God help anyone who has a story about them that includes this telling detail:

It was not the first time Ms. Campbell had been accused of injuring an employee with a telephone.

Referring to the underage girl your client is accused of raping as a “skank” is a novel approach:

“My client made $500,000 a year,” the defense lawyer, Howard Greenberg, said after a Manhattan Supreme Court appearance for James Colliton, who is being held without bail. Colliton was a tax attorney for Cravath, Swaine and Moore, a top Midtown law firm.

“He had the wherewithal to pay for any piece of tuchus on the planet,” Greenberg continued. “And he paid that skank?”

Backstory: It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp Mom; There’s Always Something A Little Off With Tax Attorneys.

Hizzoner announced that VH1 will host its annual Hip Hop Honors in New York, providing a convenient opportunity to front with his homeboys Ice-T and Russell Simmons:

“That’s c-o-o-l,” Mayor Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall yesterday after he was given the title by rapper/actor Ice-T.

Bloomberg, surrounded by Ice-T and hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, announced New York City will once again host VH1’s Hip Hop Honors. He tried his best to fit in as just another homeboy from the ‘hood — albeit one with a few billion dollars.

“Welcome to City Hall, or my crib, as I like to call it,” Bloomberg said to laughter. “Not everybody here understands our language.”

Groan.

“Where else could you have Hip-Hop Week but in New York City,” Bloomberg said, rattling off a list of local notables, ranging from Simmons, of Hollis, Queens, to “me, Mike B,” from Manhattan.

He got high praise from Simmons, who endorsed his 2005 mayoral reelection, and Ice-T, a star of “Law and Order: SVU,” who said he was surprised by the invite to City Hall.

“My people said Bloomberg’s cool,” Ice-T said as Bloomberg smiled and blushed.

“On the street, I think that’s the highest accolade he could ever achieve. When we showed up and I met him, I felt it too. You can feel it when you touch a playa’s hand.”

No! Please make it stop!

Backstory: It Could Be Just Me, But The Mayor Is Probably The Last Person I’d Want To Rap About; Mayor Mike: Rockin’ the Mic Left and Right.

You don’t often find ledes like these nowadays:

Last week, District Attorney Richard A. Brown’s office led a team of smut-stompers into questionable social clubs in Jamaica and South Jamaica. When the dust cleared, they emerged with multiple suspects in tow, charged with soliciting prostitution, possession of deadly weapons, and concealing a bag of blow. Overall, the DA’s office had a good night.

Until recently zoning laws in Staten Island allowed for two 15-foot-wide two-story houses to be built on one lot, leading some to wonder what to do with that giant pleather sectional:

Horrified Staten Island residents are living next to two homes under construction that are just 15 feet wide, but twice as tall as most houses in the neighborhood.

The two-story structures — jammed onto one lot — are strikingly out of place on a suburban Jefferson Ave. block in Grant City dotted with low-rise homes, neighbors gripe.

It’s also the latest example of what critics call the overdevelopment of the boroughs.

“Most of the houses here are ranches. Then you have these huge monstrosities built on top of us,” said Susan Fontano, an unhappy neighbor of the two new houses.

“We’re suffering. This has to come down,” said next-door neighbor Ivan Valic. “They built their bay windows on the side facing our house. I feel like I’m in a sardine can.”

The city agrees the houses are wildly inappropriate.

Even so, because the plans met zoning regulations when they were submitted in October, they were approved and are legal. Zone rules that would have prevented the buildings from going up went into effect in December.

. . .

“This is a perverted chess match,” said City Councilman James Oddo (R-S.I.). “This is a very ingenious industry. They’ve made money, and they are always looking to maximize their profits.”

The developer of the Jefferson Ave. homes defended the structures — and himself.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” said builder Ely Reiss. “If they want to change the zoning, that’s what they should do.”

Reiss said the homes will likely be listed for more than $600,000 each.

In the literary free-for-all that the “mafia cop” trial has become, Brooklyn itself becomes a character:

It could be argued that one of the most intriguing characters in the trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa is not a person, but a place. As absorbing as the witnesses, the lawyers and the two defendants is the borough of Brooklyn, which has arisen in the trial as something like an empire of the ill-fated and often illicitly employed.

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

. . .

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

Backstory: Alan Feuer’s other article about the literary flavor in a murder trial; Feuer is obviously making notes for a wonderful script and/or novel.

The fact that the order of victims’ names on the Sept. 11 memorial is a contentious issue shows just how contentious everything about the World Trade Center site is:

One of the most potentially divisive issues at ground zero — how victims’ names are arranged on the memorial walls — was settled two years ago, when the governor and mayor said they would be listed in random order, with insignias of service next to the names of uniformed emergency workers. Period.

But nothing about the World Trade Center site ever seems completely settled.

Firefighters and police officers never liked the random concept, union officials said, believing that their mission of running into the buildings while others fled entitled them to special recognition. A group of victims’ relatives proposed that names be listed by association (employees of Cantor Fitzgerald or Aon, for example) in the space corresponding to the tower where they died. The architect who won the design competition, Michael Arad, originally spoke of creating “meaningful adjacencies” that would, for instance, permit siblings to be listed side by side.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation long maintained that this discussion was over. Yesterday, however, Stefan Pryor, the corporation president, and Thomas H. Rogér, a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, told a City Council committee that renewed discussions about the arrangement of names were in fact still going on.

“L.M.D.C.’s ears remain open,” Mr. Pryor said. “We are always open to further solutions, suggestions. And we’ve had meetings on this topic quite recently.”

He said that random arrangement remained the plan and said that any alternative would have to conform to the overall memorial design.

Pressed by Councilman Alan J. Gerson of Lower Manhattan to articulate the corporation’s position on the names, Mr. Pryor said, “The current position of the L.M.D.C. is to support Michael Arad’s position.” Mr. Arad, who did not testify yesterday, said in 2004, “The haphazard brutality of the attacks is reflected in the arrangement of names and no attempt is made to impose order upon this suffering.”

At yesterday’s hearing, Mr. Rogér, whose 24-year-old daughter, Jean, was a flight attendant aboard the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the north tower, said, “The random suggestion contained within the current design may have some artistic elegance about it, but it certainly is flawed in many respects.”

Moral of this story — don’t lie on your job application:

Two dozen ex-convicts who applied for jobs at Kennedy and La Guardia airports were arrested yesterday for lying about their criminal backgrounds on security clearance forms that would have granted them access to sensitive areas, authorities said.

The job-seekers had convictions that ranged from robbery to weapons possession, but allegedly denied it on the applications.

. . .

The 24 would-be employees include men and women from throughout the five boroughs and Long Island. Their ages range from 20 to 65.

The defendants are each charged with offering a false instrument for filing. If convicted, each faces up to four years in jail.

Moral to the story — return someone’s laptop, get a lunch at Cipriani:

Last year, a Montreal gem dealer caught Hossam Abdalla’s cab and left behind a case loaded with nearly $1 million in titanium, gold and diamond rings when he rushed out for a meeting at the Javits Center. Abdalla, 30, discovered the stash, and promptly returned it to its owner.

Yesterday, Abdalla was named “Driver of the Year” by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. He and dozens of other cab drivers were feted for their exemplary service on the streets of New York.

The event showcased drivers who have recovered everything from Blackberrys to backpacks and sacrificed time and money to do good deeds for their fares.

. . .

TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus called the Egyptian immigrant “a diamond in the rough.”

“This really changed me as a person,” Abdalla said of his good deed and all the attention that followed. “Honesty is a value that I have inside. If you’re in a situation to do something right, do not hesitate — do it!”

Another honoree, Virendra Shukla, wasted no time doing the right thing when Loraine Collins and her family left a video camera in the back of his cab 18 months ago. Shukla didn’t know that the camera contained a precious keepsake video diary. He also didn’t know about the $5,000 reward.

. . .

Other recipients included Serigne Tall, a Humanitarian Award winner, for helping an elderly Alzheimer’s patient who had wandered away from a hospital; Charles Juene, a Humanitarian Award winner, for helping a blind passenger; and Abouley Mbow, a Customer Care Award winner, for returning a laptop and 200- year-old artwork valued at $12,000.

. . .

Over a lunch buffet provided by Cipriani, Daus told the honored drivers to dispense with worries about traffic or fares.

“Relax and enjoy the moment,” Daus said. “You’re not on the meter.”

Despite what you may have been led to believe, the Queens College library is actually heavily used:

“I heard that a girl was giving head in the library, under one of the cubicles on the second floor,” said Johnathen Khan when questioned about promiscuity on campus. Many other students had similar information, but felt uncomfortable giving their name to the press. Other students were completely unaware of such behavior.

. . .

Tejwatie Sohan recalls an instance of inappropriate behavior in what appeared to be a cozy nook on the fifth floor of Rosenthal Library. She was witness to a male student being straddled by a female student on the floor. “Fully clothed, they behaved as if they wished they weren’t.”

When Diana Post, a Library Information and Science master’s student, was asked about the issue, she admitted that it was common knowledge that one of the dangers of her future occupation was finding “shenanigans in the stacks.”

This just in — Baruch is not a party school:

Nancy Ventura, a senior, said, “I’ve heard that Laso-Lay-Pride parties are good, but I’ve never been. I’m too focused on my studies.” And, like her, many students don’t attend social functions at the school at all, due to other priorities outside of school. Furthermore, in dorms it is easier for students to sneak things like alcohol and drugs in then it is to actually bring them to a college campus. Allassane Toure, a sophomore, agrees that parties are non-existent at Baruch. “Everyone has too much to do and there are too many rules since most parties end by 11 p.m.”

We had no clue gender studies survived the millennium:

At 5-foot-3 inches and 430 pounds, Bigcuties.com webmaster Heather Boyle is on a mission: To tell the truth about being fat.

To a group of about 70 students, Boyle openly discussed fat sexuality, the movement behind it and its implications in today’s society.

“We’re somehow social outcasts,” said Boyle, who spoke last night at the Silver Center. “Diets are society’s way of telling you what you should look like, but 64 percent of America is overweight. If we’re the majority, then whey are we being treated like the minority?”

Since she was 18, Boyle has modeled for various magazines and now runs Bigcuties.com, a subscription-based fat porn website, which currently has 16 models that pose both nude and clothed and star in soft core and hard core films.

“Fat sells,” she said, describing the pornography on her website as identical to any other type of porn.

But Boyle’s appearance almost didn’t happen:

Boyle’s own reception at the Silver Center spoke to these concerns about the treatment of overweight people like herself.

Professor Don Kulick, director of NYU’s Center of Gender and Sexuality, said his department was met difficulty when accomodating Boyle for the event. When he asked the Silver Center building maintenance crew to move a couch from the first to the seventh floor so Boyle could sit in that instead of a chair, the building maintenance did not respond.

After Kulick and the center’s administrator, Robert Campbell, appealed numerous times over the course of two weeks, school administrators still denied the request. Their only response was that the couch was too heavy to move, Kulick said.

Workers in the private waste-hauling industry — which collects everything that is not municipal residential trash, including garbage from businesses, hotels and, well, basically everything — may go on strike April 1. The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins has more details:

Back on December 19, just as New Yorkers were about to confront a 72-hour pre-Christmas nightmare called the Transit Strike of 2005, another major city employer was prodding its workers with a sharp stick and daring them to walk off the job. Waste Management Inc., the Houston-based mega-corporation that last year did $12 billion worth of business earning some $900 million in profits, told 123 of its employees who drive the city’s streets all night collecting trash from private businesses that it couldn’t afford their health coverage any longer. . . .

After several meetings with leaders of Local 813 of the Teamsters, which represents the workers, the company went ahead and imposed its plan on the workforce. Normally, unions view that kind of action as sufficient provocation for a strike. There was little question the company expected one. Union members watched as Waste Management imported some 80 to 100 potential replacement workers, apparently ready to take over their jobs at a moment’s notice. No effort was made to hide them. “They drove behind the [garbage] trucks all night in pickups, watching the men do their collections,” said Local 813 president Sylvester Needham. “They had them in motels in Queens, just waiting for us to walk out so they could bring them in.”

Faced with that scenario, as well as with a city already in the grip of a mass transit strike, the Teamsters opted to hold their fire and keep working. To keep his members covered in the meantime, Needham had his union benefit fund pay the $305 per month in contributions needed to keep the Waste Management employees covered, while continuing to try to negotiate a new contract. A federal mediator was brought in to try and work things out. No dice.

Three months later, with no progress in the talks, the Teamsters say New York is headed for a garbage strike, its first in more than 15 years. Barring a last-minute reprieve, the Local 813 members expect to hit the bricks on April 1. “That is D-day for us,” said Needham, “We have got to the point of do-or-die.”

There’s some solid trash-hauling history in there if you’re interested in reading the whole article . . .

What, the Yankees think they can trot out Reggie Jackson and then all of the sudden everyone will want to sink millions into infrastructure improvements? Yes, yes they do:

Reggie Jackson was Mr. March for the Yankees yesterday as he helped pitch the Bombers’ planned new ballpark at a City Council hearing — but the proposal got a Bronx cheer from opponents.

The Yankees want a new $800 million stadium on parkland near their current home but the plan has drawn fire from Bronx residents and officials upset over the loss of green space.

“I am first a minority,” said Jackson. “The Yankees weren’t always really a good partner in the Bronx.”

But Jackson, a paid adviser to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, argued the team is now reaching out to the community — and urged Council members to forge a “partnership” agreement with the Boss.

Mr. October was told his sales pitch before the planning subcommittee was “a day late and a dollar short” by Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx), who has been a sharp critic of aspects of the stadium plan.

The Advance checks in on the Island bar with the $1.5 million NCAA pool:

The two signs posted on the mirrors behind the bar at Jody’s Club Forest indicate what only those in the know need to know — 537 lines are left in the West Brighton tavern’s March Madness Pool.

The nondescript black writing on plain white papers reveals:

123 people picked the fourth-seeded LSU Tigers to win it all.

240 people think the second-seeded UCLA Bruins are going to hoist the trophy.

173 people believe the third-seeded Florida Gators will cut down the nets.

. . .

With more than 150,000 entries submitted in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament betting bonanza, the pot is reportedly worth upward of $1.5 million.

It costs $10 to enter a line and each submission must include a prediction of the Final Four teams, plus the NCAA champion and the score of the title game, which will be played Monday night in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

And you may be wondering if anyone penciled in the surprising 11th-seeded George Mason team — apparently, yes:

Only one person took a giant leap of faith and selected the longest of long shots, George Mason’s Patriots, the giant-killers who entered the tourney seeded 11th in their 16-team region.

. . .

Since no one this side of Nostradamus could have predicted this year’s Final Four, insiders say the rules of the pool have been slightly altered.

Those remaining have three of the Final Four correct — the fourth pick having been knocked out during this past weekend’s Elite 8 games — and the winning pick still alive.

Rumors are circulating that one fellow was one team shy of walking away with the all the cash. He supposedly had the top-seeded Villanova Wildcats instead of their opponent, and eventual vanquisher, Florida.

But that same man is still in the pool because he was the only one to take a flier on George Mason doing the Cinderella dance.

Backstory: Shh . . . Don’t Tell The IRS!

We could invest $6 billion to build a rail link between Lower Manhattan and JFK* but I’m fairly sure people would still be willing to spend more to get to JFK on a helicopter than on an actual airplane to, say, California, and that probably says something about either the importance of a rail link or the willingness of executives to fritter away stockholders’ earnings, I’m not sure which. Oh, and did we mention that the TSA is providing security for the helicopterists? Because you might have missed that detail:

At 7 a.m., U.S. Helicopter, a start-up company, whisked its first passengers from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, over Brooklyn, Queens and the security lines at Kennedy, to the American Airlines terminal. The hourly flights, which last less than 10 minutes, cost $139 each way.

Included in that price is the luxury of avoiding the long security screening lines at the airport. At the request of U.S. Helicopter’s executives, the federal Transportation Security Administration set up a checkpoint, with X-ray and bomb-detection machines, to screen passengers and their luggage at the heliport.

The security agency is spending $560,000 this year to operate the checkpoint with a staff of eight screeners and is considering adding a checkpoint at the heliport at the east end of 34th Street. The agency’s involvement has drawn criticism from some elected officials.

[Chuck Schumer quote deleted to avoid having to provide him an outlet in which to grandstand]

But Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Wall Street heliport, on Pier 6 in the East River, called the resumption of the service a boon for the downtown economy.

“This is much more than just to have something nice,” Mr. Gargano said. “It is an essential element to rebuilding Lower Manhattan.”

Spare us . . .

But who actually uses this service?

Most of those passengers are expected to be investment bankers and other business travelers who want to save time and avoid the hassles of the normal trek to the airport.

. . .

Bobby Weiss, a self-employed stock trader and real estate broker who was U.S. Helicopter’s first paying customer yesterday, said he would pay $300 for a round trip to Kennedy, and he expected most corporate executives would, too.

“It’s $300, but so what? It goes on the expense account,” said Mr. Weiss, adding that he had no qualms about the diversion of federal resources to smooth the path of highfliers. “Maybe a richer guy may save a little time at the expense of a poorer guy who spends a little more time in line.”

Which companies did it say I have in my mutual fund?

*And if you ask me, the $6 billion project is of course the perfect way to honor the memory of those who perished on Sept. 11. Because nothing says, “Never Forget” like “One-seat ride between Manhattan and JFK.”

Contractors bemoan the closing of Red Hook Crushers (another great band name), which means they’ll be forced to travel to Maspeth (gasp!) to dump concrete detritus from Brooklyn construction sites:

The “new” Brooklyn is being built, stoop-by-stoop, gut-rehab-by-gut-rehab, bluestone-by-bluestone, in neighborhoods like Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Gowanus, the South Slope and Clinton Hill.

But a big problem has emerged: Where will the “old” Brooklyn be thrown out?

In Queens, actually.

Last month, the city shut down Red Hook Crushers, a company that played a vital, and often-overlooked, role in the borough’s surging construction industry.

For two decades, the company’s crushing equipment along the banks of the Gowanus Canal have taken in broken up cement, demolished brick walls and other debris and churned it into base material to be used again in roads, runways and sidewalks.

But since Red Hook Crushers closed on Feb. 8, hundreds of small-time contractors — the thick-calloused guys who rip up an old concrete stoop and turn it into a Yuppie’s bluestone dream — are now being forced to truck that unwanted cement all the way to the closest similar facility in Maspeth.

And all that driving is driving them nuts.

. . .

“I work in all these up-and-coming neighborhoods, fixing sidewalks, rebuilding stoops, renovating backyards,” said John Kiamie, owner of Sure Foundation.

“Now I have to drive to Maspeth — it’s two hours, back and forth on the BQE! — to dump the old stoop or sidewalk after I fix it. If I make two trips, I lose half a day on the road while my workers just sit around waiting for me to get back.”

Kiamie said he’s now turning down the small jobs that were his bread-and-butter.

“They shut this guy down without a contingency plan!” he said. “What am I supposed to do?! It’s clinical insanity! It’s a good thing it’s not our busy season or I’d never be able to stay calm!”

And don’t pretend like thick-calloused guys don’t have a keen sense of irony:

The reality is that the Crushers once-desolate Gowanus site has become very desirable. Whole Foods, whose first Brooklyn supermarket is being slowly built next door, is said to covet the space, and new apartment buildings are springing up in an area once written off as a waste land.

“The irony is that Whole Foods dumped plenty of concrete with us,” said Crushers co-owner Tom Saccomanno Jr., a copy of Pit & Quarry magazine on his desk.

Like Saccomanno, Kiamie said he certainly welcomed newcomers.

“If they want to turn the Gowanus Canal into a new Venice, God bless ‘em,” he said. “It’s great. They’ll need us to do the work. But I need a place to dump the garbage or else the BQE will be a parking lot all day and all night.”

The Department of Sanitation, for its part, says that contractors will just have to “deal with it.”

The Post, in an EXCLUSIVE, reports on the details of an internal memo from Attorney General candidate Mark Green’s campaign:

A secret “talking points” memo from Mark Green’s attorney-general campaign dumps on “lightweight” Andrew Cuomo — and instructs supporters how to defend against oft-heard charges that Green is arrogant.

The 3 1/2-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, gives surrogates for the onetime public advocate and mayoral also-ran answers to tough questions including: “Isn’t Green arrogant?”

“No staff or friend or family member who knows this believes this. It’s the slander of opponents,” says the memo.

“Mark is a confidant (sic), optimistic person, which some confuse for arrogance. It’s impossible to think MG arrogant in a field with Andy Cuomo,” the memo continues.

The details of Randy Johnson’s child support payments to the mother of a 16-year-old he fathered and the controversy surrounding the issue are not terribly interesting. What you will not be able to shake, however, is this visual:

[Laurel] Roszell claims that Johnson — who later married and had four children with his wife, Lisa — has ignored Heather’s written pleas to meet him.

“He hurts her feelings,” she said.

The hot-tempered future Hall of Famer, who is a born-again Christian, has seen Heather only once — right after her out-of-wedlock birth in 1989, and he demanded a paternity test when Roszell first sought child support in 1998.

The 6-foot-1 high-school student “looks like him, walking and talking, a young girl with attitude,” said Roszell, who is married and has a son. [Emph. added to make sure that his Yankee teammates can tease him about this in the locker room this season]

Astorians Coming Together to show that they are interesting, too:

While taking a ride on the N or W trains to Astoria these days, one is likely to notice a musician hauling a guitar or an actor reading a script or maybe a young artist sketching the city views from the elevated tracks.

With proximity to Manhattan, public safety, good cuisine and still-affordable rents, Astoria and neighboring Long Island City have been seeing a migration of newcomers in recent years — many belonging to the creative set.

Now these artists have a place to congregate in the form of a monthly gathering that kicked off last week.

The idea is “to give people a nice chance, in an intimate setting, to meet each other and get to know each other,” said Andrea Reese, a writer, performer and one of the founders of the group B-QUACK, which stands for Borough of Queens United Artists Collective Kum-Ba-Ya.

The first meeting was held last Thursday night at Waltz, an artistic-minded coffee shop on Ditmars Blvd. More than two dozen artists, playwrights and musicians mingled at the inaugural event.

“There was a feeling of a lot of excitement,” said Reese, an actor in a one-woman show about Jackie O. “It was really a lot of fun.”

B-QUACK is the brainchild of five locals: Reese, performer Jen Ryan, director and theater editor Leonard Jacobs, designer Rik Sansone and David Gibbs, a publicist.

. . .

“We’re a little tired of hearing about Brooklyn,” said Jacobs, who moved to Astoria from the Theater District three years ago after the notion of artists being able to afford Manhattan rents turned into “a laughingstock” and after many Brooklyn neighborhoods became nearly as expensive.

“It is time for us to say we are here, we are interesting,” Jacobs said.

The first few words of this story almost make it one of the best ledes ever:

A terrified Florida woman was nearly swallowed whole by a Brooklyn street yesterday when the cracked pavement collapsed under her SUV after a water main break, authorities said.

Then again, the story is strange enough as it is:

Nancy Batista, 46, would have been trapped in the 20-foot-deep hole in Bay Ridge if not for a pair of anonymous good Samaritans who pulled her from the mangled Ford Explorer, relatives said.

“The guy ripped the door open and said, ‘I got you!’” said Maggie Nieves, 45, after talking to her shaken sister, who was treated at Lutheran Medical Center. “She said it felt like Niagara Falls.”

As water gushed atop the Explorer at 3:35 a.m., a mystery military sergeant and a passerby rescued Batista, who, at first, was too scared to get out of the 15-foot-by-20-foot-wide hole.

“She was scared she might misjudge the step and that she would go down and nobody would be able to get her back up,” Nieves said.

Batista, who traded Flatbush for Kissimmee, Fla., a few years ago, was at a stoplight on Fourth Ave. at 73rd St. when the ground suddenly caved in.

“All she remembers is making a turn and the street opened up and swallowed her,” said Nieves, who first saw the wreck on TV when their mom in Florida called her Harlem home.

Gallons of water and a 2-foot-thick section of mud and debris collapsed along 300 feet of subway tracks below, shutting down the local R line between 36th St. and 95th St.

New York Magazine reports on how city landlords are quietly coming together to educate themselves on how to better evict tenants:

A recent seminar, sponsored by a landlord group cutely called Community Housing Improvement Program, brought together Manhattan moguls and mom-and-pops who may own a building or two in the outer-outer-boroughs to get a primer on putting their problem tenants out on the street. After paying $50 and making small talk over muffins and coffee one morning in the chandeliered conference room of the New York County Lawyers’ Association on Vesey Street, the sold-out crowd of 225 settled in to listen to the lawyers.

. . .

Attorney William Neville recommended getting friendly with the postman to see whose name is on the mail and subpoenaing ATM records to see where the tenant banks. His biggest thrill? “Showing that [tenants] are lying.” Lawyer Lauren Popper said that it’s sometimes worth hiring a P.I.: Her favorite gumshoe once posed as a patient to catch a psychiatrist using his rent-stabilized apartment as an office while living elsewhere. Ultimately, they were steeled by the possibility of a jackpot—the flip side of the no-account-tenant horror stories. Belkin bragged that he might be able to get $10,000 a month for an apartment he recently wrestled out of rent control. The previous rent? Three hundred dollars. A ripple of excitement went through the audience.

Trader Joe’s opening as reported by the Villager:

Three days after its grand opening on St. Patrick’s Day, the specialty grocery store at 142 E. 14th St. attracted more shoppers than it could handle. So 30 people had to wait outside before a Trader Joe’s employee allowed them to enter. “Are you serious — this line’s for a grocery store?” one woman hissed before joining the queue.

Inside, Trader Joe’s aisles were packed with shoppers. Employees dodged carts and baskets as they tried to restock the rapidly emptying shelves. The line for the cash registers looped around the entire store, all the way to the bread section. There, a cheerful employee dressed in a Trader Joe’s signature Hawaiian-print shirt held up a sign indicating “End of Line.”

. . .

As Monday’s crowd indicated, Trader Joe’s has its share of fans. Waiting on line for the register, a couple asked the stranger in front of them to snap a photo of them in front of their overflowing shopping cart. The man obliged as the couple grinned from ear to ear.

Vida Mulec, 25, an international affairs graduate student at New School University, exited the store, pleased with her purchases. It’s cheaper than the nearby Whole Foods Market, she said. “I got a dozen eggs for 99 cents,” she gushed.

Other first-time Trader Joe’s shoppers were less impressed with the store. “It’s not that cheap, but if it’s organic, you pay a special price for that,” Alex Brunavs said. Brunavs, a 64-year-old retiree, read about the opening of Trader Joe’s in the newspaper. “I heard it comes from California,” he said.

The Times picks up the Vivi scent, the show dog who is still missing:

There had been several sightings of Vivi, a white and brown female whippet, in the past few weeks, both in the tabloids and around the area of Flushing Cemetery and Kissena Park. Ms. Booth, a breeder of whippets and a friend of Vivi’s owners, who live in Claremont, Calif., had already scoured Queens a half-dozen times looking for the dog, but there was no giving up now.

“As you can see, it’s an extremely daunting search,” said Ms. Booth, who was wearing a brown ski jacket and hiking boots as she ticked off a long list of Vivi’s possible hiding spots. Having searched Queens from the marshes around Kennedy Airport to the streets of Bayside, she has become intimately familiar with the terrain. “I’m learning more about Queens than I ever wanted to know,” she said.

By late Friday, the show dog’s whereabouts remained a mystery. The search for Vivi has galvanized this part of Flushing, where several cars could be seen cruising slowly around the cemetery and park, their drivers peering out their windows. Fliers posted on several telephone poles depicted Vivi in happier days, sprinting through a field and standing at attention. “If Seen, Do Not Chase Her,” the fliers warned sternly. They also offered a $5,000 reward. [Emph. added in order to underscore the idea that the owner may deserve to have her prize dog liberated in Queens]

I suppose it was inevitable we’d eventually have to apply Broken Windows to shopping:

A gunshot fired on one of the most exclusive blocks of Fifth Avenue sent well-heeled passersby scrambling for cover last night after a fight between workers at Abercrombie & Fitch’s flagship store got out of control, witnesses and cops said.

One of the workers, a man who was not identified, was hospitalized last night after a female employee with whom he had been arguing sent two friends to get revenge on him.

The thugs pistol whipped the worker outside the store at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street.

The gun accidentally went off during the brutal beating, shattering the window of the exclusive Beverly Feldman women’s clothing store about 8:45 p.m.

The Post notes which of the wealthiest among us are armed:

Ronald Lauder has joined trigger-happy tycoons Donald Trump and Seagrams scion Edgar Bronfman Sr. as the richest men in the city packing heat, according to the NYPD’s gun-permit list.

Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and multimillionaire Marvel Comics CEO Isaac Perlmutter are the newest gun-club members licensed to carry a weapon — topping a list that already included “Mean Streets” actors Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, “Scarface” producer Martin Bregman and shock jocks Don Imus and Howard Stern.

These boldfaced names are among more than 38,000 licensed gun owners in the city; the number has steadily declined in recent years as fewer people apply for permits — and fewer are approved.

“The review is thorough and it may include a site visit,” said Police Inspector Michael Coan. “Permits are reviewed upon renewal to ensure proper cause exists to continue the permit.”

Other gun-toting notables — who have a license to carry as opposed to a permit to keep their weapon only at a home or business — include anti-gun activist Fernando Mateo and Giuliani Partners execs Richard Sheirer and Anthony Carbonetti — an in-law of the notorious booze-peddling Dorrian clan.

Republican Senate majority leader Joe Bruno and music czar Tommy Mottola remain licensed carriers, according to NYPD records through March 17. [Emph. added for the delicious irony]

Happily, teens in New York are just as weird about prom as those kids profiled on MTV:

Jenna Cossuto spent $2,400 on her custom-made dress. She’ll rent a 22-seat stretch Hummer to transport her closest friends to privately booked Gotham Hall.

And then it’s off to the swanky South Street Seaport at Bridgewater and afterward, a party in Crobar’s VIP section before a long weekend in a Hamptons beach house.

But this once-in-a-lifetime weekend isn’t for Cossuto’s wedding.

It’s for this 17-year-old’s senior prom.

“You only do prom once, and I’ve been planning this for over a year,” said Cossuto, who will graduate from Leon Goldstein HS in upscale Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.

She’s part of a growing generation of teens who think of prom as the end all, be all of their young lives.

“Teens think of prom as their Oscar night. They want to look and feel like celebrities,” says Gina Kelly, fashion director at Seventeen magazine.

. . .

“I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll spend, but probably thousands and thousands,” said Cossuto. If she gets all she wants, the total will exceed $10,000.

“My parents are just happy that I saved up myself for the dress, and they’ll obviously help me pay for everything else I need.”

Her mom, Susan, rolls her eyes, but says she and her lawyer husband are happy to give their only daughter all the things they never had while growing up.

Beyond the designer Jovani dress, which includes multi-carat Chopard diamonds, Cossuto got $550 Gucci shoes, a matching handbag, tanning sessions, eyebrow shaping and professional hair and makeup for the big day, June 7.

After the City Council reversed the mayor’s short-lived Sunday parking meter scheme, the city has been slow to change parking signs, leading some to wonder if it is intentional:

Drivers no longer need to feed parking meters on Sunday but wouldn’t know it by looking at the city’s street signs.
Since the ban on Sunday parking meters became official last November, the Department of Transportation has corrected only 5,137 of its 15,062 Sunday parking signs — a mere one-third over four months.

The slow pace has motorists crying foul.

“The reason they’re not moving quickly is because they want the revenue,” said Glen Bolofsky, president of ticket-fighting Web site parkingticket.com. “They have false signs up encouraging people to insert money into a meter that legally is not even supposed to accept the money.

“The city is just reaping a windfall from unsuspecting people,” he said.

The most backlogged borough is Brooklyn, where only 57 of 3,520 signs have been corrected. Manhattan is next, with only 1,675 of 4,711 signs replaced, and Queens third with fewer than half of its 5,590 signs changed.

“The city was fast to put them up when they were going to make revenue,” said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, which covers Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope.

“It was as if a white tornado blew through the district,” he said of the 2002 policy change that required Sunday parking fees.

The city estimated the Sunday fees generated $7 million annually.

DOT could not estimate how much money it is still collecting on Sundays since the November ban.

The Daily News reports that the homeless man who successfully sued a New Jersey town is now setting his sights on Amtrak:

A scruffy homeless man who cleaned up by filing discrimination lawsuits in New Jersey is now a regular on this side of the Hudson River — and trouble is brewing at Penn Station.

Fifteen years ago, Richard Kreimer got national attention when he won $230,000 from the Morristown, N.J., library and local cops who wrongly booted him from the library because of his horrible hygiene.

But all that money is now gone, and Kreimer, 56, spends several nights a week alongside other homeless men and women in a waiting area for Amtrak and NJTransit ticket holders.

Kreimer says he always has a ticket — but charges that hasn’t stopped Amtrak officials and cops from trying to eject him from the waiting area. “If they keep pushing me, I’ll probably speak to a lawyer about it,” he told the Daily News early yesterday inside Penn Station. “If push comes to shove, I’ll probably file a lawsuit against them, and I’ll include the other homeless, too.”

Kreimer’s allegations against Amtrak were echoed by other homeless who say they — and people who appear to be vagrants — are targeted during purges of the waiting area.

Kreimer calls it “homeless profiling” and clear discrimination — a charge Amtrak denied.

“Nobody discriminates or singles out the homeless,” said station master Norma Diggs.

Diggs said travelers can use the waiting room for up to two hours, and can stay longer only if the next train to their destination isn’t scheduled to depart during the two-hour window. Anyone in the waiting area beyond their allotted time is asked to leave, she said.

But two Amtrak workers, who asked not to be identified, charged that a station master ordered a clerk in the waiting area to “throw the bums out” about a week ago, which Diggs disputed.

Questions include but are not limited to:

• How do you blow a quarter of a million dollars when you’re homeless?
• What lawyer takes this case and do they take their customary third of the settlement?
• Can an Amtrak employee on the inside collude with the man to get some of the earnings kicked back
• If so, how can others contact the man to get on board?

Just asking . . .

I’m pretty certain I watched this plotline on Season 2 of the Sopranos:

Ten reputed members of the Colombo, Luchese and Bonanno organized crime families made millions for the mob by selling bogus stocks to unwitting investors, coercing stockbrokers into their scheme with bribes, threats and even once chaining an uncooperative promoter to a pit bull, federal prosecutors charged yesterday.

. . .

According to an indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, the 10 men secretly controlled at least 15 branch offices of brokerage firms, mostly in Manhattan but also on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, where brokers would make cold calls to investors to push fraudulently inflated stocks.

Between 1994 and 2005, they bilked investors of more than $20 million, court papers state.

To protect their financial interests, the defendants used their mob ties to intimidate brokerage firm owners and their employees, prosecutors charge.

In addition to the incident with the pit bull, a cold caller was hit over the head with a golf club, and a broker was beaten with a bat and stabbed when he said he wanted to leave the firm, according to prosecutors.

This version of organized crime either says something about the mob or about Wall Street. In any case, we have another idea for a band name:

The case is the culmination of a three-year investigation into the Colombo family’s alleged corruption of the penny stock market — stocks worth under $5.

In their classic pump-and-dump scheme, the accused made vast purchases of low-prospect stocks deemed unsuitable by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They would trick investors into buying in and driving up the price, then would sell off their holdings, according to prosecutors.

Brokers at the agencies were bribed into promoting these so-called house stocks with commissions of 20 to 50 percent of the selling price, the indictment states.

As an offshoot of the scheme, John Baudanza and Jerry Degerolamo, 34, also created a phony partnership called America’s Hedge Fund, L.P., based at 125 Demopolis Ave. in Eltingville.

The defendants lured investors into buying into the fund, then used the cash to buy cars, renovate their homes and pay off their credit cards, prosecutors charge.

(No, not “Pump And Dump” — that’s a terrible name, you sicko! — I’m talking about “America’s Hedge Fund”!)

(My memory isn’t so bad after all — it was season 2!)