This storefront is across 14th Street from our apartment. We’ve lived here a little over three years. When this new restaurant opens, it will be the sixth restaurant in that time. First there was a small italian place (never ate there), then a Middle Eastern place, then a different Middle Eastern place (both excellent), then a latino place (uninspired, hard to figure out what they were trying to be), then Westville (we loved it), and now a place called The Burgher something-or-other. It’s going to be a vegetarian only burger place Curly’s Vegetarian Lunch.

I really thought Westville was going to be the one which broke the curse. It was usually crowded, at least on weekends, and the food was always great. Their burger had one of the best charred beef flavors I’ve ever had and they were really good at anything fried or broiled. I think the long winter might have done them in. The space is small and impossible to heat with a crappy door that froze everyone inside when opened. And this was an endlessly cold winter.

At any rate, I hope the new place is better than it sounds (vegetarian burger place? What’s the point?) and I hope they can make it work. I also hope they serve meat someday.

Talking about this yesterday with Al from Bagel Zone, I hit upon another theory about the demise of Westville. The attitude of the place was too “West Village”. The East Village has a different vibe, as anyone living in either place knows well. Westville was always very relaxed, possibly too relaxed. They tended to take a long time to get food on your table. I think East Villagers don’t like to be made to wait. We’re perfectly happy to sit around for hours after a meal, but we generally want to get started right away. This could probably also be described as selfishness, but ultimately we just want to be in charge of our time. Serve us quickly, then let us sit around, don’t make us wait too long to get started sitting around.

Just for posterity’s sake, I grabbed the reviews from Google’s cache of MenuPages (they’re fast, Westville East’s page was already gone)

Food: (4.5 stars)
Service: (4.5 stars)
Value : (4.5 stars)
Atmosphere: (4 stars)

Posted by Benny McB on 11/12/2004
Welcome to the ‘hood…
At last, a restaurant 14th Street can be proud of! My wife and I are fast becoming addicts. Everything we’ve tried has been delicious– regular faves are the mac’n’cheese with bacon and a Cobb salad to die for. Service has been friendly and efficient (although we live so close that we’ve been ordering to go more than eating in.) All in all, a real winner, and a welcome addition to the Upper East Village.

Posted by Laura on 11/01/2004
The best turkey burger!
The best turkey burger I have ever had. It was not dry at all, perfectly seasoned — just delicious! Refreshing fresh brewed iced tea and a side salad made this the perfect Saturday lunch. I’ll definitely be back, although service was a bit slow…

Posted by nicoandwade on 10/28/2004
Great little spot!!
My boyfriend took me there for brunch on sunday and I loved it!! Food was great, went thru kitchen to go to the bathroom!! Will definitely come back!

Posted by Lulu on 10/11/2004
Excellent food!!
This unassuming little place will surprise you with it’s EXCELLENT food. Everything is good..from the burgers to salads to specials to brunch…the desserts will blow you away. Try the butterscotch pudding or home-made oreo if you’d like your mind blown. The service was great. I can’t recommend this place more. I love it!!

Posted by Anonymous on 07/10/2004
Great brunch!
We stopped in for brunch today. The food was quite good — my baked challah french toast wit strawberries was perfectly crisp, and my juice was fresh-squeezed. My dining companion said that his homemade granola was a trifle overcooked, but that it was neither oversweet nor over oily, and it went beautifully with the yoghurt and fruit. The decor does leave a bit to be desired, but the service was friendly and we’ll definitely be back.

There’s still the original Westville, but it’s a bit of a hike for a burger, and if I’m going to walk that far for a burger, Corner Bistro is hard to pass up. Walking for a burger makes me think of Shake Shack, but I could probably walk to the West Village and eat lunch and get back home in the time it takes to get through the line.

Flickr’s down for an upgrade, and I didn’t build an error handler into the scraped together PHP script for parsing my Flickr feed. To do list item 34,242…

That’s quite a mess…

Yesterday: Jury duty for the New York State Supreme Court in May.
Just noticed that WordPress’ auto-htaccess file broke my old permalinks. Lovely. That’s going to be fun to monkey around with. Probably won’t be fixed soon, definitely not before NAB.

Today I heard from several old high school friends that John Molle, the youngest member of my high school basketball team in 1988-89, was murdered on April 1st. John’s funeral was yesterday, April 7th.

John Joseph Molle Jr., 32, of Santa Ana, a field supervisor, died April 1, 2005. Visitation: 3-9 p.m. today, Funeraria del Angel MacDougall Family Mortuary, Santa Ana. Services: 9 a.m. Thursday, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Santa Ana. Burial service: 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, Orange.

Parents, John, Librada; son, Miguel; brothers, Raphael, Andy.

OC Register, April 1, 2005:

SANTA ANA — A man who suffered a gunshot wound in his head was found dead in Windsor Park on Friday, police said.

The victim’s name was not known, Gonsalves said.

Investigators believe that the shooting occurred during “early morning hours.” Investigators found no witnesses to the shooting.

The park is in the 2900 block of La Verne Avenue.

Anyone with information is asked to call investigators Mark Steen or Dean Fulcher at (714) 245-8355.

OC Register, April 4, 2005:

John Joseph Molle, [32], of Santa Ana, was found Friday morning in Windsor Park, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. His body was spotted by a passerby who called for paramedics. The paramedics discovered the gunshot wound. The park is in the 2900 block of La Verne Avenue.

Honolulu Advertiser, April 9, 2005:

Former University of Hawai’i basketball player John Molle Jr. was remembered as a tough competitor who was trying to improve his life.

“He was a nice guy who didn’t get a lot of breaks,” said UH associate coach Jackson Wheeler, who recruited Molle to UH in 1992.

Molle, 33, was killed April 1 in Santa Ana, Calif., after he sought the people who stole his car. He died from a gunshot wound to the head. No suspect has been arrested.

“I talked to him a week and a half ago,” Wheeler said. “He seemed fine. He seemed in good spirits. I talked to him quite often. He always had a good place in my heart. This is really sad.”

Molle attended San Diego State and Saddleback Community College before signing with the Warriors. As a 6 foot-4 senior, he helped the Warriors win the 1994 Western Athletic Conference Tournament and earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament. Molle was a skilled outside shooter who also played power forward.

“He certainly wasn’t a power forward, but he was that versatile,” former Saddleback coach Bill Brummel said.

Molle’s life spiraled soon after leaving UH. He spent a few years in prison after being convicted of a car-jacking. In prison, Molle became a Christian.

“He turned his life around,” UH coach Riley Wallace said. “I’ve always thought good of John, and I always will. He was a tough and hard-nosed kid, but he was always good around me.”

Brummel said Molle’s aggressive style invoked taunts from opposing fans. But Brummel also remembered how Molle was a popular figure during a UH camp in 1993.

“He had a magnetic personality for young kids,” Brummel said. “The kids just loved him. They followed him around, like he was the Pied Piper. To see the connection he had with kids … that was an enjoyable memory.”

John,

Last year I got a letter filling in some details of your life after high school, none of which were good. My only reply was to hope that you would someday turn your life around, learn from your hardships and bad choices and come out the better for your experience. I never wrote about it, hoping for the day you’d to slip out of your past and into a new future. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

For your parents, your brothers, your son, I’m heartbroken. I have no words except to hope they can find solace in memories of happier times.

Today, because of your death, I’ve heard from many people I haven’t talked to in more than 15 years. I’m holding onto the small glimmer of light in that. I wish any of us could have done something more for you. May you finally find some peace.

I’ll post more detailed thoughts later, I know about the rough corners (especially the annoying MSIE CSS hacks and workarounds), I’ll fix things as I find time. But I’ve got other stuff to finish up first.

Lila painting

Originally uploaded by Joe Maller.

Lila painted a pretty great picture of a man the other morning.

Beck’s new album Guero was released on March 29th, 2005.

• At Amazon, Guero is $10.99, has 13 songs, no DRM, comes with some extra paper and plastic and you’d have to take a few minutes to rip the songs to MP3 before listening (what? music can play from a CD?! How retro!).
• On iTunes, Guero is $9.99, also has 13 songs, some mildly annoying DRM limitations (but good karma?), doesn’t have any paper or plastic to collect dust around the house and comes pre-ripped to protected AAC.
• A very easy to find torrent of Beck’s new album is available on nearly every BitTorrent tracker I checked. It has 16 songs including 3 labeled “bonus track for Japan”, no DRM, no plastic, no paper, was encoded at a bit rate higher-than iTunes and downloads faster than the CD could be ripped.

To be fair, Amazon is also selling a Special! Limited! Collector’s! Edition! and iTunes has an exclusive set of remixes. The special edition with the DVD is $29.99 $23.99 and contains the three extra tracks plus four other remixes currently unavailable on iTunes but are all over the p2p networks. The four iTMS remixes are iTunes exclusives and not available physically, but are also available via p2p.

Legitimate users lose out. Saddled with DRM, offered fewer songs, price-gouged and treated poorly. Music piracy is never going to get better until the best stuff is given to legitimate users first and easily. No more bonus tracks for Japan or “collector’s editions”, give the good stuff to iTunes. The music will always escape. Might as well encourage and reward people for doing the right thing.

Vader/Leia’s Law: “The tighter you clench your first, the more star systems will slip between your fingers.”