The Villager reports that some East Village residents seem to be deciding that a gastropub may be better than a methadone clinic after all:

Some members of the E. Fourth St. A-B Block Association have shifted their opinion on a beer and wine license for the European Union restaurant, a turn of events that may allow the restaurant to sell alcohol after all.

“I’d like to see something work out,” said Frank Macken, the block association president, who previously opposed a liquor license for E.U. “It could be a model for the kind of restaurant we’d like to have in our neighborhood.”

E.U., at 235 E. Fourth St. has been closed since the week of May 14. The State Liquor Authority denied its request for a liquor license in early March, citing a rule that makes it harder to obtain a liquor-license in an area where there are three within 500 feet of each other. The S.L.A. also cited opposition from Community Board 3 in its decision.

Restaurant owner Bob Giraldi said he closed the restaurant because it was unprofitable to operate without alcohol.

But after a block association meeting on June 22 attended by Giraldi and his wife, Patti Greaney, both parties said they were looking for a compromise that might allow E.U. to obtain a beer and wine license, which is more limiting than a liquor license.

A June 8 meeting between Giraldi and the block association was tense, attendees said, but the meeting last week was far more civilized.

“I thought it was very fair,” Greaney said of last week’s meeting. “I thought both sides were able to voice their opinions.”

Opinions on the block are split “about 50-50,” Macken said. “Some are adamantly opposed, some are more pragmatic.”

Backstory: My Fist, Your Gastropub; Make Way For The Methadone Clinic!;
The Problem With Community Boards, Too, Or, Making The East Village Oversaturated With Boutiques, One Denied Liquor License At A Time.

And for God’s sake, if you happen to do this, please remember not to smoke in bed:

Firefighters have responded to reports of gas odor in several Queens apartments this year — only to find that the residents had soaked their mattresses with gasoline to kill bedbugs, The Post has learned.

One woman had even wiped gasoline on her arms to keep the bugs from biting her. Another had also wiped her children’s beds with gas.

“Gasoline is very explosive — even static electricity from a rug can ignite it,” said Battalion Chief Robert Turner, who responded to two of the incidents. “Luckily, all of the apartments were well-ventilated.”

The incidents happened in Corona, Queens, at separate apartments as recently as this month.

Three Brooklyn teens have taken the title of “Most Racist Beach” away from Queens, making decent people forget about Howard Beach for the time being:

Three white Brooklyn teens were charged yesterday with committing a hate crime after they pummeled three black kids riding their bicycles on a Gerritsen Beach street and incited onlookers to join in the attack , police said.

The victims — Joseph Pascall and Deon Davis, both 17, and Aaron Adams, 16 — said they cycled into the neighborhood because they were lost, a police source said.

The thugs allegedly cornered the victims with their car near Florence Avenue and Celest Court on Monday at 9 p.m.

They taunted the teens with racial slurs before knocking them off their bikes with the car, and pinched and kicked them when they tried to get away, the source said.

Cops said an unknown number of people in the neighborhood saw the incident and joined in the taunting and violence.

Alessandro Cerciello, Christopher Rapuzzi and Joseph DeSimone, all 17, were charged yesterday with assault as a hate crime, gang assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment, menacing and unlawful imprisonment, police said.

The big question is What Will Nicolai Ouroussoff Think? We’ll see:

Eager to avoid creating a fortress that overshadows the World Trade Center memorial, the architects of the Freedom Tower unveiled a new approach yesterday. They would clad its 187-foot-high, bomb-resistant concrete base in a screen of glass prisms rather than metal panels.

This and other notable refinements were described by the building’s lead architect, David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He spoke at an awards ceremony held by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 7 World Trade Center, overlooking the Freedom Tower site, which is under excavation.

Even after the revisions, the building would still evoke the twin towers in its height and proportions. Its rooftop parapet would be 1,368 feet above the street, as was that of 1 World Trade Center, the north tower.

It turns out that in another important respect, the Freedom Tower would echo the twin towers: it would have a sky lobby. Tenants headed to the upper floors of the 102-story building would take express elevators to the 64th floor and then transfer to local elevators.

If all goes according to plan — and almost nothing has at ground zero — the $2 billion, 2.6-million-square-foot Freedom Tower would be completed in 2011.

In the first redesign last year, the base of the tower was to rise 200 feet and perhaps be clad in stainless steel, aluminum or titanium. Though Mr. Childs envisioned these panels as enlivening the almost windowless facade, others despaired about its monolithic quality. The phrase “concrete bunker” was tossed around.

“There were a lot of concerns that this was going to look like a fortress,” said Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for which Silverstein Properties is developing the Freedom Tower. “I think David’s artistic skills should alleviate many of those fears.”

Backstory: Impenetrable! Impregnable!

The New York City Panorama at the Queens Museum of Art, recently listed by USA Today as one of ten places you should go out of your way to see, is slated for a “major multi-media update,” including an inventive way to pay for its continued upkeep:

QMA Director Tom Finkelpearl did not know ahead of time that the panorama would be making USA Weekend’s list.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s not like it’s that surprising. It really is a kind of legendary place. Sometimes I’ve been a little frustrated that the panorama is more famous than the museum itself.”

The panorama was initially built for the 1964 World’s Fair by Robert Moses with the help of a 100-member team. During the World’s Fair, an average of 1,400 viewed the panorama each day. Finkelpearl said that when visitors first view the panorama, the first thing he sees them do is find their house. He said it also gives them a chance to get a different look at the city.

It’s kind of a spectacle. It has that excitement to it,” Finkelpearl said. He continued, “It’s the special thing that nobody else has and I think that helps differentiate us from other museums.”

From when it was first built, the panorama did not change a great deal until 1992, when it underwent a major renovation. It was a $1 million project that added approximately 6,500 buildings to the panorama.

Currently, the panorama, which is sponsored by The Roslyn Savings Foundation, will soon undergo a major multi-media update. It will include relighting the model.

Finkelpearl, who used to bring his friends to see the panorama even before working at the museum, said that the museum also hopes to embark on a program where companies could pay to have their building added to the panorama.

Emph. added because now my wheels are really turning . . . bwahahaha!

The Queens Chronicle questions whether the JFK AirTrain was worth it:

The AirTrain may be the cheapest way to get to Kennedy Airport, but the cost of running the futuristic rail system is adding up.

The rail link that runs from Howard Beach and Jamaica to the airport has hemorrhaged nearly $70 million since it opened on Dec. 17, 2003, according to Port Authority of New York and New Jersey documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws.

The numbers, which run through the first quarter of 2006, detail losses of $800,000 during the system’s first two weeks of operation, followed by shortfalls of $34.2 million and $28.7 million in 2004 and 2005, respectively. The system ran $5.5 million in the red for the first three months of 2006 for a total negative balance of $69.2 million.

Port Authority officials counter that — like most, if not all, public transportation projects — the point is not necessarily to make money:

Officials at the Port Authority said the lackluster financial performance was not alarming.

“AirTrain was not created as a revenue generator but as a service for travellers,” said Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco. DiFulco pointed to another Port Authority system, the PATH trains, which run from New Jersey to New York and lose about $250 million a year. He said the AirTrain system is not expected to approach break even numbers in the near future.

Not to quibble, but the AirTrain isn’t the cheapest way to get to JFK — you can still take a bus there. It takes about twelve days, but you can do it . . .

See also: A Ride On The JFK AirTrain.

Queens boosters make it sound like such a great place to be:

Ditmars Boulevard in East Elmhurst used to be the last street before the beach. Now there’s a highway and then an airport, both built on landfill, and the beach of the 1920s has long since been replaced by a semi-toxic marsh.

“I’ve been living in this neighborhood since 1960,” recalled Borough President Helen Marshall, “and air quality has always been a problem. It’s not just the airport. It’s the combination of everything.”

By “everything” Marshall means LaGuardia Airport, the Grand Central Parkway, the combined sewage overflows (CSOs) into Flushing Bay, and the finger sticking out from the airport which prevents the raw sewage from those same CSOs from circulating fully into Long Island Sound. Instead the sludgy stench is trapped in northern Queens, and much of it ends up collecting under the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge near Shea Stadium.

“The waters here are very dirty and stagnant,” complained Ranford Parkes, who has lived next door to Marshall since she first moved to the neighborhood 45 years ago.

“Sometimes you have to go back into the house,” admitted his wife, Easter, “because the smell is so bad. I don’t know if it’s the chemicals or the river.”
Marshall concurred with this assessment, saying, “Some days I open my back door and smell chemicals.”

“Jet fuel?” immediately suggested Jackson Heights State Senator John Sabini. The occasion which brought these two Queens pols together was an announcement, on the 27th Avenue pedestrian bridge over the Grand Central Parkway, of a bill co-sponsored by Sabini but inspired by Marshall.

“We have strong bipartisan support for this bill,” promised Sabini, “which says to the DEC, ‘Take your head out of the sand.’”

The bill calls for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to test pollution hotspots along the borough’s waterfront:

Right now the DEC tests air quality at 80 sites throughout the state, but the Queens sites are all located within the interior of the borough, not near the waterfront airports. “Every plane that takes off here,” grimaced Sabini, as several of them passed by directly behind him, “has the equivalent particulate emission of 3,000 cars.”

Of course, moving the test sites will only confirm the problem, but Sabini and Marshall are confident solutions will eventually emerge. Neither was willing to talk about specific solutions. Marshall did say this, however: “I’m not worried, because the minds of Americans will come up with something. Science, they’re doing it all time.”

“We don’t’ know just how bad the problem is yet,” she went on to admit, “but we have to first know what we’re talking about.”

Marshall then referred to the waterfront corridor from LIC — which has the greatest concentration of power plants in the state — to Bayside as “asthma alley.”
“It’s no accident,” concurred Sabini, “that asthma rates are so high around here.”

Asthma Alley, airplane particulates, stagnant toxic sludge . . . with any luck, rents will go down. And what a great place to build a new urban community!

New York Daily News: “Feds rescue ‘Superman,’ nab pirating men of steal”.

New York Post: “COPS NAB MEN OF ‘STEAL’”.

The story — authorities bust a DVD pirating ring:

The feds yesterday charged 22 alleged members of an underground network with recording, printing and selling millions of counterfeit videos and DVDs in an elaborate scheme dating back to at least 1999.

“We believe it to be the largest video piracy syndicate worldwide,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York, announcing the arrests under a three-year undercover probe dubbed “Operation Knock-Off.”

The FBI arrested 13 accused members of two rings, including those who filmed the movies in theaters, printers who made video and DVD covers and distributors who sold copies of the flicks. Nine others are being sought.

Raids in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens yesterday uncovered evidence the syndicate was already geared up to make a killing off “Superman Returns.”

According to court papers, members of the rings recorded high-quality “masters” at theaters throughout the city, infiltrating previews and other limited showings.

Members known as “cammers” used camcorders on tripods to record the flicks, while “blockers” allegedly sat themselves in strategic positions around the theater to help prevent detection.

The distributors allegedly bought masters for anywhere from $40 to several hundred dollars each and then mass-produced them, selling copies for anywhere from $7 to $10 each.

“We had a camcorder making $400,000 a year just by delivering recordings two to three times a week,” said Scott McGaunn, a special agent with the FBI.

Waterfront development may be pushing out, um, waterfront development in Red Hook:

Dozens of longshoremen swarmed across the blue-hulled Zim Charleston on Tuesday at the Red Hook container port, unloading 1,150 containers of food, clothing and furniture from India that are bound for Long Island, New York City and New Jersey.

It was the first of what Zim, one of the world’s largest container carriers, says will be a weekly service bringing 90,000 containers a year to Pier 10, more than doubling the current volume and adding an estimated 152 new jobs.

But by next April, the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are hoping to close the container port and the last remnants of Brooklyn’s once-bustling cargo piers, while evicting the operator, American Stevedoring. They say the freight can be better handled at ports in New Jersey, or at Howland Hook on Staten Island.

The city is also interested in residential projects and other maritime uses on the waterfront that could generate thousands of jobs, like the newly opened cruise ship terminal on Pier 12 in Red Hook.

Although the Bloomberg administration says it would consider creating a container port in the future, the City Council will vote today on the administration’s plan to turn part of the only alternative location — the long-dormant South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park — into a parking lot.

Critics like Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn, and Representative Jerrold Nadler said the city’s plan to close the Brooklyn port is both wrong and shortsighted. They say that both the business and the well-paying waterfront jobs could be lost forever. And, they say, both New York and New Jersey need every inch of space to handle the rapidly escalating volume of goods.

“Shipping creates excellent-paying jobs for people who don’t compete in the high-tech economy,” Mr. Yassky said, “and it keeps trucks off the roads.”

But Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff counters that Red Hook is not sustainable because of its small size and lack of rail and highway access.

“Our single most important priority is providing jobs for New Yorkers,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “We also consider it an important priority to preserve and enhance jobs for dockworkers. That does not mean we have to achieve that by retaining the current uses or current tenants on the piers.”

Those beefy bouncers who look and act like ex-cons really are ex-cons:

Cops raided 42 bars last weekend and nabbed 41 unlicensed security guards — including some convicted of rape and other serious crimes, NYPD officials revealed yesterday.

At a City Council hearing yesterday on a bill to beef up regulation of bouncers, a top NYPD official testified that of those 41 unlicensed guards, 17 had previous arrest records for everything from rape to illegal gun possession and drug charges.

The NYPD didn’t immediately release the names of the bars and officials said they won’t shut them down. Instead, bar owners will be required to pay a fine and show proof of proper registration.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the proposed legislation would allow the city to shut down bars that employ unlicensed bouncers or hire bouncers who have criminal records.

But NYPD officials said they would like to make the law even tougher – requiring more training for security guards, expanding the definition of guard to include anyone who might be called upon to break up a fight, such as a host or hostess, and making bar owners keep detailed records of who is on duty at any given time.

“This is an all-too-common occurrence when police respond to a violent incident — the owner of the bar has no documentation of who was working security and the bouncer who may have been involved has disappeared,” said NYPD Deputy Chief Brian Conroy, who oversaw last weekend’s raid.

Is it that the MTA is using capital funds and going into debt to accomplish routine maintenance? Is it that its supposed budget surpluses are total book cooking*? Is it the fact that they won’t finish fixing subway stations until 2026? Take your pick:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has fallen so deeply into debt that it relies on borrowed money to repair its buses, subways and commuter rail systems but still cannot keep them adequately maintained, a report released yesterday revealed.

The report, issued by the non-profit Citizens Budget Commission, said the MTA has operated at a deficit 13 of the past 14 years and would likely have to raise fares 30 percent or more to balance its budget. The deficit currently stands at $2 billion, according to the commission.

“It’s not trivial; these are big deficits each year,” said commission executive vice president Charles Brecher at a conference in Manhattan to announce the report.

While MTA executive director Katherine Lapp, who also attended the conference, did not dispute any of the commission’s figures, she said the agency has made great strides financially in recent years. The existing debt, Lapp said, results largely from past deficits and current rising pension and health costs.

To create the appearance of yearly surpluses, Brecher said the MTA removes routine maintenance costs from its operating budget and places the cost into its capital budget, a separate pool for funding new transit projects.

As a result, two-thirds of the capital funding borrowed from state and federal governments goes to regular upkeep — not capital projects, the report said.

Fully restoring the MTA’s transit systems, or bringing them to a “state of good repair,” will take years, Brecher said. The Long Island Rail Road, for instance, will not complete repair on its infrastructure until 2014. Metro-North stations won’t be brought to full repair until 2020. And city subway stations will not be restored until 2026, according to the report.

*And thanks, by the way, for reminding us about the total unmitigated idiocy of that holiday fare special.

Since Sept. 11, residents in fireworks-rich areas cower every time an unexpected pyrotechnic display takes place:

While pyrotechnics are often associated with Independence Day, the city, following the 2003 death of the unofficial fireworks commissioner, George Plimpton, has been approving dozens of requests for fireworks displays throughout the year. Sponsors range from the retailer Target to Princess Cruises to the president of the Bronx.

The displays — each approved by the New York Fire Department’s Explosive Unit — often cause nighttime noise that has set some residents to complaining.

Detective Frank Bogucki, community affairs officer for the 17th precinct, which serves Manhattan’s Turtle Bay and Sutton Place among other communities, said that he gets a handful of complaints from residents who get startled after each fireworks show that “comes over our heads” from the East River. He added that the residents don’t like it because they think it’s something more serious.

“In these days, what we’re dealing with every day,” said Detective Bogucki, referring to the heightened worries of New Yorkers post-September 11, 2001, “it’s kind of concerning.”

A volunteer at the Turtle Bay Association, Olga Hoffman, said that the terrorist attacks of September 11 changed her attitude toward surprise fireworks displays. “Before it didn’t bother me,” she said. “After 9/11, it did.”

. . .

A producer for Fireworks for Grucci, which does about 20 shows in New York City each year, M. Philip Butler, said that there has not been much of a slowdown of business since September 11, 2001. He said that even though there was a decline in shows in 2003 (although not in 2002 because corporate sponsors had already included those shows in their budget from the year before), they’ve since experienced a “great comeback.” “We have fireworks shows now in New York Harbor without any hesitation,” he said.

Mr. Butler classified his company as “neighborhood friendly,” and said they don’t use noise-making salutes — “the workhorse of the grand finale” of any fireworks show — except on the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.

But what does any of this have to do with George Plimpton? It’s still unclear:

Plimpton was appointed fireworks commissioner by Mayor Lindsey. “I am supposed to resign each time there is a change of administration, but I don’t,” Plimpton said in an interview in the defunct Canadian literary journal Pagitica. The fireworks commissioner post has been vacant since Plimpton’s death in 2003.

Plimpton’s successor as editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, said that for all he knows the title of fireworks commissioner belongs to Plimpton “for all eternity.” Last year, a New York Sun editorial recommended Mr. Gourevitch for the position. “I’m not sure that I’m qualified,” Mr. Gourevitch said recently. ‘I like explosions plenty. But I’ve never been involved in shaping, forming, or making them.”

Technology is cool:

Forward reeled the mind in jerky, five-second stop-time intervals, when it was learned that Danny Meyer had installed a Web cam on top of Shake Shack, his Madison Square Park dog-and-burger stand, so that customers, who often stand in line for an hour and a half for a Chicago dog and cheese fries, might, as the Web site notes, “plan your time, check out the line.”

. . .

The line could be short when you checked on your computer, but what would it be like by the time you got there? Also, even if you see the line, how do you know how quickly it will move?

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Mr. Meyer said. “You can’t look at a camera and have an idea of what any human being is going to order. He could put in an order for one hamburger, he could order 20 more for his friends. We’re perhaps not as sophisticated as we would like. I do think it will be useful.”

When the cam idea first came up, “there were people on our team who said this is the dumbest thing we could do,” Mr. Meyer said. “If they see a line, they won’t go there. I said if that’s the case we will have found our Yogi Berra moment, wherein Yogi Berra says the place is so crowded nobody goes there anymore.”

See also: Shack Cam.

Apparently citizens don’t find on-duty egg fights very funny:

Sgt. Salvatore R. Carola, 38, was punished after the Internal Affairs Bureau got a videotape from an East Flatbush resident who witnessed the Father’s Day shenanigans.

Sources said Carola, an 11-year veteran, was in charge of some two dozen rookies taking part in a citywide program to flood high-crime areas with extra cops.

But first, they decided to have a little fun. For 10 to 15 minutes, Carola and the rookies, all in uniform, hurled water balloons at each other and pelted NYPD vans with eggs.

No one was hurt and no property was damaged, but one annoyed citizen recorded the “fun” and turned over the videotape.

The timing of the horsePlay, on Nostrand Avenue near Farragut Road, could not have been worse. It came after a five-hour period that saw 10 people shot or stabbed in the precinct.

One veteran police supervisor said, “This was an incident of some cops letting off some steam while they were dealing with the stress of keeping the public safe.

“It wasn’t dangerous and, while it may appear unprofessional, it was hardly the worst thing in the world.”

The Rent Guidelines Board’s annual hearing to decide whether and/or how much to raise rent on rent-stabilized apartments functions as a benign ritual for tenants to take out their frustrations about rising housing costs:

Amid total pandemonium, the Rent Guidelines Board last night voted to hike rent-stabilized rents by 4.25 percent for one-year leases and 7.25 percent for two-year renewals — infuriating tenants who said they no longer want to participate in the annual process.

The 5-4 vote came after more than four hours of mayhem, with more than 300 angry tenants, armed with noisemakers, drowning out virtually every word uttered by RGB Chairman Marvin Markus.

. . .

While protesting tenants were unhappy with last night’s outcome, they were pleased with their disruption. “We did a fantastic job,” exulted Jumaane Williams, executive director of the Tenants & Neighbors coalition. “We shut it down longer than it’s ever been shut down before.”

Tenant leaders said they decided months ago to disrupt the annual rent-setting meeting because they considered the deliberations “a sham” that always produced a pre-ordained result.

. . .

The meeting at Cooper Union was chaotic even by RGB standards, where screams and chants from the audience are routine.

Markus, branded a sellout by tenant leaders, was interrupted so loudly and so often that he called an unprecedented 2 1/2-hour recess at 6:30 p.m.

But that had no impact.

Tenant activists ordered pizza and bottled water and were waiting in full force when Markus returned just before 9 p.m.

As a phalanx of cops stood guard, Markus tried four times to restart the meeting — only to give up as one uproar after another drowned out his words.

The fifth time, Markus simply read a resolution into the microphone. Virtually no one off the stage could hear him.

We’ll keep you posted about next June’s Stabilization Day, which will be marked by a boisterous pot-clanged march down Fifth Avenue, a peaceful protest in front of Bed, Bath & Beyond and an after-party at an establishment to be determined.

At its “best,” air guitar is a spontaneous unconscious reaction to the “hot licks” and “heavy riffs” in guitar-based rock music. Tom Cruise in “Risky Business” exemplifies this. (Sorry to mention that name, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t tithing into the next astral plane back then.) The scene, ridiculous on its face (Bob Seger should have been stopped long ago!), evokes an I guess accurate (ha!) geeky-adolescent-boy-when-no-one-is-watching tone.

At its worst, air guitar is a cynical hipster meta response to the worst of the last 25 years of popular culture:

It is Thurday afternoon. Roughly ten hours from now, a shirtless William Ocean — the word air shaved into his chest hair — will shock a sold-out Bowery Ballroom with a full standing flip onto his back that crushes an empty beer can he has set onstage. He will then leap on someone’s shoulders and be carried like a conquering hero through the rapturous crowd, returning to the stage only to reveal the American-flag-print Speedos lurking beneath his sparkly pants, as his audience gleefully dissolves into a sea of pumped fists and cries of “Ocean! Ocean! Ocean!” All this will occur while he mimics the guitar solo to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

. . .

At last year’s nationals in L.A., Ocean (then representing Chicago) and [To Air Is Human author and perennial air guitar also-ran Björn] Türoque were bested in the finals by hometown hero Rockness Monster, who got obliterated in Norway by some dude from Holland. American pride is now at stake. We must reclaim the prize. The Bowery’s judging panel — the co-founder of Vice magazine, a Daily Show correspondent, an Atlantic A&R rep, and 2004 Air Guitar world champ Sonyk-Rok — will thus be brutally tough on contestants.

Ocean had anticipated this, though, and over lunch discusses his intense training regimen: loads of Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, and AC/DC on his iPod as he runs through a workout routine of deep knee bends, splits, and stretches. He has come a long way from his adolescence, spent unconsciously playing air guitar along to the Beverly Hills 90210 theme. He is through fucking around. “I’m kind of known as the guy who goes up onstage and batters his body,” Ocean says. “I’m leaving it all on the stage. I plan on leaving on a stretcher.”

This is not irony. It is, however, absurd. “It’s kind of ridiculous, to tell you the truth,” William admits of his ascending celebrity. “CNN came to my house last night.”

The Times explains how someone actually paid $11 million for a house in Gravesend, Brooklyn:

The multimillion-dollar teardown is generally considered a suburban phenomenon, a peculiar indulgence of the well-heeled in places of grassy splendor, like Greenwich or Great Neck. But there is a quiet, out-of-the-way section of the Gravesend neighborhood in Brooklyn where it has become commonplace for houses to trade for millions of dollars, only to be torn down and replaced with ever more luxurious mansions.

The most eye-popping transaction, the one that still has real estate brokers and appraisers scratching their heads, occurred in 2003 at 450 Avenue S at the corner of East Fourth Street, where a 3,600-square-foot house on a double lot sold for $11 million, according to a deed filed with the city.

Brokers and appraisers said it might be the highest price ever paid for a house in the borough, easily surpassing the $8.5 million paid last year for a brownstone overlooking the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the neighborhood that is normally considered the ne plus ultra of Brooklyn real estate.

Notwithstanding its high price, the house on Avenue S was torn down last year, and a 10,400-square-foot two-story mansion is going up in its place, at an additional cost of several million dollars. Like the old house, the new one has an orange tile roof — the neighborhood’s signature motif — as well as four bedrooms, five bathrooms, three half baths, a barrel-vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom, a grand double-height domed entryway and a finished basement with an exercise room and a theater.

Keep in mind that a 10,400 square-foot house translates into thirteen 800-square-foot apartments.

But beyond the tasteful grand double-height domed entryways, this case exemplifies the oft-heard maxim “location, location, location”:

In fact, it is a very particular part of Brooklyn, one where some of the wealthiest members of an extremely tight-knit enclave of Syrian Jews compete with one another for properties on a few coveted blocks of large homes around Avenues S, T and U, between the area’s main synagogues on Ocean Parkway and its most prestigious yeshiva on McDonald Avenue.

Because devout Jews are barred from driving on the Sabbath, houses within walking distance of a synagogue carry a premium. And while that has had an impact on real estate values in other Brooklyn neighborhoods, the effect could hardly be more extreme than it is in Gravesend, where house prices have risen to astonishing heights.

“This market is not dictated by interest rates or the price of real estate as a whole,” said Frank Lupi, the president of Wolf Properties, a real estate agency in Gravesend. “The houses over here, they sell very quickly, and you’re almost naming your price at this point.”

Come visit the Bronx’s cheery-sounding Illegal Gun Museum of Death:

It seems to be a disturbing trend these days, but more and more, while crime continues to be touted as going down, a great number of children are becoming the victims of illegal gun violence. And as Mayor Michael Bloomberg fights for gun control, one community organization is using shock tactics to get its message across.

The Illegal Gun Campaign Committee, a sub-committee of the Patterson Volunteer Committee, held a press conference to unveil the newly established Illegal Gun Museum of Death on Saturday, June 1, at the Mott Haven Reformed Church, at 350 E. 146 th Street.

“We simply must attract all the attention that we can to keep these illegal handgun murders in the spotlight until it is eliminated,” said Wallace Hasan, president of the PVC executive board. “The White House and Congress must give these illegal handgun murders the attention it deserves. If the murders of our children, particularly the recent tragedies of two- and three-year-olds, does not make this situation a priority to them, what will?”

Hasan took photos and any news stories about illegal gun deaths, ranging from a tragic fatal shooting that killed a child this Easter to another incident where a stray bullet struck and killed a girl near a local Bronx barbershop, among others, and blew them up to poster size before mounting them on boards and displaying them outside the church for those passing by to see.

The hope is that residents will be shocked and appalled by what they see that they will take action themselves and join the fight to make a difference, similar to how recent shock tactics involving cancer patients on anti-smoking ads have pushed people to quit smoking.

Service on the Staten Island Railway was suspended this morning after a vital piece of equipment related to the train system’s power supply was stolen:

Commuters were left stranded for hours this morning when train service on the Staten Island Railway from Tottenville to St. George was halted after equipment that helps supply power to the tracks at the Bay Terrace station was stolen.

Service was stopped around 4:30 a.m.

Two hours later, limited service began from Tottenville to Great Kills, where commuters could board a shuttle bus that would transport them to the Oakwood station, where they could catch a train to St. George.

Information about the stolen equipment was not immediately available.

The delay did not sit well with many of the 15 commuters at the Old Town station, who did not know why their train was late until an Advance reporter informed them.

Expect mellifluously alliterative outrage from Al Sharpton after this “slip of the tongue”:

City Councilman David Yassky, locked in a racially charged congressional race, was all smiles yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg introduced him as “Congressman Yassky.”

Speaking at the first groundbreaking to come from last year’s Williamsburg-Greenpoint re-zoning, the mayor praised Yassky — but press secretary Stu Loeser insisted there was no endorsement, just “a slip of the tongue.”

The Parks Department has begun tours of the Fresh Kills landfill site, which will soon become one of the city’s largest parks:

The tour bus crawled up the winding gravel road in low gear. On both sides, the views stretched through the drizzle toward infinity, green, green, as far as the eye could see. A light blanket of fog enhanced the sense of splendid isolation.

Two hawks swooped low over a hillside; just beyond the border of the road, a fat, bejeweled ring-necked pheasant strutted in the wet grass. One of the passengers, Charles Fallon, piped up from the back seat, “This would be an excellent place for meadowlarks.”

This excellent place was Fresh Kills on Staten Island, former site of the city garbage dump, future site of the city’s largest park. Currently, the place is pretty much empty, which is what drew about 20 tourists yesterday morning to the Parks Department’s first public tour of the 2,200-acre parcel.

“I wanted to see the before and after,” said Ann Pisano, 67, who grew up five miles from the dump, the smell of rotting trash never far from her nostrils.

. . .

The bus stopped and the tourists fanned out along the hilltop and gazed across fields of grass and mugwort, chicory and fleabane flowers. To the southeast lay one of several dense housing developments that have been built near the landfill, but in most directions the view was something like a landscape painting of the French countryside, with a few methane-burning stacks and office trailers standing in for stone farmhouses.

“It’s a lot better than I thought,” said another native islander, James Lonano. “It almost looks like a parkland already.”

There were a few out-of-towners on the bus. Ms. Pisano brought along two of her grandchildren, visiting from State College, Pa. They looked miserable. There was also a three-man crew from Omaha making a documentary about waste. The 23-year-old auteur, Henry Phelps, traveled cross-country for three months this spring, carrying every bit of garbage he generated in a clear plastic bag on his back. He seemed a little disappointed by the absence of visible trash.

Then again, you can always look on the bright side of things:

As the bus headed back toward civilization, Ms. Pisano wondered what the area would have looked like if the dump had never existed. “All this would be homes now,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

The, er, colorful race in Brooklyn’s 11th Congressional District hits the front page of the Sunday Times:

For the last four decades, the predominantly black population of central Brooklyn has been represented in Washington by one of its own, a tradition that dates to the 1968 victory of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

But now, in a district whose boundaries were drawn to strengthen black voting power, residents are locked in a wrenching, racially charged debate over a white politician’s campaign for Congress.

. . .

As the forces of immigration and gentrification have altered the demographics of these communities, ethnic and racial blocs that once promoted their own candidates have fractured, with voters now choosing among politicians of various backgrounds.

Nowhere is the phenomenon more stark than in the contest for the 11th Congressional District, where American- and Caribbean-born blacks vie for power and a steady influx of whites has heightened the worry that blacks will be displaced, from their neighborhoods and from the political hierarchy. It is a fear that Mr. Yassky’s candidacy has intensified, so much so that a group of black and Hispanic politicians are discussing ways to make sure he loses.

The Times, while tiptoeing around some of the more, er, colorful (dammit, that word again!) parts of the story*, still snags a couple beauts from so-called “nonblacks”:

As [Yassky] campaigned that same Saturday in Ditmas Park, a part of Flatbush where home values have been rapidly rising, some nonblack voters expressed qualms about his candidacy. One white couple told Mr. Yassky that they planned to vote for Chris Owens. And at a greenmarket, Joe Wong, 29, an Asian-American, said that he, too, was leaning toward Mr. Owens because he opposed the Atlantic Yards development and because he had reservations about voting for a nonblack candidate.

“I’m not totally sold on that, but it’s just the fact that it was created as a majority-minority district and the fact that blacks are underrepresented in the Congress as it stands,” Mr. Wong said, adding that he did not support efforts to push Mr. Yassky out of the race.

“I’m not saying he wouldn’t do a good job representing the district and the minorities that are in the district,” he said, “it’s just I haven’t made up my mind whether or not that’s a good enough reason for me to vote for someone or not.”

Emphasis added because, well, isn’t how well someone represents a district sort of the idea in the first place?

*What, no Charles Barron openly questioning the existence of Barack Obama?

Like the Lone Ranger needs Tonto — or was it Silver? — a man needs a trusted automobile:

Harry Ettling, like many people who own classic cars, cherishes his ride — but in reverse.

The Inwood resident has let his 1982 Honda Civic, bought brand new, sink into such an extreme state of rot that it has become a legend in the neighborhood where the Arkansas native has lived for 20 years.

“People actually recognize me in other sections of town because of the car,” he says. “The reactions range from laughter to anger to kindred spirits giving me the thumbs up, and everything in between.”

The car continues to run perfectly well despite 170,000 miles on its odometer, and taking as much punishment as New York can dish out.

“One thing that happened immediately after I bought it is it got totaled along with three other parked cars on Fort Washington Ave.,” the 56-year-old jazz guitarist says. “The frame was bent, but I had a shop straighten it out and it was fine to drive.”

A 1992 riot in Washington Heights resulted in further damage. “I came out to find the car upside down in the middle of Dyckman St. A bunch of teenagers were about to strip it but I shouted, ‘Hey, don’t! It’s mine!’ They turned congenial, and a half a dozen Dominican good Samaritans helped me turn it right side up again; $1,500 later, I was back on the road.”

Recently, two of its tires were slashed along with the tires of other cars parked near Ettling’s Seaman Ave. home, costing him $200.

But his insurance bill is a phenomenally low $800 a year and he usually spends no more than $500 a year on maintenance, which includes changing the oil and whatever else the car needs to pass inspection, though this year nothing needed to be fixed.

Bassist and neighbor Steve Alcott, 55, occasionally occupies the Civic’s passenger seat.

“When the car got turned upside down, that was really the beginning of Harry’s car as we know it today,” he says. “The guys in this neighborhood are really into their cars, and can’t believe someone would drive something that looks like that. But it’s a great car — it’ll get you where you’re going. And junk is in the eye of the beholder.”

The street outside Lee’s Tavern will be renamed to honor the founder of one of Staten Island’s top pizza places:

Twenty years after Diego (Dickie) Palemine, the former owner of Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills, was killed in a fire in Puerto Rico, Islanders will rename a street in his memory.

The corner of Hancock Street and Garretson Avenue, outside Lee’s Tavern, is slated to be renamed “Diego ‘Dickie’ Palemine Corner” in a ceremony [Sunday].

Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn), along with friends and family of Palemine, will join longtime patrons of the Dongan Hills tavern to unveil the new sign.

In December 1986, Palemine was vacationing in San Juan with his wife and children, and several friends.

A New Year’s Eve fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel casino, attributed to arson, ripped through the building and killed 96 people, including Palemine.

His wife was plucked by helicopter from the roof of the 17-story hotel and his children were safe at an outdoor pool while the fire ravaged the building.

His widow, Cathy Palemine, said that when her children reached adulthood, they decided to petition the city to rename the street corner.

The family still operates Lee’s.

Plain Pie, Lee’s Tavern:

This answers that question — not dead but not good either:

In a shocking episode, a drunken 21-year-old Penn State student fell onto the third rail in Union Square Station early yesterday — but miraculously lived to tell the tale.

Steven Waddell, of Fairfield, N.J., told The Post from his bed at St. Vincent’s Hospital yesterday evening that he doesn’t remember much, but knows he’s fortunate to be alive.

“I feel like I should be dead now,” he said. “I really didn’t feel like dying that day, I guess.”

Despite lying on the rail for more than two minutes, Waddell only suffered burns to his right elbow and thumb.

“It paralyzed me right away. I tried to pull away from it, but your body doesn’t let you,” he recalled. “I thought I went to hell. It felt like my body was being literally torn apart.”

Before the incident, Waddell had been out for a night of high-voltage drinking with some friends from high school at a bar on Lafayette Street.

Around 2:30 a.m., he and a pal called it quits and walked to the N and R platform to catch the train to his father’s Manhattan apartment.

Woozy with drink, the college senior leaned over the platform’s edge to see if a train was coming and lost his footing, tumbling into the tracks and onto the third rail — which was coursing with 600 volts of electricity.

As his buddy ran to get help, Waddell passed out and lay on the track for more than two minutes before authorities were able to pry him free.

Don’t read before lunch . . . or any other time of the day, for that matter:

A Manhattan Rite Aid pharmacy leads the Top 12 dirtiest food stores in the city, a report obtained by The Post shows. The Rite Aid at 1849 Second Ave. on the Upper East Side flunked six straight sanitary inspections between March 2005 and April 2006 when inspectors discovered such problems as hundreds of mouse droppings and food gnawed by rodents.

An alarming 159 New York City supermarkets failed three or more sanitary inspections last year according to the “Enough to Make You” report released today by Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx).

At least the Second Avenue Rite Aid is trying: One of the 34 infractions noted by inspectors was three mouse carcasses on glue traps. Inspectors also found rodent-defiled foods on the Rite Aid’s shelves — including packages marred by mice gnawing, urine and droppings.

A spokesman for Rite Aid could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Next on Klein’s list is the African Market on Faile Street in The Bronx, where live rats were found along with about 100,000 pounds of food infested by beetles and rodents.

But wait, there’s more:

* King Food Farm on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights. Inspectors found three freshly dead mice and 40 pounds of rodent-defiled chicken. The store passed inspection in April.

* Noah Products on Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn. Violations included dozens of mouse droppings and two shipping cartons of rodent-defiled smoked fish.

* Associated Supermarket on 14th Street, Manhattan. Rodent droppings were found throughout the store and food-prep areas, and 28 pounds of dog food were defiled with mouse droppings, gnaw marks and urine stains.

No one was willing to talk to the Post about the report.

Also added to the “no-go” list (like under any circumstances ever):

• Kmart at 2660 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island
• American Fu Zhou Grocery at 101 East Broadway, Manhattan
• Rodriguez Meat Market at 571 E. 184th St., The Bronx
• Global Commodities at 14-50A 118th St., College Point, Queens.
• Golden Town Supermarket at 35-16 Junction Blvd., Corona, Queens
• Genesis Deli Grocery at 3210 Fulton St., Brooklyn
• Rockaway Food at 1370 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn.

Am I reading this correctly? The second time in a week this guy plays good samaritan and this time he creams the thief with his car? Too weird:

A serial purse-snatcher was critically injured last night when he was struck by a passing car moments after he stole a woman’s pocketbook on a Chelsea street, authorities said.

The thief, who was not identified, was riding a bike when he was struck at 17th Street and 11th Avenue after he had dashed off with the woman’s handbag.

The driver, Peter Welsh, said he heard a woman scream, “He’s got my purse! Someone help!”

That’s when Welsh barreled into the thief as he tried to get off his bike.

“I tried to get in front of him and intercept him,” Welsh said. “I didn’t mean to hit him.”

The thief, wanted for a string of purse-snatchings in Manhattan, was taken to St. Vincents Hospital in critical condition.

The incident comes a week after Welsh said he chased down a carjacker who crashed into four cars and hit a pedestrian June 14 near a Brooklyn movie set where Welsh was working.

It turns out that this is for real:

He goes by Peter Parker but says he’s no hero.

The good Samaritan movie-set worker who ran down a purse snatcher in Chelsea said he just likes to help.

“I don’t feel like a hero, but I felt like ‘I’ve got to help out,’” said Peter “Parker” Welsh, 33, who carries the moniker of the web-slinging “Spider-Man” character. The real-life Peter used his van to knock the thief off his bike late Friday.

And it’s not the first time this month alone that Welsh has done a good deed. On June 14, he chased down a fleeing carjacker who ran off after crashing into four vehicles at a Brooklyn movie set where Welsh was working. He brought the vehicular villain down and into the arms of law enforcement.

He’s known as Peter Parker because he co-runs Location Parking Security Services, which handles parking for movie shoots around town.

Get it? “Parker” . . . as in parking . . . cars . . . get it?

We are a sick society:

Manhattan may be the center of the human universe, but some of its office buildings were strictly for the dogs [Friday], as people lugged their pooches to work along with their briefcases.

The eighth annual “Take Your Dog to Work Day” was a barking success at the midtown public relations firm Ruder Finn, with half a dozen four-legged cuties running up and down the halls, happily wrestling each other and poking into offices to bark out a hello.

“He’s a very calming influence, but also stimulating,” said Helen Shelton, whose elderly husky, Mystik, lay peacefully next to her desk, a plush chew toy by his side. And account exec Julie Rosenberg took a cuddling break with Rico. “He gives us something to focus on when we want to take a break,” she said.

The borough of cemeteries, airports and Archie Bunker now has its own Not For Tourists guidebook:

Looking to entice “explorers” into the borough, Not For Tourists hosted a release party Sunday for its first-ever guide to Queens.

The pocket-sized guide book with the obscure title, “Not For Tourists Guide to Queens,” consists of more than 100 pages of local hot spots, compiled by residents and mapped out in detail on every page.

. . .

With an open bar and buffet to celebrate the release at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, hundreds of people milled about inside where the floors are sprinkled with glitter and the walls are filled with artwork. Meanwhile, the pocket-sized books sold steadily at $10 a piece.

The ultra-gigantic WPA-era Astoria Pool has been landmarked:

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to landmark a 70-year-old public swimming pool in Astoria that is the largest in the city and a century-old firehouse in the Hunters Point section of Long Island City, the Landmarks commissioner said.

The 54,450-square-foot Astoria Park Pool and Play Center, constructed during the Great Depression in 1936 under the administration of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, was designated a landmark by the commission Tuesday because it is the city’s largest public pool, Landmarks Commissioner Robert Tierney said. The pool, which can hold 6,200 people, was considered worthy of landmarking for its westward vistas that are framed by the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges and the play center was considered notable for its saucer-like roofs on the upper portion of its filter house, Tierney said.

See also: Astoria Park.