RESTAURANT WEEK STARTS MONDAY
It’s the 30th Anniversary of NYC Restaurant Week, and we have 13 restaurants participating: American Cut Steakhouse, Anejo, Batard, Gran Morsi, Khe-Yo, Filé Gumbo Bar, Gigino Trattoria, Chela Tribeca, Thalassa, Marathi, The Palm, Sarabeth’s, Tamarind, Tiny’s & The Bar Upstairs, Tribeca Grill, Yves and Zutto. The program will run for 30 days, July 18 – August 21, with a two-course lunch or three-course dinner offered for $30, $45 and $60. See the details here,where you can search by neighborhood. Tribeca Grill’s Tracy Nieporent has been involved since the beginning: “Of course, in 1992, I was ordering off of the Children’s menu, while sitting on a phone book,” he noted.

URBANSPACE PEARL IS OPEN
The new Urbanspace Pearl food hall at 100 Pearl (at Old Slip) has opened. It’s 15,000 square feet and currently has 11 vendors with more coming soon. The hours are Monday – Friday, 6a to 9p, and Saturday and Sunday from 9a to 8p.

DOWNTOWN DANCE FACTORY KIDS CLEAN UP
A group of eight local dancers from Downtown Dance Factory attended The Dance Awards in Las Vegas, the premier national dance competition in the country, and walked (danced) away with a slew of awards: 1st Overall Teen Group – National Champions; several Judges Pick Awards; Top Scoring Teen Musical Theater Group; 2nd Place Teen Lyrical Group; 4th Place Teen Jazz Group. And Tribecans Charlie Head and Stella Wong were named among the top 10 dancers among hundreds.

NO GHOSTS HERE
Hook & Ladder 8 hung a new Ghostbusters sign (of course maybe they did a while ago and my powers of observation are hurting…) after the original was showing its wear and had lost a finger. The custom-made sign was donated by the Ghostbusters club of Buffalo, with an assist from Sony. (You can read the whole story here.) I bought a bunch of their patches, which they created as a fundraiser, with a bandaid on the Ghost’s finder. They are excellent.