Mmmm ... Padma Lakshmi Buys in East Village for $1.65 M., Replaces Fifth Avenue-Bound Parker Posey

A basic tenet of East Village celebrity physics dictates that whenever a comely actress moves out of the neighborhood, another must instantly come to take her place. Furthermore, because hip people inherently drift ever-eastward into the once-grimy lettered avenues, that new starlet must move in closer to the river than the one she’s replacing.

According to a source, the 39-year-old indie actress Parker Posey, who late last year listed her three-room apartment in an 1845 brownstone on East 10th Street near Third Avenue for $1.175 million, is in contract to buy a $1.35 million one-bedroom co-op at 30 Fifth Avenue.

Ms. Posey will be leaving a claw-foot tub (not to mention hip neighbors like Chloë Sevigny) for a place with a marble bathroom and SubZero appliances, on the ritziest block in Manhattan. When she was asked to comment through her broker, Halstead’s Adam Trese, he e-mailed back: “it’s personal: where she lives. That’s all.”

According to a deed filed in city records 11 hours after that e-mail, Ms. Posey will be replaced in the East Village by Salman Rushdie’s ex-wife, 37-year-old Padma Lakshmi, the model-turned-Top Chef hostess. She paid $1,651,111 for a long, thin, full-floor loft in Alphabet City.

“The area reminds her of New York when she was growing up with her mother,” a spokeswoman said.

Ms. Lakshmi, whose second cookbook, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, was published last year, will have an open cook’s kitchen with butternut-and-glass cabinets and basalt counters, according to a listing. The master suite’s bathroom is windowed also, which seems more problematic.