Trying to build a subscriber base? You can’t do much worse than salacious features about bisexual magnet school students:

The cuddle puddle may be where a flirtation begins, but parties, not surprisingly, are where most of the real action takes place. In parentless apartments, the kids are free to “make the rounds,” as they call it, and move their more-than-kissing hookups with both genders behind locked bathroom doors or onto coat-laden beds. Even for bisexual girls there is, admittedly, a Girls Gone Wild aspect to these evenings. Some girls do hook up with other girls solely to please the guys who watch, and it can be difficult to distinguish between the behavior of someone who is legitimately sexually interested and someone who wants to impress the boy across the room. Alair is quick to disparage this behavior — “It kinda grosses me out. It can’t be like, this could be fun . . . is anyone watching my chest heave?” — but Jane sees it as empowering. “I take advantage of it because manipulating boys is fun as hell. Boys make out with boys for our benefit as well. So it’s not just one way. It’s very fair.”

Last time we read about Joel Krupnik, his front-yard Christmas display was freaking out the neighbors. Today we learn that he is now accused of smearing Chihuahua feces in the hair and on the clothes of its 13-year-old owner:

The Manhattan real-estate dealer who terrified neighborhood kids at Christmas with a grotesque display of a bloody Santa yesterday cursed a 13-year-old girl and smeared dog feces in her hair after her Chihuahua pooped on his sidewalk, cops said.

Joel Krupnik, 57, allegedly went ballistic when he spotted 4-pound Bambi relieving himself in front of Krupnik’s $3 million brownstone at 318 E. 18th St. as the girl took her pet for a walk.

A furious Krupnik picked up what Bambi left behind and trailed the unsuspecting girl — whose family asked that her name not be printed — to the vestibule of her nearby apartment building, authorities said.

The hulking, 6-foot-2, 250-pound man cursed the terrified teen, then smeared the dog feces into her hair, according to cops and her mother.

Then he smeared it across her Catholic-school uniform jacket, according to the girl’s outraged mom.

“She was scared and she was traumatized,” the mom said.

“This man followed her home and followed her into her building and started cursing at her.

“She’s always picking it up, but it just so happened that Bambi did it in front of his house, but there was a tree there and my daughter didn’t see him go.”

After the attack, the girl ran to her apartment and called her mom — a single parent and buyer in the fashion industry — who rushed home.

The mother went to Krupnik’s house to confront him. When his wife refused to open the door, the mom went to cops.

“I was upset and angry, but he wouldn’t come to the door,” she said.

“She’s just a baby. She’s scared and afraid. He’s the creepiest person in the neighborhood. He’s not friendly at all. He’s scary looking.”

Cops busted Krupnik for criminal mischief and menacing, and he was expected to spend the night in custody.

The mom said when cops told Krupnik the girl was only 13, he said dismissively that he thought she was older.

A school just a mile away from LaGuardia Airport in East Elmhurst finally will be soundproofed:

This time next year, “takeoff” and “landing” will no longer be dirty words at Msgr. McClancy Memorial High School.

The East Elmhurst school, located about a mile from LaGuardia Airport, is being soundproofed by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority as part of their joint Noise Abatement Program. School officials expect the $7.2 million project, including the installation of a state-of-the-art heating and air-conditioning system, to be completed in December.

. . .

On sunny days, students and teachers are often annoyed by the sounds of airplanes flying overhead. But Melito explained that when the skies get cloudy, planes fly even lower than usual and pass by every three to five minutes.

The situation is nothing new at McClancy, which has been coping with the noise ever since it was first opened by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in 1956.

“You would have to stop the class, wait until the plane finished and then restart the class,” remembered Brother James O’Grady, the school’s principal from 1979 to 1984.

Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union is engaged in a meaningful and constructive debate with itself as the organization develops its latest negotiating position:

A burly transit union dissident has been charged with beating a union staffer aligned with Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, the Daily News has learned.

“This is a message for Toussaint,” assault suspect Christopher Magwood, 46, allegedly told victim James Mahoney during the incident at a Manhattan bus depot, Mahoney said yesterday.

Magwood — who is about 6-feet-3 and weighs around 300 pounds — was arrested this month on misdemeanor assault and harassment charges, Manhattan prosecutors confirmed yesterday.

He is a bus driver who sits on Local 100’s executive board. But Magwood has ties to a previous administration that lost power when Toussaint was elected, and he regularly opposes the union boss.

Mahoney — about 5-feet-5 and 180 pounds — works on retiree issues for Toussaint and organized protests leading up to last month’s illegal three-day transit strike.

The alleged TWU smackdown is among the topics the executive board is expected to discuss today at its first meeting since workers rejected a tentative contract deal by just seven votes this month.

The contract’s rejection highlighted dissent in the union, which has a history of tumultuous politics.

Mahoney, 56, was at the Quill Depot in Hell’s Kitchen on Nov. 15 to organize bus workers when, he said, he was attacked by a “ranting and raving” Magwood.

The bus driver shoved Mahoney’s head against the wall of an elevator, according to a criminal complaint.

“It hurt like hell,” Mahoney said yesterday.

Mahoney said he suffered bruises to his face and still has neck pain.

(Gratuitous On The Waterfront reference poached from here.)

The Daily News reports on a pilot project this spring to use EZ-Pass-like plastic payment cards in place of Metrocards:

It could be the beginning of the end of the line for the MetroCard.

Manhattan subway riders on the Lexington Ave. line soon will be able to pass through turnstiles by holding plastic payment cards — or tags small enough to fit on key chains — in front of electronic readers, authorities said yesterday.

That could mean speedier trips through turnstiles that sometimes reject MetroCards, which rendered tokens obsolete two years ago.

“No more multiple swiping,” cheered Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the New York City Transit Riders Council, which has clamored for “smart card” technology in the tubes for years.

So-called smart cards use computer chips to transmit information and are increasingly being used to pay for mass transportation and other purchases across the country.

A total of 26 stations will be rigged for a six-month pilot program, set to start this spring, involving the MTA, Citigroup and MasterCard.

They will include all the Lexington Ave. stations in Manhattan, the 23rd St./Ely Ave. station (E,V) in Queens and Jay St./Borough Hall (A,C,F) in Brooklyn.

It’s a significant step toward the creation of a single payment pass for subways, buses and commuter railroad trains in the tristate region.

Latey we’ve been seeing examples of how the economics of New York City dictate that full-fledged, non-related adults live together, sometimes four to an apartment, regardless of one’s budget. Now we must revise this to say that there are actually full-fledged adults who are related but not sleeping together sharing living spaces, regardless of their budgets: “Sibling Seeks Same to Share Apartment”.

You might have assumed that siblings live together out of economic necessity but it’s actually more complicated than that:

While siblings have sometimes lived together in middle or old age out of necessity, some psychologists and researchers of sibling relationships say that young adult brothers and sisters who become roommates could be laying the foundation for a lifelong support system. Siblings are often close as children, become distant during adolescence and then increasingly reliant on each other as adults, through parenthood, career changes, divorce and old age, said Victor Cicirelli, a professor of psychology at Purdue University.

Kristin Meyer, 27, who lives in Brooklyn with her sister, Alessandra, 24, said she wanted to have her personal photos in her living room. “The only way to do that was to live with my sister,” she said.

Experts note the benefits of rooming with your sibling:

Self-selection assures that sibling-roommates are probably on solid footing to begin with, said Michael D. Kahn, an author of “The Sibling Bond.”

And when they don’t get along, siblings tend to resolve conflicts swiftly and bluntly. “I threw a bottle of Fantastik at her,” Kristin said of a recent time Alessandra angered her by using Windex to clean their kitchen table.

Still, there are clear disadvantages:

But sibling roommates might not be comfortable with each other’s casual relationships, making one less apt to bring that toothsome bartender back to their shared quarters. “The weirdness comes in when you’re potentially dating a lot of people,” Kristin Meyer said. “It’s not something you want your sister to know. If it’s a roommate, you can get away with it.”

Today’s 61 degrees (so far!) serves as a gentle reminder of how out of touch Metropolitan Diary can be. See, in particular, today’s “January Lament”: “The weather shows it’s not July/and empathy’s in short supply.”

Has this person ventured outside in, I don’t know, the last 30 days? Because it’s not just today — the Sun reported on the warm weather — this January is one of the top ten warmest ever — back on January 11th:

In Midtown yesterday, it was evident that the recent bout of unusually warm weather is beginning to affect people’s perceptions of winter.

Some wore scarves but not jackets; others discarded all the trappings of the season and simply wore T-shirts.

Not that yesterday was a record breaker for warmth: The mercury in Central Park topped out at 49, 6 degrees above normal but 11 short of the record set in 1876. Monday was the record-setting day, when the temperature climbed to 60 at La Guardia Airport, shattering the record of 50 set in 1998.

. . .

So far this year, temperatures have dipped below freezing only three times, according to the National Weather Service. Normally by January, the jet stream is blowing cold air from Canada through the steel and concrete canyons of the city.

“Typically, by this time of year, things have shifted around where the northern branch of the jet stream has taken over, but that hasn’t happened yet, and it doesn’t look like it will happen soon,” a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, Adrienne Leptich, said.

Instead, warm air from the west and south has kept temperatures high. Warm days are expected for the rest of the week, with the warmest weather coming Friday, when temperatures could reach 60.

Why of course we know who you are, sir! Please, let me show you to your table:

If you think there’s no such thing as a free lunch, then meet Mac Montandon.

The 34-year-old free-lance writer from Brooklyn lived high on the hog in the Big Apple for five days, scoring not only free lunches, but breakfasts, dinners, lodging, theater tickets, booze — even an appointment for a complimentary colonic.

“I didn’t do it to be malicious, it was more of a curiosity — just how far could I push it?” Montandon, who chronicled the adventure for his Web log www.blacktable.com, told The Post.

To see just how far p.r. reps would go to get publicity for their clients, Montandon printed up business cards for seven fictitious magazines with ridiculous premises. Next, he hit the phones, schmoozing publicists about featuring their products in his mags.

The freebies and invitations rolled in, including a costume party thrown by the Hearst family in an Upper East Side mansion, where he hobnobbed with Ivana Trump; meals at the Gramercy Tavern and Tavern on the Green; “Sweeney Todd” tickets on Broadway; and lodging in Brooklyn B&Bs.

“If this was my full-time job, I could have gotten a lot more,” he said.

“I’m fairly certain I could have acquired a Smith & Wesson pistol, a karaoke machine, hockey equipment, Trojan condoms, a night at a sleep-therapy lab, Canadian bird-flu vaccine, and nights at the Hilton and Trump International Hotel.”

See also: The Best Things In Life Are Given To You By Publicists: How To Score Loads Of Free Shit.

Don’t restaurants have slim profit margins? Apparently some don’t think so:

A Manhattan Realtor claims she got a nasty surprise at Jean Georges Vongerichten’s swank three-star restaurant in Columbus Circle when she bit into a blackberry and chomped down hard on a small black pebble.

Joanna Cutler claims she bit the berry hard enough to shatter a bridge during the meal on Feb. 5, 2003.

Cutler — whose suit describes the pebble as a “pit” — claims she had to undergo emergency oral surgery and get dental implants.

“I have good taste, perhaps not in dessert,” said Cutler, who runs Joanna Cutler Real Estate.

In her lawsuit, filed Jan. 19 in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Cutler accuses Jean Georges restaurant, the crown jewel in Vongerichten’s culinary empire, of serving her the bad berry in a fruit plate. She is seeking $500,000 — a hefty tab, even for the famed French culinary master.

“It’s a big claim for a $16 dessert,” Vongerichten told The Post.

The Daily News reports that many small businesses took advantage of federal recovery grants following 9/11:

Donald Trump, the Rockefeller Group and Ford Models were among the tycoons and huge corporations that received federal 9/11 recovery grants earmarked by Congress for small businesses, a Daily News investigation has found.

Other unlikely recipients include subsidiaries of corporate giants Dell Inc., Morgan Stanley, The AXA Group and the Bank of China, records show.

Even World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s company qualified for some small-business recovery aid.

The firms were allowed to collect small-business grants because the state agency that dished out the free money, the Empire State Development Corp., ignored the federal definition of a small business and adopted a much looser standard.

The ESDC used employee counts — setting the maximum for its $556 million Business Recovery Grant program at 500 workers — to determine whether applicants were small businesses.

Federal law requires that the size category of the types of businesses most common in lower Manhattan — finance, insurance, real estate and law firms — be determined based on annual revenue. Only the wholesale, manufacturing and mining sectors — obviously uncommon downtown — are measured by number of employees.

Also, in totaling the number of employees, the ESDC didn’t require applicants to include employees of subsidiaries and other affiliated businesses. Federal regulations require that linked companies are included in determining whether a business is small. The News found dozens of examples of large firms slipping through as small ones.

One couldn’t tell from ESDC records, for example, that “40 Wall Street LLC” is owned by Trump.

The Donald bills himself as the “largest real estate developer in New York,” Last week, Trump sued a New York Times reporter for concluding in a book that the host of “The Apprentice” isn’t a billionaire.

But the ESDC’s rules transformed Trump into a small-business man. His company collected a $150,000 grant for losses at 40 Wall St. The grant application describes the corporation through which Trump owns that building as having 28 employees and $26.8 million in annual revenues.

That passed the ESDC’s small business test of less than 500 employees. But the revenue amount would put the single Trump property over the federal definition of a small business — which is $6 million annually for lessors of nonresidential buildings.

See who else cashed in. Names like “Dell,” “AXA Group,” “The Bank of China” and “Tamir Sapir” abound.

If you find yourself on the trackbed in the headlights of an oncoming subway car, roll into the trough between the rails. Just ask this guy:

Being a subway buff saved Daniel Silverio’s life — he knew exactly what to do when he stumbled from a downtown Wall Street subway platform into the path of a No. 2 train.

“I was walking on the platform when I hit something or bumped into something — I really can’t recall,” Silverio, 29, said yesterday from a bed at Bellevue Hospital, a day after his harrowing brush with death.

“I remember being airborne, and the train coming my way.”

Silverio, a stockbroker from Brooklyn, had the presence of mind to roll into the trough between the track rails — and luckily for him, the skilled train operator hit the brakes in the nick of time.

“The next thing I knew, I wake up and look over and see the third rail,” Silverio said.

“When I was down there, I knew not to touch anything.”

. . .

When he was a kid, his pals teased him about his being a transit nerd. “I used to be ridiculed,” Silverio said. “For once in my life it came in handy.”

The Transport Workers Union wants to penalize workers who crossed the picket line by fining them, the Daily News reports:

A Transport Workers Union Local 100 committee passed a resolution earlier this week mandating strikebreakers pay fines to the union’s Widows and Orphans Fund.

The fines would mirror those being imposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the more than 33,000 bus and subway workers who walked off the job Dec. 20. That’s two days for each day of the strike — or six days’ worth of wages.

“Those who crossed the picket line willfully damaged our ability to sustain the picket and jeopardized our ability to organize any necessary future strike action,” the track division committee said in a statement.

The resolution now goes to the local’s executive board, which meets Tuesday. It also would strip strikebreakers of their seniority privileges — the ticket to choice assignments with the best conditions and overtime opportunities.

How is this not like the mafia?

Yesterday the Daily News reported about the $150,000 Valentine’s Day extravaganza. Today, they highlight the White Castle Valentine’s Day special:

White Castle wants couples who love little burgers as much as each other to share Valentine’s Day romance over a bag of belly bombs. They’re even taking reservations.

“Some people come for a laugh, but most have a story to tell about their first date at a White Castle, or maybe they went there after the prom,” said Kelly Collins, a marketing supervisor for the chain, who said in other cities some dates arrive blindfolded or in limos.

Next month, the fast-food chain famous for its bite-size burgers will offer a Valentine’s Day experience - a far cry from the $150,000 extravaganza offered by the Buckingham Hotel in midtown that was profiled in yesterday’s Daily News.

That romantic getaway featured a private jet, penthouse suite, Nobu dinner, champagne and a Fifth Avenue shopping spree. But V-Day at White Castle means 49-cent hamburgers you can buy by the sack.

Canoodling couples will arrive at the franchise of their choosing - 48 in the New York area are participating in the promotion - and be greeted at the door by a hostess dressed to the nines, instead of in the usual White Castle uniform.

The lovers will then be escorted to their cloth-covered, candlelit table as romantic music is piped in.

“People love this,” said Collins.

Well, maybe not everyone.

“I wouldn’t dump him but I would laugh and say, ‘Let’s leave,’” said Edie Sherman, 26, who has been with her boyfriend for seven years.

“I wouldn’t dare for Valentine’s Day. Any other day, I would, but not Valentine’s Day,” said Mike Mazzeo, 20, who has been dating for five months. “What would she tell her girlfriends?”

I love it — first, Best of Greenpoint Aluminum and Vinyl Siding, now the remix [Link via].

And here we go again. The MTA puts out their first post-rejection offer, one that is worse than what was agreed to following the strike:

Some labor experts said the authority’s move was intended to pressure union leaders to accept binding arbitration — but was likely to heighten labor unrest.

The authority’s new offer keeps the provision that union members disliked most, a requirement that workers begin contributing 1.5 percent of their wages toward health-insurance premiums, and revives a proposal that had been taken off the table, that new workers contribute more to their pensions than current workers. It also includes provisions dropped early in the negotiations, like the expansion of one-person train operation.

In addition, the authority’s new offer eliminates a provision that delighted many workers — a pension refund that would give thousands of dollars to about 20,000 union members who made overpayments from 1994 to 2001.

The offer added yet another surprise chapter to a labor epic that led to failed negotiations in December, a 60-hour strike, a hard-wrought agreement that ended the walkout, and then, finally, the general membership’s rejecting the overall contract settlement by just 7 votes.

While making its new, tougher offer, the transportation authority took steps to move the dispute to binding arbitration.

While some experts said the offer increased the possibility of another strike, others described it as a tactical move devised to show dissidents that the deal rejected last week was fair. Despite the request for arbitration, both sides could still come together to reach a new deal. A spokesman for Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union said last night that the union’s leaders were studying the authority’s new proposal and were not ready to comment.

Under the guise of a followup story about sleeper agent Wayne “Rip Van” Wiggins, the Post puts out a clear call for yet more cellphone pictures of sleeping agents:

Station agents, this is your wake-up call.

A Post reader spied yet another transit snorer dozing in his booth, and the paper has received a half-dozen similar reports yesterday from straphangers who didn’t have a camera handy.

“I can’t believe these guys are paid to sleep,” said Frank Donati, who spotted this agent taking a 7:45 a.m. nap last Friday at the Northern Boulevard station on the R line.

For historical reference, see Mountain Men of the Gila:

The most historically significant of the Gila mountain men was a contemporary of [James Ohio] Pattie’s named James Kirker (1793-1853). Kirker arrived at the Gila trapper’s headquarters, the Santa Rita copper mines, in 1826, and he stayed for a decade at least, trapping the Gila streams and acting as a guard, scout and manager of the mines. By his own account he was “highly successful” as a trapper. According to William C. McGaw, author of the Kirker biography, Savage Scene, Kirker was once gone off in the wilderness, hunting and trapping, for 18 months! As late as 1837, when beaver were of little economic consequence due to their scarcity, Kirker emerged from the Gila Wilderness with over 1,000 beaver pelts, only to lose the entirety to an Indian raid.

But Kirker would be of minor historical interest had his career ended with beaver trapping. Instead, following the Apache uprising in 1837, Kirker turned to a more lucrative pursuit: scalp hunting. Hiring out to the Mexican government at $200 per scalp, Kirker led vigilantes of 50 to 100 men, many of them Shawnee and Delaware Indians, on punitive expeditions against the Apaches. The scourge lasted a half dozen years and ranged over the wilderness, from Taos to Santa Rita to Chihuahua City. The toll of Apache dead eventually exceeded 500; the scalps hung in gruesome display in the Ciudad Chihuahua square. One of Kirker’s recruits, James Hobbs, wrote: “We would fight certain tribes . . . for the fun of the thing, and for common humanity, even if we were not rewarded for every scalp.”

This Valentine’s Day, sign up for the Buckingham Hotel’s $150,000 “Most Romantic Weekend In The Universe” package, hyperbole gladly included:

“Imagine being whisked to New York City on a private jet for a series of remarkable and continually wonderful moments,” said Stephen Shapiro, the Buckingham’s hotelier. “It’s really a dream come true.”

Offered for the first time, the eye-poppingly extravagant package is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The lucky couple will be whisked to New York from anywhere in the continental U.S. in their very own G4 jet.

Upon touchdown, a limousine will take the canoodling duo to the hotel as a CD of “The Most Romantic Classical Music in the Universe,” compiled by the Buckingham, plays inside.

After having the most romantic classical music in the universe revealed (in itself priceless!), guests will enjoy The Most Romantic Central Park Horse-Drawn Carriage Ride In The Universe, tall tale-telling* carriage driver included:

The room is a 2,200-square-foot triplex penthouse with a fireplace and a Steinway baby grand piano. The master bedroom has windows on every wall and it opens to a 1,400-square-foot terrace with views of Central Park and beyond.

“In February, it’s a little chilly on the terrace, but if you’re with your sweetheart, perhaps you won’t notice,” said Shapiro.

After the high-spending twosome gets settled, they will be treated to a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park. The sunset jaunt will culminate in front of a park bench named in the couple’s honor with an inscribed plaque.

But wait! There’s more:

A candlelit dinner in the room catered by Nobu Fifty Seven is next. Following dinner, a pianist will serenade the couple as they share a champagne toast.

“Imagine that — you don’t even have to put your clothes on,” Shapiro said.

In the morning, the couple will receive a tour of the famously upscale stores along Fifth Ave. After already forking over $150,000, they will finally have their chance to sink even more cash into the city’s economy.

But even if they don’t purchase anything, the tandem won’t be going home empty-handed. They will receive an 18-karat gold lyre charm from Tiffany’s, a $5,000 painting from the Fuller building’s art gallery, two opera glasses from Lincoln Center and a two-CD box set from Carnegie Hall.

No one has signed up yet.

*On the veracity of guides in the tourism industry, see here.

The Post reports on a sexual harrassment suit filed against Knicks President and NBA Hall-of-Famer Isiah Thomas:

Isiah Thomas is a foul-mouthed, slobbering harasser who propositioned the Knicks’ former top marketing exec for sex — and even plotted to lure opposing teams to boozy strip joints to throw off their games, an explosive new lawsuit charges.

“I know you think I’m inappropriate, but I’m in love with you,” Knick President Thomas allegedly cooed to statuesque, then-Vice President Anucha Browne Sanders, according to her suit, which was filed in Manhattan yesterday.

But the salacious details aren’t what is interesting. Instead, check out Thomas’ inventive James-Bondish strategy to throw off visiting teams:

One source close to the Knick prez insisted that Thomas “is a happily married man — I don’t think [Sanders] was even on his radar. ”

But Sanders — a former IBM honcho with an impressive record who once helped oversee marketing for that firm’s Olympics sponsorship — charges that Thomas’ repulsive behavior wasn’t limited to her.

In October 2004, “a female employee of the Knicks told Sanders that Thomas had instructed her to flirt with certain men connected to the game and make them happy,” her suit alleges.

Then early last year, “Thomas told [her] he was pushing to get more Sunday noon games on the schedule,” the lawsuit says.

“Thomas said he was working with the concierges of the hotels frequented by the visiting teams to have the concierges direct players to certain nightclubs — including strip clubs — that Thomas had established relationships with.

“Thomas said that his plan was to induce visiting players to go to these clubs on Saturday night and get them intoxicated so that they would not be prepared to play on Sunday,” she says in the suit.

The question is whether the strategy worked. The 2004-05 Knicks went 33-49, 22-19 at home — their worst home record since the 2001-02 season.

A gentle reminder never to get on the Post’s bad side:

Wayne Wiggins, 37, the subway-station agent caught snoozing on the clock Sunday, has a history of sleepworking — and even brags to friends and relatives about getting paid for nap time, sources said yesterday.

He earned almost $77,000 last year sitting, and sometimes snoring, in his booth but, given his disciplinary record — including at least one citation for sleeping — transit sources say the MTA may soon be singing him a lulla-bye-bye.

“I thought he learned his lesson,” Wiggins’ 15-year-old son, Kevon, told The Post. “But he does seem to work a lot. And he’s really tired when he comes home.”

When Wiggins returns to work Thursday, sources said there’s a good chance transit officials will be waiting for him.

“They’ll probably try to fire him,” one source said. “With everything going on, they will want to make an example of him. It’s too bad because he has two kids.”

Lexis-Nexian Murdochian Wonder Post Power — Activate! Form of — damning quotes from the union newspaper:

In the weeks leading up to last month’s transit strike, Wiggins was outspoken about the MTA’s plans to make station-booth clerks do more work such as cleaning around the turnstiles.

“Transit sent around this list of, like, nine things they wanted us to start doing — changing light bulbs, cleaning the booths, policing the area around the booths,” he told The Chief Leader newspaper in December.

The agency has removed agents from many booths, and made them customer-service agents in the stations, and plans to expand this program.

“Hey, if they want to give me $15 more an hour because they’ve given me the work of four people, maybe we can talk, but otherwise, why should I do more so they can cut more jobs from the union?” he said.

“If we’re doing our jobs well enough that the MTA’s got a billion in the bank, then it’s time to share that wealth and give where it’s due.”

He also had harsh words for his supervisors.

“I think NYC Transit’s the only company in America where you can be a great worker but get fired because you came to work late twice in one year.”

Transit officials said they are still investigating the case. Sleep violations are not common, one official said, and they are taken very seriously.

In spite of his record, Wiggins — who could not be reached for comment yesterday — frequently boasted of this job perk.

“He used to say how easy it was [to sleep on the job],” said Carlos Henry, a tenant in Wiggins’ Queens Village home. “He probably worked a double shift and I guess it caught up with him.”

(Are cell-phone pictures of sleeping token booth attendants a modern form of scalp hunting?)

I’m sure they would say that worked out exactly as planned:

A drunken driver and his plastered passenger tried to avoid getting arrested after a Staten Island fender-bender by switching places — but both were busted when cops determined the passenger was more stewed than the driver, authorities said yesterday.

The two dimwitted drunks, Jose Solar-Avila, 37, and Jose Garcia Gomez, 32, were nabbed in a 1992 Mercury at the corner of Bay Street and Vanderbilt Avenue at 3:22 p.m. on Monday, law-enforcement sources said.

According to authorities, Gomez was behind the wheel of the Mercury when it collided with another car and they switched seats because they mistakenly believed Avila was more sober.

The economics of New York City dictate that full-fledged, non-related adults live together, sometimes four to an apartment, regardless of one’s budget. The Times looks at one such living situation [emphasis on unavoidable red flags added throughout]:

Being a sociable kind of guy, Otis Hart formed a group of four friends who would all live together.

Finding a four-bedroom apartment was easy. Mr. Hart put a $100 cash deposit on the third place he set foot in - a sunny, soaring duplex that was truly magnificent, as long as you looked beyond the filth, the dog waste and the general vagrant feel. A bad omen?

“It was not an easy place to show because there were dirty clothes and garbage everywhere, and not all the lights were working,” said Annie Santiago, an agent at Kline Realty in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who showed Mr. Hart the place, which rented for $3,500.

. . .

He needed roommates who would commit to a two-year lease, tolerate an uncertain move-in date and fork over three extra months’ rent (for the security deposit and broker’s fee).

Mr. Hart avoided the obvious channel, the Web site Craigslist, the real estate resource of first and last resort. “I don’t like dealing with unknown commodities,” he said. “I have so many friends, why not exhaust that before dealing with Craigslist?”

. . .

He dispatched a mass e-mail message to 83 of his contacts plus a list of 428 people in the music field.

His note extolled the features of the apartment, including his “60-inch TV, a super stereo and all the free music you could ever want.”

Hart assembled a volatile group of desperate urbanites, including the underemployed college graduate itching to move out of his parents’ home:

More than 20 people replied, but only one was really eager to move in. That was Mark Davis, 23, who had worked at the Middlebury College radio station, as Mr. Hart had a few years prior.

Mr. Davis was staying with a college friend and his family on the Upper East Side. “I needed to get out of their hair and start my own life,” he said. He got a job at the Strand bookstore and saved some money. Before he even saw the place, he told Mr. Hart he would move in.

Mr. Hart was encouraged. “Mark was a sort of a life preserver,” he said.

The overextended and overpaying:

The next recruit was Jeff Seelbach, 25, a Northwestern University graduate from Short Hills, N.J., who wrote for dustedmagazine.com. Mr. Seelbach and a roommate were living nearby, paying around $900 each for a ground-floor apartment. Their door opened onto the sidewalk, storefront-style, which he hated.

And rounding out the group, the lone female at her wit’s end, buckling under external pressures:

Rosemary Simon was more concerned about having three male roommates. Ms. Simon, 23, from Skokie, Ill., had graduated from DePaul University. She stayed first in a sublet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, then at an uncle’s house in the Bronx.

She tried to find something permanent on Craigslist, checking out prospective roommates via the online sites Google and Friendster. All seemed to be drug addicts or control freaks, she said.

A friend of a friend, who had an internship at a music magazine, sent her Mr. Hart’s e-mail plea. By now, Ms. Simon, an administrative assistant who plans to go to graduate school, was living on East 117th Street with two friends of friends. Her $500 a month bought her hot water that vanished for days at a time. In her closet, a message was scrawled: “R.I.P. Miguel, 2004.”

. . .

Then, one of her roommates on East 117 Street quit her job. She couldn’t desert the penniless group in its hour of need. “Otis sent me a bunch of gentle reminders,” she said. “He had to court me into living here.” Then, “I was baking cookies one night and the lights flashed.” It could be only one thing: “the ghost of Miguel.” She had to get out. She e-mailed Mr. Hart. The place was still available.

And now the four are living (together) happily ever after:

The four congregated as a group for the first time at the lease signing, and became fast friends. Now, they listen for hours to each other’s music. Everyone they know gathers there, watching sports on the huge TV.

“I still wake up wondering how it all happened,” Mr. Hart said. “The situation I have now is so great only because my other roommates dropped me.”

As for Ms. Simon, who likened the group to “pound puppies,” finally happy at home, “my fears about living with the guys were unwarranted and ridiculous,” she said. “It worked out almost too well, like we are a really strange musical cult/family. It’s like I’ve got three annoying older brothers.”

I give it six to nine months . . .

Did you know that NYU graduate students are still picketing? It’s true:

On Jan. 17, as New York University students returned to classes, the university’s striking graduate teaching assistants returned to the picket line.

The Graduate Student Organizing Committee took a break from picketing over the holidays while N.Y.U. was in winter intersession.

The strike, which began on Nov. 9 of last year, was in reaction to N.Y.U.’s refusal to renew the union contract. GSOC was unwilling to work without the security of a contract, despite N.Y.U.’s promises to treat the teaching assistants fairly.

Here’s an Inside Higher Ed story from November to refresh your memory (scroll down for heated comments!).

After transit workers rejected their proposed contract, the Daily News reports that TWU Local 100 is unhappy about the MTA’s moving to take the contract to binding arbitration:

Bus and subway workers will fight the MTA’s move toward binding arbitration — with some even raising the possibility yesterday of a second illegal strike.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants the state Public Employment Relations Board to form a panel that could decide the terms of a contract. It will file paperwork to start the process this week, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said.

Ed Watt, the top deputy to Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, said union leaders would “do all we can to make sure that [binding arbitration] doesn’t happen.”

But leaders of a dissident group, which fought the tentative contract, went even further.

Transit Workers for a Just Contract called for a strike authorization vote by workers if the MTA pushes aggressively for binding arbitration. In one of its flyers, it asked workers to “prepare for a possible resumption of our strike. We’ve shown that we can and will shut the city down.”

Striking over pensions is one thing — it’s a ready-made Magazine or Week in Review article! — but walking out to avoid binding arbitration?

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released its life-and-death statistics study, and the Post summarizes the data.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have a baby: Borough Park, Brooklyn, with 4,523 births in 2004 (24.4 per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are least likely to have a baby: Bayside, Queens, with six per 1,000 residents (700 total).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to be dead: East Harlem (10.9 deaths per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhoods where you are least likely to be dead: Queens Village (4.6 deaths per 1,000 residents), Bayside (4.7 per thousand) and Greenwich Village (5.3 per thousand).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have cancer: Throgs Neck in The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have heart disease: Coney Island.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to get murdered: Brownsville (28.1 murders per 100,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from using drugs: Hunts Point, The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from AIDS: Morrisania, The Bronx.

Meanwhile, the Post profiles a “typical procreative” Borough Park couple:

Faye and Shlomo Cisner are a typical procreative Borough Park couple: They have eight kids, and more could be on the way.

“It is a possibility,” Faye Cisner. “Thank God. God gives. We accept.”

Faye is 33, Shlomo 35.

They have six boys and two girls — including a set of twins.

The youngest, Chaim, is 10 months old. There’s also Joseph, 2; Reuben, 4; Rachel, 5; Meir, 7; Jacob, 8; and twins Nisson and Yocheved, who are 10.

The Cisners, who are Orthodox Jews, said they are carrying on the Jewish tradition of having many children. And that’s what many do in Borough Park.

. . .

Faye starts every morning doing the never-ending load of laundry for 10 people.

The kids eat in two shifts, and she likened the experience to serving people in a restaurant. The six older children board four different buses to get to and from school.

“There’s juggling. It gets a bit overwhelming. But it’s an amazing experience,” Faye said.

See also: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s “My Community’s Health” Pages.

The latest:

Rich rugrats across the city will be begging in their Burberry boots for next season’s ultimate fashion accessory — a $450 alligator-trimmed lunchbox.

New York designer Barry Kieselstein-Cord is set to launch a line that includes the costly item and a $550 alligator knapsack that is certain to be the “It” bag for the tween and toddler set.

(The designer imagines that “some mothers will use the lunchbox as a purse,” but if only that were the case, it wouldn’t make it into the Post, would it?)

With a transit workers contract back in the news, the Daily News looks at contributions TWU Local 100 made to elected officials and others:

Transit union President Roger Toussaint shelled out millions of dollars to pass laws, lobby pols, elect candidates and win over New Yorkers — but it wasn’t enough to sell his own members.
Long before his illegal strike and the stunning rejection of his contract on Friday, Toussaint quietly launched one of labor’s most aggressive spending sprees.

Last month, for example, the Rev. Jesse Jackson applauded striking bus and subway workers for following in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

What he didn’t say: Transit union bosses have steered $12,000 to the Citizenship Education Fund, a Chicago-based advocacy group Jackson runs.

It goes on and on from there, of course, and all members and all parties participated, but generally, the stories read like this:

City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) was angry. On Day 2 of the strike, he blasted the MTA as a “plantation.”

“Actually,” he told The News last week, “it’s probably healthier on the plantation.”

Asked about $4,000 his campaigns have collected from the union, he replied, “You think they bought me? I supported the workers long before I became an elected official, and I’d support them, even if they backed my opponent, because their cause is just.”

Transit employees rejected their new contract today by a margin of seven (!) votes:

Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, had urged members to accept the contract, hard fought after last month’s strike. But the rank and file apparently did not have faith that they were getting the best deal possible.

Mr. Toussaint said in an afternoon news conference that 11,227 members voted in favor of the new contract, while 11,234 voted against it, out of a total of 22,461 votes cast. Voting ended at noon today.

Workers are without a contract, but transit service is expected to be unaffected. Mr. Toussaint made no mention of another strike, and the vote will proably mean that negotiators for the union and the M.T.A. will go back to the bargaining table to hash out a new deal.

Mr. Toussaint blamed Gov. George E. Pataki and the leadership of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s mass transit system, for the failure of the vote.

“We believe this result is a byproduct of a number of negative and inappropriate interferences,” he said.

During arbitration on a matter between the police union and NYPD management it emerged that cops actually do have a quota system — or, as the Post calls it, the City’s “Dirty Little Secret”:

A city arbitrator confirmed yesterday what cops have long insisted — that they are forced to meet ticketing quotas.

Ruling in a case brought by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, arbitrator Bonnie Siber Weinstock found that the Police Department maintained an illegal traffic-ticket quota system at the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn.

The NYPD violated state labor law “by establishing and maintaining a summons quota for traffic violations in the precinct and by penalizing officers for failing to meet the stated number of traffic violations,” Weinstock wrote.

“The city shall cease and desist from maintaining a vehicular traffic quota.”

Evidence presented by the PBA showed that precinct cops had the following monthly quotas: four parking violations, three moving violations, three quality-of-life summonses, one arrest and two stop-and-frisks.

Weinstock, who works for the city Office of Collective Bargaining, said that only the first two categories fell under state law when the case was filed last June.

The law was amended in September to make quotas illegal only for moving violations.

. . .

“The arbitrator finds that a preoccupation with ticket-writing to the detriment of ‘fighting crime’ is exactly what labor law was designed to prevent,” she said.

In response, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the precinct “has been instructed not to establish specific, numeric quotas for summonses linked to performance evaluations.”

However, he said, nothing in the ruling prevents commanders from “productivity goals that include summons activity.”

Will anyone ever be able to figure out Red Hook? Unlikely; it seems to be a case of the blue-collar businesses against the box stores against the artists against the developers against the factory owners — did we mention that everyone hates the box stores? — except for the residents of the housing projects, who want the jobs in the box stores! — yet then there are the musicians who aren’t like artists but who need cheap rent (and seem to be unaware of any other borough) and . . . and everybody hates the Jews* . . . !

No, seriously, it sounds like that:

Red Hook is poised to receive stores like Ikea and Fairway, million-dollar condominiums, humming factories and bustling docks, and even a pier for the 1,132-foot Queen Mary 2 and other cruise ships. Yet, its future is caught up in a battle royal.

Developers want to convert waterfront warehouses and factories into apartments, even though the areas are zoned for manufacturing. But factory owners and cargo haulers fear that well-heeled apartment dwellers would not take kindly to their trucks barreling through Red Hook’s narrow cobblestone streets or their middle-of-the-night foghorns and bright lights.

“You’re going to be doing something they don’t like, even if it’s interfering with a guy barbecuing on the block,” said Michael DiMarino, owner of Linda Tool and Die Corporation, a precision metal fabricator with clients like NASA and Boeing. “I don’t blame him, but we were here first.”

Many factions dread the prospect of big-box stores like Ikea, which plans to build a waterfront furniture emporium with 1,500 parking spaces by 2007. Blue-collar businesses fear that Ikea’s shoppers would clog Red Hook, stalling their trucks. Homeowners worry that Ikea would shatter the quiet.

Yet residents of the housing projects, whose 8,000 tenants represent three-quarters of Red Hook’s population, are eager for the 500 jobs Ikea is dangling. Dorothy Shields, 74, the president of the Red Hook Houses East Tenants Association, who has taken a liking to Ikea’s Swedish meatballs, supports the store because one of every four of the projects’ tenants is unemployed.

“It’s the jobs,” she said. “I have so many people who needs jobs.”

Artists and craftsmen trickling in from Dumbo and Williamsburg fear any change because they suspect they will end up priced out of another blossoming neighborhood. Madigan Shive, a 29-year-old cellist, moved from San Francisco into a rental house with three other artists.

“There’s a good chance we could lose our house in the next year,” she said. “If I lose this space, I don’t know that I can stay in New York.”

*As per Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week”.

Meanwhile, that whole TWU contract vote is still happening and the final tally may be closer than previously thought:

Unleashing a flurry of telegrams, phone calls and threats, transit-union boss Roger Toussaint stepped up his aggressive campaign to convince bus and subway workers to approve the contract for which they waged an illegal strike.

Although most union leaders say they expect the contract to pass when the ballots are counted and the results announced tomorrow, some say the count will be much closer than the 60-40 percent margins of previous elections.

In an effort to rein in the opposition, Toussaint sent a memo to the union’s seven elected vice presidents and more than 100 other staff members threatening to dock their pay if they speak out against the contract.

Ainsley Stewart, a TWU vice president, said Toussaint docked him a week’s pay — $1,701 — for his outspoken opposition.

“I don’t understand, this is America,” Stewart said.

Stewart and others said they plan to fight over the cash.

“I don’t care what he says, nobody is going to mess with my money,” said John Mooney, another TWU vice president.

Apparently there is a great deal of dissent among Local 100’s seven vice presidents:

In 2002, Toussaint controlled most of the vice presidents and opposition was minimal, union leaders said.

“Back then he was able to ignore or get rid of the opposition,” Mooney said. “This time around it has been much harder for him.”

Leaders said they found it troubling that the union president would prevent members from having an open debate on the merits of the contract. “He’s determined to keep people in the dark about other viewpoints,” Stewart said.

Toussaint’s allies defended the blackout on dissension.

“We’re not going to pay for someone to work against us,” a source close to Toussaint said.