After reaching rock-star status, TWU Local 100 President figures out that the quickest way to come down from the cross is to rail against sensible laws forbidding public servants like police and firemen — and, yes, transit employees — from going on strike:

Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union, walked out of jail shortly after 9 a.m. today, after serving less than four full days of what was supposed to be a 10-day sentence for leading an illegal strike in December.

Defiant in brief remarks outside the jail complex in lower Manhattan, he said, “We will not back down” to demands by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to limit pensions and benefits.

Mr. Toussaint was released after his sentence was trimmed to seven days because of good behavior. Following usual jail procedure, the authorities released him on the last working day before the weekend.

Mr. Toussaint denounced the law that prohibits strikes by some public employees. “The Taylor law is a bad law, an unjust law,” he said, “pensions and benefits need to be defended.”

Roger, who the fuck is working on your public relations?

Let’s unpack this for a minute. After being released from jail early — bringing to an abrupt end the schadenfreude felt by millions of stranded commuters — do you:

A) Thank your supporters and vow to carry on the good fight against rapidly shrinking benefits for the workers of this country?

B) Thank your supporters and take the opportunity to reiterate that the Transport Workers Union means business, no matter what wildly inappropriate and unfair actions the Metropolitan Transit Authority takes?

or C) Rail against a 40-year-old law that ensures that public works in the city run smoothly, a law that I imagine most people who aren’t part of the Socialist party probably support?

Of all the things Toussaint chooses to say . . . what a stooge.

Roger, there’s a time and place for bringing up Taylor Law reform. The press conference immediately following your being released from jail early is probably the worst possible time and place!

After last year’s successful effort, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. is encouraging Bronx boosters to stuff the Zagat ballot box again:

Following up on last year’s successful push to get more of the borough’s eateries in the renowned guide, which saw 13 additional Bronx restaurants join 12 others from the borough in Zagat’s, Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. is teaming up with the Bronx Tourism Council again for the second annual Zagat Guide campaign.

“We’re just getting the word out again this year to encourage people to vote for their favorite restaurants and get them in the guide,” said Carrion. “More people are checking out our great restaurants because of the Zagat listings. I hope we will increase our presence in the 2007 guide.”

Last year, the BP’s office launched a campaign that saw Alice’s Tea Cup, Bruckner B&G, Dominick’s, El Malecon, El Rancho, El Rey del Marisco, Enzo’s, F&J Pine, Jake’s Steakhouse, Joe’s Place, Le Refuge, Lobster Box, Madison’s, Mario’s, Park Place, Pasquale’s Rigoletto, Piper’s Kilt, Portofino, Riverdale Garden, Roberto’s, Siam Square, Spoto’s, Tosca Café, Umberto’s and Willie’s Steakhouse added to the annual guide to the city’s best restaurants.

“The lack of attention to Bronx eateries is like the elephant in the room that everyone sees, but no one talks about,” said Jake’s Steakhouse general manager James Shelly. “We are ecstatic that the borough president was so aggressive in addressing the problem in a positive matter. It worked. We have worked hard here and people wondered why we were not in the guide. We didn’t have an answer, but now we have made it.”

. . .

In order for that to be further recognized in the next guide due out later this year, Bronxites must step up to the plate and be heard. “It’s up to Bronxites, all New Yorkers and our suburban neighbors who enjoy our great restaurants to cast their votes for their favorite eateries,” said Carrion. “I know I’ll be voting for many places again this year.”

The Times breaks down the 1,662 murders in New York City from 2003 to 2005:

The oldest killer was 88; he murdered his wife. The youngest was 9; she stabbed her friend. The women were more than twice as likely as men to murder a current spouse or lover. But once the romance was over, only the men killed their exes. The deadliest day was on July 10, 2004, when eight people died in separate homicides.

Five people eliminated a boss; 10 others murdered co-workers. Males who killed favored firearms, while women and girls chose knives as often as guns. More homicides occurred in Brooklyn than in any other borough. More happened on Saturday. And roughly a third are unsolved.

. . .

Among all the city’s victims, the oldest was 91; she died during a robbery. Whites and Asians, who seldom murdered, were also infrequently killed: Together, they represented 75 or fewer victims each year. Most homicides occurred outdoors. The deadliest hour was 1 to 2 a.m

(See what Jim Carroll has been up to.)

New Jersey might actually get rid of mandatory full-serve:

There are certain truths about New Jersey that have always seemed to be immutable: It is the most densely populated state. It has the highest property taxes in the country. And it is one of the few places left where you cannot pump your own gasoline.

But if Gov. Jon S. Corzine has his way, drivers may soon be in for a cultural about-face.

Mr. Corzine proposed Thursday that the state lift its self-serve ban as part of a package of transportation proposals on carpooling, mass transit and enforcement, intended to cushion residents from rising gasoline prices. And while he cautioned that his proposal was just a pilot program that would be limited to perhaps three months, he said that self-serve gasoline could save drivers about 5 or 6 cents a gallon, if properly handled.

“We think it’s a responsible thing to do,” he said. “If we can enforce the pass-through and we can mainstream that over a period of time, then it would be permanent and broadly applied throughout the state.”

What exactly does it mean to “enforce the pass-through” and subsequently “mainstreaming” it? No matter — but check out this fool idiot:

The idea does require legislative approval, however, and early reaction was mixed. Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, a Democrat from Middlesex County who is chairman of the transportation committee, said in a statement, “Telling a motorist that self-serve will save them money at the pump is like telling someone that they could save money on a new home by building it themselves.”

Um, there’s that little issue of paying all of the little men who pump the gas . . . Jackass . . .

I guess this means a NASCAR track on Staten Island is not exactly a slam dunk:

The first public hearing on the proposed NASCAR racetrack here turned so rowdy last night that police shut it down in less than an hour.

The crowd — which numbered close to 1,000 people jammed into the Petrides Educational Complex auditorium in Sunnyside — was rude and unruly from the beginning, shouting down track developers and elected officials alike.

Emotions ran so strong that one Staten Island track supporter nearly put a borough councilman in a headlock.

“He doesn’t have a right to that mike!” screamed Westerleigh resident and union official Christopher Wallace, as he wrapped his arm around Councilman Andrew Lanza’s shoulders and tried to yank a microphone out of his hand.

Lanza had triggered that reaction by suggesting that track developer International Speedway Corp. (ISC) shipped construction union members from off-Island to support the Bloomfield project, which would provide jobs.

The two stared each other down while the crowd screamed.

The dispute took place less than 30 minutes into what was supposed to be the public’s first chance to air its concerns about the proposed 80,000-seat racetrack to city officials.

. . .

The tipping point of the meeting occurred when Lanza suggested that track supporters came from off-Island, lured by the prospect of construction jobs.

That’s when Wallace, an official with Union Local 20 of the New York District Council of Carpenters, got out of his seat several rows away, started shouting, put his hands on Lanza and tried to wrest the microphone from him.

More proof that the Yankees are evil:

Yankees apparel and a shave was the disguise of choice for would-be bombers planning to blow up the Herald Square subway station, according to court testimony yesterday.

The idea was that “we should not look like Muslims, we should look like regular people,” Osama El-Dawoody, an NYPD informant, said in Brooklyn Federal Court.

El-Dawoody spent his third day on the witness stand providing an overview for hours of secretly recorded conversations with alleged bomber wanna-be Shahawar Matin Siraj in the summer of 2004 as details of the plot took shape.

Siraj, 24, suggested that the 50-year-old El-Dawoody would look more discreet by trading his kufi — a Muslim headpiece — for a baseball cap.

“Wear, like, this kind of stuff with the New York Yankees on it or something,” Siraj said.

Don’t worry, though, because the plot gets stupider and stupider:

According to their plan, the bomber would take the F train to the 42nd St. station and place an explosive device in a garbage can. Then he would board another train to the 34th St. station, place a second device in the garbage or a toilet there and take the train to the Broadway-Lafayette St. station.

It was unclear whether the bombs would be triggered by remote control or timers.

Siraj said he hoped the explosion would “take down” the shopping mall above the Herald Square station.

Idiots! No one actually uses the Manhattan Mall! No matter:

Killing people was not their main goal. They had hoped to minimize casualties by striking in the early-morning hours on the weekend when the stations subways were mostly deserted — except for the homeless, the tapes show.

“You cannot save [the] homeless,” Siraj said.

These guys sound very American, actually, with this you-cannot-save-the-homeless bootstrapper talk . . .

The Sun reports (link reveals just enough to get the gist of the story), that the Russian who took advantage of his diplomatic immunity to avoid having a Breathalyzer test administered is being sent back home:

Yielding to pressure from the State Department and city politicians, Russian officials sent the diplomat who hit a police officer with his car while allegedly driving drunk last weekend back to Moscow, officials said yesterday.

Ilya Morozov, 28, an attache at the Russian Mission to the United Nations for the last year, boarded a plane for Russia just hours after the consulate received a diplomatic note from the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, requesting Mr. Morozov’s diplomatic immunity be waived or that he be sent out of the country, a spokeswoman for the mission, Maria Zakharova, said.

The Times’ David Dunlap pays his respects to Jane Jacobs, and gives some current examples of her influence:

The idea that city planning should be informed by the city block — its people, texture, layering, scale and age — can be traced in good measure to her 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” written while she lived at 555 Hudson Street, a little block between Perry and West 11th Streets peppered with old buildings.

She liked short blocks with a lot of diversity.

On Tuesday, she died at age 89 in Toronto, where she had moved in 1968. Along Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, diversity still reigned around the unremarkable three-story structure at No. 555 (”modest” seems too grandiose a word for it), now home to the Art of Cooking, a cookware and accessories store. Elsewhere on the block are the White Horse Tavern, three restaurants, a cafe, a news dealer and a combination card store, florist and T-shirt shop.

Farther downtown, Ms. Jacobs’s hand can be seen in the redevelopment plan for the World Trade Center. A central tenet of that plan is to break down the super-block site into four smaller blocks through the re-establishment of Greenwich and Fulton Streets.

It is no coincidence that this framework was developed while Alexander Garvin was vice president for planning at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. His roommate at Yale gave him a copy of “Death and Life” as a Christmas present in 1961. “It changed my life,” Mr. Garvin said.

. . .

Another example of her influence, Mr. Garvin said, was the neighborhood preservation program that he oversaw as New York’s deputy housing commissioner from 1974 to 1978. “We were trying to save old buildings,” he recalled, “which was something I always had an inclination toward but until I read that you needed a mix of old and new buildings to have a healthy neighborhood, it wasn’t part of my repertoire.”

John E. Zuccotti was so taken by “Death and Life” that he wrote his Yale Law School dissertation in 1963, “Some Tools for Mrs. Jacobs,” on whether diversity could be enforced by zoning. He is now chairman of Brookfield Properties in the United States, whose holdings include enormous buildings on either side of the trade center site.

“Her ideas are as pertinent today as when she wrote,” Mr. Zuccotti said. “Take our problems down here. We’re talking about a 24-hour community, residential uses mixing with office uses, different kinds of commercial uses.”

. . .

“She taught us how to look at blocks,” said Ada Louise Huxtable, who was the architecture critic of The New York Times when Ms. Jacobs was battling Robert Moses and other powerful advocates of urban renewal and slum clearance.

“The intimate view of the city and its humanity really is indebted to her,” Ms. Huxtable said.

New York returned the favor yesterday. The owner of the Art of Cooking, Kate Humphrey, arrived at work to find several bouquets on the doorstep of No. 555.

One, a mixture of lilies and daisies and other springtime flowers, carried this unsigned message: “From this house, in 1961, a housewife changed the world.”

From the op-ed assignment desk: Are city-affiliated fundraising offices (e.g., the Department of Education’s Fund For Public Schools and the City Parks Foundation, to name just two) in danger of becoming the 21st century equivalent of Robert Moses’ Title I-assisted shadow government? Or to put it another way, by more fully integrating private fundraising into the daily routine of city agencies (e.g., The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City) are we creating a situation in which bureaucrats can bypass City Council/elected official oversight vis a vis agency budgets in order to promote programs or projects over which the public has no oversight? The problem isn’t with the types of programs that are being funded — I’m sure there is a de facto consensus that education and parks are worthy aims — but rather the method they are being funded — i.e., through shadow budgets without public oversight, which was the way Robert Moses, through federal Title I funding, bypassed the municipal legislative structure. I don’t know that Jane Jacobs ever commented on the potential pitfalls of this new system of fundraising but I’m guessing she would raise questions. If any writers want to take a stab at this topic, they should strike while the iron is hot — say, for this Sunday’s Week in Review!

Will the Board of Education crackdown on cellphones lead to a return of the bad old days of children not being allowed to take the subway to school? Parents are concerned:

During the final stretch of David Ritter’s hourlong trip to middle school, he pulls a cellphone from his jeans and calls his mother in Washington Heights to say he is out of the subway and moments from the Salk School of Science on East 20th Street.

“It’s one thing I can cross off my list of things to worry about,” his mother, Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, said. “It’s a required part of our everyday life. We have a refrigerator, we have running water, we have cellphones.”

Cellphones are the urban parent’s umbilical cord, the lifeline connecting them to children on buses, emerging from subways, crisscrossing boroughs and traipsing through unknown neighborhoods.

. . .

Some of these parents, also fearful of child predators and terrorist attacks, say that sending their children to school without cellphones is unimaginable. “I have her call me when she gets out of school, and she’s supposed to get on the bus right away,” Lindsay Walt, an artist, said of her daughter, Eve Thomson, 11, a sixth grader at Salk. “Then I have her call me when she gets off the bus, and I have her call me when she gets in the house. The chancellor will have civil disobedience on his hands. No one in New York is going to let their child go to school without a cellphone.”

. . .

“We sit here and we tell our parents, ‘Care about your kids, do this, do that,’ and then you say, ‘You’ve just lost that safety net that you rely on,’” said Jane Reiff, a Queens parent whose daughter Nikki, 12, uses her cellphone to call for a ride if the friends she usually walks home with are out sick. “It’s just not safe out there.”

Other items included in the crackdown — besides obvious things like boxcutters — include MP3 players:

Dumbfounded students said cellphones were essential, so familiar they were like an extra limb. But they had different reasons from their parents’. “I feel so empty,” said May Chom, 14, speaking wistfully after hearing of the policy and leaving her phone at home in Queens. With no cellphone, May said, there was also no way to listen to music on the way to the Lab School, on West 17th Street, making for a “really, really boring” trip.

I’m guessing the lucrative black market for cigarettes was an unintended consequence of the city’s 2003 smoking ban:

The smoking ban imposed in city jails three years ago has made cigarette smuggling so lucrative that a single smoke can command up to $20 from nicotine-starved inmates — leading to concerns about corruption behind bars, officials reported yesterday.

News of the thriving sky-high black market came as the Department of Investigation announced arrests in separate cases of three correction officers, two cooks and a nurse’s aide on charges of taking bribes of $50 to $1,000 to sneak tobacco, cocaine and a cellphone onto Rikers Island over the past year.

Two of the suspects — Correction Officer Glenda Glenn and nurse’s aide Cleveland Porter — were the first to face criminal charges for cigarette smuggling since the new rules were enacted in March 2003.

“When the ban went into effect in 2003, that created a market and an opportunity for people who were going to want to continue to smoke in the facility and it has created a corruption hazard and a bit of a black market,” said Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.

She said a single cigarette could fetch $10 to $20.

A bag a loose tobacco that stores sell for $2 might bring $40 to $50 in the illegal Rikers Island market.

While cigarettes are considered contraband for prisoners, they’re perfectly legal for correction officers and others who work in the jail system. But perhaps not for long.

“In light of these charges, [Correction] Commissioner [Martin] Horn and Commissioner Hearn are going to examine to what extent they will allow employees to carry personal amounts of tobacco,” said Deputy Correction Commissioner Richard White.

That brought an angry response from Peter Meringelo, president of the Correction Captains Association, who warned in 2003 that the smoking ban would cause major headaches.

Urbanist Jane Jacobs passed away in Toronto yesterday:

In 1952, Ms. Jacobs got a job as an editor at Architectural Forum, where she stayed for 10 years. That gave her a perch from which to observe urban renewal projects. On a visit to Philadelphia, she noticed that the streets of a project were deserted while an older, nearby street was crowded.

“So, I got very suspicious of this whole thing,” she told The Toronto Star in 1997. “I pointed that out to the designer, but it was absolutely uninteresting to him. How things worked didn’t interest him.

“He wasn’t concerned about its attractiveness to people. His notion was totally aesthetic, divorced from everything else.”

Her doubts increased after William Kirk, the director of the Union Settlement in East Harlem, taught her new ways of seeing neighborhoods. She came to see the prevalent planning notions, which involved bulldozing low-rise housing in poor neighborhoods and replacing it with tall apartment buildings surrounded by open space, as a superstition akin to early 19th-century physicians’ belief in bloodletting.

“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder,” she wrote in “Death and Life,” “and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”

. . .

Her seemingly simple prescriptions for neighborhood diversity, short blocks, dense populations and a mix of buildings represented a major rethinking of modern planning. They were coupled with fierce condemnations of the writings of the planners Sir Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer Howard, as well as those of the architect Le Corbusier and Lewis Mumford, who championed the ideal of graceful towers rising over exquisite open spaces.

One of the mix of buildings she wrote about was 11th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues . . .

For New Yorkers, she lived on in the famous photo of her with a beer and a cigarette in the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village . . .

It’s worth noting that she talked a lot about bars in Death and Life of Great American Cities. Although she might have a problem with the glut of bars in, say, the East Village (where community boards are on the hunt — community boards, by the way, being one of Jacobs’ big suggestions in Death and Life), she definitely saw bars as key to a neighborhood’s diversity — something that helps keep neighborhoods lively and safe well into the evening.

The AP obit features this gem:

During the Depression, on days when job hunts went nowhere, she would invest a nickel in the subway and explore a neighborhood: the diamond district, the garment district, the meatpacking district.

This love of exploration is of course the guiding principle behind the Big Map, so we’re indebted to her in this way, too.

(Les Freres Corbusiers get a shout-out, too: “Her most famous confrontation came in the early ’60s, when she helped defeat a plan by New York City park commissioner Robert Moses to build an expressway through Washington Square, their rivalry immortalized in the 2004 play ‘Boozy.’”)

After clamoring for the Mets to be “better neighbors,” Queens politicians seem happy with whatever deal they’ve struck with the team in exchange for their help financing the new stadium:

The Mets pledged jobs, contracts and other goodies for Queens yesterday to win support for their proposed new stadium.

“We’ve got a deal here,” said City Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens), whose district includes Shea Stadium. “It’s a home run for the borough.”

The deal paves the way for approval today by the full Council for a $798 million financing deal to build a new stadium for the Mets. The Council is also set to approve a similar $1.2 billion financing deal for the Yankees’ new stadium.

. . .

No dollar amount was given for the Mets pact, but 25% of the team’s annual community and charitable donations and related activities is to be steered to Queens sports, school and community groups.

The Mets also pledged to “use all reasonable efforts” to have at least 25% of construction contracts and jobs go to Queens firms and residents, and another 25% of the contracts go to minority- and women-owned firms.

Department of Corrections officials announced that they identified a site for a new jail in the Bronx. They just don’t want to say where:

A South Bronx industrial lot is to become the site for the city’s new $375 million jail, officials said yesterday.

John Antonelli, a deputy commissioner of the Department of Correction, told the City Council that the facility would have space for 2,000 inmates and be just two miles away from the courthouse.

“We have identified a site in the Oak Point section that is in reasonable proximity to the courts, appropriately zoned and large enough to accommodate a 2,000-bed facility,” Antonelli testified before the council’s Fire & Criminal Justice Committee.

The proposed site is in an area with garbage dumps, a sewage-treatment facility and power plants.

The site’s prior owners were investigated for possible ties to reputed crime boss John Gotti and declared bankruptcy, leaving behind $60 million in unpaid taxes.

“I would anticipate opposition to this, but I think that your agency is going to have to come forth with a more detailed plan than what we have today,” warned Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx).

Where, you say, is the “Oak Point” section of the Bronx? It’s not in the Encyclopedia of New York City? Neither Lloyd Ultan nor John McNamara (see here) has written the definitive history of the neighborhood? Maybe that’s because Corrections officials are really talking about Hunts Point, but then we would have known where they were talking about . . .

Next thing you know, they’ll be putting a jail in the Winfield section of Queens, and over in Vandewater’s Heights in Manhattan, one within walking distance of Punkiesberg (uh, scratch that example!), or maybe one in Kreischerville.

For extra credit.

An opening sequence for Six Feet Under: New York City:

A 24-year-old Manhattan man was thrown to his death into a parking lot at Long Island City’s Silvercup Studios after crashing into a wall on the Queensborough Bridge early Friday morning, Channel 7 News reported.

Luis Colon was pronounced dead at the scene after his 2003 Honda Pilot struck the left wall of the bridge just before 4 a.m., ejecting him 30 feet, police said. Colon was thrown through the driver’s side window and fell into the parking lot of Silvercup Studios at 42-22 22nd St., Channel 7 reported.

Silvercup, home of The Sopranos (get it?), is under the Queensboro Bridge . . . yeesh, what a way to go.

The Law & Order Corporate Welfare Act of 2006:

A group of City Council members yesterday called on the state to expand a program started last year that provides tax credits to film producers who shoot at least 75% of a movie in New York.

“The credit, everyone agrees, has been hugely successful,” Council Member David Yassky, a Democrat of Brooklyn, told reporters at City Hall.

Enacted as part of the “Made in N.Y.” program, the tax break is offered as an incentive for filmmakers who can reclaim a total of 15% of a movie’s production costs as a tax credit. The filmmakers get a 5% break on city taxes and a 10% cut in state taxes. Lawmakers put initial caps of $12.5 million annually for four years in city credits and $25 million a year for the state.

The city’s total share has already been allocated, and a current proposal being negotiated in the state budget would more than double the size of the program. The city would have $30 million an year to give in credits to filmmakers, and the state would have $60 million.

. . .

While critics of the tax credits deride it as a political favor to Hollywood, supporters say they are needed to help New York draw productions that filmmakers might otherwise take to cheaper cities such as Toronto or Vancouver. Other cities that have turned to tax credits for the film and television industry include London, which recently announced that Mr. Allen, whose films have become synonymous with New York, plans to shoot his third movie set in the British capital.

Not to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but I think most reasonable people agree that using acid to vandalize subway windows is not a form of free speech:

“I’ve seen it on every line, on almost every train,” said Andrew B. Albert, chairman of the New York City Riders Council, a state-sponsored advocacy group, who said the acid-based graffiti first appeared on subway windows about six months ago. Mr. Albert is a nonvoting member of the Transit Committee, which met yesterday.

He said the most common material used by the new breed of graffiti vandals is Armor Etch-All, an etching acid sold in art supply stores that is used by craftspeople to etch into glass or other materials. To create graffiti with the acid, it is mixed with paint or shoe polish, Mr. Albert said. And when applied to subway windows, it most commonly leaves broad, sweeping, indelible marks, which subway crews cannot remove in subway yards, as they do with painted graffiti.

Transit officials said that most subway windows are vulnerable and pose an expensive problem because they cost up to $130 each to replace. Only the newest of subway cars, acquired since about 2000, are resistant to the new generation of graffiti, because their windows are protected with Mylar, a plastic coating that can be peeled off and replaced.

. . .

The city’s resurgent graffiti problem, on buildings as well as subways, has not escaped the notice of City Hall. In December, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed into law a ban on possession of “graffiti instruments,” including etching acid, by anyone under 21. Besides etching acid, the ban covers such things as aerosol paint and broad-tipped indelible markers, which are used by graffiti vandals on buildings.

Opponents of the city ban have said it infringes on freedom of speech. Yesterday, according to The Associated Press, a lawyer said he would file suit today in federal court in Manhattan to challenge the ban as “overly broad.” The lawyer, Daniel Perez, said he was representing seven high school and college students who are supported by Marc Ecko, a fashion designer.

I’m sure Ecko cares about civil liberties and not, say — just thinking out loud here — his “full-scale global fashion and lifestyle company that reported billings of over $300 million in its men’s sportswear division alone in 2002,” but no matter — the suit must go on:

. . . imagine if, during the days when seditious libel was regarded as unprotected expression, the government, in order to deter seditious publications, made possession of a printing press unlawfulunless the possessor of the printing press could affirmatively prove at trial that the printing device would be used for a lawful purpose.

TWU Local 100 president Roger Toussaint goes to jail:

Ever-defiant transit-union chief Roger Toussaint yesterday staged an over-the-top surrender to authorities to begin his brief jail stint at The Tombs — walking across the Brooklyn Bridge surrounded by hundreds of supporters screaming, “No Toussaint, no peace!”

“I would do 30 years before surrendering!” the bleary-eyed president of the Transport Workers Union shouted to a cheering crowd of about 500 in Brooklyn before embarking with the throngs across the bridge to Manhattan.

. . .

He finally showed up outside court in downtown Manhattan at around 7 p.m., with activist Al Sharpton on one arm and teachers union President Randi Weingarten on the other.

Sporting a red union T-shirt with a black TWU jacket, the embattled labor leader bellowed to the crowd — many of whom weren’t even from his 33,000-strong union:

“I stand here because a judge found me guilty of contempt. I have contempt for employers who have kept us down. This is an attack on all working people of this city.”

The union guru then turned to his closest advisers for an emotional hug and said quietly, “All right, I’m ready,” before heading up the steps of the court building at 100 Centre St.

A scuffle briefly broke out between cops and the wife of city Councilman Charles Barron as the crowd jostled around, watching Toussaint being ushered up the steps into the building, one witness said.

“I told him I’d pray for him . . . and I’ll visit him in jail,” said a recording secretary for the union afterward.

The Jersey-born NYU student who got arrested for selling drugs on campus — the so-called “Bud Babe” — is parlaying her criminal past into a record deal:

Move over, J.Lo — the “Pot Princess” is angling to become a pop princess.

Julia Diaco, who got a slap on the wrist for selling drugs out of her NYU dorm room, is now pushing herself — as a pop singer named “J-Dia.”

“J-Dia may be one of the most controversial singers ever to hit the music scene. But with a mix of captivating beauty, brutal honesty, pure heart, raw pain, and overwhelming talent, this one is bound to captivate you and leave you wanting more,” reads the bio on her official Web site, which features several racy photos of the curvy criminal.

. . .

Diaco could have faced up to 25 years in prison had she been convicted at trial — but her site contends she actually got a bum rap. It calls the NYPD investigation “flawed” and says, “Reporters ran with the story, falsifying facts and attempting to portray her as something she most certainly was not.”

J-Dia also uses the arrest and publicity to promote herself, saying, “She quickly became known as one of the decade’s most infamous drug-dealers,” and “The American public was quickly captivated, infatuated with both the girl on television and the fascinating story behind her.

“J-Dia started a movement with the ludicrous arrest, and letters started pouring in, offering any help they had to give, and begging the DA for J-Dia’s pardon.”

Even though she’s still serving her probation, the site says, “She has since done her time, and has been set free to once and for all set the record straight, move forward, and fulfill her destiny.

“She is young, stunningly gorgeous, and overwhelmingly talented.”

The site says she has a deal with a company called Forget About It Records, and it features a number of J-Dia’s songs, including ones called “Free,” “High” and “New York.”

It also says the singer with “a heart of gold” has embarked on “an admirable mission to house the homeless, feed the hungry, and dispel all notions of suffering.”

Lyrics go something like this:

My name is J-Dia and I’m here to say
Selling rich kids drugs is a wicked way
To make it in this world — but that’s not
To say the Post still don’t think I’m hot
Haters cluck, “She was upper-middle class, theoretically smart”
But Motherfuckers, I have a singing career I need to start!
So yeah, I got caught, I got a slap on the wrist
And everything I do makes ex-con Anthony Papa pissed

Which is to say:

One person not impressed with Diaco’s latest act is ex-con Anthony Papa. Papa, 51, wrote to Diaco after seeing her comments on her MySpace profile and attempted to enlist her in his campaign to overturn the state’s Rockefeller drug laws.

He got an e-mail back from one of Diaco’s producers, who said his client was too high and mighty to help.

“We support your cause and wish you luck, but in NO way do we condone you using a young talented girl, full of promise, as the poster child of what’s wrong with America,” the response read.

Papa still thinks it’s the least she can do.

“Crime has been very, very good to her,” he said.

Previously on J-Dia.

Avert your eyes.

The Brooklyn Paper (.pdf) finds people who say what we feared they were thinking:

The Queen Mary 2 christened the new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook last week, drawing plenty of oohs and ahhs from onlookers, lots of platitude-filled speeches from politicians and one unanswered question from skeptics, “What’s in it for Brooklyn?”

More than 2,000 luxury cruisers spewed forth from of the world’s largest passenger liner on Saturday into the Red Hook sun and then promptly got on buses to Manhattan or the airport.

“This is a very nice terminal, but Brooklyn means nothing to me,” said Hoanes Koutouduian, a visitor from Portugal. “I’ll be staying in Manhattan for the food, drinks, and the jazz.”

But it’s not like they weren’t warned:

Cunard, which operates the 23-story boat, did little to encourage the Queen’s passengers to remain in Kings. The company’s Web site, for example, refers to its new port of call as “New York, New York.”

“See the bright lights of the Big Apple,” it reads. “Some come just for the shopping: there’s Bloomingdale’s on Lex, Tiffany’s on Fifth, Barneys and the unique boutiques along Madison. Or head downtown and explore the trendy shops of SoHo.”

. . .

“This is a joke,” said Tonya “Lenell” Smothers, owner of the neighborhood’s popular boubon-filled liquor store, “Who gets off a boat and goes to general contractor or a Chinese restaurant with bulletproof glass?”

Another East Village squatter artist collective disappears:

The members of the Cave, a squatter artists collective on St. Mark’s Pl. near Avenue A, recently were compelled to vacate the building after a developer with an option to buy the dilapidated tenement bought them out. Before the developer, Ben Shaoul of Magnum Management, paid them to leave, however, his workers first came in with some heavy-handed tactics, brandishing sledgehammers and crowbars.

Jim “Mosaic Man” Power, whose work decorates the bases and poles of East Village streetlights, said he enjoyed the artistic environment of the Cave, but that there was also a lot of partying and fighting that distracted from making art. He said he’s O.K. with taking a $2,500 buyout and didn’t fight leaving.

. . .

Eddy Menuau, another artist who lived in the building, also got cash to leave, and has relocated to Brooklyn and is currently concentrating on being a carpenter. Asked how much art got done in the building as opposed to drinking and fighting, he said it was about 40 percent art to 60 percent the rest.

(G.G. Allin would have turned 50 years old this August.)

Jesse L. Martin knows. Believe me, he knows:

Even Law & Order’s Jesse L. Martin gets annoyed when his show’s production shoots take over a block. He says his neighbors still hold a grudge after the time the series filmed on his Tribeca street. “Everybody in my building was mad — God, were they mad — because they blamed me for taking their parking,” he said. “They know it’s not my fault, but they take it out on me.” He’d nearly forgotten about it, he said, until one morning: “On my block there were these orange signs — and I know what those signs mean. I thought, Oh, God, please don’t let that be us, please don’t let that be us. And I look and it’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent. It doesn’t matter if it’s Criminal Intent. They’ll still hunt me down and say, ‘Hey, man, you took my fucking parking today.’”

Anarchy still reigns in the Bronx:

As the public security strike at Co-op City drags into its seventh week, both sides continue to blame the other for the stalemate, while community leaders are urging them to resolve the crisis.

“It’s open season on Co-op City now,” said Kevin Lambright, 43, president of the residents’ association that represents three buildings in the sprawling 35-building development.

. . .

Union President Joseph Monahan told the rally that criminal elements were catching on to the reduced level of security at Co-op City.

“With warmer weather and more people on the street,” he warned, “it’s just a matter of time before quality-of-life issues get worse.”

The city don’t know that the city is getting the crème de la crème of the chess world:

Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School chess team scored a checkmate last night as it captured another national title.

The eight-member team from Midwood won the National High School Chess Championship for the third straight year with a razor-thin half-point victory.

“It’s a great pleasure to have the honor of winning the title again for the last time,” said team captain Ilya Kotlyanskiy, a 17-year-old senior, who will graduate in June. “We proved our skills.”

The three-day tournament in Milwaukee came down to the wire with the Brooklyn team needing to win their final two games to capture glory.

“It feels great to win it all by ourselves and not have to share the title with anyone,” said junior Sal Bercys, 16, the highest-ranked player on the team.

Last year, Edward R. Murrow tied for the championship with Catalina Foothills High School of Tucson, this year’s runner-up. It was the sixth first-place crown for Edward R. Murrow in the team’s 22-year history.

The team later celebrated at Chuck E. Cheese.

With more private vehicles than either the Bronx or Manhattan, Staten Island is becoming a borough of fat-asses:

Recent city Health Department statistics suggest that Staten Islanders walk less during their daily rounds than do residents of the other boroughs. On relatively bucolic Staten Island, people are more apt to own cars and adopt a suburban lifestyle than their fellow New Yorkers, who trek up and down subway stairs and walk along busy sidewalks.

Staten Islanders registered 238,454 private cars in 2005 — more cars than were registered in the Bronx or Manhattan, even though those boroughs have populations roughly three times that of the Island, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. That amounts to roughly one car for every two Islanders, including children.

This car-bound life presents a challenge: Folks need to find ways to get their legs moving during the day.

The alternative is a bigger belly — the generally rising obesity rate is higher on Staten Island than in other parts of the city.

“There is a fair amount of research that in suburban-type settings, there are higher rates of obesity,” said Candace Young, the Health Department’s director of physical activity and nutrition.

In 2004, more than 26 percent of Islanders reported they were obese when responding to a Health Department phone survey, as compared to almost 22 percent citywide.

Not only do diplomats get out of parking tickets but they avoid DWI arrests as well:

A Russian diplomat who was allegedly stumbling drunk struck and injured a city cop after driving his car up a sidewalk while dodging a construction barrier — and there’s not a thing police can do to him.

The attaché from Russia’s U.N. mission was set free as a bird less than three hours after the incident and not charged because of he has diplomatic immunity, police said.

The banged up cop, however, was hospitalized at Cornell Medical Center with a knee injury.

“If it was anybody else, they would have been locked up and charged with DWI,” said one NYPD officer who asked not to be named. “Just because you work for the U.N. you get off? It’s crap.”

Police did not officially name the alleged drunken diplo, but sources identified him as Ilyasergeyeeich Morozov, 28.

According to cops, at about 9 p.m. the Russian attaché was driving on 108th Street toward the southbound entrance to FDR Drive, a stretch of which was closed down to accommodate construction yesterday.

The diplomat, however, swerved around the traffic cones on the ramp, and up onto a sidewalk, where the hapless officer was run down, hurting his knee.

He was brought to Cornell in stable condition.

Sources said it was apparent Morozov was extremely intoxicated, although he could not be given a Breathalyzer test to confirm inebriation because of his diplomatic status.

If last week’s Roosevelt Island Tram Stall made you a little less excited about the prospect of a tram to Governor’s Island, rest assured that the Calatrava-designed tram’s power supply system will be “triple redundant”:

Officials at the Governors Island Preservation & Education Corp., a group controlled by Bloomberg and Pataki, said tram technology has advanced greatly in the 30 years since the now-busted Roosevelt Island system was built.

“We are confident that anything built with those advances would operate with little or no problem,” Yvette DeBow, a spokeswoman for the corporation, told the Daily News.

. . .

If the Governors Island tram gets green-lighted, officials said they will take into account the power outage that brought the Roosevelt Island tram to an abrupt halt Tuesday night, trapping nearly 70 people, some for almost 11 hours, high above the East River.

“We’re going to end up probably with [a] triple redundant backup [power system], given what we just saw, whereas we might have only planned for double redundant,” said Peter Fleischer, senior vice president for the Governors Island Preservation & Education Corp.

TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint reports to jail (”. . . he’ll have to live on the jail’s schedule of 5 a.m. wakeups and 11 p.m. lockdowns, as well as random searches and jailhouse food — like the hot dogs and baked beans that await him . . .”), but not before commemorating the event last Friday:

“Now I’m going on vacation,” a surprisingly jovial Toussaint declared to the crowd of more than 100 supporters gathered at the Midtown offices of the powerful health-care union Local 1199.

Toussaint and his fans were treated to an elaborate spread of Spanish and Italian food on balloon-adorned tables. DJ Willove mixed reggae from the TWU boss’ native Trinidad with electronic and pop tunes that lured the big man onto the dance floor.

The alcohol flowed at the open-bar party, which kicked off at about 6 p.m., and plenty of the labor-loving supporters stumbled out late into the night.

“It was a good crowd,” DJ Willove said after the music was turned off at 10:30 p.m.

The Post witnessed Toussaint — sporting a huge grin and dressed in a union-monogrammed polo shirt — dancing before a reporter was kicked out.

“His spirits are good. He’s ready to go,” said one happy reveler.

And that was only the beginning:

Roger Toussaint spent his last day of freedom drinking and dining around Brooklyn with fellow union officials and supporters.

Union toughs stood guard at the entrances of a restaurant and a tavern in Boerum Hill while the TWU boss was inside.

The Trinidad native feasted on a lunch of curried chicken, accompanied by rice and beans and spicy cabbage at the West Indian home-style favorite Stir It Up on Atlantic Avenue.

“Are you looking to get hit?” one of the toughs yelled as a Post photographer and reporter tried to enter the restaurant.

Earlier, Toussaint enjoyed a glass of Merlot with about eight pals at the dive bar — and union hangout — Hank’s Saloon.

The Post describes what awaits Toussaint in the pokey:

No orange jumpsuits are necessary, as inmates are permitted to wear their own clothes — although he might opt for something more casual than his usual suit. He will have his own 6-by-8-foot cell, which is locked only from 11 p.m. until 4 a.m., Department of Correction spokesman Mike Saucier said.

A breakfast of cereal, fruit, bread and jam is served at 4:30 a.m. Lunch and dinner feature heartier fare, such as chicken, potatoes and pasta.

Toussaint will have access to the basketball and handball courts and the weight room for an hour each day. Alternatively, he can study the Taylor Law in the library.

Ouch!

As the search for Vivi continues, reports are starting to sound like the hunt for bin Laden or Eric Rudolph:

Vivi, the champion whippet, has been lost in Queens for two months and the tactics to find her have changed from massive searches to raising community awareness.

According to Bo Bengtson, Vivi’s breeder, having volunteers scour the area has proved to be counterproductive. “This is a waiting game now,” he said. “We are hoping that some local resident will put out food often enough for Vivi to come back to one place and eventually feel comfortable enough to let herself be caught.”

In the past, when Vivi was sighted, volunteers combed the area and it is believed that they may have caused the dog to retreat even further. “Simply going out and looking for Vivi is not going to help,” Bengtson added.

Instead, the rescue volunteers are being asked to continue to post fliers in several languages so the public can be made aware of what Vivi looks like and who to call if she’s spotted.

And now that she’s in the wild, it seems that Vivi has become quite the badass fugitive:

About a month after her disappearance, Vivi was seen in Bayside, Fresh Meadows and then on a regular basis in Flushing, near Flushing Cemetery, and later in College Point. Rescuers do not want to announce her latest sightings, but say she has been seen regularly in one area for the last couple of weeks.

One witness said Vivi still looked well groomed and even allowed herself to be petted. A 10 year old boy said the dog followed him for a while. “If even half of the sightings are correct, Vivi is still around and coping much better than anticipated,” Bengtson said.

There is also evidence that Vivi has hunted and killed small game in parks. “What was found was not even entirely eaten, which would confirm that there are lots of feeding opportunities for stray dogs in this area and that Vivi is not starving,” Bengtson said.

Previously on Vivi: Vivi Liberation!, That Fucking Dog Has Taken Up Way Too Much Of My Mental Space, Jamaica Bay Is No Place For A Lost Pup, Dionne Warwick Is On The Tarmac! Dionne Warwick Is On The Tarmac, You Call That A Dog Shit? Rats Around Here Drop Loads Bigger Than That, Yes, They’re Still Looking For That Dog.

Parents are still subsidizing their adult children (this coming after we learned that parents subsidize their adult children):

At 23, Jason McGuinness lives a postcollege life in Manhattan that is very nearly typical. He works as a media research analyst, making about $30,000 a year. Sharing a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building with a roommate on the Upper East Side, his portion of the rent is $1,100 monthly.

The walls are decorated with pennants and posters from Syracuse University, his alma mater. He orders takeout dinners, carries peanut-butter sandwiches to work and occasionally takes in a Mets game with friends.

And like many of his peers — educated, employed, urban-dwelling young adults — he receives monthly assistance from his parents, in the form of a $300 check and the payment of his cellphone bill.

. . .

Middle-income parents earning less than $72,600 a year can expect to spend $190,980 on a child through age 17, according to 2005 government statistics. But Dr. Schoeni said that parents can plan on paying almost 25 percent of that amount again over the next 17 years, or $42,280 in 2005 dollars. This sum includes higher education but also much more.

Parents pay $2,323 a year to help support children 25 and 26 years old, said [University of Michigan associate professor of economics and public policy] Dr. [Bob] Schoeni, and $1,556 annually for offspring 33 and 34. (All amounts are in 2001 dollars and reflect support to children living both independently and at home.)

All of which is well and good — until you hear that the adult children of David Maysles* are also subsidized, which is when it just gets really post-modernly weird:

While some parents earmark contributions for food and rent, others expect their children to take care of the basics while they pick up special expenses like a vacation.

“I’m enjoying watching them spend their inheritance,” Judy Maysles, a real estate agent in Manhattan, said about the support she provides to two grown children, John, 30, who works with a hedge fund in New Jersey, and Celia, 27, a filmmaker. “I’d rather spend it now and watch them and enjoy it with them. I think that a lot of my generation feel that way.”

She bought her daughter appliances for a house in Portland, Ore. Now the proceeds from selling that property are enabling Celia Maysles to make a documentary about her late father, the documentary filmmaker David Maysles.

Eventually, most children outgrow the need for a stipend. But the instinct of parents to give — and of children to receive — can linger on. When John Maysles got a dog four years ago, his mother told him he couldn’t leave it alone all day.

“So I pay for doggy day care,” she said. “It is $16 a day. Probably he could afford it, but it has been on my credit card and I haven’t changed it.”

Aggh! Don’t bring up pets in connection with the Maysles family! (Thursday Styles is on fucking fire this week!)

*Maysles co-directed the creepy documentary Grey Gardens, which basically defines “emotionally fraught parent-adult child relationship.”

If even after watching Hustle & Flow you were still confused as to what pimps actually do, know that it’s still hard out there for them, and the online tool Craig’s List doesn’t make it any easier:

An Internet advertisement for “companions” led cops to a New Brighton apartment building two months ago.

The companions allegedly were three female prostitutes and their pimp — an Elm Park man.

Now, Alex Leath, 39, could find himself with new companions — in prison — after prosecutors indicted him yesterday for allegedly promoting prostitution.

Cops said that when undercover officers went to the building at 32 Pine St. on Feb. 6, Leath offered a half-hour of sex with three women for $150. One of the alleged prostitutes — none of them borough residents — was 17, authorities said.

Police were directed to the building after scanning Craig’s List, a popular Web site for apartment rentals, used furniture and potential roommates, and calling a telephone number listed under “companions.”

Leath, who lives on the 200 block of Granite Avenue, was charged with two felony counts of third-degree promotion of prostitution and a misdemeanor count of permitting prostitution.