Mayoral hopeful Fernando Ferrer may be facing a runoff against Anthony Weiner (whose charming “Weiner Mayor” signs could stay in rotation another couple of weeks), pending the outcome of an extremely tight vote count:

Fernando Ferrer captured the most votes in the Democratic mayoral primary last night, but a strong possibility emerged that he might have to vie in a runoff for his party’s nomination against Representative Anthony D. Weiner.

According to preliminary, unofficial results last night, Mr. Ferrer held a strong lead over Mr. Weiner, who rode an anti-establishment political message out of last place in a four-way race in just the last few weeks. But unofficial results showed that Mr. Ferrer captured 39.949 percent of the vote, a hairbreadth short of the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff on Sept 27.

Foreshadowing a fierce battle over the election results in coming days, Mr. Ferrer stopped just short of declaring victory in the Democratic primary last night, saying, “We’re almost there.” Mr. Weiner had 29 percent of the vote, and insisted that he was in the runoff.

Several thousand absentee ballots still need to be counted.

Meanwhile, Gifford Miller barely did better than perennial gadfly Christopher X. Brodeur, whose message appealed to 17,000 voters (4 percent) versus Miller’s 46,000 supporters (10 percent):

Maybe it was his pledge to eliminate all subway fares. Or perhaps it was his desultory campaign promises, as outlined in a column in The New York Press several months ago, to cap apartment rent increases at 10 percent, legalize marijuana, eliminate the posts of borough president, and install free public toilets throughout the city. Whatever the reason, more than 17,000 of the roughly 455,000 Democrats who cast primary ballots yesterday chose Mr. Brodeur for mayor over a raft of higher-profile candidates with full campaign staffs.

Mr. Brodeur, a blunt-spoken man in his late 30’s who wears his chin stubble long and his brown shaggy ponytail even longer, cast himself as a reform candidate and said he has disliked every Democrat and Republican he has ever voted for.

“I’m sick of this government’s corruption, top to bottom,” he said in a two-minute campaign spot that appeared on public-access television. And if you did not want to vote for him, he added, “You can vote for one of the typical politicians, and I’m sure that’s going to work out real well.”

The Taxi & Limousine Commission released figures showing complaints against cabbies are on the decline:

Cabbies working the city’s mean streets are getting nicer.

The number of Taxi and Limousine Commission summonses issued to cabbies for rudeness has plummeted 26%, city records show. And the decline in boorish behavior behind the wheel came even as the number of yellow cab drivers increased and taxi-related calls to the city soared

Cab drivers insist they are working hard not to come off like bastards, even when faced with rising fuel prices and nonpaying customers:

Cabbie Saghar Hussain, 37, of Brooklyn, said he treats passengers with respect - even if they walk away without paying. “Sometimes you make money, sometimes you lose money,” he said. “You don’t have to get upset, be mad with anyone.”

By way of explanation, drivers note that stress levels for those in the industry can be high, and suggested lifestyle choices to mitigate the pressure:

Ronald Lee, 61, a cab driver from Manhattan, said there are three reasons behind cabbie rudeness: the pressure to make a living with increased costs, TLC harassment and wives. “I’ve been driving 34 years and I’ve never had one complaint,” he said - quickly adding that he’s not married.

Which is stranger? That a lost tourist can roam the Upper East Side for two days or that 70 is considered elderly? The Daily News reports, you decide:

An elderly Japanese tourist was reunited with her daughter yesterday after getting lost on Fifth Ave. and spending two days wandering the upper East Side.

Takako Maeda, 70, who speaks no English, was without food, money or any recollection of the name or address of the hotel where she’s staying - the upscale Pierre at Fifth Ave. and 61st St.

“She drank water from a bottle left on the street next to a pay phone,” said Satoru Kuwajima, a Japanese man who found her yesterday.

“She walked by a police station, but didn’t think they would understand her - so she kept on walking,” he said.

Maeda was separated from her daughter on Saturday about 3:30 p.m. as they walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Motoko Maeda, 37, the daughter, told cops that she lost sight of her mother in a sudden rush of people and after a long day of sightseeing.

Police used bloodhounds in an attempt to trace the woman and found a surveillance tape that showed her walking past the entrance to the Pierre.

Yesterday, she walked into the lobby of Kuwajima’s building on E. 63rd St. and was relieved to encounter someone who spoke Japanese.

As New Yorkers go to the polls on this primary day, voters can be assured that Fernando Ferrer is ready to take principled stands. After apparently rethinking the facts behind the shooting of Amadou Diallo earlier in the campaign, the Reverend Al Sharpton has come to rescue, saying it was all just a careless mistake:

Mr. Sharpton called for black voters to unite behind Mr. Ferrer despite his controversial remark that the 1999 fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo was not a crime.

“All of us have blundered and made mistakes,” Mr. Sharpton said. Referring to the city’s first black mayor, he added: “When Dave Dinkins ran, he made a mistake with the Latino community. We asked them to keep moving. Now Mr. Ferrer has said to us that ‘I said something careless.’”

The only thing better than having to flip-flop on your positions is to have Al Sharpton do it for you!

(See also Diallo: A Tragedy or a Line from the Village Voice Power Plays blog.)

What lies beneath the murky waters of the Hudson River remains unseen by most, unless enterprising divers outfit themselves with a microphone and a camera and broadcast it back to shore:

The Hudson River at night, with the lights of Manhattan reflected and shimmering on its surface, can be a romantic and inspiring sight. What lies beneath the surface is another matter.

On Saturday, about 200 people got a rare nighttime look at life under the Hudson’s surface off Pier 26, in Lower Manhattan, from two divers outfitted with underwater cameras and microphones.

Up on the pier, the audience regularly applauded and gasped at the visions unfolding live before them on two large projection screens.

“We’re taking bets to see if we see any bodies down there,” said Daniel Edelman, 23, a graphic designer from Brooklyn who was drinking beer with a group of friends. “I know it is an old New York river stereotype. But it is certainly possible.”

But alas, gawking landlubbers were perhaps disappointed to learn that there are just a bunch of fish, oysters and crabs down there — just as well, say environmental groups, who seek to further clean up the river.

If you already thought Mayoral hopeful Fernando Ferrer was a bad guy for lying about sending his kids to public school, you might not want to hear that he was the only one of the four major Mayoral candidates to campaign yesterday, the fourth anniversary of Sept. 11, as the Post breathlessly reports:

Fernando Ferrer was ripped by families of 9/11 victims and others yesterday when he broke from tradition — by becoming the only mayoral candidate to campaign on the somber fourth anniversary of the terror attacks.

On a day when the other candidates declined to talk about politics out of respect for those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, the Democratic primary front-runner not only publicly met with the Rev. Al Sharpton to crow about winning his endorsement, but blatantly criticized main foe Anthony Weiner.

With a media horde in tow, Ferrer and Sharpton appeared together at the popular Amy Ruth’s restaurant in Harlem to discuss the minister’s 11th-hour endorsement of Ferrer. The primary election is tomorrow.

But critics — including incensed relatives of 9/11 victims — blasted the politicking as disgraceful on a day when the nation honored the 3,000 people killed on 9/11.

(Of course, there’s always the chance that the Reverend Sharpton was helping the other candidates . . .)

For his part, Ferrer responded by noting that he was eating dinner with two relatives of 9/11 victims:

Ferrer all but admitted the awkward situation in accepting Sharpton’s backing yesterday.

“I’m extremely pleased getting Rev. Sharpton’s endorsement and help. But this is not a day to talk about campaigns and tactics. It’s a day to remember what the city endured four years ago,” he said.

Sharpton said he and Ferrer were not ignoring the tragedy.

He noted that two of the young people who dined with them lost parents on 9/11, and other events they attended yesterday were in memory of the attacks.

Ferrer then went on to attack Anthony Weiner, his closest competitor, for the Congressman’s vote on the Iraq War. Weiner, who while not campaigning at a Harlem church, refused to respond to Ferrer’s comments, instead affirming that even though Sept. 11 is two days from the primary, there is something sacred about the date:

“This is Sept 11. If there is one day on the calendar that we can suspend politics, it should be today,” said Weiner, who attended a church in Harlem. “I don’t think it’s a day for politics.”

Although I’m sure the churchgoers he met on Sunday appreciate anyone praying with them, they may or may not realize that Weiner is Jewish and they may or may not have perceived his visit as campaigning. I’m just saying, is all.

No kidding, an entire Sunday Styles piece on women named Katrina and how the hurricane has affected their lives. Best catch, however, is the quote from Katrina of “Katrina and the Waves” fame:

Katrina Leskanich, the former lead singer of Katrina and the Waves, who lives in London, said that when her Web site began getting thousands of hits - more than 22,000 on Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit New Orleans - she thought it was because her new solo song was getting airplay on BBC radio.

Now she’s glad that because of a decision made a month before the storm, her new album’s release has been delayed from Sept. 5 to October. “It would have looked like the most tasteless exercise in self-promotion.”

She said she hopes her band’s 1985 hit “Walking on Sunshine” might eventually become an anthem for New Orleans recovery.

The Times profiles those jack-booted thugs who pick through your trash to determine whether you’re recycling correctly:

It was not yet sunrise in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, when Sgt. Christine Pascall pounded on the darkened front door of the three-story house on 47th Street.

A middle-aged woman wearing nothing but a bath towel stumbled to the door and opened it.

“Shoes are not recyclable,” Sergeant Pascall informed her.

The woman’s puzzlement quickly turned to annoyance as the sergeant, a member of the Department of Sanitation’s enforcement division, explained that she had found other unacceptable items in the blue recycling bag: Chinese food containers with rancid stripes of fried rice, and plastic foam meat trays and egg cartons.

The woman, who spoke little English, abruptly closed the door, refusing to reopen it. Sergeant Pascall finished writing a summons for mixing garbage with recycling, an environmental offense in a city where nearly all household trash has to be exported out of state at great expense. Then she taped a pink carbon copy of the $25 summons to the homeowner’s door.

The City collects $250,000 a year this way. But we digress:

After a year on the recycling beat, Sergeant Pascall has developed a keen eye, and when she sees a multifamily house with just one black plastic bag on the curb, she stops.

“My antennae are going up,” she said. “It’s recycling day and they don’t have anything out.”

She untied the black bag and found water jugs mixed with plastic hangars, a dirty aluminum tray and a bag of household garbage.

Another summons.

As the morning wore on, some residents stood alongside their recycling like students at a science fair waiting to be judged.

“This is a good effort,” Sergeant Pascall told Phillip Simpson, who towered over her.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Simpson said.

When she got to John Garcia’s house, though, he was scowling. “They give out tickets even though they are constantly changing the rules,” he said. “That’s a real pain.”

The sergeant inspected his recycling, rejecting metal salad tongs and a lasagna pan still specked with food. (No tongs, and the pan can be recycled only if clean.)

But sometimes the rules are too elusive even for her.

“What about this?” Mr. Garcia asked, holding up a bag of old cooking pots.

“Garbage,” she said.

“I thought any metal at all could go,” Mr. Garcia said, shaking his head.

He was right. The Sanitation Department chart says that old pots can be recycled.

But any confusion over metal is nothing compared with the misinformation about plastic. Sergeant Pascall finds unacceptable plastic in almost every bag.

“We don’t recycle Kitty Litter boxes,” she said as she poked through Felicita Jurado’s neatly bagged recycling.

“But this is plastic,” said Mrs. Jurado, wrapped in a flowered house coat and pink flowered sandals. “They say plastic recycles, so I put it in the plastics.”

“You have to look at the pictures,” Sergeant Pascall said, referring to the city’s recycling decal, which indeed does not picture cat litter.

Flustered, Mrs. Jurado removed a plastic bin the size of a picnic basket that had once held several pounds of cat litter. As she did so, John Tracey, a neighbor, walked by.

“It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he said, commiserating.

Then, pointing to the cat litter box, he asked Mrs. Jurado, “Are you going to use that?”

She said no and he took it happily, planning to recycle it in an old-fashioned, unofficial way dictated by necessity, not law.

“I’ll use it as a cooler,” he said.

On the eve of the anniversary of Sept. 11, a distressed Nicolai Ouroussoff writes in the Times that the only exciting thing planned at Ground Zero is a train station:

There has been no healing, really. Four years have passed since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the road to recovery at ground zero looks bleaker than ever. A rebuilding effort that was originally cast as a symbolic rising from the ashes has long since turned into a hallucinogenic nightmare: a roller coaster ride of grief, naïveté, recriminations, political jockeying and paranoia.

The Freedom Tower, promoted as an image of the city’s resurrection, has been transformed into a stern fortress — a symbol of a city still in the grip of fear. The World Trade Center memorial has been enveloped by a clutter of memorabilia.

. . .

On this anniversary weekend, it may be time to face up to what few have wanted to acknowledge: that nothing of value can be built at ground zero while the anguish and anxiety remain so fresh - nor while political and economic forces are eager to exploit those emotions.

I was once unwilling to recognize this. Three years ago, when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was opening its competition for the design of a master plan for ground zero, I paid a call on an older architect who had spent a lifetime navigating the byzantine planning politics of American cities. At the time, New York was full of anxious hope. A public outcry over the dull uniformity of the original renderings by the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle had sent the development corporation back to the drawing boards, and there was a sense that something bold and important might happen.

The architect, unimpressed, said flatly that the only ground zero project that was not doomed to failure was the transportation hub. Since it was devoid of symbolic importance, he explained, it would not become a political time bomb. The rest? Forget it.

I refused to believe him.

Obviously, his view was prophetic. The only promising design so far is the soaring glass hall of Santiago Calatrava’s train station, which may end up as one of the most glorious public spaces to rise in New York since the construction of Grand Central Terminal. By contrast, the rest of Daniel Libeskind’s master plan looks eerily like those original Beyer Blinder Belle proposals - though with more elaborate packaging - a somber memorial to the dead, neatly parceled off from a sea of corporate towers that could be anywhere.

The Post reports that Coney Island’s Cyclone had an accident and the family operating the landmarked rollercoaster have covered it up:

A terrifying accident that injured four riders on Coney Island’s world famous Cyclone was the real reason the roller coaster was knocked out of commission, it was revealed yesterday, not the routine maintenance the ride’s operators initially reported.

The 78-year-old coaster screeched to a dead halt during its first death-defying 85-foot drop last Saturday night when the three-car train struck a “misaligned track” at 60 mph, sending four people to the hospital with whiplash and forcing it to be shut down by the city, said Buildings Department spokeswoman Jennifer Givner.

That’s a far cry from Astroland Park manager Mark Blumenthal’s claim after the accident that the ride was shut down — midway through Labor Day weekend — for basic repairs caused by heavy usage over a busy summer season.

What really happened was every Cyclone’s riders’ worst nightmare come true, said one person who claimed, in an anonymous posting on the Web site Craigslist, to have been aboard the ride from hell that night.

“The steel track snapped, the front wheels came off the first car, sparks were flying on the wooden track,” the posting read. “Several safety bars were no longer locked in when we finally stopped, others had to be broken out of their cars.

“The broken steel track on exiting looked like three folded Z’s stacked on top of each other. The wood underneath it had snapped in several places.”

When pressed for comment, Astroland spokesman Joseph Carella admitted an accident had taken place, but said it was far less severe than the Web posting described and insisted the ride is very safe.

“It’s an old lady, and it requires a lot of maintenance, and the care that they put into this is extraordinary,” he said.

Why news of an accident at one of the city’s most well known landmarks would take a week to come to light was not immediately clear.

But Carella said the fact that the Albert family — which has run the ride since 1975 — was in the process of rebidding for the city contract to manage it had nothing to do with it.

“They made all the proper reports,” Carella said. “These people aren’t foolish enough to think that when you have such a visible attraction that this wouldn’t come out.”

Bridge and Tunnel Club was on the scene that Sunday, and thought it strange that the ride was not operating on a busy Labor Day weekend with only a hastily written sign announcing the closing. Little did anyone know . . .

The Times’ Guy Trebay takes note of preparations for Fashion Week and asks whether anyone is thinking about New Orleans. Answer — barely:

And so, even when much of the nation’s attention is focused on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, there are those this week who will cling to their determination to put across the wonders of the Maidenform Dream Bra. (Tagless, made of two-way stretch foam, it has a sweetheart neckline and is available in sizes 32A to 40DD, just so you know.) They will doggedly push the latest Robb Report findings on the highest end of the luxury market (as divined by Carol Brodie, the publication’s chief luxury officer) at a Chelsea Piers event offering a select group (the only kind, really) a chance to smoke hand-rolled Zino cigars, to try on $1 million worth of jewelry and to ride in a Grand-Craft mahogany runabout and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

And they will be pleased to explain to passers-by who stop at the Evian Pop-Up Spa on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street how important indulgences like a hot-stone massage using only rocks soaked in pure imported Evian can be in the aftermath of tragedy.

“Especially in troubled times, when people are suffering, and you are thinking of water,” said Marjan Mehrkhast, an Evian spa consultant, “it’s crucial to think about your health.”

Forgetting for a minute the wider implications to the economy at large if the housing bubble actually bursts, some renters are rejoicing at the prospect of housing prices coming down:

Here’s more grist for the bubble babble: Residential real-estate prices in Manhattan have been plummeting this summer.

The average price of a Manhattan apartment has dropped from $1.332 million in June to $1.145 million by the end of August — more than 14 percent, according to the latest monthly report by the Halstead real-estate company.

Likewise, the median price of the Big Apple’s condos and co-ops has dipped from a high of $831,250 in June to $725,000 in August, a 12 percent drop.

While the summer months have traditionally been a slow time for real estate, this year’s numbers have taken an exceptionally heavy nosedive.

. . .

In June, when the average sale price for a Manhattan apartment hit $1.3 million, it was a 30 percent increase over the previous year. But the August average price of $1.145 million is less than half the yearly upswing — about 14 percent — from $1.001 million in August 2004.

“The positive fundamentals are still there,” Heym said. “But people are starting to get a little nervous. Over the next couple of months we’ll see the flattening of prices, but they’ll still be higher than they were a year ago.”

Brokers are also hearing voices of concern from their clients.

“In the last week, I’ve had several sellers ask if they should lower their price,” said a Sotheby’s broker.

“At this point, I’m telling them not to panic. But it’s getting close to the point where I’m telling them they have to be flexible,” a term that sellers across the country have not had to focus on too seriously.

How bad has it gotten? (And to tell the truth, I’m not exactly sure what “it” is.) It’s so bad that some people are starting to reconsider Robert Moses’ legacy:

He was a nasty son-of-a-bitch, perfectly happy to screw the little guy who stood in the way of his grand projects. Eventually, Moses, who at one point held twelve city and state jobs (but never held elected office and was crushed in how one run for governor), came to believe his own massive hype. The powerbroker was more than willing to displace ordinary people who got in the way of his public works projects. “If the ends don’t justify the means,” he asked, “what does?”

It’s a good question, especially in a city like ours, where little gets built and no one—certainly not the mayor or his Democratic rivals—has offered a city-sized vision.

(Sure, sure, it’s the contrarian New York Press, but still . . .)

I feel remiss for not paying enough attention to the race for Manhattan district attorney between 86-year-old longtime DA Robert Morgenthau and 63-year-old “upstart” Leslie Crocker Snyder. Not only do both candidates have connections to Law & Order but according to the Times, the race also involves a healthy dose of small-scale thuggery:

Her latest television ads have tweaked him for refusing invitations from several television channels to debate her. That issue has led to several recent confrontations - including the Tuesday night scuffle.

It occurred after Ms. Snyder and Mr. Morgenthau appeared - separately but sequentially - at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street. As Mr. Morgenthau left the center and walked slowly east on 13th Street with members of his staff and his police detail, a man in a suit carrying a large Snyder sign on a stick followed the group, asking loudly whether Mr. Morgenthau would debate Ms. Snyder.

What happened next is in dispute, but eventually Eben Bronfman, of Mr. Morgenthau’s staff, confronted the man and ended up pushing him against a fence as Mr. Morgenthau got into a black S.U.V. A Morgenthau volunteer nearby screamed that the Snyder supporter had trampled on her and torn the campaign button from her shirt.

The man with the sign would not give a reporter his name or say whether he was employed by the Snyder campaign, but he was later identified by Ms. Snyder’s camp as Carlos Laracea of White Plains, the campaign’s director of minority outreach. Mr. Laracea said that Mr. Bronfman had choked him. “I never laid a hand on them,” Mr. Laracea said, but “he got physical with me.”

Now that they don’t have to worry about black people, restauranteurs are discovering new ways to accommodate everyone’s inflated ego:

For there to be good seats, there must, after all, also be bad seats. These days, however, even the most au courant restaurateurs have a good reason to avoid that toxic combustion of self-important diner and questionable seat: money. Faced with an increasingly competitive marketplace and ever-savvier diners, the owners of many new restaurants have taken pains to maximize the number of appealing seats.

“We just try to seat everybody in the way we feel will make the maximum numbers in the dining room,” said Amy Sacco, the owner of Bette, who has built a groovy reputation as the impresario of places like Bungalow 8.

An optimist might call this quest quixotic; a realist might call it mendacity. Human nature being what it is, you can put three tables in a room and one - the closest to the window or the one where Nicole Kidman sat last week - will become more desirable.

Restaurateurs, then, must figure out how to cultivate the glow of celebrity without alienating the bulk of their paying clientele. This is easier to do at small places (merely getting into Serge Becker’s La Esquina is enough), and the exhaustive focus on food at places like Per Se can effectively sublimate status anxiety.

The New York Times notes that fine dining establishments are almost exclusively patronized by white people:

With summer drawing to a close New York diners will soon begin their fall migration back to the city’s top restaurants. But if they fly to pattern, only a few blacks, at most, will join the flock.

That helps explain why at Chanterelle one night, I almost became my own worst nightmare. The sight of a black couple strolling in struck me as so bizarre that I swiveled in my seat, bug-eyed, to trail them through all that creamy quiet. I say “almost” because my husband put an end to it with a merciful hiss: “Stop staring.”

Whoa! What kind of condescending, clueless Times piece is this? Don’t worry, writer Diane Cardwell is black! And this is a first-person account! Phew:

Well, yes, I was staring, but not just because they were black. Suddenly, for a change, I was not the only black customer in the room.

Still, is this sort of inquiry “asking the tough questions” or is it just . . . weird? Observations like steakhouses are more integrated than Nobu and Babbo, both of which are still more integrated than, say, Chanterelle? I say “weird”:

All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following. “That kind of chichi food doesn’t have long roots in the African-American community,” [president of the Multicultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance] Mr. [Gerald] Fernandez said.

But they may soon sprout. One night at a gala at Chelsea Market for the Black Culinarian Alliance, a racially mixed crowd sipped fine wine and nibbled elaborate hors d’oeuvres and specialty cheeses, enjoying an event billed as bridging the cultural divide among different ethnic groups and their cuisines.

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .

People, if you have an unwanted sheep please do not just dump it in the cemetery. Not only is it cruel but it also makes for bad puns in the Daily News, like “Ewe won’t believe this: Sheep was on the lamb.”

With gas prices hovering near four dollars a gallon, cab drivers must work that much harder, and you cheap-asses aren’t helping any:

New York cabbies say outrageous gas prices have squeezed their wallets thin - but passengers aren’t helping them out with fatter tips.

“Hah! Forget about tipping better,” laughed cabbie Ruben Abramov, 38, of Fresh Meadows, Queens. “Somebody gets in a cab, they want to spend as little as possible. So I have to spend more time on the road.”

Cabbies said yesterday they pump about $45 a day into their gas tanks - up $10 or so from a week ago and as much as $20 from more than a year ago.

But fares - and tips - have held steady. So the drivers are spending more time behind the wheel and still going home with less money in their pockets.

Abner Simon of Queens Village described filling his tank for $3.59 a gallon, waiting three hours at LaGuardia Airport, driving a woman into Manhattan for a $27.80 fare - and getting only $30 for the trip.

With primary campaigns heading into their final week, mayoral candidates score cheap and easy political points by slamming the President’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Grandstanding works!

Meanwhile, one of the like 19,000 candidates for Manhattan Borough President scores even cheaper and easier points by mentioning George Bush in television spot, then getting the unbelievable good fortune to have the local Fox affiliate refuse to run the ad. Huge, huge coverage ensues:

A local television station, WNYW/Channel 5, is refusing to run a provocative advertisement promoting a Democratic candidate for Manhattan borough president. And the campaign of the candidate, Brian Ellner, is charging that the station is doing so because the spot takes a swipe at President Bush.

The 30-second ad features Mr. Bush’s face superimposed upon a middle-aged man’s naked torso as Mr. Ellner says of the president that “the emperor has no clothes.” Mr. Ellner also introduces his partner, Simon Holloway, in the spot - which the campaign says is the first time in city history that a gay candidate has introduced his or her partner in a campaign commercial.

Mr. Ellner said in an interview yesterday that representatives of Channel 5, a Fox affiliate, had told his campaign that they would not show the advertisement because it was “in poor taste.”

“It’s pretty clear it’s an anti-free speech decision because of our criticism of the president,” Mr. Ellner said.

“It’s untenable and in my view it’s anti-American.” He added that the rejection of the ad was “disrespectful to voters.”

After giving the story big play, the Times, to its credit, calls a spade whatever they call spades:

Mr. Ellner, 35, a lawyer who advised Mark Green’s mayoral campaign in 2001, is not considered a favorite to win the borough president’s race and his advertisement was devised in part to jar voters into paying attention to his candidacy in a field of nine Democrats running for Manhattan borough president in next Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Ellner’s team devised the spot in large part to appeal to gays and lesbians, and the borough’s more liberal voters in general. Fox’s refusal to run the ad is likely to help Mr. Ellner’s aims.

Where’s Bernie Goetz — post-vigilante, shorthand for loopy public relations stunts — when you need him? Oh, that’s right, he’s running for Public Advocate, too!

The Times studied the situation and determined that Manhattan has the widest income gap of any county in the nation, confirming that the borough is for the very rich or, I guess just the very rich:

Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is only about 60 blocks from the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, but they might as well be light years apart. They epitomize the highest- and lowest-earning census tracts in Manhattan, where the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than in any other county in the country.

That finding, in an analysis conducted for The New York Times, dovetails with other new regional economic research, which identifies the Bronx as the poorest urban county in the country and suggests that the middle class in New York State is being depleted.

The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make - $365,826 compared with $7,047 - which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia, according to the Times analysis of 2000 census data. Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents.

That represents a substantial widening of the income gap from previous years. In 1980, the top fifth of earners made 21 times what the bottom fifth made in Manhattan, which ranked 17th among the nation’s counties in income disparity.

Of course you can’t mention Trump Tower in the first paragraph without setting up something special in the last paragraph (see Chekhov’s gun). Something special like a quote from The Donald himself (!), who is put in the untenable position of having to defend the income gap:

“The income gap, while supposedly increasing, seems to be a natural phenomenon,” said the developer Donald J. Trump, who lives in Trump Tower. “Times have been good, but times have been good for many people and many classes of people. I think there is a very large middle class - but not in this section, by the way.”

Tickets are on sale for the soon-to-be-reopened observation decks on Rockefeller Center’s centerpiece RCA/GE Building.

(Credit where due.)

See also: Daniel Okrent’s Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center.

Low prices and easy access to midtown mean that cocaine is enjoying a renaissance. The New York Press whispers that it’s worse than you think:

When surveying the cocaine scene, it’s almost tempting to ask, New York-style (”Is Manhattan the New Brooklyn?” “Is Abstinence the New Sex?”), whether coke is the new weed–or at least the new coke. In terms of provenance (Medellin cartel) and potency (got talc?), though, coke is pretty much what it’s always been. What’s changed is who’s doing it, where, and why.

. . .

While the Mayflower set may have discovered some sense of decorum toward the drug, not all among the city elites have. Two acquaintances recently went into a meeting with a powerful business executive and were interrupted twice: first when the businessman pulled out a bag and took a toot, and again when his beautiful young daughter popped in to help herself to a bag for later.

Afterward, the pair was invited out for a drink by the daughter, who it turned out was in the eighth grade at an expensive parochial school. Lugging about a volume of Dante, she told them that most of her friends used coke, and that she had her own dealers but visited her father because he had better stuff.

If this sounds unbelievable, recast it with marijuana in place of cocaine. It’s disgusting, but not implausible—not even shocking, really. Perhaps coke is the new weed after all.

Julian Dibbell writes up the Big Map in the Village Voice’s Site Specific feature.

Lower Manhattan’s Skyscraper Museum asked a group of architectural heavyweights which of Manhattan’s many buildings were the best. The American Radiator Building did not make the cut:

One hundred architects, brokers, builders, critics, developers, engineers, historians, lawyers, officials, owners, planners and scholars were asked this summer by the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan to choose their 10 favorites among 25 existing towers, from the Park Row Building (1899) to the Time Warner Center (2004).

Ninety of them named William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building of 1930, which may come as close as any - despite or because of its ebullient eccentricity - to expressing New York’s cloud-piercing ambitions.

The surprising runner-up was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building of 1958, which is the antithesis of Chrysler: cool, tranquil, rectangular and restrained. What they have in common is that both express the spirit of their times, Chrysler playing a jazz-age flapper to Seagram’s man in the gray flannel suit.

Before you slap your forehead and shout, “What about the American Radiator Building?” know that the survey’s respondents barely concealed their naked self-interest:

Neither the survey nor the answers were strictly scientific. Respondents tended to gravitate toward towers with which they are personally involved.

For instance, the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (now the G.E. Building), was the No. 1 choice of Jerry Speyer of Tishman Speyer Properties, which co-owns Rockefeller Center; Samuel H. Lindenbaum, a land-use lawyer who represents the center; Howard J. Rubenstein, a public-relations executive whose firm promotes the center; and Daniel Okrent, the former public editor of The New York Times, whose 2003 book, “Great Fortune,” chronicled the history of the center.

Donald J. Trump checked off none of the buildings proposed by the museum but instead nominated Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower and 40 Wall Street. Yes, that would be the Trump Building.

That’s not to say that all respondents didn’t take the survey seriously:

There were some exceptions to self involvement. I. M. Pei did not chose 88 Pine Street, which his firm designed and where it has its office. But the building was among those picked by Robert B. Tierney, the chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Perhaps there is a designation in its future, though Mr. Tierney characterized the choice as one of personal affection and cautioned, “Nothing ‘official’ should be inferred.”

The World Trade Center was not on the list and did not appear as a write-in on anyone’s ballot. Leslie E. Robertson, a chief engineer of the twin towers, chose the Woolworth Building as his personal favorite. It, too, was once the tallest building in the world, 40 years before the topping out of 1 World Trade Center.

Survey results at the Skyscraper Museum’s website along with the executive summary:

Number 1 by a landslide is the Chrysler Building, making the list of 9 out of 10 participants, with 18 singling it out as their absolute Favorite. The Seagram Building took second place with 76 votes, while the Woolworth and Flatiron buildings tied with 73. The Empire State Building and Lever House ran a dead heat for fifth, followed closely by the RCA Building / 30 Rockefeller Center. Trailing these stars by more than twenty votes were the 1930 McGraw-Hill Building, the CBS Building / Black Rock, and the UN Secretariat.

I know the Seagram Building is historical and all, but seriously, what about the American Radiator Building?

Can I get a what-what?

How do we know New York has returned to normal four years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks? The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is organizing an exhibit to commemorate Sept. 11. One of the pieces features an image of Bush with a gun to his head. The Daily News is outraged! And no one involved with the exhibit understands why (”we’re not out to make political statements”).