November 15, 1992

A facelift is in the works for the streets around Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan that will bring new lamp stanchions, street signs, trash receptacles, pollution-resistant trees and in some places, new sidewalks and curb cuts to the neighborhood. The improvements are part of a $30 million streetscape program being undertaken by the Grand Central Partnership, a coalition of businesses, corporations and property owners in the Grand Central area. A ceremonial start to the installation of the improvements will take place on Thursday at 10:15 A.M. at the corner of 42d Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, as Partnership members and city officials dig up a patch of sidewalk in preparation for installation of new granite sidewalks and curbing.

IT'S a Saturday night just before midnight and a long line of young men and women are waiting to get into the Sea Grape, the latest of numerous incarnations for a popular bar on Reef Road near Fairfield Beach. Most of those waiting to get in say they are Fairfield University students or alumni who have come to drink and have a good time. On this particular night homecoming weekend is being celebrated at the university, and a police officer in a patrol car across the street says most of the students are behaving and not causing any trouble.

SHOWMAN The Life of David O. Selznick. By David Thomson. Illustrated. 792 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $35.

YOU SEE, I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN By Yves Montand with Herve Hamon and Patrick Rotman. Translated by Jeremy Leggatt. Illustrated. 463 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $25.

It was the morning after he had his hand raised as heavyweight champion, and Riddick Bowe sat applying a towel-wrapped ice pack to his swollen right eye. That was the only apparent problem Bowe was having adapting to life at the top, a bruise that was, he said, the result of being thumbed in the eighth round of his 12-round match here against Evander Holyfield.