Last week, a terrible thing happened: The I Love New York Deli in the U-District closed (with outcry in comments over here).

Now we have learned that, horribly, the original I Love New York Deli in the Pike Place Market is also gone, gone, gone, as of this past Sunday.

I just had a rather heartbreaking conversation with owner Jon Jacobs. He was at his Big Apple Deli in Maple Valley, which remains open. Among other factors in the closures, he mentioned that his meat costs had nearly doubled. "We tried raising the price 25 cents and people went insane," he said. "Look at the price of gas versus seven years ago... and I wasn't going to cut back on quality." He says the micro-neighborhood of the U-District shop, which opened near Scarecrow Video in summer 2009, has suffered mightily because of the economy and construction in the area this past winter (as noted in comments here—and it was arguably never a great location in terms of foot traffic in any case). "Business really dropped off," he said, "a lot of businesses had trouble—the hot dog place went out of business—they've been there forever. Five businesses went under."

"It sucks, but there's nobody to blame but myself," Jacobs said. "Financially, it just wasn't feasible anymore. It just got to be where it was ridiculous... You just get to a point sometimes where you just can't fight anymore."

"Those were the love of my life, those stores," he said. "You get behind in the rent, and you just can't catch up."

Jacobs mentioned filing for bankruptcy (the Maple Valley store is a separate entity). "I don't want it to be this way," he said. "Those days that i was at the Market, I loved those days. This is the hardest time of my life... if I could pay the bills right now, I would. I know I'm not the only one, but I feel like I am. I work 20 hours a day—I work my ass off. It's really hard."

Meanwhile, Jacobs is trying to negotiate a lease on a space on the Ave to resurrect the U-District store, which would involve a loan from his father.

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Meaty Johnson's.

Details, should you so desire, after the jump.

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Best headline I've seen all day.

• Kelly O
• COMMUNITY EFFORT Where Easy Joe's, Tidbit Bistro, XO Bistro, and Cassis used to be.

Skelly and the Bean has so much heart, it almost hurts. The name itself has an adorable source: Skelly is a kid who provided an initial investment of $10 ($7 in coins) to open the place, and the Bean is his less-wealthy little sister. The space was put together on a shoestring, with many volunteer helping hands. The couple that runs Little Uncle painted and moved equipment; the editor of Edible Seattle de-spidered a bunch of the old barn wood that panels one wall. Their efforts, and those of dozens more, are recognized on the Wall of Love: a mural of swirling names in rainbow colors, with designations like "BUTCHER@LARGE," "Anonymous OCD Helper," "Tater-Tot Tester!"...

MORE > > >

They both eat lunch, apparently. A keen-eyed slog tipper spotted Gregoire slurping lemonade with Friedman downtown yesterday at the Purple Cafe and Wine Bar. It looked a little something like this:

• The Stranger
• "I went to high school with the Coen brothers, you know."
  "Oh really? I adored their movie about bowling."

I really wanted to know what they discussed, but sadly our slog tipper refused to don a mustache and pose as a waiter for eavesdropping purposes, or sidle up to a neighboring table while pretending to read a copy of the NY Times. Which means all we can do is speculate wildly. Help me out, Sloggers!

• beaconfoodforest.weebly.com

Have you heard about the Beacon Food Forest? It sounds really, really cool. The possible problem, per the Atlantic:

Of course, any "free" food source begs the question of what to do with overzealous pickers. No definitive answer on how to handle that predicament has been established yet, though. According to Herlihy, the only solutions right now are to produce an abundance of fruit so there's enough for everyone and to embed "thieves' gardens" with extra plants in the park for those people eager to take more than their share.

...but all the city's P-Patches (of which the planned Food Forest is a part) seem to do all right contending with that potential issue... and a program in a small town in England has had to urge people to come and take the produce.

“What we found was that in the first 18 months or two years nobody picked anything,” says Pam Warhurst, originator of the Incredible Edible Todmorden project. “We had to keep saying to them, go on, it’s fine, you can help yourself. Eventually people got the knack of it."

Seattle is just as polite as an English village. (And as unaccustomed to picking fruit and vegetables for free—I wonder how much of the hesitation is "but it might be DIRTY!"-related.)

Also, if you need it that bad, take it. That's kind of the point, isn't it?