Dennis Johnson, Melville House publisher.

We were looking forward to Part Two of Christopher Frizzelle’s “Confronting Tao Lin’s Publisher, Part One” column in the Seattle Stranger. In an email to us Mr. Lin has already more or less denied, or at least hedged, Mr. Frizzelle’s assertion that Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, did not support him.

Last week, Mr. Frizzelle wrote, “Why would you publish a work and then spend your energy undermining the writer's confidence in the worthiness of that very work, so much so that you end up not speaking to each other?” This week, instead of Part Two, Mr. Frizzelle only writes, “Still haven’t heard back from you, Dennis Johnson.”

Here’s what Mr. Johnson wrote to us:

The only statement that I have to make about Tao Lin's book is that I published it, promoted it hard, and am proud to have done so. Beyond that, I never comment on my personal relationships with my authors, and I have no comment on Christopher Frizzelle's column. It seems to me that if he wants to discuss the issues in Tao's book, it would be more appropriate for him to speak with Tao.

We have one word for you, Mr. President, the next time you want to sweep into Los Angeles on a weekday late afternoon: helicopter. That way you can avoid the streets the rest of us mere residents must drive to get around.

President Obama's fundraising mission in Los Angeles may have been a whirlwind trip for him, but it was a tedious slog for thousands of people who found themselves in traffic gridlock from the Westside to Hancock Park.

Angelenos vented on the Los Angeles Times website and on Twitter. LA-based writer Nina Bargiel tweeted, "Dear Obama: I voted for you but my husband CANNOT GET HOME FROM WORK. This does not bode well for next time you need something."

Headaches continued today with the President's trip to Washington State to campaign for Sen. Patty Murray. The circumstances this time were not under the President's control. Around 2 p.m. (PT) Seattleites were startled by twin sonic booms in the vicinity of Boeing Field. The noise was produced by a pair of fighter jets scrambling to intercept a small airplane that entered temporarily restricted airspace over Seattle. Secret Service agents were said to be questioning the pilot, who flew within 8 miles of Air Force One.

All in all, things could have been worse for the President. Joe Biden could have come along for the ride.

A line of roughly 15 men had gathered outside the Blind Tiger in Greenwich Village at 4:01 p.m. on Thursday, when the renowned beer-lover's mecca finally reopened its doors--this time, with actual beer.

"People have been waiting for, like, a year for this," noted the last guy in line, who added that he'd taken the day off from work.

After 10 years at Hudson and 10th streets, the much beloved Tiger was forced to move in late 2005 in order to make way for a new Starbucks.

Perhaps taking a hint from the Seattle caffeine giant, the venue reopened last fall at the corner of Bleecker and Jones--primarily as a coffee bar, however, on account of a little liquor-license brouhaha with neighborhood politico Deb Glick.

As boozehounds waited patiently for the true Tiger's second-coming on Thursday, Eater provided constant updates.

Earlier this month, the bar finally got its license to swill. Ale aficionados turned out pronto.

By 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, the crowd inside easily exceeded 50--predominantly made up of burly-looking dudes, but at least three females were present.

- Chris Shott

Visit www.JunebugWeddings.com on or before Dec.15th and enter to win a luxurious spa package from Frenchy's Day Spa, including Frenchy's favorite manicure, pedicure, facial and one hour massage

It's a rainy day here in Seattle but I have a lot to do today:

My goal for today is to make Martha Stewart's Mac & Cheese for dinner. Since X is vegetarian, I'll have to substitute some tofu delicacy for the ham. Maybe if we quaff some red wine, it will make up for the calorie excess. I'll walk over to Madison Market, our local coop, later to search out something suitable.

I need to figure out my ring size - I think I'm a 4.5 but I'm not too sure. And since X is ordering the ring off the internet, we want to be sure. We're leaning towards this platinum ring with 3.5 carat green moissanite gems. X and I discussed wedding/reception plans yesterday. We're thinking of having a Hindu Wedding Ceremony and Wedding Reception in New York on 9/15/07. My parents live in Long Island and X has relatives living in New Hampshire - so this should be convenient. We're also thinking of having a Seattle Reception on 9/23/07 for those of our friends who can't make it out to New York. I proposed having a champagne brunch and having all sorts of sparkling wine there - cremant, champagne, prosecco, sparkling red wine, etc.

We'll see!

Words of wisdom: “Every dollar you spend at Starbucks goes to Seattle …. ”
But with some spaces commanding $16,000 a month in rent, a goodly portion of that dollar is going to the landlord.

-Matthew Grace

Zillow is here.

From what we hear, the pressure-cooker environment in which the launch was being anticipated--and in many cases beaten to the market by prospective competitors--had a lot to do with the sudden launch, initially scheduled loosely for the Spring or thought to be on hold till the Summer.

Look for the whole story in today's editions of the Observer; read their full press release after the jump.

In today's other real estate news:

Johnny Damon settles down, finally. And it's not a Baseball Building, except for Bobby Abreu.

Bob Guccione causes a stir when the hedge fundies that are selling his house list it at $99 million.

Jana Bullock is up to more of her showhouse zaniness.

- Michael Calderone

Zillow.com™ Launches Beta Real Estate Site: Valuations and Data on More Than 60 Million Homes in America - for Free

Beta is first step in Zillow.com’s goal to empower consumers with tools and information to transform how they buy and sell homes

Seattle - February 8, 2006—Zillow.com today announced the launch of its beta real estate site, offering free, unbiased valuations on more than 40 million homes across the United States, with data on an additional 20 million homes. This includes most homes in the country, not just those for sale. All consumers need to do is enter an address.

In addition to finding a valuation, or ZestimateTM value for homes, consumers can access and view - for free - an enormous amount of information on individual homes, including:

- Historical value changes for each home, charted over the past year, five years or ten years.

- Historical value changes for each home as compared to its surrounding zip code, city, state or the entire U.S.

- All comparable home sales in an area.

- Satellite, aerial and parcel views of many homes.

- Individual home data, such as number of bedrooms/bathrooms, square footage, lot size, stories and year built.

Finding this information on Zillow.com is free, and does not require anyone to enter any personal information.

“Until now, finding out a current market value of any home - whether it’s yours or one you want to bid on - has been quite difficult,” said Rich Barton, Zillow chairman and CEO. “We believe you shouldn’t need a computer science degree or a real estate license to find out what a home is worth. That’s why we created Zestimate values, providing free and instant valuations for millions of homes in America. This beta is just the beginning… Zillow will continue adding tools and services to empower consumers to make smarter real estate decisions.”

Zestimate values are updated daily, allowing homeowners to track the value of their largest investment, and giving both buyers and sellers an updated view of the real estate market and individual homes.

Additionally, Zillow’s My ZestimatorTM tool allows users to refine the value of a home for their own use, based on changes or additions to that home. For example, a seller with a recently remodeled kitchen can refine her value based on this change. Zillow calculates the remodel value for her area based on local remodel data and depreciation.

Zillow’s business is advertising-based. Zillow’s consumer offering provides a platform for agents and related real estate providers to advertise their services to consumers who are serious about the home buying and selling process.

For more information, or to find a Zestimate valuation on a home, visit www.zillow.com. Read about or comment on updated Zillow news and observations in the Zillow.com corporate blog at www.zillowblog.com.

About Zillow.com

Zillow.com launched its beta service in February 2006, with the goal of empowering consumers with tools and information to transform how they buy and sell homes. Zillow was started by a group of Internet veterans, including Expedia founder and former CEO Rich Barton and former Expedia Senior Vice President Lloyd Frink. Located in Seattle, Zillow raised $32 million in funding from two leading venture capital firms, Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Venture (TCV), as well as employees, directors and private investors.

Zillow.com™, Zestimate™ and Zestimator™ are all trademarks of Zillow, Inc.

# # #

Met: June 1999

Engaged: Aug. 28, 2005

Projected Wedding Date: Oct. 21, 2006

Elizabeth Dziadik, 28, a sleek brunette resident in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, plans to marry Brett Kiefer, also 28, a boyish developer at Fog Creek Software, at the Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side.

Although the two were in the same class at Dartmouth, they didn’t meet until late senior year, when both were crammed in the back of a car on a road trip to Montreal. “I was basically totally smitten,” said Mr. Kiefer.

Ms. Dziadik dismissed him as a “nice guy.”

On the way to their hostel after a bunch of Molsons at a local “hotspot,” Mr. Kiefer boldly went in for a kiss. “She wasn’t having any of that,” he recalled.

“We had the same friends, and we were leaving,” Ms. Dziadik explained. “I didn’t want to complicate things.”

“I was all into complication,” Mr. Kiefer said.

The day after graduation, Ms. Dziadik stopped by Mr. Kiefer’s frat to say goodbye, and he gave her a kukui nut lei he’d picked up in Hawaii. He was moving to Seattle to work for Amazon—ah, the Internet gold rush!—and she was attending medical school at the University of Connecticut.

“Y’all know I’m going to marry Liz Dziadik,” he proclaimed drunkenly one night to a mutual friend. “Get her out of your head,” said the friend, rolling her eyes. “She’s thousands of miles away.”

Mr. Kiefer eventually schlepped to Farmington and took Ms. Dziadik to a dinner at a place called the Elbow Room. She was appalled to see him sporting a shoulder-length mane. “You’re doing the kind of laidback West Coast long-hair thing, I see,” she said disdainfully. Still, on this occasion she permitted a goodnight smooch.

Two months later, they met in Boston for another dinner date, during which Mr. Kiefer informed Ms. Dziadik that she was using the word “stodgy” incorrectly.

“I was like, ‘Who is this annoying guy correcting my vocabulary?’” she said. But Mr. Kiefer had cut his hair, at least, and she wound up going back to his hotel room. Hubba-hubba ….

They began a long-distance relationship, moving to New York after she was assigned to a residency here instead of in Seattle and finding an Upper West Side one-bedroom.

Mr. Kiefer proposed in a courtyard after a long day at the Cloisters, with a 2.1-carat princess-cut, platinum-set solitaire diamond from DeNatale, a jeweler near Wall Street. “She went from slightly cranky to giddy,” Mr. Kiefer said.

Ms. Dziadik positively floated through her rotation the next day. “It was the hardest of my entire life,” she said, “but it was O.K., because I had this nice ring on my finger.”

The bride-to-be said she first realized Mr. Kiefer was “the one” after he picked her up at baggage claim for a New Year’s Eve visit to Seattle brandishing a parking stub—instead of circling the airport to avoid paying for parking, like one callous ex.

“It sounds so cheesy,” she said, “but I was like, ‘Oh my God—this amazing, wonderful person had been under my nose all this time!’”

Adam Eckman and Noreen Mahon

Met: October 2000

Engaged: Dec. 10, 2005

Projected Wedding Date: October 2007

Every Tuesday, Noreen Mahon would stop in the Mike & Gerard Deli near her house in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, to pick up her weekly cold cuts and admire the sculpted arms of the six-foot-tall Boar’s Head delivery man, Adam Eckman. And he, in turn, would notice the beautiful brunette, a pharmacy technician at New York Hospital.

“Eventually, I had the guts to say hi,” said Mr. Eckman, 28.

The pair exchanged e-mail addresses and arranged a first date at Manhattan Beach. As they watched the gentle lapping of the waves, Mr. Eckman shyly turned to his escort and asked her if he could slip her some tongue (to use the cold-cuts parlance)—and she acquiesced. “I knew there was something about him,” said Ms. Mahon, 26. “That he was the one I was supposed to be with.”

However, she was still hurting from a bad breakup with someone else, so after three months of dating, the new couple cut it off. “She was in my life and all of a sudden she was gone,” Mr. Eckman said. “Even my mom said, ‘Where’s Noreen?’”

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, though, Ms. Mahon e-mailed her estranged deli darling. “I just wanted to make sure everybody on his end was okay,” she said.

They had a joyful reunion at Giordano’s, an Italian restaurant near the house he shares with his family in Whitestone, Queens. But it took him until the following summer to trot out the L-word (on a sunset-illuminated bench at the site of their first date), and two more months for her to reciprocate.

“I knew how he felt, and I knew that it was real, but I was nervous,” Ms. Mahon said. “I had felt it for so long, but I didn’t want to say it because I didn’t want anything bad to happen.”

The couple enjoys tennis, whitewater inner-tubing (and, we presume, hiding the salami) upstate in Lake George. Ms. Mahon likes reggae, but her hunk of man-meat has been able to turn her on to honky music (he loves James Taylor, and they’ve seen Coldplay live in concert) … up to a point. I really don’t care for Metallica,” Ms. Mahon said. “Luckily, he doesn’t really listen to it too often. It’s his workout music.” Yikes!

Mr. Eckman is also an avid ice-hockey enthusiast, and he proposed marriage during one of their many trips to the Wollman Rink in Central Park, dropping to one knee and brandishing a two-carat, princess-cut piece of ice set in a platinum band and embedded with pavé diamonds, from John Miele Jewelers on Bowery.

“Of course,” whispered Ms. Mahon, weak in the knees. “Of course.”

“You have to say ‘yes.’”

“Yes,” she said.

They’re choosing between the Riviera in Brooklyn and Jericho Terrace in Long Island for their wedding ceremony. In the meantime, Mr. Eckman, who now has his own Boar’s Head route, is looking for an apartment in Bayside. Because living with your folks … is the wurst!

Although New York missed the top spot, there are other reasons to celebrate throwing away money in the metropolitan area. Two overpriced places across the Hudson, Bergen-Passaic and Middlesex (whence this reporter hails), also made the Top 10.

-Michael Calderone

A man showed up at the address printed on my first business card and asked the receptionist if anyone had lost a wallet. These days, I barely remember to take business cards with me when I leave the house. Then, I was so thrilled by their shape and texture and significance, I'd carry no less than 10. I offered to pay the man, but he refused; he mumbled something about being in the neighborhood and took the elevator out of sight. Of course, after he left I discovered that he'd already paid himself $17 and a monthly MetroCard.

The important stuff, however-the wallet itself, the credit cards, the all-important driver's license-was all there and untouched. Which might explain why, two years later, when I left my wallet in a cab again, I made none of the usual motions to erase myself. I canceled no accounts, changed no codes and threw away no keys. Blessed with an often-inconvenient mix of faith and practicality, I decided to give my hunch a week before I called Visa. A game of financial roulette, if you will. And on the seventh day, my wallet showed up in my mailbox. And it was good. Even the cash was still inside. (The bad news was that my lost-wallet inflation rate had apparently gone up only $1 in two years.)

This stuff happens to me all the time. It's not that I think I'm particularly lucky; I'm not. On some level, I'm conscious that it's a numbers game. For example, everyone I know who grew up a true New York City kid has been mugged at least twice. Logical. The other night, I thought I felt someone sneaking up on me and I knew my time had come. I just knew it. I felt a hand tug at my arm and turned, wide-eyed, to see a very tall woman who said, "Sorry, but ..." and then tucked the label on my collar back inside my shirt. I laughed, touching where the tag had been, and thanked her. It was then I decided the city is looking out for me. As they say, "Now more than ever." And perhaps that's it-perhaps it's a post-post-post-9/11 humanity that's trickled down to everyday courtesies like not stealing other people's wallets. Perhaps it's simply that niceness has always been New York's best-kept secret, constructed and maintained to keep the tourists out. Sort of like how it really doesn't rain very much in Seattle.

In all likelihood, it's not even as romantic as a shared front, but rather a basic sympathy for our fellow urban dwellers. It's inverted "do unto others" selfishness. I probably wouldn't leap in front of a cross-town bus for anyone only because I wouldn't expect someone to do that for me. But I would expect them to tell me that my fly is undone and take a certain amount of pride in informing others of this myself. In the past five years alone, I have left my wallet in a cab an astonishing-nay, impressive-6.7 times. (The .7 is for all the times I would have gone ID-less into a bar had someone not gotten out of the back seat after me and said, "Forget something?") With the exception of that first $17 idiot's fee, my wallet gets returned to me every time. Every. Single. Time.

Do I think I am jinxing this streak by coming out in the open with it in this manner? That I am courting a trip to the Herald Square D.M.V.? I did consider that. I also figured this would be the ultimate test of my theory that it's not me, not just my luck, but something more organic about the way the city works.

I was absent-mindedly picking at my nails and pondering all of this on the subway platform when a small Korean woman came out from behind the median map barrier and smacked my arm down. "Slun!" She shook her head and held my fingertips in a bunch. "No bite!" People turned to look. Apparently my mother had found a way to morph into this meticulous woman who, in reality, had painted my nails three weeks prior at a local salon. After that, the question was no longer whether the city was looking out for me, but whether it was butting in. I like the barely-there idea of a guardian angel. I could do without the baby-sitting police. When does neighborliness become meddling? It's got to rain in Seattle eventually.

With few exceptions, our actual neighbors who share our addresses are strangers as well. Recently, I came home to a note pasted on my door with duct tape. Apparently I had been throwing my trash bags in the incorrect bucket outside my brownstone, thus leading to some bad bucket overflow. This deviant behavior had to stop. I felt the note was on the brusque side, but perhaps that was just the duct tape talking. Shaking it off, I plucked said note from my door and threw it out in the kitchen. One minute passed before something occurred to me, and then I flung open my kitchen cabinet, reread the Sharpie scrawl and realized: This guy was going through my trash. How else could he know it was me? Yes, I was creeped out. Yes, I now pulp my receipts and double-knot my trash bags. But the thing is, in his own inadvertently selfish way, he meant well. The man didn't want trash outside his house. And his casa is my casa.

In the end, it is rare that our random acts of kindness do not achieve their intended effect. It doesn't take much more than those magic words "Hey, you've got toilet paper stuck to your shoe!" to make me fall in love with this place again. Maybe I'm easy. Maybe it's all about inverted selfishness. That Cuticle Cop was well intentioned, but because I would never do what she did, it pissed me off. I'm just not a good enough person to smack a stranger.

Thus, as I stood there waiting for my train, I felt my understanding and empathy for my fellow New Yorkers swell like a big glowing orb of Care Bears and butterfly kisses. I said the absent-minded professor's prayer of gratitude for every glorious time a wallet-shaped envelope appeared in my mailbox. I smiled at people holding my same subway pole, and they smiled back. Because this is the beauty of strangers: We're all just trying to do our best to help each other out, motivated not by karma or luck but by a natural instinct to aid the greater whole, one stray clothing tag at a time.

Except for the old guy on the corner of 13th and Seventh two nights ago who saw me smoking a cigarette and told me it would kill me. Asshole.

"Whoever owns this phone left it on the plane," he told us, from Seattle.