In New York Magazine David Amsden writes one of those pieces you want to believe — hope against hope — is some Stephen Glass-esque fabrication:

Inside a vaguely South African–themed nightclub called Cain, a pale-skinned, blonde-haired girl named Sophie is on the dance floor. She sports a yellow blouse with a plunging neckline, white jeans that look grafted to her skin, and shimmery ice-pick heels. Yesterday, Sophie graduated from a certain all-girls private school uptown, and she is still three years shy of being legal in such an establishment, though right now that’s irrelevant. Right now, Sophie is a woman in her twenties, just like her I.D. says, and just like she told the guy in the preppie blazer with the gelled-back hair on the dance floor. He’s sort of annoying. But sort of cute too. And very likely graduated from high school right around the time Sophie was born.

“Him? Yeah, I think he’s like 35, or even 40,” observes Sophie’s friend Audrey. “She hooked up with him last week at Lotus.”

Audrey is also 18, also pale and blonde. When she imagines herself in ten years she sees a successful woman working as “a representative of some corporation. Like if I’m doing press for JPMorgan, that’s fine.” She is slouched in the banquette running alongside the dance floor, sipping her second Grey Goose and cranberry. Next to her is Lana, 17, all long brown hair and big, drowsy brown eyes. The three girls (whose names have been changed “because otherwise our parents will freak”) are jaunty, sweet-natured, sophisticated, and acutely self-aware. They know which is the dessert fork. The last time any of them looked their age, they were in elementary school. Like so many privileged New York kids, they have been taught, since they were small children, never to act like children.

“Apparently I hooked up with him last week at Lotus, but I don’t remember” is how Sophie had described the incident to her friends earlier that day over lunch at Nello, on Madison Avenue. “That was totally uncharacteristic, and you know it. I don’t just randomly hook up with people. I can count the number of guys I’ve kissed on”—Sophie did some math with her manicured fingers—”two hands. But I’d only had a sushi roll for dinner, and we drank way too much.”

For their part, the older men seem to view this arrangement as some sort of mini Thai holiday:

The girls decide that Hiro isn’t happening tonight, and head over to Gypsy Tea, a club on 24th Street that feels a lot like Hiro. They sit at the owner’s table and dance on the dark couches. Around them, like a halo, stands a ring of older men staring, hoping, debating first lines in their minds. “My feeling is that if they’re in here, they’re 21,” says a ruddy-faced man in his forties with a crew cut. “And that’s where I stop asking questions. So you can tell me they’re 18 and I’m basically just like, ‘Shut the fuck up.’”

A thirtyish guy with slicked-back hair in a pink polo shirt approaches Lana, sticks out his fleshy hand, and says, “Dance with me.” A moment later she is sandwiched between him and his friend, who’s wearing a blue polo shirt. Eventually, Sophie and Audrey pull Lana away. The polo pals high-five each other.

Pink shirt: “I’m just here to get laid.”

Blue shirt: “But it never happens with little girls like that.”

Overhearing this, a 31-year-old wearing a black suit and baseball cap shakes his head. “It kind of disturbs me to see all my friends hitting on girls twenty years younger than them,” he says. “I guess the girls just don’t care. Maybe they just care about the money, I don’t know. It all comes down to that because, come on, it’s not like they’re going to fall in love in a place like this. They can’t possibly think they will. I’ll tell you, I feel really terrible for women my age, in their thirties and forties. There’s no market for them anymore. Everything is about girls like these.” He takes a sip of his Heineken and suddenly changes his tone. “But, God, they’re the hottest people in here, aren’t they?”

Oh, my aching head. Please someone reveal this is just the latest “Hack Heaven”.

Of course the way to stand up to the evildoers and show we are not cowed is to rebuild — starting with an impenetrable 20-story concrete base — oh yes, that will show them:

Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a radical redesign of the Freedom Tower planned in Lower Manhattan yesterday: a 77-story glass-clad skyscraper that would sit atop an almost impermeable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal, sheathed in ornamental metalwork, overlooking the memorial intended to honor those who died at the World Trade Center.

The redesign was worked up in a matter of weeks after an embarrassing setback for the trade center redevelopment, when the New York Police Department deemed the first version of the Freedom Tower too vulnerable to attack by car or truck bomb.

The newly configured building would have no occupied space other than the lobby for its first 200 feet. It would be set at least 40 feet farther away from West Street-Route 9A, a heavily trafficked state highway. Many of its windows would be tempered, laminated and multilayered for extra protection against explosions.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement released after the unveiling that the “new design provides for a level of bomb blast mitigation consistent with the N.Y.P.D.’s report on the Freedom Tower and adequate to the threat” described in federal safety guidelines.

. . .

The first 30 feet of the 200-foot-tall pedestal would be completely solid. The next 50 feet would have some openings, allowing light to be brought into the lobby from above. The rest of the base would be occupied by four floors of mechanical equipment. Stainless steel, titanium or aluminum panels would mask the concrete wall.

Sounds lovely!

Meanwhile, Times Art Critic Nicolai Ouroussoff unsheathes his thesaurus and unloads, bemoaning the design’s “impregnability”:

The darkness at ground zero just got a little darker. If there are people still clinging to the expectation that the Freedom Tower will become a monument to the highest American ideals, the current design should finally shake them out of that delusion. Somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project suggests a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness. It is exactly the kind of nightmare that government officials repeatedly asserted would never happen here: an impregnable tower braced against the outside world.

. . .

The temptation is to dismiss it as a joke.

. . .

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating: as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear.

. . .

Absurdly, if the Freedom Tower were reduced by a dozen or so stories and renamed, it would probably no longer be considered such a prime target. Fortifying it, in a sense, is an act of deflection. It announces to terrorists: Don’t attack here - we’re ready for you. Go next door.

Looks like somebody’s writing a novel — Anthony Ramirez in today’s Times on the Nathan’s Famous hot dog-eating contest qualifying rounds:

Call them Ishmael.

In a pursuit not at all reminiscent of “Moby-Dick,” a group of competitors gathered yesterday to hunt and subdue the ferocious unseen eating machine known as Takeru Kobayashi of Japan.

Mr. Kobayashi, 5-foot-7 and 131 pounds, is ferocious because he has defeated rivals many times his weight.

He is an eating machine because he has won Nathan’s Famous hot-dog contest four years in a row. Last year, he ate a record 53½ frankfurters, buns and all, in the required 12 minutes, or roughly one every 13 seconds.

And he was unseen because yesterday was not the Fourth of July and Pier 17 at South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan was not Coney Island.

The contest, held in the shadow of a tall ship at high noon, was one of several regional qualifying rounds leading to the final July Fourth showdown at Nathan’s. As the reigning champion, Mr. Kobayashi didn’t have to be there.

Still, the news media converged, the curious stopped to watch and George Shea, the master of ceremonies, summoned up all the gravitas that can attach to a man wearing a straw hat.

To the beat of Eminem’s “8 Mile,” Mr. Shea declared: “They say that competitive eating is the battleground upon which God and Lucifer waged war for men’s souls, ladies and gentlemen. And they are right!” Mr. Shea is co-founder of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which oversees the Nathan’s contest.

. . .

Among the 14 men and 2 women, the favorite was Eric Booker, 36, a subway conductor on the No. 7 line. At 6-foot-5 and 420 pounds, a Nathan’s T-shirt straining at his Henry VIII girth, Mr. Booker looked every inch the nine-year veteran of the competitive-eating circuit.

. . .

Mr. Booker won. Chewing like a gerbil, if a gerbil wore a backward baseball cap, his cheeks distended like those of Dizzy Gillespie, Mr. Booker ate 22½ franks.

The number was less than half of Mr. Kobayashi’s record. Will Mr. Booker be ready for the Big Show?

Yes, Mr. Booker said, observing that he had recently eaten 41 Nathan’s franks, though not in competition. And, he acknowledged, “they were the supermarket kind,” easier to find than the Coney Island kind but skinnier.

Still, Captain Ahab-like, Mr. Booker said about Mr. Kobayashi, “I’m not going to stop until I get him.”

Thanks to the unrelenting scrutiny of the Daily News, the MTA has postponed a full board vote of the proposed new rule changes:

The MTA’s proposed rule revisions for subways and buses has become a tempest in a coffee cup.

A vote on a host of new regs - including bans on drinking beverages and walking between subway cars - was postponed for at least a month yesterday amid questions, objections and confusion.

“We do listen,” MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said after a board meeting. “When people say something to us, we do think about it. We’re actually not ashamed to admit we might have gone too far.”

The Daily News perseverates on the MTA’s new proposed rules, noting that sipping water, among other things, will become a ticketable offense:

Beware, New Yorkers: The subways are filled with potential lawbreakers.

They’re the fiends who put their feet on seats. They sip water - or worse, coffee.

They might even be you.

The Daily News hit the subway yesterday and caught dozens of commuters flouting soon-to-be adopted rules revising the transit system’s code of behavior. The new rules, which also include a ban on walking between cars, will take effect Oct. 1.

Feet on the seats, sipping liquids and walking between cars are obviously associated with other behaviors subway officials must stop (sleeping or spending all night on the train, drinking alcohol and panhandling/performing/selling candy), but the logical extreme does seem a little . . . extreme (thus the pretty good headling: “A Rail Jolt”).

The MTA announced a new batch of rules yesterday, including a ban on moving between cars. Notably absent: a ban on photography (woo hoo!). The Times explains what’s new:

Subway riders afflicted by broken air-conditioning, foul odors, children selling candy bars for occasionally dubious causes and even the random groper have long sought relief by quickly switching cars.

No more.

Moving between cars - as well as resting one’s feet on the seats, sipping from an open container (even a cup of coffee) and straddling a bicycle while riding the subway - will be prohibited under a new set of passenger rules adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s transit committee yesterday, the first such rule changes since 1994.

While riding between cars is already forbidden, managers at the authority said they wanted to make clear that even quickly darting from one car to another while the train is in motion is dangerous.

There is only one way, they said, to move safely to another car - exiting the train at the next station and then quickly re-entering it, even if passengers making a such a dash could face other perils, like tripping, smashing a finger or losing a purse between rapidly shutting doors.

Ha. Exactly.

The MTA’s full board now must vote on the changes. Apparently there is some dissension about the proposed moving-between-cars rule:

Mark Page, the city’s budget director, who represents Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on the board, observed: “It is, from time to time, convenient to absent oneself from a car or from a particular group of people.”

Let’s put it this way — it is from time to time convenient to absent oneself from a car or from a particular group of people when, say, a big J.O. party is underway on the 3 train:

Riders like Beatrice McCants, 30, said they had faced many such occasions. Ms. McCants, who works as a newspaper distributor in Midtown, said she was riding a Brooklyn-bound No. 3 train Wednesday when a man began masturbating in plain sight. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to get off this train,’” she recalled. “Now I’m going to get a fine for that, for running from a flasher? I won’t pay it!”

Now that’s a quote! (Nice job, Sewell!)

This quote, however, doesn’t help:

“Let’s say you get on the train in the front, but you’re in a hurry, and you need to exit in the back,” offered Manny Guzman, a 15-year-old high school student from East New York, who was observed yesterday moving between two cars on an uptown No. 2 train. “It is unsafe, but I do it all the time.” Banning this practice, he added, “makes no sense.”

No, no, no! Don’t say it’s unsafe! That doesn’t make sense! (Bad job, Sewell!)

The final vote is set to take place tomorrow.

If you’ve stepped outside at 8:02 a.m. to find your car towed, this is probably why:

Traffic Enforcement agents don’t have ticket-writing quotas - they have “productivity” goals, police officials insisted yesterday.

“The number of parking summonses which has been issued is certainly part of the overall assessment of their productivity,” Assistant Commissioner Susan Petito said yesterday at a City Council transportation hearing.

Last year, the NYPD’s 1,100 agents issued 5.4 million tickets, carrying fines of about $500 million. At the Transportation Committee hearing, police officials repeatedly sparred with skeptical Council members over whether quotas exist.

“The primary purpose of these ticket-writing agents is to write tickets,” said Transportation Committee Chairman John Liu (D-Queens). “Do you judge them on the number of tickets that they write?”

“No,” said John Valles, head of the NYPD’s Parking Enforcement District. “We judge it by the accuracy of the summonses.” Petito quickly said other performance measures do include productivity.

$500 million, just so you know, is about two-and-a-half times the City of Buffalo’s budget.

Meanwhile, the Times notes the use of “expectations” as opposed to “quotas”:

The city has added hundreds of agents to issue summonses for parking violations. It counts on them to generate more than $500 million for its budget. And it has definite “expectations” for how many tickets they write.

But lest there be any confusion, the city wants New Yorkers to be sure of one thing: Those parking tickets on their windshields are not a result of a quota system.

That was the mixed message the Police Department delivered yesterday to skeptical members of the City Council. Some of them accused the department of imposing a stealth tax on New Yorkers through a concerted ticket blitz in recent years. Police officials denied that accusation, and said they did not force ticket writers to meet numeric goals.

But in careful language, they acknowledged closely tracking the number of tickets issued and using that data to assess the productivity of parking agents. Chopping his way through a semantic thicket, Councilman John C. Liu of Queens, chairman of the Transportation Committee, said the police were, in effect, admitting to an undeclared quota system.

The New Yorker’s Ben McGrath attends an off-duty book party in honor of a publication about neoliberalism in the taxicab industry (don’t ask — that’s not what’s interesting here) and discovers what cabbies hate most about their clientele:

Exactly what the full range of party chatter was is tough to say, because a variety of languages were spoken, but an interloper, with a little persistence, was able to discern that most drivers would probably disagree with the cheery characterization of the yellow cab (made at a recent design forum at Parsons) as “New York’s movable public space.” A fairer, if blunter, slogan might be: “Our workspace, where you annoy and disrespect us.”

“They treat the car like they’re slobs,” a driver whose handle on the Bengal Cabbie Association’s CB radio channel is Babar said of his passengers. He added that those who sit in the front seat, and who make radio requests, are usually drunk. Drunk passengers occasionally throw up, and the smell lingers for weeks.

Said interloper (McGrath) learns more; for example, who knew that multiple stops were a problem? Not I:

“There are so many things,” Rizwan Raja, a Pakistani driver, said, rattling off a list of his pet peeves: putting one’s feet up on the partition, smoking, crossing the street lackadaisically. Requesting multiple stops is also frowned upon. “These people come out of expensive, posh bars, where one beer is twenty dollars, but they make groups together so they can share a taxi and save a couple of dollars,” Raja said. “‘Three stops’—that really, really blows me off.” Tips, ever since the fare increase, have been meagre: “Sometimes forty cents, sometimes twenty cents.”

Raja went on, “The worst is when they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ Once you answer that question, then it’s ‘What is the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani government?’” Raja, who says he is asked that question “almost every day,” has recommended that his passengers see “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

The single-screen Beekman Theatre on the Upper East Side is being bulldozed to make way for progress:

Immortalized in “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen’s 1977 romantic comedy, the 53-year-old upper East Side movie house - one of the last single-screen theaters in the city - closed for good last night.

A throwback to the premultiplex era of neighborhood cinemas, the Beekman, on Second Ave. and 66th St., is being cleared to make way for a breast cancer treatment center.

. . .

“This is an assault on the character of what makes New York wonderful,” said George Reisz, 56, a nearby resident. “Some day, there’ll be nothing left.”

Starbucks, McDonald’s, Home Depot, breast cancer treatment centers . . . where will it end? Sloan-Kettering must be stopped!

From a Times article about the dearth of solid, affordable one-star restaurants in Manhattan:

The affordable high-quality restaurants that were once so common in Manhattan are not quite dodos, but rather like kakapos, ground parrots that are endangered on the island of their birth. Like the kakapo, they have been transported from their natural habitat to other terrain. In the restaurants’ case, that place is Brooklyn.

Trust me, it makes more sense when you read the whole article, but not total sense . . .

Hipsters colonizing the South Bronx:

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

Yes, it’s the very South Bronx that had a reputation for grinding poverty, rampant arson, runaway crime and as the starting point of Tom Wolfe’s race-relations nightmare, “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which chronicles what happens to a Master of the Universe driving with his mistress in his Mercedes-Benz on a creepy Bruckner Boulevard.

Well, Bruckner and the blocks nearby now boast two tidy bars that a Master of the Universe would feel more than comfortable patronizing, including one, the Bruckner Bar and Grill, that offers pear and arugula salad.

There are a dozen antique shops, at least one new lively art gallery, Haven Arts, to join three older ones, and a cafe partly owned by a resourceful Dominican immigrant that sells bourgeois bohemian delights like croissants and veggie wraps.

The bad news is that gentrification may price out longtime residents, the good news, however, is that White Europeans now walk comfortably there:

As he has been doing for 16 years, Angel Villalona, a Dominican immigrant, still sells papayas, coconuts and mangoes from the side of a truck, as well as batidas - fruit milkshakes that he prepares by yanking the cord on his sidewalk generator, which feeds electricity to an Osterizer blender. But now one of his customers is as likely to be a sculptor who has just moved from Williamsburg as a longtime resident like Charles Bachelor, a truck driver who immigrated from Antigua.

“White Europeans used to be afraid to walk in this neighborhood,” Mr. Bachelor said. “Now they walk comfortably.”

I basically fell out of my seat on the subway this morning reading the worst op-ed ever:

I try to go to the gym just about every morning. Because I work out with my scarf on, people stare - just as they do on the streets of Cambridge.

The other day, though, I felt more self-conscious than usual. Every television in the gym highlighted some aspect of America’s conflict with the Muslim world: the war in Iraq, allegations that American soldiers had desecrated the Koran, prisoner abuse at Guantánamo Bay, President Bush urging support of the Patriot Act. The stares just intensified my alienation as an Arab Muslim in what is supposed to be my country. I was not sure if the blood rushing to my head was caused by the elliptical trainer or by the news coverage.

Frustrated and angry, I moved to another part of the gym. I got on a treadmill and started running as hard as I could. As sweat dripped down my face, I reached for my towel, accidentally dropping my keys in the process. It was a small thing, I know, but as they slid down the rolling belt and fell to the carpet, my faith in the United States seemed to fall with them. I did not care to pick them up. I wanted to keep running.

Suddenly a man, out of breath, but still smiling and friendly, tapped me on my shoulder and said, “Ma’am, here are your keys.” It was Al Gore, former vice president of the United States. Mr. Gore had gotten off his machine behind me, picked up my keys, handed them to me and then resumed his workout.

It was nothing more than a kind gesture, but at that moment Mr. Gore’s act represented all that I yearned for - acceptance and acknowledgment.

She’s kidding, right? Actually, scratch that — the Times is kidding. They have to be!

Did I ever tell you about the time I left behind my umbrella at Fairway? Along with that umbrella slipped away my faith and enthusiasm for the Upper West Side. As I lugged my many bags thoughtlessly stuffed with olives and sumptuous cheeses down Broadway, the rain came down steadily. Drenched, I cursed the gods, only to have Regis Philbin — no shit! — tap me on the shoulder. Just before ducking into his hired car, he handed me a black umbrella — the ubiquitous five-dollar black umbrella — a lumpy, overwrought symbol of my restored sense of good will towards men.

It was nothing more than a kind gesture, but at that moment Mr. Philbin’s act represented all that I yearned for — acceptance and acknowledgment.

For the Times, the story behind the Billy Graham Crusade is not the man’s message, the devotion of the flock or even namby-pamby generalized anthropological discourse on the role of religion in culture but rather the logistics, “where even the ineffable must be quantified”, which is actually probably how the Times views religion when you think about it. At least they didn’t use their special red state correspondent:

Since Labor Day, the crusade’s 30 paid staff members have run their campaign from a 12th-floor office in the Fashion District overlooking a nine-story billboard of an underwear model pulling down his briefs to reveal a tattoo of a panther. ([New York Crusade Director Art] Bailey said he found the image inspiring. “This picture is an illustration of what the world sees,” he said. “The world focuses on the outward body. Our job is to put the focus on the inner man, the part that is eternal.”)

It was here that organizers booked the Christian pop bands that will play before Mr. Graham preaches and where they secured the services of Bibleman, a caped crusader in Spandex and silver body armor who will lead the children’s rally on Saturday morning at Flushing Meadows.

Bibleman . . . intriguing . . .

P.S. A little birdie points me to the Bibleman website and an apparent connection to Eight is Enough/Charles in Charge Hunk Willie Aames.

Steve Fishman’s New York Magazine piece on alleged NYU fraud Hakan Yalincak and his mother has so much dirt that reading it will probably disqualify you from the jury pool:

Together, Jackie and Hakan, along with their indispensable props—a Waspy, credit-poor Matthew Thomas; a white-shoe attorney; and a grateful NYU—managed to convince people who ought to know better that an undergrad history major was running a hedge fund after classes.

Highly recommended!

New York Magazine’s guide to trash-picked furniture:

Even an Eames lounge should be left alone if you detect the slightest note of urine.

Yuck!

Restaurant Impresario Jeffrey Chodorow on what it’s like to be a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, er, a foodie trapped in a businessman’s body:

“Let me just say this to you,” Mr. Chodorow said over a table loaded with platters of soft lobster pancakes (”my favorite”) and gooey lamb spareribs. “Unfortunately most people - and we’re sort of changing that now - but most people thought of me as a wealthy investor guy who just invested money in restaurants. A business person who just opened up these mega-restaurants, and it was just about the money.”

“But that was so far from the truth,” he continued, sounding vaguely distressed as he picked at a dumpling with a fork. “You know how they say, ‘I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body?’”

Across the table, Karine Bakhoum, Mr. Chodorow’s friend and public relations adviser, dropped a chopstick. “Oh please, please!” she said. “Don’t print that! He’s a foodie.” She turned to Mr. Chodorow. “You’re a foodie!”

“I’m a foodie,” Mr. Chodorow said agreeably. “Trapped in a business person’s body. People say about me, I’d go around the world for the opening of a clam.”

Major beverage company attempts to raise the world’s largest popsicle in Union Square, ice chunk melts in summer sun and leaks into the street, objective fails:

Under the noontime sun of New York’s first day of summer, [Beverage Company], the soft drink maker, answered the question of whether a 171/2-ton Popsicle can be made to stand upright in Union Square.

It cannot.

In a brave attempt to surpass a Guinness record - “The World’s Largest Popsicle” - [Beverage Company] mixed and froze a gargantuan icy doppelganger of its new kiwi-strawberry flavored [Beverage Company] on Ice. Then the frozen treat was hauled by freezer truck from Edison, N.J., and raised with an enormous crane in Manhattan.

Alas, like James Arness in the 1951 alien thriller “The Thing From Another World,” the giant [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and "Popsicle"] began to melt. Soon pedestrians were fleeing in not-quite terror, fire trucks were converging and the police were closing off streets to contain the publicity stunt gone wrong.

[Beverage Company] officials first started to worry when the pink liquid began to flow onto East 17th Street. They feared cyclists and automobiles would slip in the ooze.

Ice sculpture specialists who were helping [Beverage Company] with the publicity event also wondered whether the [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and "Popsicle"] was beginning to become hollow in the middle and would topple when set upright.

[Beverage Company] officials then decided to stop the [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and "Popsicle"]-raising at a crowd-disappointing 25-degree angle. The mushy giant block was then trucked away and a television-sized ice sculpture in the shape of the [Beverage Company] logo took its place.

I can’t believe that of all the quotes to pull out of this Times article about the mammoth pothole that formed over the weekend on 56th Street I’m going to pull out such a cloying, obviously Metropolitan Diary-worthy one such as this:

“I told my son that that’s exactly how the Grand Canyon was formed,” said John Trials, who took a break from his job at Xerox at 40 West 57th Street to examine the hole around noon yesterday. “It’s amazing what a little water can do.”

But I did!

Where else does a pothole become a geology lesson? Only in New York, Kids! Only in New York! [That loud crash being the sound of Cindy Adams bitchslapping me. Ouch!]

The president of one of the two firefighters’ unions is telling his men to adhere to stricter national guidelines calling for firetrucks to come to a complete stop at red lights and stop signs, even though City regulations allow firetrucks to cautiously proceed through them. Predictably, response times have gone up. Go figure!

It has been a few years — we are obviously way past due for another annoying term describing stylish straight men!

In any other paper, paragraphs such as this might be considered offensive — good thing we’re reading the Times’ Sunday Styles section:

Of course there are still places that gay men will go that straight men will not. The Speedo swimsuit is still off limits to even the most vain heterosexual American men, as is knowing the words to Kylie Minogue’s latest hit single.

As to the term itself, we are being purposely vague lest it becomes popular.

Move over Peter Max! The New York Art World is now at the forefront of Jock Art, a bizarro movement in which a Jugs Football Machine becomes performance art! No one ever figured fielding punts could be so outre:

Last Sunday, Tim Laun crouched down behind his Jugs Football Machine, a large blue metal tripod with two whirling white tires on top, and loaded a National Football League-size Wilson ball into the breach. With a single swift motion and sudden thwap, the ball was arcing over the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens: a perfect imitation of the trajectory of an N.F.L. punt. Four and a half seconds later, the ball thudded onto a square of freshly sodded grass painted with hash marks, like a swatch from a football field, as a group of neighborhood kids watched in perplexed wonder.

Tim Laun with his “Hang Time,” a performance-art piece.

“I love seeing that perfect arc and perfect spiral,” Mr. Laun said a little dreamily, as he loaded another Wilson into the machine.

Though the act of firing footballs with a Jugs machine takes place routinely on the practice fields of America as a way of training punt returners, his project is not a mundane part of preseason practice. To hear Mr. Laun, a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan from Wisconsin and an adjunct professor of art at Hunter College, tell it, it is a work of art: one with a specific title: “Hang Time.” As part of an exhibition called “Sport” at the sculpture park, Mr. Laun is firing football after football into the blue sky with the Empire State Building and the East River in the background. Those willing to sign a waiver can attempt to catch the machine-generated punts. But if no one is around, Mr. Laun is content to fire his footballs to no one at all.

“It’s that suspended moment in the game when no one can touch the ball,” Mr. Laun said as another ball sailed skyward. “And that person waiting and looking for the ball, they look like the depictions of rapture in Renaissance paintings.”

I can’t decide if this story was worth registering at the Post for:

A Queens couple claims their daughter’s memories of elementary school have been marred by a “horrible” yearbook photo, and are demanding the school recall all 200 books and replace the picture.

Michelle Maihepat, of South Ozone Park, said her 11-year-old daughter, Asheana, is so embarrassed by the “bad picture” that she has been crying and hiding her face in shame from her sixth-grade classmates at PS 121 since the yearbooks were distributed Monday.

“For the rest of her life, she’s going to have to be ashamed of that horrible picture,” Maihepat said.

“Twenty years down the line, she’s going to look at this book with her friends, and her friends are going to say, ‘What happened to you there?’”

If the Post keeps writing Onion-worthy stories like this, I might have to check them more often! This, for example — too much:

A teary-eyed Asheana said the episode has upset her so much that she has decided to skip graduation next week.

The family says anything less than a total recall is not good enough, reasoning that the yearbook is Asheana’s legacy among all her classmates at PS 121.

“Who knows, one day she might be famous or have a lot of money and someone could blackmail her with that picture,” Maihepat said.

Police and residents are saying that the main suspect accused of killing a Chinatown diner this week is a businessman from New Jersey who had some sort of financial dispute with the victim. Obviously the best method of negotiation in such a case is to shooting the other party in the nuts:

The New Jersey man shot and killed in a Chinatown restaurant on Wednesday was supposed to be building a restaurant financed by the wealthy businessman who shot him, the authorities said yesterday.

The victim, Ming Wang, was shot several times as he sat waiting for his food at the Yung Sun Seafood Restaurant at 47 East Broadway early Wednesday evening. The shooting followed a dispute the men had about the restaurant project, authorities said.

The police were still searching for the suspect last night, and have not officially released his name. But investigators and residents of Chinatown identified him as Sau Yung Cheng, 50, of Hamilton, a suburb of Trenton. He is also known by the name Allen Cheng.

. . .

On Wednesday, Mr. Wang walked into the Yung Sun Seafood Restaurant before 6 p.m., and sat down with a couple sitting near the door of the restaurant, the police said. They said that after a brief, heated exchange, the couple walked out of the restaurant. A short time later, the man returned and shot Mr. Wang four to eight times, wounding him in his head, back, arm and groin. Then he ran, and disappeared into Chinatown.

There is something gritty and film noir-like about “disappearing into Chinatown.” Nice flourish! Of course it’s not like Gangs of New York anymore, and the suspect was traced back to his home of Hamilton, where furious customers demanded to know why the Chinese people weren’t open because, you know, Chinese places are open every day — even Christmas:

No one answered the door yesterday at Mr. Cheng’s house in Hamilton, and the BMW that neighbors said he usually drove was not outside. Neighbors said the local police had been at the house. A restaurant in Hamilton owned by Mr. Cheng was closed yesterday, and confused customers could be seen peering into the darkened windows.

“I want some sushi,” said John Abatto, 47, who lives in Hamilton. “He should have had his workers open the restaurant.”

Dude is on the lam and you think he should open shop? Now that’s service!

Had we only sculptor Eric Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman” — dayenu! Had we only Sharon Paz’s falling silhouettes in Jamaica, Queens — dayenu! But no, it wasn’t enough! The Daily News takes up the case:

A Brooklyn artist evoked the images of people who leaped to their deaths from the World Trade Center by repeatedly jumping off a Chicago musuem - outraging the families of some 9/11 victims.

Kerry Skarbakka, who wore a safety harness under his clothes, told the Daily News that Tuesday’s stunt was his way of asking questions about what went through the minds of those who jumped from the towers and others who watched helplessly.

But some people who lost loved ones in the terror attacks told The News they were disgusted by the very idea of Skarbakka’s “art” project.

“What kind of sick individual is he?” asked Rosemarie Giallombardo of Midwood, Brooklyn, who lost her son, Paul Salvio, on 9/11. “Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels. He’s an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something.”

Even as it cannibalizes its own past, New York remains steadfastly opposed to the “continuing corporatization” of rustic Manhattan. Yet the hopelessly provincial still cannot stop 7-Eleven from penetrating the moat:

For a swath of America, nothing says summer like a Slurpee from 7-Eleven.

But Manhattan has always been an island unto its own, so the imminent opening of a 7-Eleven on Park Ave. South and 23rd St. - the first in the borough in more than a decade - isn’t exactly being treated as the next big thing.

“I’d much rather have a coco gelato,” said model Kristine Szabo, strolling down Park Ave.

A 7-Eleven is an unlikely backdrop for her walk, but as she said yesterday, “Why not? There’s already everything else here. It’s a lost cause.”

The “lost cause” is the continuing corporatization of Manhattan, as mom-and-pop drugstores are replaced by Duane Reades and coffee shops have all become Starbucks.

For some, however, the Vermontization of Manhattan has no appeal:

. . . [N]ot everyone is so disdainful of the 7-Elevens.

Marcos Rodriguez, 23, of Corona, Queens, is a club promoter who’s happy a 7-Eleven’s coming to town, and not just because “they have everything.”

Does a 7-Eleven ruin the character of the city? “No,” he said. “These little newspaper stands and stuff, they ruin the character. Makes the street ugly.”

It is said that New York is unsentimental about its past — one of the reasons it has remained a vital, adaptive center of commerce over the years. Its character — build up, tear down, build up, tear down — can be contrasted with more static cities like Philadelphia and Boston. So in some ways it’s not surprising that the imminent demise of historic Yankee Stadium apparently bothers no one.

But can you imagine this callousness happening with Fenway Stadium or Wrigley Field? The Times reports:

Construction of the ballpark will mean the end of major league baseball at Yankee Stadium, where Mickey Mantle roamed center field, Don Larsen pitched the only World Series perfect game, popes visited and Joe Louis beat Billy Conn.

“We are standing at the cathedral of baseball,” Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, said at a crowded news conference with team executives and elected officials sitting beneath the stained glass of the Stadium Club. “We love this place. We honor its memories.” But, he added: “This building is becoming nonfunctional. It can’t go on for another 40 years.”

Fenway is similarly “nonfunctional,” but Boston can’t seem to replace it.

Isn’t there anyone out there who wants to save The House That Ruth Built? Yes — about 20 people:

Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor, said he did not anticipate a fight over the stadium or a campaign like the ubiquitous one mounted by Cablevision against the proposed $2.2 billion Jets stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan that could have been the centerpiece of the 2012 Olympics. The refusal by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last week doomed that project, forcing the city to look to Flushing in Queens.

“There’s a small group that doesn’t want everything to happen, wherever it is,” Doctoroff said.

That small group appears to be Friends of Yankee Stadium, whose membership of 20 has been “waiting for something to organize against,” said David Gratt, one of its members, who lives two blocks from the stadium.

The group has a Web site, yankeesstayhome.com.

“For 20 years, the Yankees have stated their desire for a new stadium, but never successfully stated a case for need,” he said. “The mayor and the Yankees say it’s approaching nonfunctionality, but it processed nearly four million people last year. I’m sure there are minor structural things to be addressed, but it’s not nonfunctional.”

Gratt said he would like to see the old stadium survive the way Fenway Park has.

It’s like the leasing office said after informing us they would be raising our rent an extortionate 9 percent: “We value good tenants but your apartment is below market.”

The metaphysical Daily News headline: “New York to Everything That Moves: Drop Dead!”

The Times’ deceptive headline — “For 20 Bucks, Is It Worth It?” — refers not to the sometimes disappointing “cheap week” chickensalmoncaesarsalad offerings but rather whether the restaurants think it’s worth it. Whose side are they on anyway?

So they lose money on truffles and fresh morels — what happened to a sense of civic duty? Some of us treat Restaurant Week as a rare opportunity to experience — Bowdlerized, no matter! — places commoners can’t afford or can’t often afford! A culinary bleacher seat, as it were. That’s why stuff like this makes me feel lazy about wanting to take a long lunch:

David Waltuck, the chef and an owner of Chanterelle, said he uses ingredients that are “maybe a little less expensive” like chicken or salmon during the Restaurant Week lunch rush. “I wouldn’t do calves’ liver or tripe or a strong fish,” he said.

Sure, skimp on the liver because it’s too much of an “acquired taste.” Harrumph! The question is whether Restaurant Week is worth it to the consumer! Yet the Times wants us to believe that restauranteurs are somehow magnanimous about it:

“When I called my fish guy last year and told him I wanted to do halibut for Restaurant Week, he told me to put down my crack pipe,” said Alexandra Guarnaschelli, chef at Butter on Lafayette Street. But her grilled halibut with squash emulsion flew out of the kitchen and became a house favorite.

So an open call to establishments participating in Restaurant Week: Pick up the damn crack pipe already! We’re still going to come — it’s addictive!

The biggest tragedy of this Times article about unairconditioned city schools is that this glorious bit of Times-ese appears in the 13th paragraph. It’s as if the reporter was scared to bring it up front! Is that dripping sweat or condescension? You make the call:

But in New York, with its sometimes majestic but aging schools, the heat’s effect seemed especially pronounced. Classrooms were like ovens by the end of the day, the students inside feeling like they were being slowly sautéed in their own perspiration. There were no reports of serious injuries, but there was misery aplenty.

See, I have qualms aplenty with the mixed metaphor here — shouldn’t it be “Classrooms were like ovens by the end of the day, the students inside feeling like they were being slowly basted in their own perspiration”? Or “Classrooms were like sauté pans by the end of the day, the students inside feeling like they were being slowly braised in their own perspiration”? Get Frank Bruni on the case — he can advise!

The Village Voice tries to digest the Queens Olympic Stadium hail mary effort:

. . . [I]t’s been quite a week for turnabouts in general. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who just last week was insisting that a Queens stadium was unworkable because there was no way to pay for it, now enthuses that it would be “one of the most wonderful things, I think, that would ever happen to Queens.” Mets owner Fred Wilpon, who had insisted on going halfsies with the public on any new stadium, now says he’ll pay construction costs out of his own pocket. . . .

How much of this is real, and how much is political posturing to convince the International Olympic Committee not to laugh off New York’s bid for the 2012 Summer Games when it meets in Singapore next month? Probably a fair bit of each.

But isn’t there a third, more devious reason? Namely, if New York’s chances for snagging the Olympics are slim to none, it’s the perfect opportunity to make empty gestures all around. It’s the equivalent of garbage time in the waning minutes of a blowout — let the scrubs get some playing time!

Knowing that the city’s bid amounts to nothing offers the Mayor the chance to dazzle Queens residents with grandiose plans to turn Willets Point into a destination. Knowing there’s no chance the Olympics will happen allows Fred Wilpon to make generous — and meaningless! — gestures to pay all the costs for a stadium. Smart, that.

You know the city’s Olympic bid chances are rapidly diminishing when people are talking about gentrifying Willets Point. Say it ain’t so! So:

A new Shea Stadium may be part of a larger transformation in Queens that would turn one of the city’s perennial eyesores into a trendy mix of retail, entertainment and housing.

The city Economic Development Corp. is sitting on 14 different development concepts for Willets Point, a 48-acre outback of junkyards and auto-body shops.

“Many of the ideas for the area are spectacular,” Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) said.

“Many of them include retail and entertainment-related complexes,” added Liu, a member of the city’s Willets Point Advisory Committee. “Housing is a component in some of the plans. Some of the plans envision a new commercial district. Some of them call for an entirely new community - residential and commercial mixes.”