavish 18th- and 19th-century period rooms, opens at a gallery space at 6 Harrison Street in Tribeca on Nov. 12.'” If so, it’s a new gallery…? Or a pop-up one?

••• The strange, sad story of Salah Youssef, which isn’t really Tribeca-related except that it involves a gun being displayed outside the Square Diner. —The New York Times

••• An axe-grinding, bitter writer for Vice went on the Inside Tribeca Loft Tour; the report is titled “How the One Percent Lives,” so you can see where this is headed. Sample quote: “I suspect the real reason the loft owners let people into their homes was to say ‘Look at all of the crazy rich-person stuff I have! Look how fucking tasteful it is!'” Actually, the loft owners probably do it as a favor to the Friends of Duane Park and to help out the designers they worked with, but that’s something you might understand better when you’re older and wiser, son.