Random Downtown Evening

I haven't blogged for a while so here's a diary entry: On Highland Ave just west of Elizabeth where everything's getting built on the north side, they had carefully scrubbed down the facade of the old Grinnell Sprinkler building (they waterproofed many buildings back in the day but not the Winecoff!) but this morning when I drove by the whole thing was being torn down. Oh well, at the least the building next door is being saved for a restaurant. For lunch we tried a new place (for us), Papi's Eastern Cuban at Myrtle and Ponce. Their pork special was awesome, more like street food than Las Palmeros on 5th. Not sure if that's an east-west thing :) Tonight, scheduled to meet the wife downtown so I walked to the train station. Noticed all the fences had been taken down along those goofy Inman Station condos: the brick columns are still there but all metal and wood fences are gone. No game at Philips but there was still a decent crowd at CNN Center. Noticed Rimini's Pizza finally closed, that's about the only truly wretched pizza I've ever had... gahhh. McCormick & Schmick's had a good crowd going. Walked over to Centennial Tower (their accent lights at the top are looking fine), to check out the media opening for Thrive on the first floor. It was a nice space but severely packed. It will be interesting to see how they do in the future but they have a good staff to start. We wanted something more substantial for dinner and headed over to sidebar a place I've really missed since leaving downtown for midtown. I'll have to make point of getting down there more often. Good crowd there too.... and.... and the spot on the corner (formerly Icon, formerly (crap I can't remember)) is a new location of Slice from Castleberry. They didn't change the decor at all from Icon and it had a better crowd than the previous occupants usually got. Bravo! For some reason, I seem to remember there was supposed to be a new Slice over off Edgewood, but I cannot find no corroboration. Signing off. Peace, baby