After dozens car windows were smashed on Staten Island, police investigators are looking into the possibility that an auto repair shop was behind the vandalism:

Cops are investigating the possibility that a North Shore auto repair shop hired thugs to smash out almost 100 car windows in an attempt to beef up business.

Inspector Richard Bruno, commanding officer of the North Shore’s 120th Precinct, is so disgusted with the rash of vandalism last week that he has personally promised to go to any lengths necessary to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“This is either some fraternity or gang initiation, or some sort of operation for financial gain,” Bruno said.

He emphasized that his detectives are “leaning toward” the latter of those two theories.

“We will be visiting every auto glass repair shop on the North Shore. There are over 20 of them, and we will be running background checks on the owners to see if anyone is struggling financially,” said Bruno.

He added that his officers will be on the lookout for two to four white males last seen leaving some of the crime scenes in a black Kia Sportage, a four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicle.

“We have the ability to check state Department of Motor Vehicle records for every black Kia [registered] on Staten Island,” said Bruno. “And we are going to do that. We’re going to shake some bushes.”

In total, Bruno said, 86 windows were damaged — 20 Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and 66 Friday night into Saturday morning.

The NYPD provided the following statistics: 30 car windows were smashed in Mariners Harbor; 17 in Port Richmond, near Heberton and Charles avenues; 15 in West Brighton, near Oakland, Pelton and Castleton avenues; 11 in Westerleigh; nine in New Brighton, near Tysens Street and Franklin Avenue, and four in Castleton Corners, near Knox Place and Governor Road.

“The damage was deliberate,” said Bruno. “There was one residence on Oakland Avenue where the suspect hopped into a fenced-in backyard, broke a window with a brick and hopped back out.”

New York City private school tuition surpasses Harvard:

Tuition and fees at some New York City private high schools will cost more than $30,000 for the school year beginning in September 2006, breaking a new barrier in sticker shock for parents.

New York already boasts the highest private school tuitions in the country, but prices at some schools will now surpass even the cost of sending a child to Harvard. Many parents have been notified about the tuition increases over the past few weeks.

Riverdale Country School, located on a leafy oasis in the Bronx, will charge $31,200 for tuition, lunch, and books for grades six through 12. Bus service from Manhattan costs an additional couple of thousand dollars. At the Trinity School on the Upper West Side, tuition for seniors will reach $30,170, which includes a $400 “graduation fee.”

. . .

At $30,000 a year for kindergarten through 12th grade, parents are looking to spend about $400,000 before their children even get to college.

Undergraduate tuition at Harvard this year is $28,752, plus room and board.

“We’re so out of whack that we think that it’s okay to pay more for Riverdale than for Harvard — people around the country are laughing at us,” the founder of the Manhattan Private School Advisors, Amanda Uhry, said.

Ms. Uhry, who charges parents $6,000 to help get their children into private school, said the $30,000-a-year price tag won’t cause most of her clients even to blink.

“The reason they charge as much as they do is the same reason I charge as much as I do — because I can,” she said. [Emph. added because it's obvious]

Sorry about what I said before, I didn’t mean to judge.

The Post gladly reports how the MTA is pointing the finger at those free morning newspapers for the increased number of track fires during 2005:

All those thousands of free newspapers being handed out at subway stations are to blame for a huge jump in track fires, transit officials said yesterday.

“The papers get put down on the platforms and then, due to the vacuum effect of the trains, get pulled into the tracks,” said Michael Lombardi, MTA senior vice president for subways.

While they’ve all been minor blazes, the number of fires increased by almost 20 percent in 2005 to 1,673.

Although NYC Transit added 116 cleaners and the agency is cleaning the tracks more systematically, the volume of trash is hard to overcome.

The aggressive distribution of the free dailies, such as amNewYork and Metro New York, along with increasing ridership, have caused the daily garbage haul to grow by 15 tons, Lombardi said.

Discarded food and other trash is also to blame.

The newspapers say they do not deserve to be blamed for the fires, and transit advocates and elected officials agree.

The Times profiles Hizzoner’s Karl Rove, and the shady unchecked world of backroom horsetrading that goes on in the upper reaches of city government:

In September, a new sign went up on the Williamsburg Bridge, and it won national notice as another example of New York City’s singularly abrasive charm: “Leaving Brooklyn, Oy Vey!” The sign, the brainchild of the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, gained attention in newspapers as far away as Pittsburgh and Kansas City.

But in the intricate dance of New York City politics, the sign was as notable for the timing of its appearance as for what it said. It arrived after two years of resistance from the city’s transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, but just shortly before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was to face re-election. And just after it went up, Mr. Markowitz, a Democrat, crossed party lines to endorse the re-election of Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican.

Though City Hall said the close timing of Ms. Weinshall’s reversal and Mr. Markowitz’s endorsement was coincidental, someone intimately involved in the matter said one person played a crucial role in paving the way for the sign’s placement: Kevin Sheekey, Mr. Bloomberg’s top political strategist.

It was just the sort of finesse — some say deal-making — that Mr. Sheekey, 39, quietly put to work in helping to get the mayor re-elected in a landslide victory in November. And now with that election behind him, Mr. Sheekey has moved over to City Hall, and has quickly gone on a virtual war footing to make sure Mr. Bloomberg pushes through his agenda before the mayor is forced to leave office in 2009 by term limits.

The triangulation! The Rovian brilliance!

Mr. Markowitz acknowledged that he told Mr. Sheekey of his displeasure at not getting his “Oy Vey” sign put up. But he said he had no knowledge that the resolution of the fight was politically motivated, and that it did not prompt his endorsement.

“It wasn’t exactly happening and then it happened,” Mr. Markowitz said of the sign.

Such maneuvering seems distinctly out of character for an administration that had prided itself in shying from raw power politics — or what Mr. Bloomberg had derisively called “horse trading.” But Mr. Sheekey’s tactics have impressed some who worked to defeat the mayor.

“I think they ran a flawless campaign,” said Howard Wolfson, a strategist with the New York State Democratic Committee. Though he said he could not discount the more than $80 million Mr. Bloomberg spent on his campaign, he said he considered Mr. Sheekey “probably the best political operator” of Mr. Sheekey’s generation, citing “pure politics, cutting deals and making things happen.” [Emph. added to underscore a wonderfully backhanded compliment]

Those proud photos of the Spin Doctors performing there may have been a bad omen:

C.B.G.B. won’t be the only East Village music venue to close this year. Continental, the punk club where Joey Ramone, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, D-Generation and the Dictators once took the stage, will no longer host live music after Aug. 26, said Trigger, the club’s owner.

A little after 6:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, Trigger sat in the club’s basement greenroom and talked about his decision to stop hosting bands after 15 years. Wearing a winter hat with earflaps, snow boots and a black zip-up sweater, his deep voice echoed in the empty room. “There’s not much of a scene anymore,” he said. “We have a few great nights a month here, but nothing like the old days.” The club currently books four to five bands a night, seven days a week.

Back when the club opened, there wasn’t a Kmart on Eighth St. or even a single Starbucks on Astor Pl., and the late Joey Ramone, who lived a block away from the club, was a regular. The first year Continental was open, Iggy Pop came in and asked Trigger if he could book a show. “I told Iggy to bring in a demo,” Trigger said. Pop took him seriously — for a minute — before Trigger told him he was joking, he said.

The neighborhood has changed since then. Continental, which is near the corner of St. Mark’s Pl. and Third Ave., is now sandwiched between a McDonald’s and a kosher falafel restaurant named Chickpea. “A punk rock club on a corner like this — it’s just impossible,” Trigger said. Band members who used to live in the neighborhood have been priced out of the East Village. “Rents have really changed the complexion and energy of the city,” he said.

A little after 10 p.m. on a recent Sunday, about 40 people filled the long, narrow club space. T-shirts, baseball caps and various laminated signs advertising drink specials hung above the bar. Black-and-white photos taken at the club of various musicians, including Iggy Pop, Dee Dee Ramone, the Spin Doctors and the Wallflowers, decorated the black walls.

. . .

The renovations will not be dramatic, and the overall look and feel of the club will remain relatively similar, Trigger said. He plans to install a jukebox and a flat-screen plasma television screen upstairs and a pool table in the basement greenroom. The greenroom’s benches, red-and-black-checkered floor and sticker-covered walls will stay completely intact, he said.

It’s more than just a job, it’s Randy Cohen come alive, where the NYPD conducts advanced experiments on human nature in the Sutphin Boulevard subway station:

The bait is a cheap handcart carrying groceries and $5 in a purse left on a subway platform.
Cops watch nearby, waiting for a would-be thief to snag the items.

It’s a crafty ploy that netted 14 people in its first setup two weeks ago. But while authorities crow that among those nabbed are many serial criminals — including one man previously busted 57 times — critics blast it as everything from entrapment to a costly example of wasted police manpower.

Officials said those busted in Operation Lucky Bag face raps of petit larceny and possession of stolen property, both misdemeanors. They already had a total of 146 prior busts on their criminal records, including grand larcenies, robberies and the attempted murder of a cop, authorities said.

One man, 39-year-old Keith Myers of Brooklyn, previously was arrested 57 times for crimes including bank robbery and grand larceny. He also has a pending drug rap against him.

When Myers was nabbed Feb. 16 outside a Jamaica subway station with his “loot,” he allegedly also was carrying hypodermic needles and spat in the face of the arresting cop, Lt. Gary Abrahall.

“It has been a very successful program,” said police spokesman Chief Michael Collins. “The type of people we find who commit the larceny of removing this bag we leave out are the type of people who are committing all kinds of crimes.”

. . .

One police source disgruntled with the program . . . blasted it a waste of manpower.

The source said there were 10 cops — one sergeant and nine officers — involved in the Jamaica sting that nailed Myers and no other perps during a three-hour surveillance.

Displaced Hurricane Katrina victims staying in Brooklyn deal dope out of their motel:

Two Hurricane Katrina victims living in a Brooklyn motel have been busted for dealing heroin, police sources said yesterday.

David Townsend, 27, and Nicole Smith, 31, were nabbed in their room Friday at the Golden Gate Motor Inn in Sheepshead Bay after cops were tipped that the two were dealing and sent a plainclothes officer who made a buy, according to the sources.

The couple moved to the motel soon after losing their home in the storm.

NASCAR is moving forward with plans to expand to Staten Island, Wal-Mart’s popularity is strong and getting stronger and Evangelical Christians are making inroads on the Upper East and Upper West Sides of Manhattan:

In the twilight of the biggest snowstorm in New York City’s history, the pews of a rented Baptist church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan were packed for the Rev. Timothy J. Keller’s fourth sermon of the day.

The 600 or so who braved the snow for the evening service got what they had come to expect — a compelling discourse by Dr. Keller, this time on Jesus’ healing of the paralytic, that quoted such varied sources as C. S. Lewis, The Village Voice and the George MacDonald fairy tale “The Princess and the Goblin.” It was the kind of cogent, literary sermon that has helped turn Dr. Keller, a former seminary professor whose only previous pulpit experience was at a small blue-collar church in rural Virginia, into the pastor many call Manhattan’s leading evangelist.

Over the last 16 years, Dr. Keller’s church, Redeemer Presbyterian, has swelled to 4,400 attendees, mostly young professionals and artists who do not fit the prototypical evangelical mold, spread out across four different services on Sundays.

. . .

The Rev. Stephen Um, whose church in Boston, Citylife, began four years ago and now attracts about 500 people every Sunday, said he and other pastors had embraced Dr. Keller’s emphasis on delving into the prevailing culture almost as much as into the biblical text. Along these lines, Dr. Um is just as likely to cite a postmodern philosopher like Richard Rorty or Michel Foucault in his sermons, as he is, say, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.

The Post follows up over the weekend about the horticidal-arborcidal maniac now in custody — “Whacker Out of His Tree”:

“All trees and nests must die and be controlled!”

That’s what a kooky shrub-drubber said when cops grilled him on some $24,000 in damage he allegedly caused by breaking tree branches and upending bushes in Union Square Park.

“I did it!” David Sasson, 34, of East 14th Street, boasted when cops caught him Thursday morning, as he was allegedly continuing his three-week spree. “I’ve done this to thousands of trees!”

The alleged shrub schlub’s police statements were released yesterday, as a Manhattan judge ordered him to Bellevue.

Even though it’s naturally occurring and accidental, it’s still dangerous:

The authorities widened their investigation into possible anthrax contamination yesterday to include an apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and medical officials were giving antibiotics to seven people who could have been exposed to the spores.

An eight-member team from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including two epidemiologists, along with F.B.I. agents, took samples yesterday from the Manhattan apartment of the man who had contracted anthrax, the Brooklyn warehouse where he used animal skins to make drums for his African dance troupe and a Dodge van that he is believed to have used to transport the skins, which are a suspected source of the bacteria. The results of the laboratory tests might not be available for several days, officials said.

The anthrax patient, Vado Diomande, 44, has been hospitalized in Pennsylvania since he collapsed after an African dance performance at Mansfield University on Feb. 16. He was in stable condition yesterday at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa. Officials believe he inhaled the anthrax while working with untreated animal hides brought over from Africa.

. . .

In Manhattan, the police sealed Mr. Diomande’s fifth-floor apartment in Greenwich Village, but other building residents were allowed to enter and leave. The authorities also sealed the Brooklyn building where Mr. Diomande worked, an eight-story warehouse at 2 Prince Street, near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. While the building is mostly used as storage, it also contains several recording and art studios.

Investigators from the federal team — four industrial hygienists, two epidemiologists, one biologist and one laboratory scientist — collected samples from the apartment and the van, while F.B.I. agents took samples from the warehouse. The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is analyzing the samples. A C.D.C. spokesman, Thomas W. Skinner, said officials expected to collect more samples today.

. . .

Officials continued trying to reach people who had contact recently with Mr. Diomande or the animal skins he had handled. They reached four of his associates on Wednesday and three more yesterday. One of the seven people taking antibiotics is Mr. Diomande’s wife, Lisa, who accompanied him to the musical performance on Feb. 16 and has been with him since.

A Crown Heights man who reported contact with the animal hides is being given preventive treatment along with his family, the city said in a flier distributed last night at the man’s building, 1100 Dean Street. Neither the man nor anyone in his family is ill, the notice said, but city and federal health officials cordoned off the building late last night. None of the seven people are believed to be at risk of contracting anthrax, Mr. Bloomberg said, adding that antibiotics were an appropriate cautionary measure.

Then there’s the understatement of the week:

“Obviously, the fact that anthrax got into the country and it got through Customs without being detected raises questions,” said Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We will have to have an after-action report to find out what happened and what has to be changed in the future.”

Renowned dirty fucker Peter Braunstein gets a Gawker-ready hairstyle piece in today’s Post:

Accused fire fiend Peter Braunstein may have stabilized since getting locked up in Bellevue Hospital, but his hairstyles have been all over the map.

Braunstein showed up for a routine Manhattan Supreme Court appearance yesterday sporting a shaggy new beard. It’s the fourth makeover in as many court appearances.

Since his arrest in December on charges he masqueraded as a fireman so he could kidnap and sexually torment a female co-worker, the former Women’s Wear Daily fashion writer has gone from curly haired to buzz cut.

Braunstein, 41, has told cops he slavishly follows his own press coverage — and is so image conscious he once complained that his wanted poster made him look “like a crazed Mexican.” But his lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, joked yesterday that no significance should be attached to this latest “look.”

“I don’t think they give you razor blades over at Bellevue,” Gottlieb quipped.

The Post’s two favorite targets get the borscht-belt treatment in one fine piece:

Tired of endless bungling, bickering and bad ideas, a group of diplomats from the United Nations went on a fact-finding mission this week to learn how a successful New York institution works. Unfortunately, they wound up at a Knick game.

Looking like fish out of international waters among the long-suffering Knick fans, the group, led by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, donned red NBA caps as they watched from a luxury box at Madison Square Garden Wednesday. Also wearing the goofy headgear were the wife of China’s U.N. ambassador and Russia’s envoy. The diplomats were treated to a true Knick experience — the team lost to the Miami Heat, 103-83.

An arborcidal maniac terrorizing Union Square Park finally is brought to justice:

An East Village vandal was nabbed red-handed yesterday after rampaging through the roses — and the redwoods and the magnolias — and running up $24,000 worth of damage in Union Square Park, authorities said.

Parks Department officials said David Sasson, 34, of East 14th Street, spent the past three weeks committing horticultural homicide before he was arrested in the park at 1:30 a.m.

Officials said Sasson thrashed 23 hydrangea bushes, 12 red-stemmed dogwoods, 10 holly bushes, seven roses of Sharon, three butterfly bushes, a Chinese dogwood, a magnolia tree and 20 ornamental trees during his three weeks of arboreal abuse.

They had no explanation of why Sasson went on his strange rampage.

Sasson was captured after two officers from the Parks Enforcement Patrol staked out the park and lay in wait for several nights.

“He was in the process of ripping branches off trees,” said Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston, who added that the arrest went down “very smoothly.”

Sasson used no ax, choosing to take matters into his own hands.

“He was doing this with his bare hands,” said Johnston. “He reached up into the tree branches and pulled off the limbs.”

Sasson faces second-degree criminal mischief charges and something called “destruction or abuse of trees,” said district attorney spokeswoman Barbara Thompson. He could get up to seven years for the bush whacking.

See also: Arborcide — Don’t Do It.

Idiots! Backwards-writing swastika-painting idiots:

If you’re gonna hate, at least get it right.

A vandal described by cops as “some knucklehead” put Nazi swastikas on a Bronx Jewish center early yesterday — spray-painting them backward.

But the vandalism was enough to bring out a delegation of religious leaders and local elected officials to denounce the act and speak against religious intolerance.

Police were investigating the incident at the Pelham Parkway Jewish Center, where the vandal, described a teenager by an eyewitness who saw the crime from an apartment window, spray-painted three large swastikas — backward — on the side wall of the center, at 900 Pelham Parkway South and Muliner Ave.

The Police Department bias unit has been called into the case, police said.

“These knuckleheads don’t even know how to do it right, much less understand what something like this stands for,” said a police source.

It was the second time in a year that the center has been vandalized with swastikas.

(Title swiped from here.)

If you care what’s happening with the MTA-TWU talks, click here, because I couldn’t be bothered.

New York City Councilman Eric Gioia attends to the most important issues facing his district:

Banning pointed metal scissors and small tools from airplanes to make airline travel safer and to send a clear signal to terrorists has been proposed recently by Congressmember Joseph Crowley and City Councilmember Eric Gioia.

The lawmakers said that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reimposing the ban on these small tools would send a clear signal to terrorists that the United States would remain vigilant in securing the safety of its citizens and the country.

Both also said they support pending legislation to reimpose the ban on those articles and others.

The TSA officially lifted the ban last December and immediately ran into strong opposition from Crowley and other public officials. Crowley (D–Queens/The Bronx) introduced the Leave All Blades Behind Act [Damn you, Bush for beginning this "Leave . . . Behind" convention!], which seeks to reinstate the ban on all scissors and tools that can be used to threaten the lives of airline passengers and flight personnel.

United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D–New York) introduced a similar measure calling for freezing the list of previously prohibited items.

Gioia (D–Long Island City) announced he would introduce a resolution in the City Council denouncing the TSA’s decision and supporting the bills introduced by Clinton and Crowley.

The Queens Gazette’s Austin H. Armistead doesn’t mind a little hyperbole every once in a while:

Scrabble, a board game that combines the best features of crossword puzzles and anagrams, was invented by Alfred M. Butts, a Jackson Heights resident. The game was first played at then Community Methodist Church at 35th Avenue and 81st Street and went on to conquer the world. [Emph. added because who can argue with that?]

See also: San Jose Scrabble(r) Club Two-Letter Words List.

Don’t get me wrong — I like your humorous, self-deprecating style, but if you’re going to convert those anti-amnesty types, you might want to rework that slogan a little:

Rallying under the slogan “No Paddy Left Behind,” about 900 Irish and Irish-Americans packed a town hall meeting in Woodside on immigration reform Friday evening.

Speakers urged the audience, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, to call their elected officials in support of the Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill. Currently before the Senate, the measure would allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States and earn a chance to apply for permanent residency.

. . .

The Kennedy-McCain bill, known as the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, was introduced before the Senate last year by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The measure would permit undocumented or “illegal” immigrants currently living in America to obtain work visas for up to six years. They could apply for permanent residency after paying fines, passing a background check and completing a period under a temporary visa. The bill would also create a new path to legal immigration through a temporary worker program.

Undocumented Irish immigrants present at the meeting said current laws prevent them from returning home to visit family. They pay taxes, but cannot apply for health insurance or open bank accounts, much less obtain a driver’s license.

An interesting 24 plot twist reveals itself on Staten Island:

A crook broke into a Department of Environmental Protection employee’s vehicle on Staten Island and swiped a laptop computer with a disk containing information about the city’s water-distribution system, police said yesterday.

Not to worry, though — there’s nothing sensitive on the computer, because if there were, there wouldn’t be an article in the Post about . . . never mind, don’t go there:

Sources said the information was not classified or confidential and the car apparently was not singled out, since other vehicles on the block, Devens Street in Westerleigh, were also burglarized.

If you have people in from out of town, feel free to send them down to the federal courthouse:

Miami real-estate agent Claude Attia wanted to do something meaningful during his few days in New York.

So he wandered into the Manhattan federal courthouse — and smack into John “Junior” Gotti’s sensational trial on its most explosive day of testimony.

“I told them downstairs I wanted to see something interesting. They sent me up here,” the 45-year-old Frenchman said.

His jaw dropped when he saw platinum-blond Victoria Gotti, who showed up for court wearing a waist-length sable fur coat, skintight blue jeans and her signature oversized Louis Vuitton bag. She hunched silently in the second row with her fire-engine-red-haired sister, Angel, and family matriarch Victoria Sr.

“These people want to be like Al Capone!” he said, shocked.

Attia wasn’t the only wayward tourist who made his way into the gallery — and he certainly wasn’t the only one stunned by the display.

“It’s like watching ‘The Godfather’ all over again,” said star-struck Ian McNeilly, 54, a lawyer visiting from Sydney, Australia. “In Australia, we have more white-collar crime than hit men.”

And the show is not just for tourists:

Manny Diaz, a court-case buff, traveled all the way from The Bronx to catch a glimpse of the action.

“I’ve always admired John Sr.,” said the 47-year-old recovering drug addict, who attends trials to keep himself clean. “I’ve always liked the Gottis, too. But I don’t like Victoria’s show. I think it’s propaganda.”

The only thing worse than a slumlord is . . . nothing because I’ve read enough Post articles by now to know that slumlords are total scum of the earth:

A notorious Queens slumlord was blasted yesterday for racking up a staggering number of violations at his filthy, rundown buildings — while he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax abatements.

Nicholas Haros “very definitely is a slumlord. We don’t want slumlords in our community,” fumed City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who represents Corona. “He is clearly showing insensitivity to his tenants, insensitivity to the city of New York.”

One of those rental tenants, Elena Nuñez, 74, showed reporters a massive hole in her Corona apartment shower stall that she says Haros has refused to fix for the past two years. She also displayed a hole in the ceiling he has ignored for three years.

“He’s bad,” Nuñez said of Haros, 58, who refused to speak to The Post at his Flushing office. “He’s not a good landlord. He doesn’t do anything.”

Other Haros tenants pointed out collapsed ceilings, peeling paint, rotted walls, vermin-ridden kitchens, wall mold and a leak that has persisted for 16 years.

City officials said Haros-controlled corporations own 81 apartment buildings in the city, mostly in Queens and The Bronx. The buildings contain 3,247 units, largely occupied by immigrants and elderly tenants whose rent totals tens of millions of dollars annually.

City inspectors have found 16,696 violations — more than five per apartment. A total of 13,548 of them are considered “hazardous,” or worse, “immediately hazardous,” officials said.

And it gets worse — Haros is sucking at the City teat:

Haros owes the city more than $411,000 in emergency repairs that it had to make on apartments because he failed to do so, and he has paid more than $303,450 in fines related to his shoddy maintenance.

But Haros continues each year to get massive amounts of city tax abatements related to affordable housing programs, and the city’s Finance Department said that situation is likely to continue without a change in the law governing such tax credits.

If he’s not careful, the phrase “Haros-controlled” might become shorthand for, say, the ninth circle of hell . . .

The vestigial Sam Goody in Queens Center Mall is closing:

The news saddened shoppers who have been buying music and videos there for years.

Woodside resident Arturo Quan raved that he could always go to Sam Goody to get the DVD of a concert he saw on PBS.

“This is the only one — the only place I could find it. I guess I got to look for another store, perhaps in Manhattan,” he said.

Other Sam Goody faithful found it painful to let go of the idea of a bricks-and-mortar shopping experience:

Yolanda Wilson works two doors down at the mall’s Time Warner Cable office, and would often go down to Goody’s when she had a break. With the store and its wide selection to become a thing of the past, she said, she dreads having to shop for CDs on the Internet.

“I don’t like to shop online, because you don’t know what you’re getting,” she said. “Let’s say you pick the wrong one and want to return it — you have to go through the whole process of mailing it back.”

Obviously iTunes would blow these people’s minds. Better space out that news a little . . .

The Daily News further researches animal hides in drumming, making the case that the percussionist who contracted anthrax probably did get it from goat skin, as the experts first were saying:

Local West African drum makers say making drums with animal hides is a tradition that dates back hundreds of years.

People involved in the trade prefer to use goat skin from their home countries, ideally from a female animal. The skin is sun-dried, shaved and sometimes bleached for esthetic purposes.

“You can buy the goat skin in New York, but the goat in New York is too fatty, too thick,” said Ibrahima Diokhane, who owns Keur Djembe, a popular drum store in Gowanus, Brooklyn. “But the goat in Senegal is thinner, and the butcher there cuts it right.”

Diokhane, a native of Dakar, Senegal, either brings his hides in a suitcase or ships them in a container.

The World Health Organization notes that industrial anthrax tends to afflict those employed in the processing of bones, hides, wool and other animal products.

Dog owners are scary. Really, really scary:

A few weeks ago, the owners of the Chocolate Room, home of the $40-a-pound raspberry-peppercorn ganache, paid a visit to the bakery that had just opened across the street from the trattoria that sells pizza flaked with actual gold leaf. They complimented, with a tinge of envy, the Blodgett ovens behind the bakery counter.

Not much to envy, the bakers replied. “They said, ‘Don’t buy these ovens because they’re convection ovens and our cupcakes come out windblown,’” said Naomi Josepher, one of the chocolatiers.

Ms. Josepher was perplexed. “I said, ‘Your cupcakes look a lot better than ours. And anyway you guys are serving dogs and we’re serving people.’”

Well, yeah. And?

It is true. The bakery, Buttercup’s Paw-tisserie, claims to be the first doggie bakery in the whole city that makes its treats on-premises. Take that, SoHo.

And P.S.: The cupcakes, known in this case as pupcakes, are not in the least windblown. They are in fact perfect miniatures, with a perfect white yogurt-icing paw print embossed upon a silken crust of carob.

They are also utterly delicious. To humans. As well they should be, considering the all-natural human-grade ingredients.

“The stuff we use here is healthier than what we eat,” Betty Wong said from behind the counter, as her business partner and brother-in-law, Scott Wong, prepared a tray of wheat-free liver-and-herb biscotti for the oven.

Paw-tisserie also offers coconut-coated carob-crunch truffles ($1.50), liver-cheese brownies (75 cents), salmon crackers with seaweed and anchovy paste ($6.95 for “a barker’s dozen”) and pupcakes ($1.50).

Silvercup Studios unveiled a plan to build a massive $1 billion studio/housing/office complex on six acres of East River waterfront in Queens:

The six-acre project in Long Island City, which formally began wending its way through the city’s land use review process yesterday, is called Silvercup West, an expansion of Silvercup’s existing operation six blocks to the east, the home studio for television shows like “The Sopranos” and “Hope & Faith” and where many movies have been filmed.

If it is approved, the expansion would include eight soundstages, production and studio support space, offices for media and entertainment companies, stores, 1,000 apartments in high-rise towers, a catering hall and a yet-to-be-named cultural institution. Silvercup would easily be the largest production house on the East Coast, although Steiner Studios in Brooklyn has the largest single soundstage.

“With added studio space, more productions that may have been filmed elsewhere will now take advantage of all the benefits of filming in New York City,” said Stuart Match Suna, who together with his brother Alan formed Silvercup in 1983. “In addition, we are creating a 24/7 live, work and leisure community.”

The Post notes the size of the buildings:

Two residential towers and an office building at Silvercup West will range from 49 to 57 stories.

“These are tall buildings, but they’re located right on the biggest back yard you can have, which is a river,” said Alan Suna, who is building the project with his brother, Stuart Match Suna.

The project will go on six acres just south of the 59th Street Bridge. The site is now home to a 79-megawatt generating station, a city salt pile and the historic Terra Cotta Building, which the developers will restore.

Not sure how many feet that would be, but if it’s taller than the 48-story, 663-some-odd feet Citibank Building, it could become the tallest building on Long Island.

Meanwhile, this is sure to disrupt the activities of that cozy little hidden place to take prostitutes, the whimsically named Q-Plaza Motel which has been under fire for a while now:

State, city and community officials converged on the Q-Plaza Motel in Long Island City on Sunday, January 27 to protest the pimps and prostitutes that frequent the hotel and often do business on surrounding streets. The hotel, located at 42-11 Vernon Blvd., has created an increase in quality of life crimes, according to state Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, who organized the protest/press conference on behalf of her constituents in the Ravenswood and Queensbridge communities. “We are fed up with the growing problem of prostitutes in Long Island City,” Nolan said.

. . .

“When I walk my dogs in the morning I find used condoms,” said Gabriela Granados, who with her husband is opening a dance studio on 9th Street, behind the hotel. “I have the right in the morning to walk my dogs without being stalked by men who are looking for (prostitution) services.”

. . .

Prior to the rally, [Community Board 2 Chairman Joseph] Conley explained that the hotel, which had been closed down in 1998 after repeated efforts by police and the community, was able to reopen under a flaw in zoning. The hotel is situated directly south of the Queensboro Bridge; to the immediate north of the bridge are the Queensbridge and Ravenswood developments and much of the remaining area is industrial.

“It’s an example of poor planning,” Conley said, explaining that the hotel is allowed to exist in that spot because it’s zoned residential when everything around it is industrial. The hotel is an anomaly in the area. “You don’t see a national chain coming here,” Conley said of the site. “You don’t see a brand name here.” The hotel was most recently a cinder block parking garage before being reopened as a hotel.

A West Village man has been hospitalized for a case of “accidental,” “naturally occurring” anthrax:

A New York City man has been hospitalized with a case of anthrax that a federal law enforcement official said may have been contracted from animal skins during a visit to Africa.

The infection appeared to be accidental, and authorities did not believe it was related to terrorism, the official said.

The man traveled recently to the west coast of Africa and became ill shortly after his return, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

It was not clear how the man came into contact with the deadly substance, but aides to Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was related to his job as a drummer and that federal and city officials traced the exposure to New York City after the man became ill in Pennsylvania.

The search for Vivi, the Westminster Dog Show participant that apparently bolted before getting in the cargo hold of her plane, now includes several psychics:

With all leads running dry on the sixth day since the prized show dog darted off a plane during boarding at Kennedy Airport, the main search party has begun taking advice of at least four animal communicators.

“They are telling us that she is alive and they are telling us she is warm,” Honi Reisman, a close friend of Vivi’s owners, said via cell phone yesterday as she searched the heated cargo buildings dotting the airport. “They are saying she’s in a building — but there are hundreds of buildings.”

About a dozen psychics in total have chimed in, claiming to channel Vivi, with four psychics echoing the same information, said Paul Lepiane, Vivi’s co-owner.

. . .

Close to a hundred hours have already been logged by searchers for the prized whippet, whose full name is Champion Bohem C’est La Vie. On Wednesday morning, Vivi was on her way home from the Westminster Dog Show — where she took a coveted award of merit - when she broke free from her crate before being loaded inside the plane. The crate latch was later found to have been broken.

Though she can run as fast as 35 mph, both her owners and the psychics think she is somewhere on the airport’s 5,000 acres.

Animal telepathy is not new for Vivi’s co-owner, Jil Walton. One communicator helping search for Vivi also channeled Walton’s horse 10 years ago, finding that the animal once had an offspring who died, Walton said. The information turned out to be accurate.

“Some part of me says it’s ridiculous to feel hope,” Walton in a phone interview, speaking of the pet psychic, “but some other part of me says it’s real.”

Reisman’s sister, Carol, gave the name of psychic Beatrice Lydecker of Portland, Ore., as helping out. Lydecker said Vivi was in eyeshot of lots of yellow equipment — not much help in an airport littered with forklifts — and was hiding under folded boxes. “She said Vivi could hear a person calling to her, but she didn’t recognize the voice,” Carol Reisman said.

The Village Voice brings us up to date on various Sept. 11 conspiracy theories*:

Many Truth activists now dismiss the “pod theory” and its cousin “the flash,” which contend that the planes that struck the towers had unusual shapes on their undersides that may have fired missiles. More maligned is the idea that no planes hit the towers — that what we saw were drones or holograms. Even the no-planes-at-the- Pentagon theory divides Truth-ers.

. . .

By saying they’re only checking facts, the Truth activists avoid having to address the weaknesses in their own yarn. Why do the “booms” at the trade center come several minutes before the “demolition”? Why would the government destroy WTC7 when no one knew or cared about it? What happened to the people on the planes?

Some skeptics, however, aren’t shy. Fringe pol Lyndon LaRouche thinks the attacks were “an attempted military coup d’état.” Hufschmid says the Arab terrorists were patsies of several governments, including the U.S. and possibly Britain, France, Canada, and Israel. Ruppert, an adherent of the theory that oil reserves have peaked and that the petroleum-based economy is in great peril, postulates that 9-11 was a desperate effort by a couple dozen elites from the Clinton and Bush administrations to cling to dwindling energy supplies. His version stresses the links between the CIA and Wall Street and drug money, suspicion of the Secret Service, and a plot to rid the world of 4 billion people in order to reduce demand for petroleum.

*Ed Begley, Jr. is asked what he thinks of all this.

After tackling the history of salt and cod, writer Mark Kurlansky now profiles oysters, of which New York once had many:

Through the oyster, Mr. Kurlansky’s current book traces the social, economic and environmental history of New York City and its waterways, starting even before the Europeans came on the scene, with the oyster-loving Lenape Indians. From the shells in the middens, or refuse heaps, archaeologists have concluded that the Lenape ate tons of oysters. With the Dutch, then the English and eventually every other group that arrived, the abundant oysters in the harbor and the rivers contributed to the city’s economy.

The Dutch did just fine shipping oysters to Europe, though they were disappointed that the city’s oysters could not revive their pearl industry — they are the ones who named Pearl Street — but Eastern American oysters, Crassostrea virginica, do not make gem-quality pearls. All the native oysters on the East Coast, from Louisiana to Newfoundland, are C. virginica, a different species from many West Coast varieties and from European oysters.

. . .

He marvels at the human taste for oysters. “They take work, and they are not terribly nutritious,” he said. “And a hundred or more years ago oysters were a food that was consumed in more or less the same form by every social class. Throughout most of New York’s history, oysters were incredibly cheap. You could get all you could eat for 6 cents, an entire plate for less than what a hot dog cost, at a time when a single out-of-season strawberry cost 50 cents.”

The police are sticking it to the rich and powerful, throwing them in jail for offenses like driving on a suspended license:

Is the NYPD aggressively cracking down on well-heeled Manhattanites caught driving with a suspended license near Central Park and sending them to jail? Pediatrician Laura Popper was recently pulled over for driving her scooter in Central Park after 10 a.m. When cops discovered her suspended license, they tossed her in the “Tombs” for nearly nine hours. Pierre Hauser, a foundation executive, was caught making a U-turn near his Central Park West home. His suspended license got him thrown in the clink overnight. Philippe Soule, a landscape designer, got pulled over on the Upper East Side, arrested, and sent to jail for twelve hours. His license had been suspended for failing to pay a $25 ticket he’d gotten in New Jersey a year ago.

“There has to be some kind of crackdown,” Popper says. “Every time I tell my story, someone says, ‘That just happened to somebody I know.’” Even celebrity spouses aren’t safe: Last year, Jon Stewart’s wife, Tracey McShane, was arrested and jailed for five hours after being pulled over in the park.

In some cases, the license was wrongly suspended in the first place. Stewart’s wife had paid her ticket, but the check hadn’t been processed. Popper had paid hers, too, but had forgotten to pay a surcharge. So she shared a cell with some rather tough women: “One actually said, ‘Don’t fuck with me, and I won’t fuck with you,’” she says. Hauser’s night in jail in Harlem featured cellmates “doing crack in the corner,” he says.