. . . then they blocked MySpace on the computer systems, and I said nothing because I’m not like 14. But then they decided to take away the water cooler, in another back-door measure masquerading as an environmental initiative, and suddenly I discovered that my coworkers and I had no more safe space in which to discuss television programs like 30 Rock, Grey’s Anatomy or the Real Housewives of Atlanta:

City Councilmen Eric Gioia (D-Queens) and Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn) will introduce a bill next week that would stop city agencies from buying bottled water and water coolers for workers at city agencies.

The city spends $2.1 million annually on bottled water, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

“New York City has some of the cleanest water in the country, and we should use it,” said Gioia.

He noted that the move would also save on storage and disposal costs and help the environment by reducing waste and truck traffic for water-delivery services.

If you are by chance traveling by rail this holiday weekend and the train seems crowded, check out the first or last car — both of which may be emptier than usual:

The FBI’s source reportedly told agents of an al Qaeda-connected group’s desire to place bombs or suicide bombers inside the first and last Long Island Rail Road commuter cars and detonate them as the train entered Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, also used by the Washington-New York-Boston Amtrak system and the New York City subway.

It’s been a while, old friend:

Federal authorities are warning law enforcement personnel of a possible terror plot against the New York City subway system during the holiday season.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a “plausible but unsubstantiated” report that al-Qaida terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

On the contrary, this is the most effective remedy for traffic congestion — much cheaper than gadgetry and revenue producing, to boot:

You may have begun to notice more traffic tickets being written. And you may have guessed — correctly — that it has to do with getting New York City more money. Well, brace yourselves, the city is putting 200 more ticket-writing traffic agents to work.

The city’s latest move to close the budget gap is annoying New Yorkers to no end. Soon, you may not be able to avoid the police no matter what you do. Approximately 100 of the agents will be in Manhattan; the other 100 will be spread out across the other boroughs.

“You get stuck out there in the middle; not because you’re not paying attention,” driver Rob Frangavilla said. “People walk across; you’re stuck there. I just think it’s a crazy way to raise money.”

. . .

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly laid out the plan on Tuesday.

“[We will put them] in Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. We will not deploy them right now in Staten Island,” Kelly said.

The agents will be looking primarily for drivers who “block the box” at intersections. That ticket will cost $115.

Interesting:

Newsday recently reported that the New York Police Department is phasing out “The Thug” and replacing it with a target that looks more like Mr. Clean, a visage apparently inspired by no one. Not so with “The Thug,” which, depending on who’s doing the talking, is any number of people, from actor Ernest Borgnine to boxing great Rocky Graziano to Fred Worell, a deceased sergeant who worked as an instructor at the range.

At least, that has been the prevailing wisdom since the scowling face made its debut. But after Newsday’s report, retired Det. Harold Schiffer stepped forward with a proclamation likely only to deepen the mystery.

“I know who that guy is,” Schiffer, 65, said. “It’s a guy named Jesse Oldshein. He’s 90 years old and living in Florida.”

When contacted, Oldshein, a retired lieutenant, didn’t make much of the mystery, probably because to him, there’s no mystery about it. “That’s me,” he said from his home in Boynton Beach. “I was up at the range one day. They asked to take my picture. They said, ‘Pose in a boxing stance.’ Next thing I know, my face is on the target.”

. . .

Officially, “The Thug” is known as Silhouette SP-83A. It portrays a bad guy — snarl on face, snub-nosed revolver in hand — out of a Cagney movie. But the NYPD says the shaded area covering the head and much of the torso makes it difficult for instructors to see from a distance the shot patterns left behind by an officer.

Mr. Clean is shaded differently, as is a second new target, a faceless silhouette that looks like a Martian. The new targets were designed by the Firearms and Tactics Section and have been in place as part of a pilot program since July.

Oldshein says he never gave much thought to the issue, but his wife, Francine, remembers other police officers for years teasing him about it.

“It was a big deal back then,” she said. “So many people came over to us: ‘Hey, Jesse, you should get residuals,’ or ‘Hey, Jesse, I shot at you today.’”

Earlier: “Cops’ Favorite Target Thug, but Just Who Was the Guy?” New York Times, February 17, 2005.

. . . quipping about taxpayer bailouts:

In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year, $400 million contract to name the Mets’ new stadium in Queens Citi Field. As recently as last week, the troubled financial-services conglomerate said it had no intention of backing out of the deal for the new stadium — the replacement for Shea Stadium, which is being demolished.

Well now, with Citigroup getting a second multi-billion-dollar rescue from the federal government, two City Council members would like to see Uncle Sam get some credit.

The two councilman, Vincent M. Ignizio and James S. Oddo, both of Staten Island, called on Tuesday for the stadium to be renamed Citi/Taxpayer Field. The two men will soon be the only Republicans on the 51-member Council; the only other Republican, Anthony Como of Queens, was recently defeated in a special election.

“Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself,” Mr. Ignizio said. “The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess.”

Mr. Oddo quipped: “Not naming the field after Jackie Robinson in the first place: mindless. Tom Seaver stepping onto the new mound for the first time: timeless. Actually acknowledging the contributions of the hardworking taxpayer: priceless.”

Cute.

Location Scout: Citi Field.

Dire economic times are linked with a rise in the cobbling arts:

As New Yorkers cut back on spending and cobble together their cash, the city’s shoe repair stores are getting an unexpected boost.

“It’s getting better and better,” said Cesar Andrade, who owns Andrade Shoe Repair in the West Village.

“We’ve been getting more customers for the past two or three months, and they’re coming in with more expensive shoes to be repaired.”

As people look for ways to tighten their belts, splurging on a new $150 pair of shoes or boots is no longer an option, says John McLoughlin, president of the Shoe Service Institute of America.

The roughly 7,000 cobblers nationwide are all reporting soaring trade and many of those doing so are here in New York City.

“It’s tough to go and buy a new pair of shoes. I’ll leave these and pick them up tomorrow and they will look like new,” said Kathleen Owen, 30, a financial adviser who always brings her worn out heels to Gary’s Top Shoe Repair in Rockefeller Center.

“I’m a New York City woman, and I hit the pavement a lot. I would not be able to afford nice shoes every time the soles get holes.”

Igor Nabatov, her regular cobbler, has been giving shoes a new lease of life for 17 years and says he has seen a 15% increase in business this year.

Who knew a picture of a tunnel was could be so enraging, in that where-the-fuck-is-all-this-money-coming-from kind of way:

Construction, it seems, is indeed under way for the extension of the No. 7 line, the cornerstone of the Bloomberg administration’s planned development of the far West Side.

The MTA’s capital construction page shows an update for November with pictures from below, where the agency is hollowing out the cavern for the station and making way for the eventual launch of a tunnel-boring machine, which will slowly dig its way along the 1.5-mile route.

The project, budgeted at $2.1 billion, would extend the line from Times Square to the base of the Javits Center on 34th Street, adjacent to the West Side rail yards. The Bloomberg administration has been the driving force behind the extension, which it says will help spawn tens of millions of square feet of West Side development.

The cash-strapped MTA had no desire to pay for the project, so the city is footing the entire bill, up to the $2.1 billion. Should costs exceed the budget (which many onlookers assume they will, given rising costs everywhere), the city and the MTA have yet to negotiate an agreement on who would cover them.

(Given the lack of real funding sources for the MTA’s next five-year capital plan and the $1.2 billion deficit in its operating budget, it’s safe to assume the agency isn’t eager to pony up any cash for a project the Bloomberg administration pledged would be paid for entirely by the city.)

As in bold, public relations-scamming cost-cutting measures amounting to precisely 0.52 percent of a $1.3 billion deficit:

The MTA’s doomsday budget may take a huge toll not only on drivers’ wallets but also on their time.

The agency is weighing a plan to close some cash lanes at the nine bridges and tunnels it operates.

And as if that won’t create enough congestion, it may also begin stopping drivers without enough money on their E-ZPasses instead of letting them through and billing them later - saving $3.4 million in mailings.

The possible changes are part of the agency’s plan to close a $1.3 billion budget gap unless city and state lawmakers step in with a crucial bailout package.

MTA officials expect to save $3.4 million by closing cash booths at times when fewer cars use the crossings. Still, it would likely slow traffic to a crawl as cars pile up behind the remaining tollbooths.

. . . is a New Yorker writer with a bicycle:

The Greenway is especially well suited to bicyclists, who, if they are moderately fit and don’t blow a tire on a broken apricot-brandy bottle, can cover the entire distance in a single leisurely morning or afternoon. Biking the Manhattan shoreline turns the city inside out, and gives the cyclist firsthand answers to questions that often stump even lifelong residents, such as: are there any decent places in Manhattan to go rock climbing, and what the heck do they keep under the Henry Hudson Parkway? Perhaps you yourself rode the Greenway on a recent, spectacular Friday afternoon, beginning and ending at the Battery, where, when you started, a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat was baiting a fishhook with a half-dollar-size crab, which he had selected from a joint-compound bucket at his feet.

*Fuck the circumflex — pour it into my hand!

Ask the Lionel-Industrial Complex, which has — GM-like — slowly indoctrinated railfans to never accept transportation alternatives:

Subway car No. 8026 stopped, and the public-address system announced, a little too clearly: “Sheepshead Bay. This is a northbound Brighton local. Next stop, Kings Highway.”

“This was my line,” said Thomas C. Nuzzo, who was driving the train. “I can name all the stops.”

But No. 8026 was nowhere near where he grew up in Brooklyn. It had been circling a track inside Grand Central Terminal — a model railroad track, that is. No. 8026 and the three drab-green cars it was pulling are the first New York City subway cars ever built by Lionel, which has made model electric railroad trains for more than 100 years.

Of course, in the 21st century, electric trains have wireless controls. Mr. Nuzzo, Lionel’s events manager, pushed a button on the device in his hand. The doors snapped shut, and the train sped off.

Mr. Nuzzo said the four cars look like the R-27 cars that went into service in 1960, down to the checkered floors inside. Outside, they match the original color — “kale green,” he said. (Most R-27 cars were painted red in the late 1970s and early ’80s; they were retired from the fleet in the 1990s.)

The signs identify the train as a QB. Mr. Nuzzo said the QB went over the Manhattan Bridge; the QT was routed through a tunnel under the East River. Mr. Nuzzo, 57, remembers it well. “It was the line my mom used to take me to Macy’s on,” he said.

Lionel announced more than two years ago that it was venturing into official New York replicas under a licensing agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Lionel’s president, Jerry Calabrese, said the project fell behind schedule after Lionel decided to copy the QB cars. (They stopped close to where Lionel’s showroom was, on East 26th Street, until the company moved to Michigan in 1969.)

“I felt it was important to go back to our roots on the East Coast, the city in particular,” said Mr. Calabrese, who moved Lionel’s executive offices to Manhattan two years ago. During its years in Michigan, he said, Lionel had “redirected its vision of trains in a broader national sense instead of a more local metro sense.”

He said the move “re-established our geographic interest, and that’s why we did the subway.”

But he also said that he was emotionally involved in the subway car project, and that figured in the delay: “The more we decided to make it better and better, the longer it took.”

No. 8026 works with Lionel’s latest operating system, which is more elaborate than the one that powers another new Lionel model, a replica of a Metro-North commuter rail car. The system on No. 8026 is so authentic that it mimics the noises that subway trains make. Lionel sent a sound engineer to record noise in Brooklyn subway tunnels and on modern subways. That noise is played back as the four-car train makes its rounds.

So how real is the little QB? Mr. Calabrese answered by telling a story: On Lionel’s version of Amtrak’s Acela, the doors, brakes and pantographs — which connect the train to electrical wires overhead — break down at about the same rate as on the real thing.

He said that not long ago, he was a passenger on an Acela train that had to pull over because a pantograph had broken. “I offered to send in some of our people to help,” he said. The Amtrak crew members, however, “weren’t in a joking mood.”

Earlier: The Long Arm Of The Lionel-Industrial Complex Returns To Wrap Its Filthy Fingers Around Our Fair City; He Came Dancing Across The Water, Cortez — What A Killer.

One of The New York Times’ Neediest Cases:

For the past two years, [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases], 74, who has diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and depression, has been largely confined to a bed set up in the living room of her apartment in the Amsterdam Houses near Lincoln Center.

Her weight has risen to 400 pounds from 277 in the past three years, much of it, she says, on account of twice-daily shots of insulin.

[One of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] is now too big to fit in the complex’s elevators, so if she needs to visit the hospital, or to go anywhere else, the Fire Department must come and carry her down four flights of stairs.

. . .

Because [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] cannot easily leave her bed, even for the bathroom, the world comes to her.

A home health aide comes four days a week, eight hours a day. A doctor visits every two weeks. A psychotherapist meets with her weekly. Volunteers come twice a week to engage her in conversation. Food typically comes from Meals on Wheels, or neighbors or a restaurant with delivery service.

“It’s impossible for me to go out, and I don’t want to fight anymore,” [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] said in Spanish.

The highlight of her day has long come from watching television. A religious woman, [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] said she spends much of her time in prayer, and does not start watching TV until late afternoon, after her second self-administered insulin shot of the day.

But this summer, when her television set suddenly stopped working, [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] said she felt even further cut off from the world. She sank into depression.

“I was looking at the ceiling,” she said.

Recently, the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, a member of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies — one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund — bought [one of The New York Times' Neediest Cases] a new $300 flat-screen television. It was an expense she could not afford because her only income is a monthly $660 Social Security check.

Maybe at the confirmation hearing some senator will ask what exactly a borough president does:

Adolfo Carrión Jr., the Bronx borough president, is being considered for a senior position in the Obama administration, possibly as secretary of housing and urban development, people involved in the transition said on Saturday.

Mr. Carrión was elected Bronx borough president in 2001 and re-elected in 2005. He is one of several prominent Hispanic officials reportedly under consideration for a cabinet post; Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is considered the country’s most influential Hispanic politician, is a contender for secretary of commerce.

Mr. Carrión, 47, met with transition officials last week, but a decision on the selection of a housing secretary is not expected to be made before next month, people involved with the transition said.

Besides Mr. Carrión, the others being considered for housing secretary are believed to be Manny Diaz, the mayor of Miami, and Saul N. Ramirez Jr., the former mayor of Laredo, Tex., who was deputy housing secretary in the Clinton administration.

Either it’s that or a Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cup-like melding of your two very favorite things in the world — pole dancers and pedicab operators:

Biker Andrew Katzander is taking pole dancing to the streets — on the back of his pimped-out pedicab.

The 44-year-old, a landscaper by day, pedals his racy rickshaw while a sexy dancer shimmies up and down a shiny 8-foot metal pole on a neon-lit platform attached to the back of the bike.

The PoleRider, as he calls it, is already stopping traffic. In one case, he said, cops briefly pulled him over in Times Square.

“It’s all legal. The cops can’t really stop us — I’m riding my bike and she’s exercising,” he said of flash dancer Marlo Fisken, 25, a pole-dancing teacher.

“I’m not a stripper. Because you have high heels and you’re on a pole, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything raunchy,” she said. “It’s fun, and it’s a little bit exhibitionist.”

Don’t worry — it’s happening to everyone:

Fashion powerhouse Ralph Lauren, Brooklyn-born billionaire Ira Rennert and gossip-column staple Shelby Bryan are among thousands of New Yorkers who recently settled big debts with the state taxman as Albany aggressively moves to fill its dwindling coffers, records show.

The Polo designer’s high-flying ways couldn’t escape the reach of the New York Department of Taxation and Finance when it came to operating his $50 million Gulf Stream V private jet.

On Oct. 2, Lauren’s shell company, R.L. Wings, technically the jet’s owner, paid $4.18 million on its two-year-old tax debt, according to public documents.

Through a spokesman, Lauren said he was fighting to get the money back.

And no silly congestion pricing cameras to fuss with:

City controller and mayoral wanna-be William Thompson Sunday proposed closing the MTA’s budget gap by hiking taxes for motorists.

Thompson’s plan would stick all metro-area car owners with supersized-vehicle use taxes based on the weight of their car.

The sliding-scale tax would be in addition to the sliding-scale, weight-based state registration fee they already pay every two years. That means about $200 extra for cars and $400 or more for heavyweights like SUVs.

“We need to assure that all those who benefit from a healthy transit system will pay their fair share,” said Thompson, noting that transit ridership reduces congestion.

Thompson’s proposed tax would affect all 12 counties of the so-called Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District served by the MTA — and raise as much as $1.8 billion annually, he said Sunday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed closing its $1.2 billion budget gap by hiking fares 23% and slashing service.

I’m thinking Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson:

Like his laidoff owner, Louie the 5-pound wonder dog is waiting for work.

Deborah Chusid, 46, lost her advertising job on Sept. 26, another New York casualty of the economic downturn.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when she phoned her ex to ask him to put their 14-year-old son, Jonah, on his health plan, there was another blow. He had lost his job the same day.

Now what?

. . .

Why not put the dog to work? Surely everyone would think Louie — a friendly black-and-white Mi-Ki named after Louis Armstrong — is as adorable as she and Jonah do.

. . .

Like people showbiz, it’s a dog-eat-dog world for animals trying to break in. [Linda Hanrahan, the president of Advertising for Animals and owner of the now departed Toonces the Cat of "Saturday Night Live" fame] advised that Louie not get his hind legs up too high, as the reality is often disappointing.

“I’ll try to get that poor little dog a week’s worth of dog food,” added Hanrahan, noting that most pet owners should not plan on their pooch becoming a meal ticket. Then in a whispered tone, she confided, “If she had a Jack Russell, it’s so much easier.”

If there are rats and roaches on city buses, does that mean there are other things to worry about as well? It’s concerning:

Some Brooklyn buses are roach coaches with creepy crawlies joining riders — and one driver had a run-in with a rat.

Drivers and riders said they’re bugged out about conditions on the big rigs pulling out of the East New York depot and urged NYC Transit, which is planning a fare hike next summer, to do something.

“It would bother anyone,” one driver said.

A B45 driver said she had a rodent encounter on her bus Nov. 12 at Livingston and Court Sts. in downtown Brooklyn.

She said she had completed a run and was about to turn around and start picking up passengers in the opposite direction when the cat-sized vermin charged.

“He came from the back of the bus and ran straight at me,” the driver said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I got out of there as fast as I could. He got so close I’m still jumpy about it.”

The roaches are much more prevalent and just as bold, drivers and riders said.

“It’s not uncommon to see roaches on the buses,” another driver said. “It seems like they’re attracted to the warmth of the engine. I’ve had them crawl on my shoes. It can freak you out.”

No, we were kidding earlier! We didn’t think anyone would actually do it:

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and husband Pete Wentz welcomed a son Thursday night, according to a posting on his Web site.

Bronx Mowgli Wentz weighed 7 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 1/2 inches long.

“Ashlee, Pete and baby Bronx are all healthy and happy, and thank everyone for their well wishes!” a spokesman said, according to People magazine.

. . .

The Web site says Mowgli is a character who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling’s short story “In the Rukh” and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in “The Jungle Book.”

. . . just say you’re thinking about cutting funding for libraries.

Or the school band. No one ever wants to cut funding for the school band. The public eats up this stuff.

So if it’s just Tony Avella running against Bloomberg, maybe we should take a closer look at the Councilmember. Here’s what we know:

• He’s obsessed with animals, perhaps to the exclusion of other, uh, more pressing issues
• His public profile sometimes rises to a level of grandstanding, but perhaps not overly so . . .
• . . . in part because the grandstanding is often principled, or at least principled sounding
• That said, anyone who is against foie gras is kind of weird, and it would be stupid to have that become part of the Avella bully pulpit
• And yet . . . there’s something I like about someone who is willing to crack down on unwanted fliers and menus; that’s problem solving!
• And he does seem willing to take on the mayor when it’s appropriate . . .

OK. I’m sold. Tony Avella for Mayor. Go Tony, go! (But note that this is not a mandate! If you try to take away our foie gras, know that we may have to pull a Jesse Jackson on your ass.) (And a note to other potential candidates: following the mayor’s recent behavior, there are probably a lot of us who can become cheap dates.)

Community Boards across the city deal now facing Snoop Dogg quandary:

Local residents should expect to see fewer blocks named in honor of their late friends and neighbors now that the city has instituted new guidelines regulating the practice.

Just a few weeks ago, the city approved 85 new street designations throughout the five boroughs — 13 of them right here in Brooklyn. But that’s the last big batch of honors the borough is likely to see for some time.

Community Board 11 Chair Bill Guarinello recently explained the new criteria his board will now be following, saying that “street namings have been run like the Old West” and that in the past the designations were partly granted on the basis of “who you know.”

“Community Board 11 has new standards,” Guarinello said. “There are going to be times now when we are going to be rejecting people.”

Under the new criteria, candidates put up for consideration must have been “New Yorkers of a significance to New York City.”

This greater emphasis on citywide rather than local appeal significantly raises the threshold that prospective honorees now have to achieve before a street is designated in their honor.

The latest group of Brooklynites to have streets named after them includes victims of violent crime, a successful realtor and members of Coney Island’s Polar Bear Club.

According to Guarinello, Community Board 11 committees charged with considering new street dedication applications will immediately begin using the city’s revamped criteria.

Advocate for the destruction of bits and pieces of the city’s architectural history:

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall urged destruction of the New York State Pavilion during an interview this week with the Daily News, pre-empting a city study on whether the structure can be saved.

“It should be demolished,” Marshall said of the pavilion, designed by famed architect Philip Johnson. “We have great artists. He’s not the only artist in the world.”

Though the 1964 World’s Fair exhibit has decayed much over the decades, the unique rotunda with three towers remains integral to the city’s proposed transformation of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Location Scout: New York State Pavilion.

Mayor Bloomberg, illustrating his near-peerless ability to helm the ship in the midst of stormy, uncertain weather:

Call him Mayor Doomsberg.

In rat-a-tat fashion on Wednesday, Hizzoner:

- Warned city workers they are in danger of being laid off.

- Defiantly told homeowners not to count on property tax rebates.

- Ordered city thermostats turned down as temperatures hovered near freezing.

“Wear a sweater if you’re chilly!” the mayor advised city workers — before threatening them with unemployment.

“You’re trying to plan, if you’re a city worker, whether you’re going to have a job. You have to start worrying about that and plan,” Bloomberg said. “There’s an awful lot of the 300,000 municipal employees who have got to start worrying about their jobs.”

. . .

Bloomberg also said the city won’t send out $400 property tax rebates until he’s sure the city can afford it, despite his budget director’s admission on Monday that the Council has to approve the decision.

“I understand exactly what the Council said. We issue the checks. And this is not something that’s going to be decided by litigation,” he said, referring to a suit filed by several Council members to force him to send the rebates.

As a matter of fact, I was thinking this. Thanks for bringing it up:

As thankful as the city is for all Mayor Mike accomplished after 9/11, that was nearly a full term ago. Now, he’s decided he wants a third term, even though he still owes us a second.

Even his strongest allies have a hard time naming a memorable achievement from Bloomberg’s second term — beyond his sparking a national gun-control campaign. Instead, he was fixated for most of the last two years by an always-improbable, yet ballyhooed pursuit of the presidency, followed by a largely unnoticed, two-month-long audition for the consolation prize of vice president.

In one of the most sordid performances by a city executive in modern history, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey appeared on NY1 in May to declare that “the person who picks Mayor Bloomberg as their vice-presidential candidate wins the election,” partly because Bloomberg would “help finance a campaign” with “between zero and a billion” dollars. This televised and indiscriminate bribe offer generated no takers and, more remarkably, drew not one word of fire from the city media.

Two weeks later, Bloomberg acknowledged that he’d asked a pollster to see what voters thought about extending term limits so he could run again.

Annotation: Wayne Barrett writes the best, most complete history of how this all happened. The op-ed co-optation, the charitable bribes, the “lack of time” to prepare a referendum, the City Council treachery, the misuse of the worldwide financial crisis to gin up a reason to run again and much, much more; bookmark this or clip it and put it in your scrapbook . . .

Wow, the much maligned “Superblock” of the 1960s gets landmark designation in Greenwich Village:

Three towers that have dominated the Greenwich Village skyline for 40 years were given historic landmark status yesterday — a move that will make it harder for the property owner, New York University, to expand on the site.

. . . and then they see the sign saying that there’s never been a death on the Cyclone. And yet, you still “assume risk”:

A California musician who died days after riding the Cyclone should have known that riding the rickety 80-year-old Coney Island coaster is dangerous, the city says in new court papers.

Keith Shirasawa, 53, died in August 2007, five days after he snapped his neck and fractured several bones in his neck during a downhill plunge on the wooden roller coaster.

His family sued the city and the Cyclone’s operators last month.

In court papers filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court, city attorney Cynthia Goldman said Shirasawa should have known the risks involved.

“Any and all risks, hazards, defects and dangers to the extent alleged are of an open, obvious, apparent and inherent nature known and should have been known to [Shirasawa],” Goldman wrote.

This basically ensures that your mother will never get on there with you. Thanks.

Location Scout: The Cyclone.

So much for the idea that extending term limits for everyone gives cover to make the tough decisions — that’s just out of touch with reality:

Confidence certainly does not flow at City Hall, where the City Council’s Finance Committee convened on Monday to hash over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposals to plug multibillion-dollar holes that the economic crisis has poked in his budget plans. Not that the Council needed to be reminded that times are tough. But Mark Page, the mayor’s budget director, reinforced the point anyway.

“We are not in particularly good financial straits,” Mr. Page told committee members. It was a masterly display of understatement, worthy of Emperor Hirohito’s appeal to the Japanese people to accept their crushing defeat in World War II. “The war situation,” the emperor said in August 1945, “has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

Comparable understatement brought Mr. Page no reward. Council members had no desire to make life comfortable for him.

They were particularly angry at the mayor’s plan to save the municipal treasury $256 million by canceling $400 tax rebate checks that were supposed to have been mailed to homeowners weeks ago. It turns out that the cancellation needs the Council’s consent; that approval is as likely as your winning the Mega Millions lottery. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Page will have to figure out another way to scrape together the money.

“This is just one of those ‘out of touch with reality’ moments that you guys have from time to time,” Councilman Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn said to the budget director, his voice laced with scorn.

Christine C. Quinn, the council speaker, who on most matters is almost surgically attached at the hip to Mr. Bloomberg, also opposes him on the rebate. She has spoken harshly as well about another of the mayor’s money-saving ideas, this one affecting city services for the elderly. It belongs, she said, “in the garbage can.”

It also turns out that the mayor got it wrong in calling for a 6-cent charge on plastic bags in stores. He had called it a fee, which he and the Council could impose on their own. On Monday, Mr. Page acknowledged this amounts to a tax, requiring Albany’s approval.

Just think: Only days ago, Council members were offering Mr. Bloomberg (and themselves) as New York’s salvation from fiscal doom. Ms. Quinn and Mr. Fidler were among the 29 council members who voted to amend the term limits law and thereby allow Mr. Bloomberg (and themselves) to run for an extra four years in office.

Many do:

Many also pointed out that the plastic bag is hardly a throwaway — indispensable, they said, for cleaning up after pets, camouflaging the smell of a dirty diaper, hiding an open can of beer or simply holding other trash.

On the other hand, waiting a half-hour in the middle of the night sucks rat tail:

The MTA’s doomsday budget will wipe out the W line, zap the Z line and ax more than 1,500 NYC Transit jobs, the Daily News has learned.

The list of bus and subway cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will unveil at its monthly board meeting Thursday is extensive and potentially bruising, sources said.

. . .

According to sources, the cuts include:

- Elimination of at least a handful of bus and subway routes, including the W and Z subway train lines.

- Fewer transit workers in the subways because 600 or so station agent positions will be axed and about 350 administrative posts.

- Longer gaps between scheduled trains at midday and between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.

- Expanded subway loading guidelines to allow for more crowding of trains.

- Eliminating bus service during late nights and weekends on dozens of routes that have low ridership.

I’m still pissed about that asinine public relations stunt back in ‘05 . . . give me my ten minutes back!