After shocking us, revealing the real estate broker business’s seemy underbelly, coming to terms with the horrible truth about the industry, subsequently creating a stir and eventually carving out some middle ground, this week Brian Carter does some investigative reporting to determine who is entering this lucrative field:

Here at the [The New York Real Estate Institute] you can start your career after just one week of training. The state requirement for becoming a licensed agent is 45 hours of classes, and the successful completion of two multiple-choice exams.

. . .

While at the Institute, I spoke to Raul Mero, who, after just one day of classes, was excited about his future career. I asked Raul what inspired him to get his license. “A friend, an absolute burn out, this kid does nothing well . . . is closing six deals this month. If this kid can do it, so can I. Ridiculous.” It made sense to me. Raul just turned 32, and with his friend, the “burn out,” blazing the trail ahead, he was ready to leave his job in alternative marketing, which he explained simply meant handing stuff out to people on the street. Raul made no bones about it, he was in it for the money.

See also: Carter’s Rental Dementia blog.

The latter is clever but developers don’t offer amenities unless they have to . . . the housing bubble is upon us:

When luxury condominiums open early next year at 20 Pine St., a former bank in the Financial District, tenants will be able to cap off their days by soaking in a Turkish bath, practicing their swings with a golf simulator, or perfecting their yoga poses in a private exercise studio.

Instead of hailing a taxi, those moving into 255 Hudson St. in SoHo will be able to slide behind the wheel of one of the vintage automobiles at the building’s disposal. Residents at 15 Central Park West will be able to watch a DVD in that condominium’s screening room or select a book from its private library. Meanwhile in Brooklyn, overwhelmed parents living at the Court Street Lofts can call on a “nanny concierge” to arrange playdates for their toddlers.

With a bevy of condos hitting the market, many residential developments are luring apartment-hunters with amenities that are transforming apartment buildings into veritable self-contained villages.

Call it “assisted living” for the family set.

“The market has demanded it,” a senior managing director of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, Anne Young, said. “People in New York work so hard. At the end of the day, we do not want to leave our homes, but we still want the gracious lifestyle we think we’re entitled to. We want to go home to our own gym, our own movie theater, our own golf simulator.”

In this newly condo-crowded city, developers are looking to stand out, an executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Tamir Shemesh, said. “They’re saying, ‘You’re going to pay $2,000 per square foot, but we’re going to give you extras that you won’t be able to find at other places,’” he said. “They’re not looking at reducing the price, but they are looking to give you more for your buck.”

. . .

The Ariel — two luxury high-rises in the West 90s — will offer tenants access to an on-site La Palestra fitness center, a billiards room, and a “pet salon,” where residents can “bathe their dog, without putting them into your tea-for-two tub in their $3 million home,” Ms. Trazzera said.

“We’re empowering New Yorkers to become the overachievers that we’re all expected to be,” a managing director of Corcoran Sunshine, Daniel Cordeiro, said.

Mr. Cordeiro said building-based services — from dog spas to steam rooms to at-your-service concierges — are quickly becoming commonplace in new condominiums. “To me, it’s like the Internet or a Blackberry,” he said. “It’s not a luxury anymore.”

He added: “These amenities, in hindsight, you think, ‘How could we live without this?’” [Emph. added to underscore hopeful spin]

Plans for Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx may be closer to Fine:

Ten years after winning control of the gigantic, castle-like Kingsbridge Armory, the city may be close to figuring out what to do with it.

Developer Peter Fine has pitched a plan — including schools, a YMCA, big and small retailers and a multiplex — to the local community board, and the process is inching forward.

. . .

The city inherited the 408,000-square-foot state armory — covering four city blocks — in 1996. Since then, plans have come and gone — but none garnered the required combination of financial backing, local support and political will.

Fine, head of Atlantic Development Group, one of New York’s largest developers of affordable housing, may become the first to nail down all three.

“We worked closely with local residents, civic leaders, clergy, education advocates and elected officials to create a community-oriented plan that delivers schools, jobs, athletic facilities, entertainment, retail and community space,” said Fine.

Fine has cultivated good relationships with many of the elected officials on a city task force overseeing the approval process, making significant campaign contributions. Like the plans preferred by the community, Fine’s includes public schools for 2,000 students, a 57,200-square-foot YMCA, another 13,000-25,000 square feet of community space, a retail portion with a major department store, a cinema and a parking garage.

Location scout: Kingsbridge Armory.

Even though there is much to occupy us with, New Yorkers spend an inordinate amount of time simply getting to work:

The Census Bureau says New York City now has the second-longest commute in the nation — 34.2 minutes — a slight increase over the past five years and only a little better than Baltimore.

The average commute for the rest of the country is 25.5 minutes — a 24-second drop since 2005.

“We all should hold a celebration,” Alan Pisarski, author of “Commuting in America,” said sarcastically. “We’re saving 0.4 minutes!”

But even those 24 seconds might look good to folks in Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx and Brooklyn who had longer commuting times than workers in any of the other 231 counties analyzed by the bureau.

The sorry statistics: Queens, 41.7 minutes, Staten Island, 41.3, the Bronx, 40.8 and Brooklyn, 39.7.

New York had the longest statewide commuting time — 30.4 minutes. Even the Los Angeles area, long notorious for its traffic horrors, came in 16th, at 28.4 minutes. New Jersey was third with 28.5 minutes.

(And when you get to the office you can keep playing Snake, though I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.)

Meanwhile, The New York Times Editorial Board endorses David Yassky in no uncertain terms:

Mr. Yassky is undoubtedly an opportunist, as are most politicians and certainly all those in this race. But far more important is his stellar record on the Council, leading groundbreaking work on gun control, affordable housing, the environment and jobs creation — all important to the 11th District.

Backstory: The Post Oppo Research Machine Chugs Along; See, The Thing Is Was, Senior Year Was Just Such A Blur For Me . . .; Excitement!; Well, That’s A Relief!; Pay To Campaign!; Recipe For Hitting The Front Page Of The Sunday Times: Just Add Sharpton; You Know You’ve Jumped The Shark When . . .; Unite To Stop White Individuals!; The Sad Thing Is That It Was Probably A Carefully Crafted Statement; How Do We Put This? Let’s Just Say Identity Politics Still Exists . . .; Barack Obama: Some Guy They Stuck In There; Nothing Against Your Policies, It’s Just The Color Of Your Skin.

Bruce Ratner should have set his sights on Long Island City in Queens, where apparently they’ll build anything:

Changes are a-comin’ to the Long Island City skyline in the form of development that will transform neighborhoods once cluttered with grimy auto repair shops and underutilized industrial buildings into streets lined with towering residential units and glistening office buildings.

. . .

Dingy industrial buildings are being demolished or gutted to make way for glistening new condos or sprawling residential lofts, and recent groundbreaking ceremonies paved the way for construction of the $200 million, 15-story Citigroup Office Tower at Court Square Two, which will house the national headquarters for Citibank’s credit card division and branch banking business.

Some of the exciting new things planned include:

• “A 20-story tower with 120 condos, a running track and a swimming pool with a retractable dome at 45-56 Pearson St. on a site that housed the former Sternberger Warehouse parking lot and several dilapidated private houses.”
• “Four stories are being added to a century-old factory and former power plant at 50-09 Second Ave. which will boast 175 condos, a fitness center, a kids’ playroom and a screening room for Super Bowl parties and other affairs.”
• “A 17-story development dubbed the ‘Crescent Club,’ will rise at 41-17 Crescent St. just north of the Queensboro Bridge The development will feature 110 condos, a lap pool, a putting green and a landscaped back yard.”
• “Real estate mogul Jerry Speyer is coming to Queens. The city chose the owner of Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building to build a mammoth tower of at least a million square feet on a site where the Queens Plaza Municipal Garage now stands.”

All this change and yet still no laundromat within short walking distance.

The Queens Gazette decodes asphalt graffiti:

Most native New Yorkers know the scrawls mean their streets or sidewalks are about to be torn up by some municipal agency or by the cable company, but few know which agency the colors represent.

Before the first shovel goes into the ground in any repair or development project, city homeowners, architects and developers are required to perform a survey to determine the location of “underground facilities.”

The surveys are performed by workers dubbed “locaters”, who measure and mark the distance of water, gas, electric and cable lines that lie precariously close to projects requiring excavation, a representative of the City Department of Design and Construction said.

A red mark denotes an electric project dealing with power lines, cables, conduit and lighting cables, Tony DeRoma, a manager at NY 1 Underground, a private firm hired by the city to provide project markings using New York’s Uniform Color Code, said. Yellow refers to gas, natural gas, oil and steam utilities. Orange markings refer to alarm and cable systems. Blue markings mean the job is related to water mains and other potable water systems. Pink paint is used to mark for temporary surveys-a “preliminary mark”, DeRoma said.

Markings in green paint mean a street is in line for new sewers or a new drainage system, and white paint indicates an “imminent excavation” near the marking.

Interesting, but what’s new here? In short, purple:

The city recently added a new color to the spectrum of its Uniform Color Code, DeRoma said. Purple markings refer to reclaimed water systems, irrigation and slurry lines, which could mean that work is about to begin on lines connected to a nearby car wash.

The color purple indicates water rated a degree below drinkable, but usable by a private business through a “holding tank.” The water, though “non-drinkable,” can be used in irrigation systems or in a filtered system that takes out suds, making it perfect for use by a car wash, DeRoma said. Such systems must be drained and maintained on a scheduled basis-a process that requires excavation.

Perhaps I dismissed too hastily the power of Jack Murtha’s endorsement. I had no idea that the main issue for voters in the 11th Congressional District is the war in Iraq*. And the candidates are now tripping over themselves to prove that they’re more antiwar than the competition:

For the four Democrats running for Congress in central Brooklyn, there may be differing views on a host of subjects. But on one topic there is strong agreement: They all contend that the United States’ military involvement in Iraq is a bad thing and that the troops should be pulled out as soon as possible.

All the candidates contend that the war is an issue that could energize voters to support them. But with their unanimous opposition to the war, the candidates find themselves trying to outdo each other in fashioning themselves as the antiwar candidate in what has become the city’s most fiercely contested, unpredictable primary battle.

One candidate, Chris Owens, has recorded an antiwar song that he is trying to get radio stations to play. Another, City Councilwoman Yvette D. Clarke, trotted out an icon of the antiwar movement, Representative John P. Murtha, to appeal for votes in brownstone Brooklyn yesterday.

The 11th Congressional District includes neighborhoods like Park Slope and Prospect Heights, hotbeds of antagonism toward the Bush administration. And the candidates say these are areas where voter turnout is expected to be higher than in the rest of the district, and where the issue of Iraq looms large.

So each of the candidates has been looking for attention-worthy methods of playing the Iraq card. Those methods range from the traditional to the highly unconventional.

. . .

For his part, the younger Mr. Owens is not content to confine his outspoken opposition to the war to position papers on the Internet or mailings to voters. The song he composed and recorded, “Love Is the Way,” was originally written as a protest tune during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. But Mr. Owens has refashioned the tune in a fusion of Middle Eastern and reggae styles with lyrics demanding that President Bush withdraw the troops from Iraq.

Mr. Owens said that he was trying to get the song played “in stations that focus on young people,” adding that it could motivate younger voters to go to the polls for the Sept. 12 Democratic primary (the song opens with Mr. Owens, the lead vocalist on the recording, identifying himself).

. . .

For Mr. Yassky, the issue has been the centerpiece of three of his many mailings to voters. One piece states: “The best way to honor our troops is to bring them home.” “I have strong feeling about this war,” Mr. Yassky said yesterday. “But I must say, I haven’t recorded a song yet.”

You can download Chris Owens’ “Love Is The Way” by visiting his website.

*By the way, is there anyone in the country who wants more war in Iraq? And wouldn’t this have been a more substantive issue in, say, 2002?

Bloomberg acknowledges that he has nothing to gain by endorsing candidates this election cycle. But then he had to go and do this:

Mayor Bloomberg has made his feelings known about a top musical race, but he is staying out of the state races for governor and Senate, saying that his neutrality is what’s best for the city.

“I think because I’m the mayor, and I will have to work with whoever is elected,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday, “it would be in the city’s interest if I just stay neutral.”

The mayor did make one major endorsement yesterday, throwing his considerable musical muscle behind Shakira in her bid for Video of the Year at tomorrow’s MTV Video Music Awards, which are being held at Radio City Music Hall. The Colombian pop star is up for the award for her hit single, “Hips Don’t Lie.” The other nominees are Madonna, Panic! At the Disco, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Christina Aguilera.

“I think I’m going to have to go with Shakira — those hips don’t lie,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a taped segment that aired yesterday on MTV’s popular video countdown show, “Total Request Live.”

. . .

Mr. Bloomberg is a registered Republican, but he has distanced himself from the party during his mayoralty, and Mr. Faso and the GOP candidates for Senate, John Spencer and Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland, are well behind Mr. Spitzer and Mrs. Clinton in the polls. The mayor is seen as being close to Mr. Spitzer, the gubernatorial frontrunner.

Mr. Bloomberg’s flirtation with a presidential run also may have factored into his calculation, an Albany political analyst, Alan Chartock, said. “Clearly, he has a good relationship with Eliot Spitzer, but if he endorses him, he potentially damages his bona fides with Republicans, which he may need in case he runs for president on the Republican ticket,” Mr. Chartock said

*At least I refrained from the real cheap shot: “She Makes A Man Want To Speak Spanish.”

Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town could be yours . . . for five billion dollars:

Metropolitan Life is putting Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — a stretch of 110 apartment buildings along the East River — on the auction block.

With a target price of nearly $5 billion, the sale would be the biggest deal for a single American property in modern times. It would undoubtedly transform what has been an affordable, leafy redoubt for generations of Manhattan’s middle class: teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers, office clerks and construction workers.

MetLife, one of the largest life insurers in North America, said in July that it might sell the two complexes, which it built nearly 60 years ago with government help. It has hired a broker, who started registering bidders last week for the 80-acre property along First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets.

Behind the scenes, the sale has already drawn interest from dozens of prospective buyers, including New York’s top real estate families, pension funds, international investment banks and investors from Dubai, according to real estate executives, even though the marketing book will not be released to bidders until next week.

. . .

Already there are signs that bidding will be feverish. As one executive involved in the sale put it, “This is the ego dream of the world: 80 acres, 110 buildings, 11,000 apartments, covering 10 city blocks in Manhattan.”

According to several bidders, the list of buyers who have signed up includes the most active developer in New York City, the Related Companies; one of the largest landlords, Glenwood Management; Tishman Speyer, which controls Rockefeller Center; two publicly traded real estate companies, Archstone and Vornado; the international bank UBS; and the Blackstone investment firm, as well as the Rudin, Durst and LeFrak real estate families.

Given the size of the deal, buyers are expected to team up. “You’ll see some interesting people stepping up to the plate for this one,” said William Rudin, whose family owns about 2,000 apartments in New York.

Telling a cop to go fuck him or herself is not necessarily protected free speech:

Screaming an anatomically impossible obscene suggestion at a police officer is against the law, a Manhattan judge has decided.

The quirky ruling, made public yesterday, concerns the case of Brooklynite Ramon Morena, who is charged with creating a public disturbance by shouting “Go f - - - yourself” at a cop in the Theater District in March.

Morena’s lawyer had tried to convince the judge that civilians enjoy a First Amendment right to criticize and verbally challenge police officers. The charges, he argued, should therefore be thrown out of court.

But Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Richard Weinberg didn’t buy it. If you’re disorderly, you’re disorderly, the judge wrote — and there is no “police officer exemption” to the rule.

Morena now faces up to 15 days jail if found guilty of disorderly conduct.

. . .

. . . [A]ny alleged screaming would be merely “a private annoyance” limited to the cop, the defense lawyer argued — and as such should have rolled off the officer’s back.

The judge countered, “To adopt defendant’s arguments would be to effectively carve out a police-officer exception from the disorderly conduct statute and to condone the heaping of verbal abuse upon a police officer regardless of the circumstances. This the court will not do.”

Your latest 11th Congressional District news . . . controversial Congressman Jack Murtha — who is on the right side of the Iraq War for a, er, primary in the 11th Congressional District but the wrong side of basically every other issue CD11 voters care about has endorsed (!) Yvette Clarke:

City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke (D-Flatbush), one of four Democratic hopefuls for the 11th congressional seat, announced a high-profile endorsement by Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, trumpeting him as a leading figure against the war in Iraq.

But Clarke’s opponents quickly pointed to Murtha’s anti-abortion stance and opposition to gun control.

. . .

Murtha earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association in 2004 for his votes against gun control — while most city reps got an “F.”

Murtha also earned a 0 out of 5 on a 2005 scorecard by the pro-choice group NARAL, compared to the 5s given to most city politicians.

“We’ll take the support of [Attorney General] Eliot Spitzer, [former Mayor] David Dinkins and Brooklyn’s teachers over a pro-gun, anti-choice, out-of-state congressman any day,” said state Sen. Carl Andrews’ spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa, referring to Andrews’ own endorsements in the race.

Clarke defended Murtha’s endorsement and said her own views on social issues are more important than Murtha’s.

“The voters know where I stand, and they’ll be voting for me on [Sept. 12].”

Opposition research . . . complete!

Meanwhile, David Yassky works hard to distance himself from one of the more controversial developers in Brooklyn (outside that one guy , of course):

Meanwhile, City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights) came under fire for nearly allowing controversial Brooklyn architect Robert Scarano to host a fund-raiser for him that was slated for last night.

The event, to be held at Scarano’s DUMBO offices, was abruptly canceled yesterday following calls by the Daily News.

. . .

A Yassky campaign spokesman would not discuss why the Scarano fund-raising event was canceled except to say, “The campaign didn’t think it was appropriate.”

Yassky has come under fire in the past for taking money from developers, while Scarano has sparked criticism in some neighborhoods for building condos that critics say are too big.

Scarano also was investigated by the Buildings Department for allegedly unsafe practices following worker injuries. He settled with the city last month and agreed to forfeit signing off on his own building plans.

Is it that hard to run a campaign, people? Come on!

After learning that in effect, taxpayers are paying the Yankees to lobby the city, more details emerge about how that happened. In short, basically everyone was new:

Henry Stern, who as Giuliani’s parks commissioner was the one to actually sign the Yanks and Mets lease extensions, says he “never heard any conversation relating to legal and lobbying costs,” though he quickly adds, “I didn’t handle negotiations.” But he’s not exactly surprised that things turned out as they did.

“I have found that very often, just in the course of business, when the city signs an agreement with another party, and city officials change and the private party remains the same, things don’t come out the way they were intended by the city,” says Stern, who has served on and off in city government since 1973 and now runs his own think tank. “Particularly in economic development matters, the reality on the ground often ends up different from what the parties intended when they signed the lease.” This was particularly true, he says, at the end of 2001, as Giuliani’s staffers cleared out their desks to make way for Bloomberg’s team: “The city was not rich in institutional memory.”

And if that wasn’t enough:

Those having a portion of their salaries charged to taxpayers included George Steinbrenner’s sons Hal and Hank, plus his son-in-law (and now designated successor) Steve Swindal.

In addition to lobbyists, the Yankees charged the city $56,967.46 for the services of Sive, Paget & Riesel, the outside law firm that drew up the new lease in the first place.

In my mind it can either be “seriously deteriorated” or “shabby” but not necessarily both. But the Department of Transportation seems to believe that a recent report about the condition of the Brooklyn Bridge is not such a big deal:

The city’s most recent annual report on the condition of bridges and tunnels, just out, rates the Brooklyn Bridge’s condition as a 3.15 on a scale of one to seven, with one as “potentially hazardous” and seven as “new.” A three rating is used to indicate that a bridge has experienced “serious deterioration,” according to the report.

A spokesman for the City Department of Transportation, which maintains the bridge, Craig Chin, said the bridge would be painted in 2009 as part of a $236 million project that also will include improvements to the bridge’s decks, approaches, and ramps. He said the rust visible under the peeling paint on the bridge’s structure has not adversely affected its safety.

“The Brooklyn Bridge is structurally safe,” he said.

. . .

The city’s bridge and tunnel report for 2005 lists an estimated cost to paint the bridge of $85 million. That’s an increase from an estimate of $74 million in the 2004 report. A paint job has been listed as “in design” for the bridge since the city’s bridge and tunnel report for 2002.

Mr. Chin said the bridge’s last paint job was between 1985 and 1991 under a state contract.

Location scout: Brooklyn Bridge.

First you give the film industry tax breaks to clog up your streets. Then you’ve got to start a city-funded program to help even the playing field for minorities and women because by giving tax breaks to studios, you’re supporting an industry in which minorities and women are underrepresented. The nerve of these people:

The Bloomberg administration is seeking to expand job and training opportunities for minorities and women in the off-screen crews that form the backbone of the thriving film and television production industry in New York City.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said that the effort is intended to continue the work of a City Council task force on diversity in the film industry, which Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn established early this year. She acted after some council members complained that minority groups and women were underrepresented in the often well-paying production jobs even as the film industry was being aided by city and state tax breaks.

Now the administration is putting together what it calls a working group that “will have a goal of developing specific recommendations in six months” for increasing job and training opportunities in the industry for minorities and women, said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. The group is to include representatives from production companies and labor unions.

. . .

Mr. Doctoroff, in an interview, said the Bloomberg administration saw the planned group as a “joint effort with the Council.” But he and Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn, the chairwoman of the Council’s task force, said it was not clear whether the task force would continue or would be subsumed by the new group. Like the administration’s planned group, the Council’s panel includes film company and union representatives.

. . .

Mr. Doctoroff said that given a lack of demographic data on the industry’s production ranks in the city, “I don’t think we know for sure” whether minority groups and women are seriously underrepresented. “But we believe we can do better,” he said, especially in relation to the higher-paying jobs in the industry.

But Ms. James, whose district includes Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, said she had often heard “complaints that when you go to film locations, you see a paucity of women and people of color” in the production ranks.

She said she and other council members had brought up the matter in 2004 at committee hearings on a bill, which later passed, to add city tax breaks to state tax incentives for movie and television companies to film in New York.

Ms. James recalled that at the hearings, she asked the companies’ representatives “what statistics they had on the employment of people of color and women” in production jobs.

“They said they didn’t know; that they don’t keep those numbers,” she recalled. Then early this year after hearings on another bill to extend the city tax incentives, she said, she expressed her concerns to Ms. Quinn, who then formed the task force.

Seen on Staten Island — Dustin “Screech” Diamond:

From 5 a.m. until after sunset last night, 100-plus ABC crew members descended on the Hilton Garden Inn, Bloomfield, and a nearby office building to film parts of episode 4 of the Knights of Prosperity.

The show, due to premiere Oct. 17, mixes sitcom fare with celebrity voyeurism by following a pack of goofy characters as they plot to rob the home of Mick Jagger.

The plum-lipped, wire-thin rock icon, around whom the show has been built, makes an appearance as himself in the first episode, the production company divulged yesterday.

Otherwise, the TV people on scene at the Hilton Garden Inn yesterday guarded the set with passion equal to that of a Betty Crocker Bake-off contestant protecting a secret recipe.

They couldn’t quite hide Dustin Diamond, however. The actor, who played the uber-nerd Screech in the early-1990s sitcom Saved by the Bell, has a cameo, although a spokeswoman for the production company was characteristically mum.

He’s a little heavier and has a little more facial hair — other than that, he’s Screech, said hotel owner Richard Nicotra.

It’s amazing how much time and effort is spent on seven minutes of airtime, marveled Nicotra, as he watched the crew line up for a buffet lunch during a break in the 14-hour-plus day. We’re friendly to them. We enjoy doing this. It’s certainly good business.

With some Hollywood set-designer magic, the hotel can be transformed into Anywhere, USA, and it receives frequent visits from scouts looking for locations to shoot.

Knights of Prosperity, starring Donal Logue and a band of other actors who have yet to become household names, joins the ranks of such shows as Law and Order and The Sopranos in using the hotel as a set.

What does Donal Logue have to do to become a household name on the Island? Screech-struck ingrates . . .

Twelve hours on how to sell factory-seconds electronics and cheaply made socks:

Starting next month, aspiring entrepreneurs will be able to attend a seminar that will teach them the marketing skills they’ll need to be vendors at an indoor flea market in Far Rockaway, Queens.

The “How to Become a Successful Flea Market Vendor” workshop was set up by organizers of the Seaside Flea Market, who are seeking locals who yearn to own their own businesses and are willing to set up shop at the market, which reopens this fall.

“When we saw there was an opportunity for something to happen in the Rockaways, we jumped at the chance,” said flea market vendor Valerie Vargas, 45, who co-owns Pisces Arts & Crafts with her husband, Max.

The Far Rockaway couple took the 12-hour course earlier this year and on summer weekends have sold their handmade jewelry and oils at the flea market, located at 1700 Seagirt Blvd.

“We went there open-minded. We didn’t know we had a knack for this, and I’m enjoying it,” said Vargas, 45, who also works as a production editor. “We’ve done quite well this summer, and we have repeat customers. Our goal and dream is to have our own store.”

The vendor course instructs participants how to choose a product for sale, how to set uptheir selling area and salesmanship.

“Anyone who is interested in extra income or starting their own business can learn how to do it on their own,” said Abbey Feldman, course instructor and a market organizer. “It is ideal for people who like the boutique business concept.”

Someone like Bill Maher should hurry up and book Charles Barron before he ever comes to his senses. Today, the councilmember defends New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin even as Nagin steps back from his Ground-Zero-is-a-five-year-old-hole statement:

Criticism surrounding comments by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin about rebuilding at Ground Zero is a “racist double standard,” according to City Councilman Charles Barron, who took aim at Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani yesterday.

“One year later, they have the unmitigated gall to tell [Nagin], ‘How come it wasn’t fixed up?’,” Barron, D-Brooklyn, said during an unrelated City Hall press conference. “Here you have two white mayors in New York City — one a racist, Giuliani, and the other a billionaire, Michael Bloomberg — and five years later they still haven’t built up downtown Manhattan after 9/11 and they got the nerve to ask him about one year after Katrina.”

In an interview scheduled to air last night on “60 Minutes,” Nagin deflected criticism about reconstruction delays in New Orleans by pointing to Ground Zero.

“You guys in New York City can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later,” Nagin said. “So let’s be fair.”

Yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nagin backed away from that comment: “I wish I would have basically said that it was an undeveloped site, which it is.”

. . .

Barron, meanwhile, said he supported Nagin 100 percent.

“Giuliani put a little mask on his face so he didn’t get dust in his mouth and nose and he was called ‘America’s Mayor,’” the councilman said. “Five years later, the place isn’t even built. They didn’t criticize Bloomberg, they didn’t criticize Giuliani. Ain’t no maybe, they didn’t do it to the white mayors.”

Voters of the 10th Congressional District, please send Barron to Congress — HBO needs you!

Previously on “Charles Barron Says The Darnedest Things”: Barack Obama: Some Guy They Stuck In There and “It’s probably healthier on the plantation”.

The Queens Tribune makes it sound downright Victorian:

As the last few joggers and bikers make their way out of Forest Park, it is mostly silent. Dusk quickly fades to night and a new group of people begins to quietly make their presence known by the sound of their careful footsteps.

Along Forest Park Drive, between Metropolitan Avenue and Mayfair Road, the ample greenery and bush provide cover to keep people, and any secrets they hold, hidden from view. And here, when the light goes away, the men come out to play. Heading down the maze-like bicycle paths in the park, men of all colors, races, and sizes can be found standing along the way, in clusters or by themselves. The men are fully dressed, unthreatening and quiet. Some stand still and stare, others gesture with hand signals while others repeatedly walk by, trying to create eye contact.

After contact is made, and interest is reciprocated, the men disappear, usually in twos, but sometimes in threes or fours. Movement can be heard in the bushes. A closer look reveals men’s faces and their bare lower torsos, often in compromising positions. The deafening sounds of cars and horns from the road make their noises inaudible as the bushes keep them out of plain sight.

Other Queens public sex hotspots include: Cunningham Park.

The Not For Tourists Guide to Queens book-release party makes Talk of the Town:

The partygoers sprawled across the SculptureCenter’s gravel courtyard, picking at pieces of fruit and cheese. Many of them hailed from Manhattan or, disproportionately, from the newly trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, just across the Pulaski Bridge. Michael Sendrow, a twenty-nine-year-old Sunnyside resident (and brother-in-law of one of the guide’s editors), gave a possible explanation for the party’s inter-borough popularity. “It was posted on Myopenbar,” he said. (Myopenbar.com is “your guide to free booze’ in New York. “Queens is full of good shit,” the site’s notice for the N.F.T. party had said. “The Astoria pool, Indian gold by the pound, men with mustaches, strip joints . . .”) “Terrible,” someone chimed in. “I’m telling you: they’re all hipsters, here for the free beer. Cheats.”

Insofar as other Queens residents could be found, they, too, were wary of outside interest in their borough. Bryan Kimpel, a lifelong Astorian, confided his concern that Queens was on the verge of an invasion by exiles from pricier parts of the city. “I was just telling some of my friends about Water Taxi Beach, and then I was going, ‘Oh, jeez, I better not tell too many people.’ Because we’ll have to wait in line.” Cathy Albright, the one local who expressed unqualified enthusiasm for the guide, had moved, just a year earlier, to Astoria from Texas. “I’ve been waiting for the Queens edition to come out,” she said, clutching her complimentary copy. “The addresses are so screwy here.”

. . .

By eight, the party was winding down. Revellers had begun spilling out onto Jackson Avenue, some in search of the E, G, and 7 trains, others in the general direction of the nearby L.I.C. Bar. A dozen more loitered on the sidewalk in front of the SculptureCenter, apparently uncertain of their next move. Sendrow said, “I imagine that these people, who probably don’t know where they’re going, get a Queens guide and have to look at it in order to get back to wherever they’re from.”

What a wag . . .

Brooklyn’s Puppetry Arts Theatre is funded, in part, by your attendance at that bi-weekly underwear party. And that’s the rest of the story:

Four years ago, Tim Young, founder and director of Brooklyn’s Puppetry Arts Theatre, which puts on puppet-based educational programs for underprivileged city youth, was facing a stark reality. He was pushing 30 and needed to strip down his life. “I was catering full-time, and I was working so hard that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the theater — ­nowhere,” he says, sitting fully dressed on a stool in his cramped Park Slope kitchen at one in the morning recently. A group of guys in boxers and bright-colored American Apparel briefs breezed by; some stopped to dispense Cosmos into plastic cups from an Igloo cooler. “I was going to have to get a roommate, I was going to have to get a third job. I just wasn’t bringing in the money I needed to run the not-for-profit.”

. . .

Half of the theater’s $30,000 operating budget — insurance, supplies, actor and musician fees — comes from the party’s proceeds (donations, sponsorships, and grants pay the rest). They have let the theater, which is approved to go into the schools by the city Board of Education, expand from throwing one or two events a month to five to seven. Activities range from visiting classrooms to teach students how to make puppets out of paper bags to an annual Halloween carnival in Park Slope. It also puts on a musical, called In a Round About Way, about a girl who runs away from home. Young’s puppet Oglesby also appears in John Cameron Mitchell’s upcoming sexually graphic film, Shortbus.

And although Young can sound a bit defensive — “If someone says, ‘You’re throwing a party for gay men in their underwear!’ I say, ‘Well, I don’t see you paying my rent or giving me money to buy glitter’” — the guests approve. “You come here for the social atmosphere, but you’re also helping kids,” said Mike, 34, a burly lawyer, as he retrieved a plastic bag filled with his clothes. “I’m all for that.”

*At least I refrained from saying anything along the lines of “Puppetry Of The Penis” . . .

Proof that even New Yorkers love the occasional historical reenactment:

It was soon after 1 p.m. yesterday when a band of Revolutionary soldiers, one of them just 16, emerged from the edge of the forest, muskets blazing. The British navalmen moved into place, taking no casualties, and loaded their cannon.

“Read-ay,” a man wearing a tri-point hat said as he twirled a smoldering charge in the air and touched it to the fuse. The cannon let off an enormous, black powder explosion, sending a five-foot smoke ring barreling down a hill at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

. . .

The muskets, clothing, cannon, and other materials are almost all replicas made by another group of reenactors, who create objects from historical eras using only the kinds of tools and supplies they would have had.

“I love history. I love doing this,” a parks ranger from Staten Island and part-time British artillerist, Michael Callahan, 49, said. Of his entire outfit, only two things weren’t replicas: a pair of small square spectacles he bought at an antique store, and his underwear.

“The truth is, they didn’t wear underwear,” a fellow artilleriest, Richard Cuneo, said. “We have health standards nowadays.”

It was a consensus among the reenactors that New Yorkers had a stronger interest in their hobby than they had expected. Gaggles of Brooklynites and history buffs with digital cameras, video cameras, and camera phones pushed close to the reenactors and cheered with the cannon’s deafening booms.

The field is a short walk from Battle Hill, the highest point in Brooklyn. Viewed in a larger frame, yesterday’s scene was just one part of the city’s tangled history. Looming above the clouds of musket fire were a Citgo gas station sign and a 1960s-era sign advertising “Worldwide Furniture Warehouse.” Behind those was a church steeple covered in black renovation material, the top of a chemical plant, and, beyond them, the Statue of Liberty.

Location scout: Greenwood Cemetery.

At least he doesn’t “always” use it to park illegally:

Former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who left public office more than 41/2 years ago, regularly uses an NYPD placard to park in illegal spots outside his private law office, the Daily News has found.

Last Wednesday, in the morning and the afternoon, The News spotted Vallone’s Cadillac DeVille parked in an illegal zone near his Astoria, Queens, office.

The sign read “No Parking 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday,” but an NYPD parking placard — a perk granted to Vallone by the city — protected him from getting a ticket.

“I try to use it [the placard] with discretion, but there possibly are times when I don’t,” said Vallone, who served as the Council’s speaker for more than a decade before term limits forced him from office in 2001.

“I don’t always park illegally,” he added. “I assure you of that.”

Vallone, 71, said he currently serves as an informal adviser to the mayor and the Council, but he acknowledged that he uses the placard for private reasons when parking outside his law office.

When told about complaints from people in the neighborhood who vehemently object to Vallone getting the special placard, the former speaker said, “I can understand that.”

“I do make make mistakes and I’ll try to correct it. I’m sorry,” he said.

But this is actually a time-honored tradition — sort of the way former Presidents get office space and a secret service detail:

Paul Browne, the NYPD’s top spokesman, said it’s the department’s “longstanding practice” to provide special parking placards to former mayors, former police commissioners and former City Council chiefs.

Browne said the placards expire annually, but he said these former officials are entitled to the special perk for life.

“It’s been the custom followed for many years,” he said, adding, “I don’t know the precise history.”

Shawn Green comes at a time when the city’s Jewish community is searching for a role model:

Not that there’s any pressure on Shawn Green to succeed in New York, but when Mr. Green — power-hitting right fielder, two-time All-Star, Jew — took the field in a Mets uniform for the first time on Thursday, a fan named Corey Mintz held up a poster with Mr. Green’s photo on it.

“The messiah has arrived,” the poster read.

Jews are famed for their prowess in many fields, but have long been stereotyped, even by themselves, as being weak in athletics. There might not be a group on the planet with a more finely honed sense of physical inferiority.

So when a star ballplayer who happens to be Jewish comes to play in the New York area, a capital of Jewish culture, home to nearly two million Jews, it is cause for much rejoicing.

Americans, Jewish and otherwise, may not hold sports stars in the esteem they once did. Jews no longer feel quite the need to prove themselves as Americans by, for instance, excelling at sports.

But still the Jewish people hunger for a hometown hero to call their own.

. . .

And in the stands at Shea Stadium, Joshua Ostrovsky, a husky Manhattanite with a billowing Jewish afro and a gold Hebrew “chai” necklace outside his Dwight Gooden jersey, called Mr. Green a role model.

“There were many times in Little League that people said to me, ‘Ostrovsky, you are fat, you’re Jewish, you’ll never play baseball.’” said Mr. Ostrovsky, 24. “So I lost weight, and they still said, ‘You’ll never play baseball because you are Jewish.’ Shawn has been an inspiration to me.”

. . .

Mr. Green, for his part, seems happy to be in New York. “For me it’s an important thing, the Jewish community here,” he said Thursday. “I definitely want to be a part of it and am excited to be a part of it and hopefully I can make them proud.”

So far, so good. In his second at-bat Thursday, he lined a run-scoring single to left field and the place erupted.

“Ma-zel tov! Ma-zel tov!” Mr. Ostrovsky chanted to the rhythm of “Let’s Go Mets.”

Mr. Ostrovsky pulled at his mane of kinky hair.

“I haven’t been this proud of a Jew since my brother’s bar mitzvah,” he said.

Traffic is so bad on Staten Island that motorists use cemeteries as short cuts, leaving a trail of blood in their wake:

Sunrise at Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp is usually announced by the crowing of Rodney the rooster, who is ever accompanied by his companion, Henrietta the hen.

But yesterday, for the first time in years, dawn was missing its “cock-a-doodle-doo” after a speeding car struck and killed Rodney Friday afternoon, leaving Henrietta and Moravian staffers forlorn.

“People treat Moravian Cemetery like it’s Hylan Boulevard,” said Richard L. Simpson, the cemetery’s historian. “Accidents happen, but if you go slow, birds move. You know they were speeding, the way Rodney was splayed on the ground, with feathers everywhere.”

This is the third bird killed by drivers in the cemetery this summer, Simpson said. The cemetery’s two freshwater lakes draw many migrating birds, including ducks, egrets and Canada geese, he added. Earlier this year, a favorite cemetery goose, Squiggles, also was killed by a car.

. . .

Around 2 p.m. on Friday, when the feathered pair would normally be pecking on the office window, ready for their lunch, a worker found Rodney dead in the road.

Cemetery workers stayed late after work to give Rodney a proper burial in a shady spot behind the office building, overlooking the lake. Henrietta was nowhere to be found. But later, when staffers went to pay their respects, they found her standing over her friend’s grave. She laid an egg there, which staffers placed on the cross-post of Rodney’s grave.

“She had to know he was there. They were so close,” Simpson said.

Moravian has posted numerous stop signs and speed-limit signs, as well as adding speed bumps to discourage lead-footed drivers who cut across the cemetery from Richmond Road to Todt Hill Road, but to no avail.

Two fire hydrants and many signs have been knocked down by speeders, Simpson says, adding that road rage and aggressive drivers on nearby Hylan Boulevard probably don’t help matters.

“Most people are very respectful here, but every now and then, you get somebody in a hurry, like in any other place,” said Rev. Duane Ullrich, from nearby New Dorp Moravian Church, noting that the birds are fed in front of the office building, in the area of the cemetery with the highest traffic.

Don’t tell the kids — alcohol really does turn you into Superman:

A 60-year-old man, apparently drunken, jumped five stories off the roof of his Hell’s Kitchen apartment at about 10:30 last night and was barely injured, cops said.

The first thing Alexander Mikhailov asked cops for when he got up: a drink.

“I don’t know how he survived it,” said a police source at the scene of the fall from the top of 527 W. 47th St.

It was broken by some “potted plants” on an elevated level of a building behind Mikhailov’s, the source said. He was taken to St. Vincent’s hospital in stable condition, officials said.

You can’t win:

In a neighborhood where three or more drinking establishments per block is not all that unusual, E. Seventh St. between Avenues B and C doesn’t seem to be in that kind of spirit.

Instead of the usual assortment of drinking establishments, five religious institutions hold sway here, making it the kind of block that would most certainly give any cocktail hour devotee the shakes.

“It’s a blessing,” said Wilfred Moore, deacon of the Gethsemane Garden Baptist Church, at 223 E. Seventh St. “I don’t have a problem with the number of churches on this block because we’re outnumbered, anyhow.”

. . .

Not all the residents of E. Seventh St. sing the praises of this confluence of churches.

Joan Eddings, 21, confesses that she’d rather have more wining and dining establishments along the block and fewer Bible-toting neighbors.

“You’re walking along minding your business and someone’s always saying ‘God bless you,’” she griped. Eddings added that, “Some people think it’s a blessed block because of the churches, but it’s the realtors who own property here who are truly blessed.”

Another disgruntled block resident, Michael Shenker complained, “There used to be a beautiful garden where they built Gethsemane Garden Baptist Church, and we lost it. I’d prefer that we had kept that open space open rather than another church.”

The second incarnation of Stonewall has closed:

Seventy-six years after the first bar of the same name was opened at 53 Christopher Street, the prospect looms that the historic site of the 1969 riot widely credited as the birth of the gay-rights movement might disappear.

And the neighborhood surrounding the block of Christopher Street just east of Sheridan Square (which has been ceremonially named Stonewall Place) is raising a glass to the Stonewall’s demise.

Born in infamy on a sultry summer night when a ragtag group of drag queens and gay hipsters started hurling bottles at the police who were raiding the bar, the Stonewall, neighbors say, remains riotous — at least for the now ultra-gentrified Greenwich Village.

“They promote these urban youth parties,” said Bill Morgan, the owner of the Duplex, a popular gay nightspot at the end of the block where Stonewall is situated. “They pushed out the regular gay clientele in favor of this new, urban, hip-hop, gangster clientele. Then you bring a bunch of 18-to-20-year-olds in the area who have no place to go and start goofing off and being loud. It’s disruptive to the neighborhood and brings in the wrong element in the neighborhood.”[*]

Others say that the bar’s owners co-opted the site’s history and ran the business into the ground:

Dominick Desimone took over the lease on the historic location, which hadn’t been a bar for nearly 20 years, in 1989, amid promises to return the bar to its former glory and create a fitting commemoration of its original character.

Many were dubious.

David Carter, the author of Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, told the story of how he pointed out to the owner that the original flagstones of the bar’s most popular dance floor remained intact even 20 years after the bar had closed. The next time he walked by, the flagstones had been covered in what he described as “bathroom tile.”

“They were interested in exploiting the Stonewall name to make money,” Mr. Carter said. “They had no appreciation for the site itself. I think it was a purely money-making venture done under the guise of preserving and honoring history. This was a total fraud from the beginning.”

. . .

Mr. DeSimone, who is straight and was interviewed from a hotel in St. Lucia on Monday, defended himself and said that tight finances are just a reality.

“Think how many $6 drinks you have to sell to make up for $20,000 a month in rent,” he said.

But ask anyone at the bar, and they point fingers directly his way.

“There’s been terrible mismanagement,” said a bartender who goes only by “Tree” and who also served at the original Stonewall in the 60’s. “Dominick doesn’t know how to run a gay bar.”

*Update — Bill Morgan emails (8/30):

I want to set the record straight regarding the Stonewall Bar. I am in no way thrilled at the prospect of losing such an incredible landmark for both the West Village and the Gay community. I have nothing but empathy for any fellow businesses especially one of Stonewall’s stature. Losing Stonewall will actually hurt my business as Stonewall brings people to the neighborhood. The “reporter” from the observer not only paraphrased my sentiments from the 20 minute telephone interview he edited them together in a way that has very little in common with what I actually said. It’s as if
he had a bias in mind for the article and decided to tailor or fabricate statements to bolster his case. When he asked why I thought the Stonewall was failing I stated that I felt the owners had forsaken the history of the place and the hardcore regular clientele by bringing in the 18-20 year olds for the “detention parties” and the like. I did say that the crowds can be disruptive late at night as once they leave the Stonewall they have no other bar to go to because they are underage. So they hang out and make noise. That’s the nature of 18 year olds. I never said that the kids were “the wrong element” and I never said anything even remotely close to being happy at the prospect of losing such a historical establishment. The article this person wrote is not only misrepresentative of me but of the attitude of the community toward Stonewall. I hope Stonewall survives and prospers for years to come. As far as the Duplex is concerned - We are very proud of the diversity of our patrons and the diversity of our staff as well. As you may imagine I am sickened by the bigoted quotes that were attributed to me. I have written the reporter from the Observer, pointed out the inaccuracy of his article and requested that he set the record straight on his end.

Don’t ever let them tell you that it doesn’t save time to board cars close to the stairwells because it does:

At 6:06 a.m. yesterday, 24 hours and 2 minutes after setting off on their quest to pass by all 468 subway stations, Dan Green and Donald Badaczewski pulled in to the end of the No. 6 line — a full hour faster than the record two other pals set in 1998.

“I feel satisfied, I feel tired, and I can’t think straight,” said a yawny Green, 26. “I just wanted to get the hell off of the train.”

First on the list of things to do was a bathroom break, followed closely by strong coffee.

After traveling all of the 230 miles covered by the train system in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, the new subway champions were greeted by Badaczewski’s girlfriend, Chris Kelly, and a bevy of TV cameras.

“I know this sounds really weird, but I’m so proud of them,” said Kelly, 24, who was waiting with a hug, balloons, and a sign proclaiming victory.

She also bore gifts of burritos and water for the weary champions.

Early in the evening before, the duo was running about 40 minutes behind schedule after boarding slow trains to Astoria and the Bronx.

But a few lucky late-night transfers and unexpected shuttle service to Bay Ridge had them back on track by 4 a.m.

After a sprint up the stairs at the Lexington Ave./53rd St. station to catch an uptown 4, the last leg of the journey had arrived. The pair transferred to a 6 at 125th St. and cruised into Pelham Bay Park before the sun came up.

Former college roommates, Green and Badaczewski, 24, planned their trip so meticulously as to know which train cars were closest to station staircases.

. . .

They aren’t planning on submitting their time to the Guinness Book of World Records, which only tracks a record for a person visiting each station.

But Michael Falsetta of the East Village, who did a similar ride in 25 hours 11 minutes with his college buddy eight years ago, conceded defeat.

“Even Babe Ruth’s record fell eventually,” said Falsetta.

See also: Will Records Fall?, But What If You’re The Sick Passenger?

It had something to do with something down there:

A report that a fetus had been found at a Queens golf course triggered a multi-agency search for the mother yesterday — a search that ended when officials determined that the discovery was in fact a sanitary napkin.

Employees at the Forest Park Golf Club called 911 just before 1 p.m. yesterday, prompting a level-one mobilization — the deployment of several dozen officers — to the public golf course in Woodhaven, police said. The discovery was initially reported by a golfer who was suspicious of something she found in the restroom, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department said. “Everyone thought it was a fetus,” a course employee said.

Before resolving the case, members of the police canine unit and a helicopter from the aviation unit joined officers in scouring the golf course for signs of a woman they believed abandoned the fetus. A duty inspector and a duty captain also reported to the scene, police said.

. . .

Three hours after it began, the search was cancelled when investigators determined the true nature of the golfer’s discovery. Without a case to investigate, police removed crime scene tape, the course manager, Robert Smith, said. “It was nothing,” he said.

Golf was not suspended during the investigation, Mr. Smith said.

Abandoned fetus? Play through!