The 22-year-old former ESPN production assistant whose affair with former Mets GM and baseball analyst Steve Phillips hit the front pages of the tabloids was on Good Morning America today. Brooke Hundley said, "I did things I regret, obviously. People make mistakes at 22. That's what I was trying not to do originally, was hurt anybody else or affect anybody else's lives negatively. But I did things and I thought about things just as an avenue to get people to pay attention, to start asking the right questions, to get me out of a bad situation."

They finally did it; they finally killed those weird and almost iconic asphalt mounds in Washington Square Park, destroying them with the cool efficiency of a doctor lancing a boil. Which they most certainly were not—they were mysterious '70s-era tributes to the city's ever-imperiled idiosyncrasy. They'll be replaced with safety-first fake-turf clones, as part of the city's multi-million dollar renovation of the park. Curbed reports that the entire southwest quadrant is now "quiet as a crypt, the silence broken only by the scrounging of squirrels." Goodnight, sweet mounds, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Earlier this year a reader spotted a tourist group coming off the Bedford Avenue L in Williamsburg. So it shouldn't come as too much of a shock that there's now a course at FIT called "Williamsburg, The New Style Frontier." Or at least, there was on October 24th.

Italian illustrator Matteo Pericoli "has executed an intimate collection of drawings — glimpses of the city, as seen from the windows of prominent New Yorkers." CityRoom takes a look at his new book The City Out My Window: 63 Views of New York, which includes drawings and stories inspired by them. For example, Stephen Colbert says of his view: "Because my studio is directly across from a windowless telecommunications skyscraper whose peak bristles with microwave transmitters, when I think of my view mostly I think about cancer, so I try not to think about it at all."

      

Click on the images for the scoop on Bar Henry, Sushi Uo, Mermaid Oyster Bar, Manhattan Inn, Northern Spy Food Co., and Má Pêche.

Are aliens checking out Manhattan? One man says he filmed a "red craft" UFO for four nights straight this month, and has some footage to back up his claim. He says he filmed from The Great Hill in Central Park, saying, "When I started filming, it hovers about then suddenly I descends near the Reservoir. Slowly and vanishes. After about 30 min, when I got home, It popped up again for about 40 more minutes and morphed into a Plane... I know its sounds crazy... Its been out for about 4 nights so far... For some reason it knows I'm filming it."

The iconic Empire Diner in Chelsea is being taken over by the team that operates the obnoxiously fashionable but beautifully staffed Coffee Shop in Union Square. The owner of the property will not be renewing the lease with Renata Gonzalez, who's operated the classic diner for over three decades. Instead, the Gotham City Restaurant Group will replace Gonzalez with a 15-year lease rumored to be in the $25,000 per month range. Gonzalez says she's trying to get the new owner to keep some of the current employees, some of whom have been there for as long as her, but that seems unlikely. The name's changing too, but that hasn't been revealed yet.

The father of a 14-year-old Connecticut girl filed a missing persons report with police after his daughter left the house Saturday morning and didn't come home that night. The unidentified girl wasn't answering her cellphone, but police were able to track her down using her the phone's signal, finally locating her Sunday afternoon in a room at the Belleclaire Hotel on the Upper West Side. Inside the room, police found condoms, a vibrator, and an 18-year-old Belgian man named Anthony Freson, who swears the girl told him she was 18 when they "met" in a Yahoo chat room in April.

The mystery is being lifted little-by-little around James Jackson, whose tombstone was recently unearthed in Washington Square Park. In under a week it was theorized that Jackson resided at 19 East George Street (the former name of Market Street), and was a watchman and grocer.

Dios mio; on Saturday Nestle is opening its first U.S. "Nestlé Pure Life Mercado del Agua" (Water Store) to "bring the benefits of Nestlé Pure Life Purified Water to the Hispanic community." And they've got Hispanic TV personality and Pure Life spokesperson Cristina Saralegui to appear at the grand opening to help target the demographic. In the press release announcing the store, Saralegui (the Hispanic Oprah) says, "It is my privilege to join Nestlé Waters in celebrating the grand opening... I want to help increase awareness for our community about how drinking water is critical to living a healthy lifestyle."

                     

New York's newest Apple Store, at West 67th and Broadway, is officially opening up its doors this Saturday at 10 a.m. (we're told they will be giving out t-shirts). We're about to head inside for a special sneak peek, and will be updating with more images over the course of the day. First impression: that's a lot of glass! And the roof is glass, too. And this is their fourth glass staircase.

It's time for your annual subway reef moment of zen. Last November the Today Show gave us an up-close look at the watery graves that some subways will meet. Now the NY Times points out that tonight's National Geographic Ultimate Factories program visits a plant that produces the new subway cars, "telling us for almost an hour about all the welding and wiring and safety inspections that go into making the things." That's right, see the subway car that will inevitably cause you to be late for something, before it even hits the track, and way before it hits the surf.

     

Did you know that of the 150ish historical statues in all of New York City there are only five of real women? According to NYC Statues, Joan of Arc was the first, and the others are Eleanor Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Golda Mier, and Harriet Tubman — who was the last one, put up in 2007.

If you spend enough time riding a bike around New York, you learn to steer clear of those insane Access-A-Ride drivers, who are employed by NYC Transit to provide transportation for people with disabilities who can't take the subway or bus. In our experience, Access-A-Ride drivers are maniacs, and in recent years, the drivers have been in some high-profile accidents, including a fatality and a hit-and-run.