••• Starting January 25, North End Grill is closing its dining room for a week while it expands the private dining room to seat 18. The bar room will be open, but the restaurant is taking the opportunity to have a little fun, serving a pop-up bistro menu at dinner instead of the usual one. (You’ll recall that before joining NEG, chef Eric Korsh was at the well-regarded East Village bistro Calliope.)

••• The New York Times Magazine ran an ad for 70 Vestry with a close-up rendering, and there’s a similar one on the teaser site. It’s a lot nicer-looking than the preliminary rendering, and the Statue of Liberty is so close you can practically touch it. (Also, apartments start at 1,700 square feet and $5 million, and that’s presumably a low floor, either on Vestry or West Street.)

••• Soho Photo‘s February shows open on February 3, including this: “The Breast and the Sea is a written and photographic project capturing the strength and beauty of breast cancer survivors. Photographer, Miana Jun, and author/survivor, Rebecca Pine, share stories and photographs of participants, with scars bared in the sea.” From the project’s website: “We are currently interviewing and photographing women of diverse ages, backgrounds, and walks of life who have lost breast tissue to cancer. These moving stories and images of strength, beauty, acceptance, and inspiration are being shared here, and we are working toward creating a book. Participants may choose to be interviewed, photographed, or both.”

••• It looks like work is ramping up on 79 and 81 Warren, which are being combined into one building and getting a two-story addition. The good news is that the Schedule A says a restaurant will be on the ground floor (where Il Giglio was); the less good news is that the second, third, and fourth floors are going from artists’ live/work quarters to more class A apartments. Below: A pic from last September.

••• Do you think that the reason NYPD cars park on the sidewalk is to send a signal to the traffic cops, so they don’t get ticketed?

••• For posterity’s sake: a shot of Richard Haas’s wonderful 1974 trompe l’oeil mural at Prince and Greene.