The weird thing about New York is that all of its well-known, well-loved foods are so agonizingly and stupidly simple. Bagels — they’re just bread! Pizza — just cheese and bread! Pickles — brined cucumbers! And who can forget hot dogs? Fortunately, The Times’ Ed Levine bursts at least one myth right off the bat:

You know those hot dogs that you know and love, and can’t wait to eat this time of year? The ones served at Katz’s Delicatessen, Gray’s Papaya, Papaya King, the legendary Dominick’s truck in Queens and the best “dirty water dog” carts?

They’re all the same dog, manufactured by Marathon Enterprises, of East Rutherford, N.J., the parent company of Sabrett. They may vary in size, preparation and condiment selection (and Papaya King has Marathon add a secret spice to its mixture), but they’re the same ol’ dog. In fact, until a few years ago, Marathon made Nathan’s hot dogs.

Still, he can’t help himself from waxing poetic about yet another totally pedestrian item. No wonder Europeans think we’re weird:

So what constitutes a great hot dog? To me, it’s a grilled, kosher-style frank served on a lightly toasted bun with slightly spicy mustard and a homemade onion or pickle relish that is neither too sweet nor too hot. The Old Town Bar on East 18th Street not only toasts the bun that encases its grilled natural-casing all-beef Sabrett dog, it butters it as well. Sublime! Sauerkraut is also fine atop my dogs, though every once in a while I crave one prepared Southern style, with cole slaw. My ideal dog should fit neatly into its bun, sticking out by at most an inch on each end.

The key is context, and if you’ve ever traipsed out to Coney Island to wait in line for a hot dog — a hot dog! — you probably understand what he means:

But when you are surrounded by screaming Mets fans at Shea or Cyclones fans at KeySpan Park in Coney Island, and the score is tied, and you bite into one of those less than exemplary franks slathered with mustard, you just might be having the peak hot dog experience of all.

The manic rumbling of the hydra-headed skip-stop 1/9 is coming to an end, making sign makers happy:

The No. 9 train has six days left to live, but it has already begun to disappear.

Platform by platform, station by station, workers are erasing evidence of the line’s existence on hundreds of signs hanging above the tracks and at the entrances to the subway system. By Tuesday, the No. 9 line will officially and forever be no more.

(Sewell Chan — so serious sounding!)

“Skip-stop service on the 1 line is an idea which today doesn’t make sense for our operations or our customers,” said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit. “By eliminating skip-stop service, the majority of riders along the 1 line will benefit from shorter travel times and will no longer have to stand on platforms as trains pass them by during rush hour.”

The No. 9, then, enters a graveyard of other route designations that have graced the subway map over the years. The No. 8, an elevated line, ran above Third Avenue in the Bronx until it was demolished in 1973. Double-letter designations - like the AA, GG and QB - were phased out in 1986. The JFK Express ran alongside the A train, from Midtown to Howard Beach, Queens, until 1990.

The No. 9’s death has been slow and painless. Over the last few weeks, workers have been placing black vinyl patches over 904 signs on platforms and entrances at 45 stations: 37 along the line itself and 8 transfer stations.

See also: “Number 9 . . . Number 9 . . .” Blog Entry (1/12/05)

Parks Department plans to renovate Washington Square Park involve removing the concrete mounds in the southwest portion of the park. The New Yorker profiles a neighborhood group dedicated to preserving them, confirming that people in Greenwich Village have become no less loopy over the years:

Leonie Haimson, who lives just off Washington Square Park and heads a group of Village residents informally known as Save the Mounds, has been advised that, for public-relations reasons, it might be better to refer to the three asphalt bumps in the southwest corner of the park, threatened with demolition by the Parks Department’s renovation plans, by the term “hills.” “‘The Hills’ sounds less silly,” she said the other day, sitting on a bench with some fellow mounds defenders, not far from the objects of their attachment. In truth, the mounds, each of which is about six or eight feet high, are hills to about the same degree that Washington Square Park is square. But they are, as Haimson pointed out, all that the Village offers in the way of elevation; and they are sufficiently beloved for two thousand neighbors to have signed petitions protesting their destruction.

“Generations of children have played on these mounds—my daughter took her first running step on them,” Haimson said as her son, Nathaniel, who is six years old, frolicked on the mounds’ cracked and weedy surface. Another advocate, Suzanne Dickerson, said that her daughter Erin, now a junior at Yale, had played there avidly for years. “I credit her athletic ability to those mounds,” she said. “I really think it developed her calf muscles. She was a competitive track runner all through elementary school, until she switched to swimming.”

The piece notes the history of the mounds. And the fervent self-sacrificing nature of the mounds’ supporters:

The mounds were created in 1971, when, with the construction of two new children’s playgrounds, the park—which until the mid-sixties was a turnaround point for the Fifth Avenue bus line—was rededicated as a place for leisure. Robert Nichols, who was the project’s landscape designer, says that the mounds and the play area around them were inspired by the so-called “adventure playgrounds” that he had seen in Scandinavia. Although they were built for children, the mounds have been adopted by Villagers of all ages: hundreds of people mounted them this past winter with sleds in tow; and, until about five years ago, a theatre group used their valley as a natural amphitheatre for productions of Shakespeare and Sophocles. Over the years, however, the mounds fell into disrepair—an instance, Nichols believes, of malign neglect on the part of the Parks Department, inspired by the earlier thwarting by Village activists of Robert Moses’s hopes to bisect the park with an extension of Fifth Avenue. “I can’t imagine a park without a bunch of mounds, myself,” said Nichols, who now lives in Vermont but whose daughter, Eliza, has become one of the mounds’ chief protectors. (She told activist colleagues that she was prepared to lie down in the path of bulldozers.)

“I can’t imagine a park without a bunch of mounds, myself.” Are these people nuts? Fuck the stupid mounds!

Whole Foods got busted by the state for its landlocked wine store in the basement of the Time Warner Center. The Times explains:

Whole Foods Market has closed the wine shop in its store in the lower level of the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle after pleading no contest to charges from state liquor officials that it was illegally operating it in a grocery store.

Citing state law that requires wine and liquor stores to have a separate entrance at street level and prohibits them from selling food, the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control fined Whole Foods $5,000 on April 7 and gave it 30 days to sell off its stock. Whole Foods closed the shop on May 9 and surrendered its liquor license to the agency.

Keep in mind that other more sensible states allow grocery stores not only to sell wine but hard liquor as well! And don’t forget that New York State didn’t even have Sunday sales until last September.

Whole Foods plans to use their liquor license to open up a store (with a separate entrance) on Houston Street. Local merchants are unhappy:

David Lannon, Whole Foods’s Northeast regional president, said the company expected to transfer and use the surrendered license again for a wine shop occupying 4,000 to 5,000 square feet of space in the blocklong supermarket it planned to open on East Houston Street next year. State law also prohibits holders of retail liquor licenses from owning more than one store. The East Houston Street wine shop will be separate from the supermarket there, with an entrance on Chrystie Street.

Several owners of wine and liquor shops near the planned Whole Foods have asked Community Board 3 to oppose the shop before the alcohol agency. Alan Jay Gerson, the neighborhood’s City Council member, said he also opposed the shop.

But hey, I’m all for competition — just not this kind of competition:

Anthony White, an owner of Discovery Wines at 10 Avenue A, said Whole Foods’s buying power gave it an unfair advantage. “Competition is fine, but we’re not happy about the way they can underprice us,” Mr. White said. “We’re buying cases and they’re buying pallets.”

Frommer’s finally writes something useful — “Where to Stop Where to Go,” a guide to the city’s bathrooms sponsored by a pharmaceutical company marketing medication for overactive bladders. The Daily News notes the achievement:

Those with an urgent need for a rest room now have a guide for where to go when they need to go - thanks to seasoned travel writer Arthur Frommer, who has felt your pain.

“I experienced firsthand what traveling with an overactive bladder is like - needing to ask strangers about locating a rest room or trying to persuade a salesperson to give me access to those facilities,” Frommer writes in the 75-page travel-tip book “Where to Stop & Where to Go.”

Natives and tourists alike will appreciate the section devoted to New York’s sometimes hard-to-find public powder rooms.

Bonus Points: Where to Stop Where to Go; See also the original bathroom guide, Bathroom Diaries (Big Pharma should have gone there first!); Bathroom Diaries New York Page.

Employees at a Midtown Starbucks are attempting to unionize. Management sends in the Pinkerton agents. New York Magazine has the story — “A Union Revolution is Brewing”:

It sounds very Brave New World, but [Barista Daniel] Gross prefers an Old South analogy. “We’re talking about wage slavery here,” he says, slamming his hand on the table in a non-multinational East Village café so hard that a water glass jumps. “We are very aware of the implications of that term. We wouldn’t use it if we didn’t think there were inherent similarities to plantation slavery.”

Unlike an antebellum cotton farm, however, Starbucks does offer comprehensive health-care benefits to two thirds of its workforce, those clocking twenty hours or more a week. And Fortune magazine just rated it the second-best large employer in the nation.

Gross scoffs. “Their dirty little secret is the repetitive strain injuries,” he says. “Starbucks is not some old-world European coffeehouse. We face an extraordinary demand every day, while an epidemic of understaffing requires us to work at lightning speed.” There’s the bending and stooping, the risk of steam burns, the carpal tunnel syndrome from pulling hundreds of espressos. By the time Gross pauses for breath, Starbucks, which prides itself on being a comforting “Third Place”—welcoming customers into a sphere that is neither work nor home—sounds more like a Dickensian workshop.

New York Magazine profiles the author of our favorite books about super-obnoxious, hyper-privileged Upper East Side teens. We have several Gossip Girls and anxiously await the latest.

This part was great:

From the beginning, Von Ziegesar added her own raw and distinctive touches, not all of which went over with Little, Brown. In Gossip Girl No. 1, Serena falls serendipitously into modeling and—like Carrie Bradshaw—ends up pictured in bus ads all over Manhattan. However, unlike Carrie, the shots (at least in Von Ziegesar’s initial draft) were artistic close-ups of her anus—part of a series of shocking celebrity portraits. Little, Brown suggested Von Ziegesar substitute a belly button. She chose a compromise that works hilariously well—the orifice is itself a mystery, even to Blair, who is tortured by her former friend’s sudden fame. “Was it her belly button? It looked like the dark pit at the center of a peach . . . Blair could never get completely away—Serena was fucking everywhere.”

Is it possible to find satisfaction in the suburbs? The New York Times investigates “Is It Worth It?”:

It’s a springtime ritual: Like pollen shaking loose from the trees, many young Manhattan families are preparing to scatter toward the suburbs and a new phase of life. Others are merely thinking about it, wondering about the tradeoffs, and the psychic toll.

Is there any way to know in advance whether moving to the suburbs will work out - or be a big, expensive mistake? Will fine schools, backyards and breathing room compensate for tedious commutes, fewer conveniences and a possibly somnolent lifestyle? Will the suburbs be populated by like-minded transplants or insular unsophisticates? Are the restaurants really that bad?

The answer to that last question is an emphatic “no”:

But one thing many transplants never adjust to is the food. Barbecues aside, “the food in New Jersey is some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten in my life,” Mr. [Nick] Aloe said, citing the generic quality of many restaurants. “How can you explain a 40-minute wait to eat at Chili’s?”

Beth Little of Summit, N.J., said a good selection of restaurants is “the one thing we always say we miss.”

What Posh and Becks hath wrought . . . parents naming their children “Brooklyn”:

An astounding 3,211 kiddies were named for Kings County in 2004, making it the 101st most popular name in the country.

“We thought it was pretty,” said nursing aide Lynn Wattier, who lives in O’Neill, Neb., population 3,733.

She named her daughter Brooklyn, even though she’s never visited the borough.

“My husband was afraid when she got older people would ask, ‘You got named after a bridge?’ But we didn’t care. We like it anyway,” Wattier said.

Amazingly, improbably, the name “Brooklyn” was the eighth most popular name in baby-lush Utah (and Utah has a higher birth rate than Bangladesh!):

The Social Security Administration compiles the top baby names every year. In Utah, Brooklyn hit No. 8 on the charts, beating out Elizabeth, Sarah and Ashley. In Ohio, 203 baby girls were named Brooklyn.

Although David and Victoria Beckham named their Brooklyn after the borough in which she was conceived (Where? Bay Ridge? East New York?), most who name their children after the country’s fourth largest city have never visited and indeed just like the way the name sounds:

“Some people may be naming their kids Brooklyn because they love the place,” said baby name expert Pam Satran, who wrote “Cool Names.”

“But Camden and Trenton are really popular names, and I don’t think too many people are doing that because they love the place,” she said. “People just like the way it sounds.” Denny and Pamela Barton of Des Moines were ahead of the trend when they named their daughter Brooklyn 16 years ago.

“We read in a magazine that Donna Summer had named her daughter Brook Lyn,” Pamela said. “Teachers always tried to shorten it. She always had to say, ‘Don’t call me Brook.’”

Some parents prefer a more genteel “Brooklynn” - which ranked as the 346th most popular name last year, with 910 baby Brooklynn girls.

“It’s a great name,” beamed Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “It’s a classy name.”

Camden and Trenton, too! Teaneck can’t be far behind . . .

“The Donald” answers the question of whether he can be even a bigger media whore than he already is: Yes!

The New York Times answers the question whether it’s possible to become shipwrecked inside city limits: Yes.

As if electrified sidewalks weren’t already bad enough, skirt-wearing pedestrians now must worry about peeping toms working from under the subway grates:

At first, it looked as if it might be a bomb. The truth, it turned out, was not as dangerous but was alarming nevertheless: someone had put a video camera below a street grate on the Upper East Side, apparently placed to look up the skirts of women walking past, the police said.

A passer-by spotted the camera on Tuesday on a shelf above a subway catwalk, about three feet below street level, rigged to a battery pack and pointed straight up on the south side of 88th Street just west of Lexington Avenue. After the passer-by called the police, the bomb squad arrived, and a technician dropped onto the catwalk, among cigarette butts, bottle caps and gum wrappers, to examine a camera connected to a digital video recorder, the police said.

The discovery repulsed women who live or work near the corner.

. . .

“I guess I have to be a little more careful now walking on the street.”

The (diminished but still present) threat of mugging, iPod heists, electrified sidewalks — how much more careful can one possibly be?

By the way, the owners of the co-op next to the retaining wall that fell on the Henry Hudson Parkway are on the hook for paying the costs of the cleanup:

For years, the Castle Village apartments in Washington Heights have practically sold themselves. The five-building co-op complex lures buyers to 181st Street and Cabrini Boulevard with its backyard park, indoor gym, roof decks and spectacular views of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge.

But many buyers and sellers are not talking about those “Rvr Vus” anymore, not since a retaining wall owned by Castle Village collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway last Thursday, leaving behind a gaping pit of mud and rock and a mess that will probably cost the complex millions of dollars to repair. Because costs in cooperatively owned buildings are divided among apartment owners, each owner could be on the hook for thousands of dollars.

“We were scheduled to close this week, and all of a sudden, this happens to us,” said Michael Lugassy, who is buying his first apartment with his wife. “We were like, ‘What are the odds?’ Had the building completely fallen into the river, things would have been different.”

Now, residents and buyers are fretting about repair costs, calling their lawyers and researching the co-op’s insurance coverage. But even though the collapse has swamped the building’s management office and postponed a few sales closings, residents and real estate brokers say it has not sunk any deals.

That must have affected sales, right? Wrong! See how:

In Manhattan’s overheated, bargain-hungry real estate market, the focus on Castle Village may have actually improved business, said Gus Perry, who owns a real estate agency in the neighborhood. His agency, Stein-Perry, is showing two apartments in the complex, and fortunately, he said, neither faces the pit.

“We have had calls from people who didn’t realize this place existed,” Mr. Perry said. “The following day, we were up there showing apartments.”

I think he’s lying! But no matter . . .

Rebuilding the wall will reportedly cost between $3 and $5 million — this in addition to the several million it will take to clean up the mess. But it’s such a good deal — and such views! — one can’t resist it:

Brenda Copeland was not so sanguine when she turned on the news Thursday night and saw dirt, boulders and trees spilled onto the parkway. Ms. Copeland, a book editor for Simon & Schuster who lives on the Upper East Side and is buying her first apartment, said she had made frantic phone calls to friends who had helped her find the apartment. It is a one-bedroom on the ninth floor with sweeping views of the city and the Hudson, but suddenly she was worried about her purchase.

“I thought, ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ ” Ms. Copeland said. “I bought all of the books, like ‘100 things a New Apartment Owner Needs to Know.’ They told you about falling interest rates, not falling rocks.”

She had already signed a contract and paid a 10 percent down payment on the $449,000 apartment. But she said she calmed down and decided to go ahead with the deal, even if she had to pay for the damage or repair.

The Plaza Hotel is selling off its inventory in preparation for its overhaul. Gross old pillows are going for $6. Gross old comforters are going for $30. Gross old bellhop uniforms are going for $100. The Daily News has more. Its coverage includes liberal doses of phrases such as “glam garage sale,” “classy clearance sale,” “tony trinkets” and “leftover luxuries.”

Renters everywhere celebrate the imminent real estate market crash.

The Supreme Court has struck down state laws in Michigan and New York restricting direct sales to consumers from out-of-state wineries. The issue apparently came down to upholding the Constitution (vis a vis the 21st Amendment) and an “evenhanded” use of laws restricting commerce (the so-called “Commerce Clause”). Five justices thought the commerce considerations were more important, making it a victory for consumers (bring on that sweet California Pinot!) perhaps at the expense of the Constitution (wine is still better than the Constitution!):

“States have broad power to regulate liquor,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “This power, however, does not allow states to ban, or severely limit, the direct shipment of out-of-state wine while simultaneously authorizing direct shipment by in-state producers.”

“If a state chooses to allow direct shipments of wine, it must do so on evenhanded terms,” he wrote.

Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

At issue was the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition in 1933 and granted states authority to regulate alcohol sales. Nearly half the states subsequently passed laws requiring outside wineries to sell their products through licensed wholesalers within the state.

But the Constitution also prohibits states from passing laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses. That led to a challenge to laws in Michigan and New York, which allow direct shipments for in-state wineries but not out-of-state ones.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the ruling needlessly overturns long-established regulations aimed partly at protecting minors. State regulators under the 21st Amendment have clear authority to regulate alcohol as the see fit, he wrote.

“The court does this nation no service by ignoring the textual commands of the Constitution and acts of Congress,” Thomas wrote.

He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens.

Opinions here.

As if trying to discern the irony level associated with guns and steak wasn’t already diffcult enough, now we hear that roller derby is enjoying a renaissance:

And there are signs that the sport is moving from localized hobby to national pastime. In August Las Vegas will play host to Rollercon, the first roller derby convention; in January the A&E Network, banking on the appeal of tough and toned women in skimpy outfits, will begin showing “Roller Girls,” a 13-episode reality show. “The dramatic part is, they go and act out their therapy on the rink, which makes for good TV,” said Nancy Dubuc, a senior vice president of programming at A&E Network and the executive producer of the show.

The Web site for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league (www.gothamgirlsrollerderby.com) describes each player as “an amalgam of athlete, pinup girl, rocker and brute,” and derby girls are hardly typical jocks. Their uniforms are more Victoria’s Secret than Nike, and many members of the league say the derby is the first organized sport they have ever joined.

What should be scary for New Yorkers — the cultural elite — is that no one participating seems to consider it good old ironic fun, rather, this is serious stuff:

More than 500 rockabilly fans, skateboarders, stylish girls in leg warmers and a reporter from German Playboy braved the rain on April Fool’s Day, paying $12 each to watch the Mayhem and the Bombshells in the opening bout of the season, which runs to October.

A huge-ass century-old retaining wall holding back Washington Heights from the Henry Hudson Parkway collapsed yesterday, killing no one:

Residents say that for years rocks and debris had occasionally fallen onto Riverside Drive, which doubles as an entrance ramp to the northbound parkway.

But few suspected the giant wall would ever give way.

Meanwhile, the Daily News gets all bitchy about how NY1 failed to cover the mayhem (”New York 1 News blew it.”). I didn’t realize people took them seriously! Not as seriously as, say, the Daily News! I guess Pat Kiernan was featured in The Interpreter, though, so they’re pretty real.

New York Post headline: “West Slide Drive”

New York Daily News headline: “Grid-Rock”

Winner: The Post!

If you noticed yourself sneezing more in the past couple of days, it’s not your fault; tree pollen is atrociously high right now. The Daily News offers tips to save yourself:

• Wash your hair every night and, before entering your bedroom, change your clothes to remove pollen that collects during the day.
• At home or when driving, keep the windows closed and set the air conditioner to recirculate air to keep out pollen.
• Avoid eating apples, pears and hazelnuts (even hazelnut-flavored coffee) if you suffer from tree pollen allergies.
• If you are allergic to grass pollen (peak season is in June), avoid celery, cereal grains, melons and tomatoes.
• If you are allergic to weed pollen (peak season is in late August to September), avoid bananas, zucchini, cucumbers, echinacea and sunflower seeds.
• If you have a yard, keep grass cut short and flower beds weed free. Avoid planting junipers, Bermuda grass, ryegrass and chrysanthemums. Go for less allergy-inducing plants such as azaleas, begonias, bulbs (tulips, irises, poppies and daffodils), and palms, pines, firs and dogwoods.

Before the end of the day, I will be replacing all of the city’s trees with palms. We will be the Miami of the North.

Of course, this will be moot when the dreaded Asian Longhorned Beetle eats all the city’s trees and once and for all takes care of our allergy problems: “Beetle may kill half of city trees.”

Familiarize yourself with your allergy-alleviating comrades: USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine Asian Longhorned Beetle Backgrounder.

Who knew, as in Who knew Gifford Miller’s secret strategy to wrest control of the Mayor’s office hinged on his singing ability? The Times explains:

As backstage dressing rooms go, the rear seat of a sport utility vehicle is not exactly diva-grade. The lighting is bad, and the catering table nonexistent. But it was the only place available last month for Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, as he prepared to face what would be, for most politicians, an almost insurmountable test of political courage.

In a few minutes, he would take to a lectern at the Eileen Dugan Senior Center, and he would sing.

“My wife doesn’t let me do it at home,” explained the speaker and mayoral candidate, as his vehicle crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. “But I’ve always liked singing.” He broke into snatches of a couple of tunes to illustrate the point. “It finally struck me that if I could find some captive - and uncritical - audiences, I could indulge myself a little more.”

Although “indulge myself” isn’t something one necessarily wants to hear from someone running for office, it at least helps contribute anecdotal evidence to support the maxim “Politics is Show Business for Ugly People.” And lest you try to accuse Miller of pandering, know that his street cred is real:

“Half my security detail can sing the ‘Hatikvah,’ ” he said, referring to the Israeli anthem, one of several he has learned and sung on the campaign trail, including the national songs of Greece, Kenya and Ireland (in Gaelic, though he usually sticks to English, since “most Irish-Americans don’t speak Gaelic, so it just seemed like showing off”). He especially enjoys the official anthem of Puerto Rico. “It’s called ‘La Borinqueña,’ ” he said, lolling his L’s lustily. “Laaaaaa Borin-QUEN-YA.”

No, certainly no one is showing off here . . . no siree!

It sounds like a Twilight Zone episode or an Onion article . . . but it’s not! The “lucky numbers” inserted into fortune cookies by a Long Island City-based fortune cookie company matched six of the seven March 30 Powerball numbers, which set off alarm bells when 110 people had winning tickets:

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.

But from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.

It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.

The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.)

Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong sixth number - 40, not 42 - and would have been first-place winners if they did.

“We didn’t sleep a lot that night,” Mr. Strutt said. “Is there someone trying to cheat the system?”

He added: “We had to look at everything to do with humans: television shows, pattern plays, lottery columns.”

Earlier that month, an ABC television show, “Lost,” included a sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn’t match the Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a soap opera, “The Young and the Restless,” didn’t match, either. Nor did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery offices.

“Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie,” said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. “The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie.”

Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four million a day.

“That’s ours,” said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner’s cookie slip. “That’s very nice, 110 people won the lottery from the numbers.”

The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. “We are not going to do the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer,” Mr. Wong said. “It’s more efficient.”

How many packs of gum does it take to pay off a $350,000 mortgage? The Post investigates:

For $350,000, you can own a building with 50 square feet of usable space on a 102-square-foot commercial lot on Seventh Avenue South in the West Village.

. . .

That $350,000 will buy you 10 feet of frontage on the busy avenue, explains real-estate broker Rod Kritsberg of A&I Broadway Realty.

That’s perfect for a newsstand, cab stand, crepe window or fast-food shop, says Kritsberg, who is advertising the property on craigslist.org.

Its location — at 30 Seventh Ave. S., between Leroy and Morton streets — “is right in the heart of Greenwich Village,” he said.

“It’s a vibrant area, on a street where you get a lot of foot traffic, especially at night,” he noted. “There’s no place that sells water, cigarettes and gum for several blocks.”

When potential employers add “only Ivy League or similar need apply” to job postings, they’re probably not talking about smarty pants like Hakan Yalincak, who was charged in federal court for bank fraud just days before graduating from NYU’s College of Arts & Sciences:

While most graduates will walk through the arch Thursday stress-free and exuberant with success, one CAS student will be sitting behind bars in Rhode Island, contemplating a charge of multi-million dollar bank fraud.

Hakan Yalincak, a CAS senior majoring in mathematics, pleaded not guilty on Friday at the New Haven, Conn., district court to charges of conducting a $43 million bank fraud scheme by depositing fake certified checks into bank accounts in Connecticut and Switzerland. On a separate lawsuit in civil court, he is charged with conning Connecticut investors into investing $2.8 million in a non-existent hedge fund.

Things you don’t want your attorney telling the New York Times include but are not limited to “the facts will either indicate that he is culpable or is not culpable.” That’s not a great way to build confidence in your client:

“He’s an enterprising finance guy, an extraordinarily intelligent young man,” Mr. [Mickey] Sherman said. “At some point, I think the facts will either indicate that he is culpable or is not culpable.”

Bonus: Legal remedies for investors victimized by check-kiting schemes.

An Adam Gopnik-penned story about the new dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History uses the impressions of two anonymous children as the filter through which the reader experiences it. Or is it actually a thinly veiled story about his two children, set against the backdrop of a new dinosaur exhibit? Or is it really just an excuse to show how his ten-year-old son is so smartly (and improbably!) clued into the cult of Steve Martin. I vote number three:

Mark Norell is the all-knowing curator of the extremely cool, truly awesome, and very soon to open “Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries” show at the American Museum of Natural History. “He looks just like Steve Martin,” a ten-year-old whispered politely to a companion one afternoon last week, after taking in Norell’s expressive eyebrows and oversized jaw and handsome, slightly supercilious smile.

A 25-year-old “real estate investor” (we know what that’s shorthand for) has purchased an old diner on the west side of Manhattan and has shipped it piece by piece to an upstate location in order to reopen it as a Florent-style hip restaurant.

I love dreaming, too!

Alas, it’s serious, and the Times reports the move took place last night:

It was possible to take the money used to buy the defunct Munson Diner, for nearly six decades a neon-lit source of heartburn and nostalgia in Hell’s Kitchen, and get, say, a bare-bones BMW convertible.

Of course, opting for a $30,000 sports car would not get the buyer the eight-door refrigerators (two), refrigerated display cases (two), soup table, deep fryer, Silver King coffee urn and enough seats (7 booths, 15 stools) for four football teams. Or, for that matter, the memories of the “Seinfeld” and “Law & Order” television episodes in which the diner made an appearance.

But restaurant accouterments and television history are not why Jeremy Gorelick, 25, and a group of upstate investors bought the Munson Diner this year. They bought it, Mr. Gorelick said yesterday, for reincarnation in a Catskills town as a “destination location” resembling the hip Restaurant Florent in the meatpacking district in Manhattan, but with a stream of high rollers from, fingers crossed, a nearby casino, or, failing that, a summer music festival like Tanglewood.

And so, to that end, the diner was lifted onto a flatbed truck last night to be inched from 11th Avenue and 49th Street over the George Washington Bridge, with a final destination 90 miles northwest of New York: a hill overlooking Liberty, a tiny village in Sullivan County.

“It’ll be a classy restaurant in a retro location,” Mr. Gorelick said.

Not to nitpick, but isn’t it a retro restaurant in a . . . I don’t know that I’ve ever heard upstate New York called “retro.” I don’t know that folks up there consider their ‘hood “retro”! I hope the folks in Liberty love Boudin Noir and Duck Mousse Pate! (I mean, I sure do, but I’m not retro like all them all are!)

Perhaps caving to extreme pressure from both the New York City Council and the Connecticut State Legislature — two institutions on the forefront of the crusade to protect the little guy — Loew’s movie theaters have announced they will start advertising the time a movie will actually begin, allowing movie watchers to skip the commercials before the movie:

Coming soon to a movie ad near you - if not to a space-squeezed marquee - the time that the movie starts. The time that the movie really starts, not the time that the trailers and the commercials start. Or words to that effect.

Loews Cineplex Entertainment says that next month it will begin publicizing true starting times, sort of.

John McCauley, the company’s senior vice president for marketing, said the times in the company’s newspaper and Web listings would still be the times when the trailers and commercials start. But the ads will also carry a note advising that, as Mr. McCauley put it yesterday, “the feature presentation starts 10 to 15 minutes after the posted show time.”

In retrospect, I’m surprised Elliot Spitzer didn’t also avail himself of this tempting low-hanging fruit! And now on to bigger and better things about which the City Council can warn consumers — Neil LaBute, for example . . .

Restaurant kingpin Alain Ducasse has fired his chef, apparently because of a tepid New York Times review:

Alain Ducasse has removed Christian Delouvrier as executive chef at his restaurant at the Essex House, citing a recent review in The New York Times that downgraded its rating to three stars from four.

“I am at the top in Paris, in Monte Carlo and in Tokyo, and I cannot remain with three stars in New York,” said Mr. Ducasse, an internationally celebrated chef who owns or is a consultant at nearly 30 restaurants throughout the world. “I knew we could not regain four stars with Christian Delouvrier at the helm, and I had to make important changes in the dynamic of the kitchen. I needed someone who has worked longer with me. And once I make up my mind I move fast. The life of this enterprise depends on it.”

He said that the loss of a star had not affected business, but that it was a blow to his pride.

Mr. Delouvrier said in a phone interview yesterday that he had no hard feelings, and both men said they might open a bistro together in New York. “Working with Alain Ducasse was a big opportunity for me, but I knew it would not last forever,” Mr. Delouvrier said. “There were bumps in the road, with the New York Times review. Maybe because we had two different philosophies. Right now, for me, anything goes.”

The City Council approved a Mayor-backed plan to rezone the parts of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, paving the way for increased density in the blocks near and on the waterfront.

But before you scout pre-sells, please read Jonathan Van Meter’s unironically condescending take on Brooklyn on the New York Magazine website. I say this as someone who may or may not be moving this summer and would appreciate some outer-borough bashing to ward off the competition. (NB: please — PLEASE — do not read the entire piece, the devastating conclusion of which confirms the worst in Manhattan snobbery and could make moot the aforementioned ulterior motive.)

The Metronome — that massive backward-forward digital clock on the south side of Union Square — has been reconfigured to count down the days until the IOC announces the 2012 Olympic host city. How crass! The Times explains:

A few weeks ago, passers-by began to notice a change in the Metronome, the enormous public art project on the facade of One Union Square South. Instead of telling time in its usual way, by counting the hours while simultaneously subtracting the remaining time left in the day, the artwork’s digital clock seemed to be counting down to some future date. Last Tuesday, the clock had 70 days remaining, which would place Day 0 at July 6.

With its rapid blur of digitized numbers, the Metronome had always confounded out-of-towners, but now it was bewildering New Yorkers, too. The clock was installed in 1999 and had not wavered from its format. So why the change? What is the significance of July 6?

. . .

It turns out that July 6 is the day the International Olympic Committee will announce the host city of the 2012 Olympics. According to Jay Carson, a spokesman for NYC2012, the group spearheading New York’s Olympic bid, the clock countdown is a joint venture between NYC2012 and the Related Companies, which manages the building and commissioned the Metronome, and was created so that “thousands each day would feel the urgency.” After July 6, the clock will return to its old form.

And while the NYC2012 folks are “enthusiastic about the project,” the artists who created the clock aren’t so sure:

The creators of the Metronome, Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, had a more tepid reaction. Works of art, Mr. Ginzel said, “are like children,” and he likened the Metronome change to “sending your child off to school and hearing that the teacher has decided to dress it in different clothing.”

Ms. Jones said having the Olympics in New York might be good for the city, but added, “I don’t think artwork should be used as advertising.”