They act as if this is somehow strange:

Brooklyn’s housing market is so through the roof that families are forking over $625,000 to live next door to one of the city’s most dangerous housing projects, The Post has learned.

A new community called Spring Creek Estates, which will feature 40 two-family luxury homes, is in the process of being built along weed-strewn lots in East New York near the infamous, crime-laden Louis H. Pink Houses.

The first five houses are already up on Pine Street and recently sold for between $479,000 and $579,000, brokers said. And with marketing for the next 10 homes under way, two families have already signed contracts to pay $625,000 without a shovel hitting the dirt.

“Everybody knows about the reputation of the Pink Houses, but we’ve had no problem marketing the new development,” said Cecilia Calcagnile, a Centruy 21 broker arranging the sales. “We’ve had phone calls off the hook and are selling houses right off the blueprints before we even break ground.”

The 4-acre Spring Creek Estates is expected to be complete by 2008. It will run along parts of Stanley, Worthman and Euclid avenues and Crescent and Pine streets in one of the city’s highest crime areas.

Despite seeing a 57 percent drop in crime the past decade, the 75th Precinct last year led all police precincts in the number of murders (29) and ranked third out of 76 in the number of reported crimes (3,479).

The 11th Congressional District is just a big ball of laffs:

Days after standing on the steps of City Hall and endorsing City Council Member David Yassky in his bid for Congress, the mother and brother of a slain council member, James Davis, returned to those steps to withdraw that endorsement and to call on Mr. Yassky to drop out of the race.

Thelma Davis and her other son, Geoffrey, said Mr. Yassky left about 200 senior citizens stranded in the rain July 21, when he failed to get enough buses to transport them to City Hall for a memorial service in honor of her son, James, who was killed by a gunman in the council chambers July 23, 2003.

“This is not only a horrible act against the seniors, but against society,” Ms. Davis said yesterday, holding a picture of her late son. Ms. Davis said she wants Mr. Yassky to apologize publicly and pay $20,000 to four senior centers left without transportation that day.

By that time, campaign fliers touting the endorsement — showing Ms. Davis solemnly looking at a sepia-colored photograph of her slain son — had already been mailed to voters.

But it doesn’t end there:

In response to the withdrawn endorsement, an invoice Geoffrey Davis submitted to Mr. Yassky’s campaign — showing Mr. Davis hoped to be paid $50,000 for campaign work — was released to reporters.

Mr. Davis said he has been helping the campaign since last July, with the expectation of getting paid at some point.

“When he reneged with the bus company, and made my mother that upset, I sat with him,” Mr. Davis said, recalling a meeting he and an associate had with Mr. Yassky and his campaign manager at a famed Brooklyn eatery, Junior’s. The meeting took place the Monday after the memorial service, he said.

“From this point on, it is totally, strictly business,” Mr. Davis said.

Mr. Davis, who is unemployed, said he discussed the year’s worth of campaign work he did, and the field operation he planned to do in the crucial final weeks of the campaign.

“I said, ‘You got an hour to think about it,’” Mr. Davis told The New York Sun.

The following day, Mr. Davis submitted his invoice, which included $10,000 in administrative charges that Mr. Davis told the Sun he said was “my fee.” An additional $2,000 for a campaign office and petty cash were also listed.

And revealing all this is supposed to make you look better how?

A Staten Island woman is the latest example of how squatters have rights:

The lot at the dead end of Port Richmond Avenue — a dilapidated industrial area with gutted buildings, decaying docks and the aroma of chicken carcasses wafting from a nearby poultry slaughterhouse — seems like no place for anyone to live.

But squatter Patricia Walsh is fighting to stay there.

For five years, Ms. Walsh has called home an abandoned office trailer, with her seven dogs, dozen cats and cartloads of recyclable cans and bottles.

The 53-year-old calls herself a community activist, an animal lover, a proud citizen of Port Richmond for the past 22 years.

The owners of the 1.2-acre property overlooking the Kill van Kull call her a pain in the butt.

Since October, brothers Robert and Rudolph Rando of Long Island have tried just about everything to get her off their land so they can sell it to an Island development company.

They’ve offered her $10,000 — she refused it.

“I don’t trust them,” she said, standing in the cluttered yard last week.

They’ve promised to foot all of her moving expenses, to pack her belongings in a truck and bring her anywhere she wanted.

“They’re rich. They have nice homes to go to. Where else can I go?” she replied.

. . .

John Z. Marangos, a Staten Island landlord attorney representing the Randos, called it the toughest eviction case he’s handled. Even serving legal notice to Ms. Walsh has been a challenge. Her trailer home is guarded by an angry Chow Chow named Mary, and Buster, a massive pit bull with a knack for sniffing out lawyers carrying notices of eviction.

Meanwhile, his client has been losing “thousands of dollars every month” — not including legal fees — while he fights Ms. Walsh in court, Marangos said.

The 2nd Avenue Deli will become a bank branch:

The East Village building where the famed Second Avenue Deli served matzo ball soup and pastrami for five decades is becoming a bank branch, according to a broker involved in the deal finalized Wednesday.

Chase signed a lease for the corner property on East 10th Street and Second Avenue, as well as a newsstand next door, said Jonathan Krieger, a broker for Robert K. Futterman and Associates.

Backstory: How Much Corned Beef Do You Have To Sell To Make Rent?

The Daily News profiles cowbell man, the latest in the storied history of long-suffering Mets superfans:

The New York Mets were down seven runs by the seventh-inning stretch to the worst team in the National League one recent night, and it seemed the only thing keeping fans inside steamy-hot Shea Stadium was the promise of post-game pyrotechnics.

But even a pummeling at the hands of the Pittsburgh Pirates couldn’t stop scoreboard-blind superfan Edwin (Cowbell Man) Boison, who continued to roam the stadium, pounding out the beat to the battlecry of Shea: Lets Go Mets!

“I think it’s awesome that there is a guy who is this dedicated to the game and the Mets — it’s exciting,” said Rich Laconi, 24, of Astoria, who had asked Boison to pose for a picture.

Not to be left out of the photo shoot was Laconi’s friend, Aileen Tlamsa, 24, also of Astoria. “I want to thank you. I have a picture of you in my cell phone from last year’s Fireworks Night,” she told Boison.

“It’s always my pleasure to take pictures with fans,” the affable Boison remarked after taking off his signature “Cowbell-Man” Mets jersey so Tlamsa could model it for the picture. “I want them to feel like they’re having a good time at the ballpark and have something to talk about when they leave — even if the Mets don’t win.”

For the last 11 seasons, regardless of the standings, the score, the opponent or the weather, Boison, 48, has pounded beats all over Shea, logging more miles each game than Mr. Met, the team’s official mascot.

“I’ve always been a people person,” he said, when asked to explain his high-profile hobby. “I go in there as ‘Cowbell Man’ to represent the team and the fans. I consider myself a superfan.”

. . .

Yet while his crowd-roving percussion act has pushed him to the brink of icon status at Shea, Boison has learned that there is a downside to being a superfan. Because of complaints from a few season-ticket holding fans on the loge level, section 5, Boison is forced to bypass this section entirely during his stadium wanderings. As one Shea stadium employee put it, the detour is the result of “an uneasy truce” brokered between the two sides.

“He’s an arrogant pain in the a–,” said Bill Brownsell, 53, an anti-Boison Mets season-ticket holder in section 5.

“He’s more interested in promoting himself,” chimed in section-mate Eric Michalak, 47, who flies up from his home in Cape Coral, Fla., to attend Mets games. “There are a lot of people who would rather not have him here.”

Moral of the story — never trust anyone with a pet rooster:

A Manhattan man was arrested yesterday after he killed his pet rooster by biting its head off because he was angry at the bird, authorities said.

Humberto Rodriguez, 52, was charged with animal cruelty after agents from the ASPCA found his pet’s headless body on the fire escape of his apartment at 506 W. 213th St. in Inwood.

When the agents got there, they noticed a large crowd around the fire escape — pointing up to the headless bird, authorities said.

Rodriguez confessed to having champed down on the 6-pound rooster because it had attacked one of his pet baby pigeons.

He said he became enraged and sought to discipline the foul bird.

Responders found the body of the rooster on his fire escape, ASPCA spokesman Joe Pentangelo said.

The rooster’s head has not been located.

Authorities also discovered that the rooster had been a victim of previous domestic abuse:

An examination also found that the rooster, which Rodriguez owned for six months, suffered from two broken wings, Pentangelo said.

Two young punks (creeping Postism, sorry) beat up a mother running with her baby in Prospect Park and robbed her iPod from her:

Two boys robbed a Park Slope woman jogging with her child in Prospect Park yesterday, police said.

Laurie Maher-Samra, 35, was jogging in the park with her 7-month-old son in a stroller when the youths, who appeared to be 12 years old, attacked her near Nellie’s Lawn at 1 p.m.

She was running along East Drive in the park, listening to music when the boys attacked.

They ran up to her from behind, hit her in the head, snatched her iPod and fled, police said.

“I just didn’t think it would happen at 12:30 in the afternoon,” said a shaken Maher-Samra. “I was just surprised that they would attack a mom with a baby.”

She and her son were not injured.

“There were people around. It was weird,” she said. “It was a bold move. As a mom of a 7-month old, I should be able to walk with him in the park.”

The 78th Precinct, which encompasses the park, has seen a 30 percent drop in robberies over the past year, but iPod thefts have been on the rise across the city.

This is what I’m talking about.

The Villager’s Lincoln Anderson is on the verge of popularizing a new phrase — “antibar activists”* — in the course of profiling a woman who is raising children next to an East Village bar:

Last month, a few neighbors held a protest rally outside that bar, Boxcar, between 10th and 11th Sts. Their ranks were swelled by antibar activists who don’t live in the neighborhood, including individuals who had coalesced to push for the closing of The Falls, the Soho bar where Imette St. Guillen was last seen in February before her murder, allegedly by a bouncer.

Wearing a nightgown and robe, Liz Glass, who lives around the corner on E. 11th St. and whose first-floor apartment’s backyard abuts Boxcar’s backyard garden, organized the rally. With her were her three young children, ages 2 through 7, whom she says are kept awake by the bar’s noise, the older two of whom toted protest signs.

“We can’t sleep anyway. It’s a pajama protest,” Glass said, with a forlorn expression.

More than a year ago, Boxcar agreed to a curfew for its backyard of 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends.

However, shortly after the bar agreed to the backyard curfew, Community Board 3 passed a resolution calling for the State Liquor Authority to close the bar’s backyard entirely. Glass, the bar’s primary critic, is asking the S.L.A. to follow through on the resolution.

Although Glass is the neighbor most affected by the noise, others say they are too.

“I moved to here to be by the beautiful park, and then I got this,” said Eden Fromberg, an OB/GYN doctor who lives on 10th St. whose rear windows face into the block’s interior. “Somehow, with the A/C on and a tape of a babbling brook playing, I can still hear them,” she said of her unsuccessful efforts to block out the bar’s noise at night.

A woman from Huntington House, a shelter for female parolees and their families on the other side of Avenue B, saw the protest and came over to briefly lend support and add her name to their petition.

“Let me sign it!” Haydee Figueroa said, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she grabbed the clipboard. She said she was angry “because of the bullshit in the morning — 2 a.m., 3 a.m. they come out to talk and to fight. This one is worse,” she said, gesturing at Lakeside Lounge a few doors down from Boxcar. “A lot of women can’t sleep,” she said.

Although it’s unclear how much noise is too much noise, one’s threshold seems to lower when you involve a two-year-old:

Boxcar also built a sound-barrier wall between its backyard and Glass’s backyard — Glass called in a complaint to the Department of Buildings as the bar was building it because they didn’t have a permit. Spingola says they didn’t know they needed a permit.

Standing in Glass’s backyard around 10:30 p.m. the night of the protest, a steady mumble of voices could be heard from Gnocco, a restaurant on 10th St. with a backyard dining area. Less audible was the sound from Boxcar’s backyard. Inside Glass’s apartment, with the windows closed, it was hard to hear anything from either place.

“We have no violations — no noise violations, since she started her thing,” said Spingola. “The Department of Environmental Protection was here last Thursday night and we did not get a violation. And D.E.P. doesn’t mess around.”

*The first recorded (or at least Googlable) reference seems to be Anderson’s After ‘Falls murder,’ a flood of concerns about bar safety from March 2006.

Again, it’s never the wrong time or place to ghoulishly call attention to a social problem*:

The suicide of a 25-year-old Upper West Side woman, who jumped to her death a day after breaking up with a boyfriend, has brought to light the pressure put on young Orthodox Jews to marry.

Sarah Adelman, a Brandeis University graduate who managed a dental office in Midtown, on Monday afternoon leapt from an eighth-floor window of 35 W. 96th St., where she resided. Ms. Adelman left no note, police said, but was suffering from depression and had called another former boyfriend to say goodbye, the New York Post reported.

It’s difficult to know what role societal preoccupation with marriage played in Adelman’s suicide, but her death has initiated a conversation about the Orthodox community’s premium on coupledom, a singles columnist who is an observant Jew, Esther Kustanowitz, said. “I think it’s really sad that it took an incident like this to mobilize the community,” she said.

Anecdotal evidence of Orthodox Jews staying single longer in recent years has prompted religious leaders to trumpet a shidduch, or matchmaking, crisis, according to Ms. Kustanowitz, 35, whose Web log, JDaters Anonymous, provides a forum for Jewish singles to discuss online dating. “Traditional Judaism, as a whole, doesn’t know what to do with singles in their 20s and 30s,” she said.”There’s a temptation to try to marry everybody off. On one hand, that’s admirable, but on another it places pressure on people that they might not be ready for.”

In certain Orthodox circles, unmarried women of a certain age are stigmatized, according to a 27-year-old rabbi and teacher, Chananya Weissman, who started End the Madness, a movement devoted to changing the culture of dating in the Orthodox community. The effort, Rabbi Weissman explains on the End the Madness Web site, is dedicated to a relative “who at the age of twenty was considered ‘over the hill’ by her society,” and died without having married. “‘Over the hill’ is pretty young, especially for women,” he said yesterday. “It can be 22 or 25 or 30.”

*See also: The Point Of Which Should Hit You Like A Ton Of Bricks . . .

The demolition of St. Brigid’s Church on Avenue B in the East Village began yesterday, surprising everyone:

In panicked phone calls and anguished e-mail messages, word spread quickly yesterday morning in the East Village: “They are demolishing St. Brigid’s.”

By 8 a.m., concerned residents, former parishioners and preservationists, many of whom had been working to save the historic church for about five years, began gathering at Avenue B and Eighth Street in Manhattan. They took in the gaping eight-foot-tall hole in the back of the church, a shattered stained-glass window in front, and the scaffolding surrounding the base like a hangman’s noose.

“It floored me,” said Edwin Torres, a former parishioner and member of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s.

The sound of electric saws and hammers from inside confirmed that what they had been fighting to prevent for so many years had begun, with no warning to them.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York issued a statement to reporters: “Work began today to take down the former Saint Brigid’s Church, which had become unsafe as a result of the rear wall of the building pulling away from the rest of the structure.”

It is, many would argue, an ignominious end for a church more than 150 years old, one of the oldest houses of worship in Manhattan, built to care for Roman Catholic immigrants fleeing the Irish potato famine.

Work continued despite the best efforts of elected officials who, powerless to stop it, nevertheless delivered grand speeches:

A host of politicians and community leaders, including Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who was a parishioner of St. Brigid’s; Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president; State Senator Martin Connor; and Assemblywoman Sylvia Friedman, delivered impassioned statements yesterday afternoon in front of television cameras in the shade next to the church.

They accused archdiocesan officials of giving in to their greed and the overheated real estate market. They denounced the demolition as the erasing of heritage and history. They asked what Jesus would do.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the decision to demolish the church had nothing to do with money, pointing out that Roman Catholic officials were not planning to sell the property, but instead wanted to convert it to some other use that fits their mission, although that has not yet been decided.

So, as the politicians dispersed yesterday afternoon, the buzz saws continued to buzz.

The New York Press doesn’t do much to make you think that real estate brokers don’t deserve to be ripped off:

They were understandably deflated. We were walking to Astor place having the usual, “call us if anything exceptional or perfect comes up” conversation, when I noticed a strange and peculiar look come over them.

I had heard about this before: rental dementia. Tired, beaten and finally worn out by the process, they had seen enough and were willing to accept how little they would get for their money. During this “phase” you could rent them almost anything.

I had to think quickly: The shock can apparently wear off, and this is how most people come to live in Jersey City, or on Roosevelt Island.

I mentioned a spot I knew of on Lexington and 26th. It wasn’t even a three bedroom, but rather a really big two bedroom that they could convert. Originally, they were adamant about living below 14th and having three bedrooms. We were already on the 6 train headed to 23rd when it started to wear off — like drunks who had passed out in the bathroom and then belligerently demanded to know how they got there.

“Does it get good light?” they asked. I’d say, “It has a few windows.” “How many bathrooms?” “Yes,” I’d say, and then shake my head in confusion. “Can we put a wall up?” “It already has some walls, why not?”

The door to the questionable apartment opened. I let them go in first. It’s the moment you wait for in this business. You see the crazy look in their eye almost immediately, and you know they want it. It makes all the wasted and frustrated time worth it. More than just liking it, they were worried that somehow they wouldn’t get it. When they were this excited and nervous, you knew there would be no stalling or negotiating with the fee. I’d whack them for 15 percent without even a discussion.

It took them less than two minutes to decide they’d take it, and another 20 to decide where the wall would go and who would get what bedroom. They faxed applications that afternoon and signed leases less than a week later. I had to split the commission with the listing broker, which really hurt because he never even showed up (the doorman had let us in).

One split with the listing broker, another split with my broker, and I walked away with $1,400. I’d get to keep my apartment for yet another month. I’d also bought myself another month in the real estate game.

See also: What Would Randy Cohen Do?

Ew:

It was the hottest day of the year to date, with the mercury reaching well into the 90s, but that didn’t stop users of Yellowstone Municipal Park from celebrating a little extra comfort.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe was joined by a bevy of sweaty kids to cut a ceremonial toilet paper ribbon Monday afternoon. The choice of material was fitting, as the snip marked the official opening of the park’s new comfort station. Thanks to $400,000 allocated by Councilwoman Melinda Katz, the renovated station features new ADA-compliant bathrooms, a new brick façade, a stainless steel roof and doors, and new windows guards, as well as a new classroom/office and maintenance/equipment rooms.

Notably, the Parks Department is actually the only city or state agency that maintains free, public toilets in the city. They operate and care for hundreds of the facilities in neighborhoods across the city.

“This humble amenity helps hundred of thousands of daily visitors find relief and allows them to extend their visits,” said Benepe.

*Yes, that was an actual campaign.

Brooke Astor’s son pushes back:

David Richenthal, who produced three Broadway plays with Anthony Marshall, defended him and disputed the allegations as “the most fabricated bunch of nonsense I’ve ever read.”

Mr. Richenthal said that he had worked in an office in Mrs. Astor’s duplex apartment for the last couple of years — an apartment he said was as beautiful as when Mrs. Astor was still regularly in the spotlight. He said that her doctors had diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease several years ago and that Mr. Marshall “spends a good deal of his energy taking beautiful care of his mother.”

Mr. Richenthal said that Mrs. Astor’s health had declined in the last 18 months or so, and that she was in an all but vegetative state. “She has no idea where she is,” he said, adding that when Mr. Marshall and his wife, Charlene, visit her, “she doesn’t know they’re in the room.”

He called Anthony Marshall “a completely dutiful son.”

“One can only guess that his own son has his own emotional agenda,” Mr. Richenthal said. “I’ve never seen him there.”

Previously on: Brooke Astor Is Being Nickel And Dimed To Death.

A United Nations employee has been indicted for his part in a smuggling ring that brought large quantities of a narcotic plant into the country, the proceeds of which funded Somali warlords. Somewhere, John Bolton’s self-righteous pushbroom quivers with rage:

A U.N. employee used U.N. diplomatic pouches to smuggle illegal drugs as part of a ring that brought 25 tons of contraband into New York in the past year and a half, federal prosecutors and the FBI said yesterday.

The shipments of khat — an illegal stimulant grown in East Africa — were received by a mail clerk employed by the United Nations, Osman Osman, who sent them across America, according to an indictment unsealed yesterday.

Prosecutors say Mr. Osman, a Somali citizen who had been employed at the United Nations for 29 years, was an important cog in the largest khat trafficking enterprise America has known. Forty-four defendants were named in yesterday’s indictment, and 14 were still at large, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

Khat is an evergreen shrub grown along the Horn of Africa. Chewing the leaves has long been a custom in the countries of the region. Immigrants have brought the habit to America, where the active chemical in the leaf is as illegal as heroin. The trafficking ring exposed yesterday was responsible for importing more than $10 million worth of khat since the end of 2004, according to the indictment. A portion of the proceeds were sent back to Europe and the United Arab Emirates, in order to repay khat producers, according the indictment.

At a press conference yesterday, an FBI agent, Mark Mershon, said law enforcement officials hoped those arrested would cooperate with efforts to track down exactly where that laundered money went. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, said that the khat trade is a known source of funding for Somali warlords.

*The Post’s headline was actually “Feds’ Khat Nip”.

The Post piles on Con Ed chairman Kevin Burke, noting that the recent blackout may lead to an Enron-esque boost for his stock options:

Kevin Burke, the embattled Con Ed chairman who relocated Queens into the Third World, could make a bundle off his company’s stocks, thanks to the blackout.

Con Ed’s stock closed at $45.21 on Friday, July 14, the last trading day before the electricity went out for more than 100,000 people in the borough on the following Monday.

Yesterday, the stock finished at $47.19 — up 4.4 percent from July 14.

Power broker Burke owns 272,625 shares and options of Consolidated Edison, according to regulatory filings.

This means that while northwest Queens was sweating in the sweltering darkness, the total value of Burke’s paper holdings surged $560,000.

Experts say that utility stocks are generally very stable — Con Ed’s hasn’t moved more than a few percentage points all year — but crisis situations where supply is limited can boost trader speculation and investor interest.

Burke’s windfall is in addition to his $1.5 million salary and bonus.

Con Ed can’t get a break as the power goes out in Staten Island, affecting 16,000 “customers”*:

The latest power failure occurred as the utility and the city braced for a second summer heat wave that could endanger a fragile electrical network in Queens that is still being repaired.

The power failure on Staten Island began at 4:15 p.m. when three overhead lines were damaged — just 12 hours after Con Ed announced that electricity had been restored to the last customers in the Queens blackout. Around 10 p.m., Con Ed said, power was restored to all of its customers on Staten Island. The term “customer” includes residential and commercial buildings as well as households.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled plans to visit Queens last night to go instead to the affected areas of Staten Island. “The good news is the temperature is reasonably cool and we do expect to get everybody back very soon,” the mayor said last night in a news conference at Dongan Hills.

The mayor further noted the difference between above-ground and underground power lines:

He took care to distinguish between the power failure on Staten Island, which uses overhead lines, and the blackout in Queens, which relies mostly on underground networks.

“This is a very different situation than existed in Queens,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Here, when a cable is out, they know that everybody downstream is not getting power, so their estimates are very good. In an underground system, there are multiple paths to every house, so they don’t have a way of knowing.” In Queens it took Con Ed four days to correctly estimate the number of customers without power.

*And don’t let the terminology fool you — 16,000 customers could turn out to be a lot of people.

On the topic of grandstanding, Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. shows us how it’s done:

Astoria and Western Queens are slowly emerging from a hellish nightmare. We have stepped out of the Dark Ages. But of course Con Edison still remains outside the age of reason. Just like Baghdad Bob, they continue their laughable public misinformation campaign by trying to grossly minimize the extent of the damage they caused. First, they insisted that it was a minor problem with only a few hundred “customers” without power, then they raised that number to 1,800 and finally five days into the crisis they admit that 25,000 are without power.

That is why, my fellow citizens, I am calling on the district attorney to investigate the matter, requesting federal oversight of the utility and urging the power company to “use technology” to prevent this from happening in the future:

On Tuesday night I stood and watched electric power lines burn and fall to the ground. The fact that this was caused by two hot days in the summer is outrageous. I’m frightened to see what will happen in the hot summer days of August. Con Ed has assured us that they will be conducting their own investigation into this calamity. If this isn’t a case of the fox watching the henhouse I don’t know what is. That is why I along with Assembly Member Michael Gianaris and Council Member Eric Gioia have called for an investigation by District Attorney Richard Brown and will be conducting hearings at the City Council and the Assembly. Hopefully the “Con” in Con Edison will take on a new meaning.

Additionally, I am working with Congressman Joseph Crowley to get a federal monitor placed over Con Ed. The next few months will be crucial to rebuild our fragile network and ensure that this doesn’t happen again. I think we have all learned we can’t trust this irresponsible corporate neighbor, which provides us with stray voltage in the winter and no voltage in the summer, to do the right thing.

I am also demanding that Con Ed, like every other major utility provider, use technology that can show where service is down. It is embarrassing that in the 21st Century our utility provider must ride through the streets like a modern day Paul Revere looking for lights to see if power has returned.

Mayor Bloomberg announced that Con Ed will reimburse customers for lost food and medicine without proof of receipts:

People who lost food or medicine because of the Queens blackout will be able to submit compensation claims of up to $350 without having to provide receipts or other itemization, Mayor Bloomberg said Wednesday, the day the last of the tens of thousands of affected residents and businesses had their electricity restored.

At a news conference in Queens, Bloomberg said Consolidated Edison would also be waiving a requirement that people fill out a specific form, and would instead accept written letters sent from a legimately affected address. Small businesses may apply for up to $7,000 in compensation, but will have to submit documentation.

When asked if there were concerns about possible fraudulent claims, Bloomberg said, “I would hope if people didn’t suffer a monetary loss they would not try to scam the system. New Yorkers are fundamentally honest.” At the height of the blackout, which lasted for 10 days, about 100,000 people went without lights, air conditioning and refrigeration.

Randy Cohen aside, how many customers — especially ones without power for ten days — do you think will hesitate to collect the full amount? And do you blame them?

Con Edison announced that power has been restored to the last of the Queens customers without electricity:

Consolidated Edison said early this morning that had restored electricity to all the customers who endured a blackout in an eight-square-mile chunk of northwest Queens for more than a week.

. . .

Some awoke Tuesday to discover that they had hot water and air-conditioning for the first time in eight days. By the evening, only about 100 customers were still entirely without power, and their service was restored overnight, Con Ed said. But anger lingered over how long it had taken Con Ed to reconnect everyone.

Meanwhile, the mayor glibly responds to those who were troubled by his thankfulness — basically, “it’s a free country”:

He declined to respond directly to criticism from Queens officials and residents who were upset by his praise of Con Ed and Mr. Burke. “We live in a country where you have the First Amendment,” the mayor said. “You have the right to say anything you want. What I’ve got to do is focus on what’s right for this city.”

If true*, then this seems at least mildly disturbing:

City documents newly uncovered by the Voice reveal that the New York Yankees billed city tax-payers hundreds of thousands of dollars for the salaries of team execs and high-powered consultants to lobby the city and state, thanks to the team’s sweetheart lease deal engineered by the Giuliani administration.
. . .

The Yankees are apparently taking advantage of a clause in their lease with the city that allows “planning costs” of their new $1.3 billion stadium — groundbreaking for which could take place as soon as next week — to be deducted from the team’s rent. The planning deductions date back to a lease renegotiation arranged by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his final days in office. Under the December 28, 2001, lease deal, both the Yankees and the Mets were allowed to deduct up to $5 million apiece from their annual rent payments to the city, to be used for planning the new stadiums that Giuliani proposed to build, with city aid, across the street from the teams’ existing homes.

. . .

Until recently, the city had insisted that it had no details of how the “planning” money was spent. But a review of documents submitted by the Yankees to the parks department — pried from the city only after a Freedom of Information Law filing (a separate request has been made for Mets city documents) — shows that the beneficiaries of the city money include not just those working to design the stadium, but also those trying to extract public approvals for it as well.

For starters, Yankees president Randy Levine (a former deputy mayor under Giuliani) and the team’s chief operating officer, Lonn Trost — the two top Yankee officials working for passage of the stadium deal — received a combined $312,500 in city money in 2004. The Yankees’ justification, according to the documents: The amount totaled 30 percent of Levine’s annual salary and 20 percent of Trost’s, representing the time each spent working on the stadium project.

Even more audaciously, the Yankees in 2004 charged the city $203,055.87 for the services of Powers and Company . . . According to filings with the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying, Powers was hired by the Yankees to lobby the state senate and assembly and the governor’s office for permission to use 25 acres of Bronx parkland and $70 million in state money for the stadium — permission that, as the Voice has reported (”Playing Hardball,” March 15–21, 2006), was granted in June 2005 after no discussion or debate in the legislature.

The city even apparently paid the Yankees to lobby the city itself. Another recipient of city money, via the Yankees, was the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, which, according to the New York City clerk’s lobbyist database, has served as a registered lobbyist for both Tishman Speyer, the Yankees’ project managers for the stadium, and the Yankees themselves. (Tishman’s $1.9 million in 2004 was the number one billable item in the stadium planning account.)

*As if the Yankees need more money!

If true*, then this seems sort of mean spirited:

The city is using a big slice of the $1 billion it got from the feds post-9/11 to fight first responders who claim they got sick on the site, a lawyer who is suing the city charged yesterday.

David Worby, who is waging a suit on behalf of 8,000 WTC responders and their survivors, said $20 million has been “spent on city lawyers to deny the claims of cops, firefighters and others who were sickened.”

“That money should be used to help these people,” he said. “Take $100 million from the billion, Mr. Mayor, and set up a proper registry” to monitor the health of those who toiled at Ground Zero.

There was no immediate response to Worby’s accusation from Mayor Bloomberg, but the city contends it is allowed to tap funds from the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company to defend itself against claims. The federally funded entity was set up after the 9/11 attacks because no commercial insurance company would take on the risk.

Bloomberg promised to look into whether the city stiffed its 9/11 heroes after being prodded to do so by hard-hitting Daily News editorials that described the plight of 12,000 ailing Ground Zero workers.

*Can this possibly be true?

Brooke Astor’s 82-year-old son is depriving her of earthly pleasures, name-brand medicines and even her own pets, according to legal documents filed by Astor’s grandson:

Brooke Astor, the patron saint of philanthropy and society in New York, is being forced to live her remaining days in wretched, uncharitable conditions, according to court papers filed by her grandson.

Astor, now 104, is allegedly being kept inside her dilapidated Park Ave. duplex by her only child, Anthony Marshall — who controls her $45 million fortune, yet refuses to spend money for her care.

The grandson is seeking to transfer guardianship away from his father. The list of indignities is long:

• Although Astor had always used Estée Lauder cosmetics and face creams, her head maid, Mily Degernier, who has worked for Astor for 35 years, has instructed that a “cheaper brand” of makeup be used and that Vaseline be used instead of face cream.
• A prescription for Astor’s anemia, Procrit, which costs about $1,000 a month, was stopped for no medical reason.
• An enzyme supplement, CoQ10, to promote a healthy heart, and which may help in Astor’s battle against cancer, which costs $60 a bottle, was stopped at the instruction of Charlene Marshall, Anthony’s wife. She then told the aides to buy the medicine off the Internet, a diluted version that costs $26 for three bottles.
• When an aide’s request for two air purifiers — needed for the dust-filled apartment — was denied, they were bought by de la Renta.
• When a request for hair bonnets and no-skid socks was denied, Astor’s nurses bought them themselves.
• Astor apparently has not seen her beloved dogs, Boysie and Girlsie, in six months because they are kept locked in a pantry to keep them from damaging the apartment.
• Anthony Marshall, Astor’s son from her first marriage, repeatedly has refused to open up Holly Hill, her 75-acre estate in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, this year, even though Astor has said she wants to die there.
• While Astor has a nurse on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the staff has been cut back. She used to have two aides on duty at all times, according to an affidavit filed by one of her nurses, Minnette Christie.
• Astor’s physical therapy has been cut from three to two times a week over the protests of the therapist.
• While the apartment was once filled with art, figurines and fresh flowers, according to court papers, “which gave Mrs. Astor great pleasure,” some of the art and figurines have been removed. Floral arrangements have been replaced with one or two bouquets from the local Korean market.
• Although Astor was known for being always impeccably dressed, she is now reduced to wearing torn nightgowns and old clothes because her son won’t buy new ones.

I feel a two-hour episode of Law & Order coming on . . .

The big question facing proponents of the Atlantic Yards project is how to convince people that an area with million-dollar homes can be “blighted”:

Of all the real estate jargon, bureaucratic buzzwords and plain old insults exchanged over the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, no term has evoked quite such unruly passion as “blighted.”

During the last two years, the word has hung like a scythe over the 22-acre site, most of it on the northern edge of the Prospect Heights neighborhood, where the developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, hopes to build its $4.2 billion project.

For the developer, it is a fitting description of the abandoned auto-repair shops, collapsing brownstones and gloomy vacant lots that blemish the area, and of the eight-acre railyards that slice through the neighborhood just south of Atlantic Avenue. For many of the several hundred people who still live there, “blighted” is a term of abuse, one that ignores the sleek, recently renovated buildings on Pacific and Dean Streets, the bustling neighborhood bar, and other signs of revival. Even some supporters of the project, like Assemblyman Roger L. Green, disagree with the description.

“That neighborhood is not blighted,” Mr. Green, whose district includes the Atlantic Yards site, said at a hearing last year. “I repeat, for the record, that neighborhood is not blighted.”

The long-running blight debate took a major turn in favor of Forest City Ratner last week, when the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s lead economic agency, formally declared the project site blighted. It was the first step in a process that could eventually allow Forest City to acquire, through eminent domain, the few remaining parcels that the company has not been able to acquire privately over the last few years.

But for all the freight the word carries around Prospect Heights these days, “blighted” is a word with no fixed definition, legal or colloquial.

It is not unlike Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous remark about pornography — “I know it when I see it” — said Joseph M. Ryan, a land-use lawyer who has consulted for the development corporation before but has no involvement with the Atlantic Yards project. “Usually it’s a high crime rate, debilitated buildings. Often you’ll have pollution, or inadequate usage of land.”

Under past court rulings, for example, an area can be declared blighted even if particular parcels within it are not. Similarly, a given plot of land can be declared “underutilized” if what is built there is smaller or shorter than zoning laws would otherwise allow, even if the building in question is not dilapidated. Moreover, it is largely up to government officials to decide how prevalent a condition must be — how much crime, for instance — in order to label an area as blighted.

“There are no hard and fast rules regarding blight,” said Jessica Copen, a spokeswoman for the development corporation. “There’s a large area of subjectivity in evaluating the indicia of blight.”

Hizzoner gets in hot water (or lukewarm water, if your boiler is still out) after giving thanks to Con Edision during the waning moments of the massive blackout in Western Queens:

With Queens elected officials standing behind him, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg used a City Hall news briefing yesterday to forcefully defend the performance of Consolidated Edison in handling a power failure in western Queens that stretched into its eighth day.

The mayor’s comments appeared to surprise the officials, particularly when Mr. Bloomberg said Kevin M. Burke, chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, “deserves a thanks from the city.”

The Queens politicians openly shook their heads and rolled their eyes during the mayor’s remarks. He also said Con Edison had “done a very good job” in handling the power failure, which continued to affect thousands of people.

The mayor has been criticized more and more for his reaction to the power failures as they have dragged on, and yesterday his remarks drew surprisingly candid rebukes from the politicians who represent the affected area and appeared with Mr. Bloomberg at City Hall.

“I almost walked out,” City Councilman Eric N. Gioia said later. “I was shocked and disappointed by his defense of Kevin Burke today.”

What a scene — a posse of pissed-off politicians behind the mayor sputtering, “must grandstand . . . does not compute . . . must grandstand . . . does not compute.” If nothing else, Bloomberg seems like he has a sick sense of humor.

Meanwhile, had Con Ed preemptively shut down the power instead of keeping it going, four to five times as many Western Queens residents would have been in darkness (and without air conditioning and refrigeration and television and the internet and all those things that you take for granted while you have electricity), albeit for a much shorter time:

It was around 9 p.m. a week ago, on July 18. For nearly 24 hours, Consolidated Edison had been fighting to keep the power on in Queens. Six of the 22 feeder cables that distribute electricity to a half-million people in the western portion of the borough had failed. Then, in slightly more than a half-hour, four more feeders began to fail.

At a command center near Union Square in Manhattan, top managers at the utility had to choose: keep the power running and take the risk of causing more damage to the system, or shut down the network serving western and northern Queens, guaranteeing a wide blackout but one that could likely be resolved quickly.

“We were right there on the edge, thinking about whether to do this,” said John F. Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison. When the load eased slightly, he said, the worst seemed to have passed. “We made the decision to hold on, realizing the impact of shutting it down.”

So they kept the power on, the trouble spread, and eventually up to 100,000 residents of Queens were plunged into as long as eight days of sweltering darkness. Far more people, four to five times as many, would have lost power had the entire local network gone down, but the misery of the more limited blackout has lasted much longer than it probably would have in a controlled shutdown.

As a resident of Western Queens with power, I say thank you to Con Ed!

From today’s Craig’s List job postings*:

English Pud Downtown Looking for Host Staff

*What’s it to you if I’m looking for a job? Know of any?

The good thing about locating cables underground is that the city is largely immune to power outages during severe weather. The bad thing about locating cables underground is that it becomes difficult to figure out where the problem is once something goes wrong:

Consolidated Edison reported major progress yesterday in the week-old struggle to restore power to western Queens, but thousands faced a new workweek without electricity and frustrations boiled over as some officials called for a declaration of emergency and the resignation of the utility’s chief executive.

Kevin Burke, Con Ed’s chairman and chief executive, said at a 4 p.m. briefing that utility crews had restored power to nearly 16,000 of the approximately 25,000 customers affected by the blackout. In human terms, that meant that the lights, elevators, refrigerators and air-conditioners were back on for an estimated 64,000 of the 100,000 people who had suffered through the ordeal.

In an update last night, Chris Olert, a spokesman for the utility, said that by 5:45 p.m., service had been restored to more than 19,800 customers. That amounts to about 79,200 people, using a layman’s rule of thumb that counts four people for every “customer,” which could be a single home or an entire apartment building.

At a news conference at Con Edison’s headquarters in Manhattan, his second briefing of the weekend after five days of public silence, Mr. Burke said that Con Edison crews were working around the clock “street by street, manhole by manhole, to get all the customers back in service.”

The dwindling numbers suggested that the end might soon be in sight, but Con Edison has come under a barrage of criticism as having grossly underestimated the extent of the blackout, especially in the first few days.

Mr. Burke insisted that he could still provide no estimate of when full power might be restored to eight square miles of Astoria, Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside, Hunters Point and other sections. Underground cables had burned out in those areas, apparently overloaded by the utility’s decision to keep the power flowing to most of the 400,000 residents of western Queens despite the loss of 10 major feeder cables that power the area.

That decision meant that all of the area’s power was running through only 12 feeder cables, and through transformers and secondary cables that were not designed to take such a heavy load.

Mr. Burke said he had no explanation for why the 10 major cables went down while Con Edison’s 56 other feeder cable networks continued to work. The root cause of the blackout, one of the city’s most prolonged in decades, is under investigation by the utility itself and by the Queens district attorney’s office, the City Council and the state’s Public Service Commission.

See also: It’s More Or Less 2,000.

This is sort of like drenching the messenger:

Erich Fuchs is a real pisser, according to his landlord — and for that, he’s getting evicted from his prewar Upper West Side building.

The cantankerous tenant’s alleged penchant for tossing urine from his 10th-floor balcony has landed him in Housing Court in a dispute that illustrates tenants’ rising frustrations over a nerve-racking condo conversion under way at 230 Riverside Drive.

Built in the 1930, the elegant doorman building, with sweeping views of the Hudson, has recently gone through substantial renovations — changes that have made possible an $800,000 price tag for a one-bedroom apartment.

The redone lobby, which one resident dissed as “bordelloesque,” now features gleaming white mosaic tile and a new chandelier.

But the dust and noise from the construction has annoyed many of the rent-control tenants who moved there before Manhattan real estate went sky high.

And though tenants have been edgy over the changes, things never got physical until last September, when Fuchs began throwing urine and other things off his balcony onto construction workers, officials claim.

Though cops were called on several occasions, no charges were filed, the building’s lawyer said.

Last month, according to construction workers, Fuchs threw a bucket of urine off his balcony — drenching one of the workers.

“He hates the construction,” one building employee said. “He’s been battling it for a long time.”

The lawyer for the building management claims that by throwing urine at the workers, Fuchs violated his lease and is subject to eviction.

All of which points to the importance of reserving the right to toss urine out the window when signing one’s lease . . .

*For that you need a symbol — like Clinton, for example!

Smoking on the subway platform is dumb* but doing it when your name is on the terrorist watch list is just dumb luck:

A man on the national terrorist watch list was smoked out by a sharp-eyed undercover cop yesterday, The Post has learned.

Ashish Nayyar, an Indian national, was spotted puffing away on a cigarette by the plainclothes cop on the elevated No. 7 train platform at Queensboro Plaza around midnight Thursday, law-enforcement sources said.

The officer issued him a ticket for smoking. When he did a warrant check on the smoker’s name, he discovered Nayyar was on the terror watch list.

Nayyar had a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association card on him from a relative who is on the force, police sources said.

He was brought first to a Transit Division holding area, where NYPD counterterrorism detectives and FBI agents interrogated him, the sources said. It was determined that the FBI in Texas had put Nayyar on the list.

Sources said Nayyar’s relative on the NYPD came down to the interrogation and got “huffy,” but left when he was told what the situation was.

Authorities had no photo or fingerprints on file to compare with Nayyar’s but were able to conclude he was the man on the watch list because he gave police information — his mother’s name and his hometown in India — that matched the data on the watch list.

After investigators confirmed his address and his employment, they decided that he was “not a player” in terrorism, a law-enforcement source said.

And it didn’t end there:

He was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for being in the United States illegally, sources said.

*You’d be surprised how many undercover cops seem to be looking out for this.

I wonder if he’d consider the practice of ripping off brokers a form of civil disobedience:

For some renters, the temptation is just too great.

With a broker’s help, they have found a perfectly suitable apartment. Then, depending on their moral compass, tolerance for risk and financial standing, they may be tempted to double back and try to close the deal alone — thereby saving 15 percent of a year’s rent, the fee typically charged by rental brokers in Manhattan.

With the median rent for a one-bedroom in a doorman building now at $2,450 a month, according to Citi Habitats, that $4,410 fee could buy a fine flat-screen television set.

An informal survey of Manhattan rental agencies confirms that while backdoor maneuvers remain rare, they are growing in what is the tightest rental market in more than a decade. Vacancy rates stand at a microcosmic 0.56 percent, and the number of apartments for which the owner pays the broker’s fee has dwindled. Surging rents are commensurately swelling the dollars-and-cents translation of 15 percent and the incentive to avoid paying a fee.

The risk of cheating the broker — who I suppose is not entirely a parasitic drain on the economy — can be severe if you’re dealing with one of the thuggier ones:

So if you are a renter with the stomach of a street fighter and the situational ethics of a reality-show contestant, what, exactly, are the risks of cheating on your broker?

They run the gamut from tribal to litigious.

“A broker can make a person’s life very miserable if they want to,” said David Francis Calderazzo, the director of leasing for William B. May Real Estate. “All you have to do is spread the word that these people are no good in the building, that they’re deadbeats. No one likes the cold shoulder.”

“A couple of years back,” said Mr. Calderazzo, a former actor, bartender and bouncer, “I showed an apartment to someone who was from one of my corporate accounts but had to pay his own fee. It was a $3,800 one-bedroom on the Upper West Side for him and his dog.”

The client dropped out of sight after looking at the apartment. But two months later, during a routine 411 check on vanished clients, Mr. Calderazzo discovered he had been double-crossed.

“I confronted him, and he basically hung up on me,” Mr. Calderazzo recalled. “Then, he calls me up two or three weeks later. He said he had to get his locks changed three times because someone put Krazy Glue in them. That the super and the doorman paid him no mind.

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. I believe in karma. But I know people in the building. He figured out maybe it’s because he didn’t pay me my fee. He mailed me a check for 15 percent ASAP.”

Well now that’s odd:

Some would argue that there is nothing scarier than morning rush hour on the New England Thruway passing through the Bronx.

Throw a Tomahawk missile in the mix and you make it even scarier.

It happened to New Yorkers Friday when they found themselves nose to nose with a missile — that’s right, a missile — fell off a flat-bed truck on the thruway.

There was never any danger, however, as the missile wasn’t really a missile, just an inert, 18-foot long, 2,900 pound replica of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.

The real McCoy carries can hold a nuclear warhead and got rave reviews when it was first used — sans the warhead, of course — in Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.

The replica, it can now be told, is capable of slowing the morning rush hour to a crawl, as it did Friday.

The 4:47 a.m accident sent the NYPD Bob Squad racing to the scene, fearing the worst. But police quickly realized they were dealing with a replica.

“It just resembles a missile,” said Lt. John Gay, spokesman for the U.S. Navy. “It’s the same size,the same shape as a missile. We use it to train personnel how to load missiles onto submarines.”

By midday, the dupe was on its way to the police facility at Randalls Island. A Naval representative will arrange for transport to its home, a naval station in Norfolk, Va.

It had been at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a Research and testing facility in Newport, Rhode Island.

Its trip back south was scheduled to go through New York City, but as it neared the Hutchinson River Parkway entrance ramp the trailer carrying the missile stalled in the center lane and was rear-ended by a truck, police said.

The trailer then jackknifed and the case in which the missile was stored fell onto the roadway.