After earlier drawing the line at “smell,” apparently some Brooklyn mail carriers are also balking at “stoop”:

Neither snow, rain, nor gloom of night will stop letter carriers from completing their rounds. But brownstone stoops in Brooklyn? Well, that’s a different story.

The residents are complaining that mail carriers have been dumping letters by their garden gates rather than making their way up the brownstone steps.

Letters, catalogs, and magazines delivered to certain streets in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have been rained upon, blown away, and destroyed. Some residents who filed official complaints with the postmaster found that their mail stopped coming around at all for several days.

Postal workers complain that trekking up the steps is treacherous business, especially in the ice and snow.

When the sidewalk mailbox belonging to Elizabeth Juviler, a real estate agent in Bedford-Stuyvesant, recently fell off, her attempts to replace it with a box inside her foyer failed because her letter carrier refused to use it.

“Our mailman said he didn’t climb stoops,” Ms. Juviler said.

. . .

As part of the move to phase out stoop service, when new residents move in to a brownstone they are not guaranteed mail delivery to the top of the stoop, according to a customer service agent at the Postal Service.

The man who claims to have taken the only photographic evidence of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” reveals his inspiration:

Rudy Mancuso is 85 and lives alone in a rental apartment on the Lower East Side. He uses a cane and moves slowly. But 55 years ago, on Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso had the split-second timing to snap a photograph of one of the great moments in sports: “The shot heard ’round the world.”

The photograph of the home run hit by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants in the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds to steal the National League pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers and set off pandemonium in New York became iconic — Thomson swinging the bat, the ball sailing above the Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca as it soared out of the park.

. . .

In 1951, [Mancuso] and the rest of New York were riveted by the three-game series between the Giants and the Dodgers to decide who would play the Yankees in the World Series.

By the third and decisive game, Mr. Mancuso said, he had received an authoritative and specific photo assignment.

“God told me Bobby was going to win it with a homer in the ninth,” he said. “There’s no doubt. I was chosen to take that picture.”

On Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso said, he rode the subway to the Polo Grounds carrying a Busch camera he had bought for $300 to use for wedding portraits. His ticket put him in the upper level directly behind the press box. He had only brought two exposures with him and used the first one early on, taking a snapshot of the Yankee right fielder Hank Bauer, who was sitting nearby.

Mr. Mancuso set the camera on top of the press box until the bottom of the ninth when Thomson came to bat.

“Like I said, I knew it was going to happen, so I pulled the paper strip out that protected the exposure and put the focus on the furthest it would go. I put the focus on infinity.”

“I heard the crack of the bat and snapped the picture,” said Mr. Mancuso who made a batch of prints and said he took one to The New York World-Telegram and Sun the next day.

“They took it inside and then came back out and said: ‘We can’t use it. It’s old news,’” he recalled. “I think they took a picture of it and it got spread around, because it got to be all over the place. I should have copyrighted it.”

One station, $2.1 billion, to be funded by the city:

The city will pay $2.1 billion to build a single subway stop on the No. 7 train extension as part of its deal with the MTA to share a role in developing the West Side rail yards.

MTA board members yesterday unanimously approved a plan to auction the prime Manhattan real estate to the highest bidder that meets a set of yet-to-be-determined criteria set by the agency and the city.

Should the cost of extending the No. 7 train from Times Square west to 11th Avenue and down to 34th Street end up costing more than $2.1 billion, the MTA will be on the line for any overruns, officials said.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said that despite arguing with the city over the particulars, the offer was hard to refuse.

“This is one of the few times we’re getting a project where we don’t borrow or use our own resources,” he said. “Our riders get an extension of their line at no cost to them.”

Under the current plan, the city will pay only for building the terminal station at 34th Street, not the second one originally planned for 41st Street and 10th Avenue.

Instead, a “shell” of a station will be built at 41st Street, in case the agency later decides the extra stop is necessary. Building that station would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

But Kalikow said the MTA decided the station isn’t needed now.

“This is a lot of money for one stop,” said Beverly Dolinksy, director the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “The MTA and the riders are still going to be left hanging.”

And is it just me or does the Javits calendar look pretty busy already?

A cop has been arrested for stealing the credit cards of people whose deaths he was investigating:

Officer Eduardo Saillant, 38, of the 60th Precinct in Brooklyn allegedly took the cards while taking part in investigations of elderly people’s deaths, a law-enforcement source said.

He used the cards to charge an undetermined amount of money at gas stations and stores such as Home Depot, the source said. And when he was busted, he was also found with a stolen police radio, cops said.

Saillant was arrested quietly on Tuesday and freed on his own recognizance Wednesday. He was slapped with misdemeanor charges of petit larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and official misconduct and a felony charge of grand larceny in the fourth degree, which could get him up to four years in prison.

The first alleged theft occurred on May 3, when Saillant and his partner responded to a report of a death on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. There they found the body of Howard Apler, 63, who died of heart disease.

Saillant allegedly swiped Apler’s Visa card and used it to charge items at a Home Depot and for gasoline.

A short time later, the dead man’s sister noticed charges being made to the card and, after talking with relatives, alerted police.

Then there’s this apology:

Richard Acevedo, 42, a close friend of the officer’s, said Saillant is a divorced dad of two.

“Eddie’s a good-hearted person,” Acevedo said. “He tries to help a lot of people, and sometimes helping a lot of people he gets himself in trouble.”

It’s sort of like not wanting to go to the dentist because you’re worried he’ll tell you you have a cavity . . . except we’re talking about up to 30 million gallons of oil:

Suspicious about long-delayed promises to clean up the massive Greenpoint oil spill, residents have not signed up to let state officials test their homes for cancer-causing vapors.

At a community meeting held Wednesday night by state environmental and health officials, homeowners repeatedly demanded guarantees their insurance policies would not be canceled and their houses would not be condemned if tests come back positive.

“What if . . . we have to vacate?” Ludwig Bauer, 51, asked from a crowd of 200 residents.

Despite pleas from elected officials to sign up for the testing, only 10 residents asked for more information about the program, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said yesterday.

Some, including Bauer, said they will not sign up.

“I’m terrified,” said Bauer’s wife, Catherine. “What if they say my house is condemned?”

Parking spaces? We don’t need no stinking parking spaces:

Borough President Marty Markowitz has 13 coveted parking spots in traffic-congested downtown Brooklyn — but that hasn’t stopped him and his staff from using the Borough Hall pedestrian plaza as an illegal parking lot.

The Daily News found up to 17 cars at a time parked on the flagstone plaza in the last three months — even though it’s in the middle of Columbus Park, a city park.

“It is illegal for anyone to park on the pedestrian plaza around Borough Hall,” said a city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Markowitz’s own black SUV is routinely parked on the sidewalk on Joralemon St. next to a busy newspaper kiosk amid a throng of pedestrians.

. . .

“You don’t need a car,” said [Larry] Johnson. “There’s a bus and train on every corner. They should be subject to the same tyranny as us, and park on the street.”

The buzz in Queens is about the new electrified subway trusses that are keeping pigeons away:

Pigeons have long plagued a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, making a home among the trusses and girders under the rumble and roar of the No. 7 train and leaving their mark on the sidewalk, stairs and lampposts.

After a decade of requests, New York City Transit is providing some relief in the form of low-voltage wires that give the birds a little shock.

New York City Transit, a division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, began installation of the pigeon deterrent at the 52nd Street stop of the No. 7 train in August as part of a pilot program to rid the area of the birds, and the work continues, a New York City Transit spokesman said.

. . .

The preventive measure is comprised of a flexible wire and plastic molding carrying a low voltage that gives a mild and non-lethal shock to the birds, according to the manufacturer’s Web site. The system, called Shock Track, is manufactured by Bird-B-Gone Inc. of Mission Viejo, Calif.

City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) also lobbied on behalf of the deterrent system, writing his first letter about the pigeons to the president of New York City Transit only weeks after taking office in 2002.

The Woodside location is the first site where New York City Transit has installed this system, which is considered a pilot program, Transit spokesman James Anyansi said.

. . .

Jose Sanchez, a newspapers salesman who has been working just outside the station for the past eight months, said the bird droppings still coating parts of the sidewalk had been a problem for commuters.

“It would fall on many people. It was a problem, but not so much for me,” he said.

He said the system appeared to be working: “There are fewer pigeons in the past five weeks.”

State Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan (D-Ridgewood) and Margaret Markey (D-Maspeth) lobbied the agency for a cleanup.

“I am pleased that the MTA has started to address this serious health and sanitation issue. It is a relief to know that this unsightly and unsanitary situation will soon be fixed,” Nolan said.

Longtime Sunnyside residents are struggling to cope with train noise related to maintenance work at the nearby Amtrak-Long Island Rail Road train yards. Hopefully the work will end before the luxury lofts — going up literally right next to the train yards in neighboring Long Island City — are completed. The Queens Chronicle tells the story:

Trains passing by their building with the horns blaring are leaving some Sunnyside residents sleepless, stressed out and feeling like they live on the wrong side of the tracks.

Horn noise from the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak trains that pass by Sunnyside Towers has increased recently, say occupants of the 39th Avenue co op building, which the trains pass by 24 hours a day.

. . .

Ayne Horyn, a 20 year resident of the building, finally started complaining last week to the railroad about the noise. By the weekend, nighttime horn blowing had mostly subsided, at least temporarily. Horyn also consulted with a noise expert to find out how the horns could be affecting her health.

Les Blomberg is the executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearing House based in Montpelier, Vt. He said that even intermittent noise can have a negative effect on residents, and one that isn’t always recognized by the industry. “In the recent train horn study that the (Federal Railroad Administration) did, they wouldn’t even say that train horns wake people up, but they absolutely do,” he added.

Assuming that a Sunnyside Towers resident is 100 feet away from the train horn when it blows, Blomberg estimates the sound they hear is likely around 110 decibels — as loud as a rock concert and about 30 times louder than a normal conversation.

Even if residents are able to sleep through the sound, Blomberg added, their bodies still respond with a little burst of adrenaline, interrupting their sleep cycle. “Whether they acclimate or not, there are going to be some lingering effects to it,” he said.

Then again, maybe the Sunnyside Rail Yards will be covered one day . . .

Was this ever an idea for a film script? If not, someone should get on it:

John A. (Junior) Gotti could be headed to the Midwest — and to college — after his latest trial on racketeering charges dead-ended yesterday, buffing his contention that he put a life in organized crime behind him.

“If they let us alone, I’ll leave. I’ll take my family and I’ll go [to the Midwest],” vowed Gotti, who spoke of his desire to further his education.

. . .

In the latest trial, prosecutors tried to prove Gotti was part of a racketeering conspiracy because he has continued to receive mob money and benefit after 1999 from property and other assets he accumulated with proceeds from his crimes.

His defense lawyers say Gotti paid a large fine when he pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1999 and was permitted to keep his assets, regardless of where the money originated.

The Gotti camp clearly saw yesterday’s mistrial as a victory. “We’re just thrilled right now,” said his sister Victoria. “Today’s a humongous step. This win meant a lot to us.”

A super-secret poll commissioned by Council Speaker Christine Quinn confirms what should have been obvious — voters don’t want the City Council to self-servingly overturn term limits:

The poll showed that only four in 10 New Yorkers favor having the council members stay longer than the current limit of two four-year terms.

Following months of speculation, the lawmakers were briefed yesterday on the results of a survey of 700 registered voters that the council speaker, Christine Quinn, commissioned in the spring. A consulting firm, Kiley & Co., asked voters whether they supported an extension of term limits: 40% responded that they did, while 57% were opposed, according to several council sources with knowledge of the poll results. The speaker paid for the poll with campaign funds.

The results appeared to confirm that Ms. Quinn and her colleagues would be igniting a political firestorm if they decided to take on term limits. Mayor Bloomberg is opposed to changing the law, and the businessman who originally championed the term limits initiative, Ronald Lauder, has vowed to fight an effort to overturn the law.

There are many reasons to get rid of term limits — the instability of revolving doors, the need for an institutional memory, the potential for increased grandstanding — but this is the best reason:

A Brooklyn council member, Kendall Stewart, said voters were “disenfranchised” in the earlier referenda because Mr. Lauder spent so much money, about $4 million, in support of term limits.

Huh.

*Why, yes we did.

I can almost hear Jerry Orbach say it — “Some strange characters hang out in this neck of the woods”*:

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday — as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it’s other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

“The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face,” said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

“I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early.”

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

. . .

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

“I’m staring at him and I think, ‘Is that a prop or a real person?’ His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn’t get up, like he lost his balance,” Samuel said.

*OK, OK — being Jerry Orbach is harder than it looks!

An evangelical group targets rootless Brooklyn hipsters:

While Greenpoint hipsters sip lattes and leaf through the Sunday papers at Café Grumpy on Meserole Ave., a fervent group of young neighborhood churchgoers prays behind them.

“I am evil, born in sin,” chant worshipers in the newly established Williamsburg Church.

Since July, a congregation of 15 has been gathering on Sunday nights in a nook in the back of the cafe, an area that operates as an art gallery the rest of the week.

“A church isn’t a building, it’s a people,” said pastor Robert Elkin, who moved to Brooklyn six months ago to open the church.

Elkin is a member of the Heritage Bible Church, a 1,400-person evangelical group based in Greer, S.C. The born-again missionaries hope to open churches across the country, particularly in areas where religion isn’t at the top of people’s to-do lists.

“It’s a ripe environment, but it’s a challenge,” said Elkin, who sees “hedonism” in Williamsburg and Greenpoint’s youth culture.

The group’s target audience is hip, young New Yorkers who have ignored God for too long — and have been overlooked by God’s messengers.

. . .

Café Grumpy owner Caroline Bell didn’t want to talk about her new tenant. “Anybody who wants to rent out the back can,” she said.

If New Yorkers sometimes seem like they have a libertarian streak, it’s only because their government is often trying to do stupid shit like making food illegal:

But while more and more restaurants are already moving to rid their kitchens of trans fats, which are squarely tied to the increased risk of heart disease, New Yorkers’ reaction to the city’s proposal, approved unanimously on Tuesday by the health board, typically went something like, “Right, but on the other hand . . .”

Alan Rosen, one of the owners of Junior’s, said, “I don’t want to be told what to eat.” And Robert S. Bookman, a lawyer for the New York State Restaurant Association, said city health officials might be treading on a legal landmine. “I would be shocked if some national company does not sue,” Mr. Bookman said.

The plan would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, and restaurants would have until 2008 to comply.

No one disputed the health risks of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients commonly found in fried foods, bread, doughnuts, salad dressings and other prepared foods, but most were ambivalent, if not upset, about the prospect of government intervention into their businesses, and their diets.

“Let me tell you, it is healthier, the product does taste better,” said Sanford Levine, 64, who owns the Carnegie Deli and has found alternatives to almost all its cooking oils and shortenings that contained high amounts of artificial trans fats. “Nobody has complained so far,” he said.

But there is also a matter of principle, Mr. Levine added.

“They shouldn’t tell a businessman how to run a business,” he said. “They can make suggestions, but I don’t think it should be the law.”

And if slippery slope arguments and principles don’t make you think this is a ridiculous idea, think about the prospect of a protracted legal challenge that may have constitutional issues — and while city attorneys argue the case, all the money that could have been spent for, say, educating children about trans fats:

Opponents said they could make a strong legal case against the proposed limit.

Mr. Bookman said he expected the limit to be particularly disruptive to some of the nation’s largest restaurant chains, like McDonald’s, which use trans fats in highly standardized recipes that could not easily be changed for New York City.

He said a legal challenge might be made on the grounds that the local restriction violates federal rules on interstate commerce, since some of the chains prepare their French fries and other menu items in other states, using trans fats in the process, before freezing them and shipping them to restaurants in New York.

“I don’t believe New York City has the authority” to interfere with the interstate food chain, Mr. Bookman said.

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said he and his staff had considered potential legal challenges to the proposal.

“New York City has the ethical responsibility, and we think we have the legal jurisdiction to do it,” Dr. Frieden said. “If somebody brings suit, we will look at it.”

*Don’t know who he is? You will when he gets slapped down by the Supreme Court . . .

The Eagle Electric Company Factory on 21st Street in Astoria — which after a residential conversion now sort of resembles a beachfront condo on, say, the Gulf Coast (see here for more reaction) — is ready to take applications:

Gutted and completely rebuilt, the former Eagle Electric Company factory on 21st Street will soon officially become Riverview Apartments. Although an opening date has not yet been announced, the $30 million coop development has been given the green light by the state attorney general’s office.

“We have been approved [to sell] and will begin to market at the end of this month,” said Joseph Pistilli, chief operating officer for Pistilli Realty Group, developers of the project, at the September meeting of the United Community Civic Association (UCCA).

“We are very excited about this project for many reasons,” said Vincent Reilly, sales and marketing director for Riverview Apartments. “These are very large apartments,” he said of the 188 units at Riverview.

One-bedroom apartments will range in size from 650 square feet to 865 square feet, at purchase prices from $254,000 to $328,000 (median price $305,000). An average two-bedroom apartment is 1,400 square feet at $556,000, while an average three-bedroom apartment is 1,750 square feet at $750,000. Some three-bedroom units have lofts and mezzanines.

The name “Riverview” seems odd, since a tree-filled Astoria Park stands in the way of the river. And that’s just one side of the project — many of the units seem to only have a view of 21st Street. The developer explains:

Bordered by 19th and 21st Streets and 24th Avenue and 23rd Terrace, the units in Riverview Apartments on the 19th Street side will have views of Astoria Park, the East River and the Triborough Bridge.

“There are river views, but actually, all three sides of the building have really nice views,” [Pistilli Realty Group chief operating officer Joseph] Pistilli said.

Then — unless I’m mistaken here — there seems to be some fuzzy math:

“Typically, topend new construction in Long Island City goes for $800 a square foot,” Reilly said. “Riverview is between $500 and $600 per square feet.”

In addition, Reilly said maintenance charges, typically set at $1.50 to $2.00 per square foot are between $1.06 and $1.22 at Riverview. For example, an apartment of 700 square feet would have a monthly maintenance charge of about $700, he said.

Between $1.06 and $1.22 per square foot for maintenance adds up to $742 to $854, which is a little more than “about $700″ . . . plus, is high-end real estate in Long Island City really $800? Because that’s not what I’ve been hearing.

But that’s not all — the land is actually being leased right now with the expectation that it would be bought within ten years — with co-op owners on the hook:

Pistilli Realty does not own the land at Riverview, instead leases it from Eagle Electric with an agreement to purchase in no later than 10 years. Therefore, Riverview Apartments can only be offered at this time for sale as a cooperative development and not as a condominium.

The plan is to refinance Riverview eventually. “When the [cooperative] board takes over there is an opportunity to convert from co-op to condo,” said Pistilli. The Riverview plan approved by the attorney general’s office includes a provision making it mandatory that co-op apartment buyers participate in the purchase of the building and land.

Huh.

It’s been over 50 years since Candid Camera first aired and we’re still dealing with the ramifications:

A Queens man who apparently wanted to become the next “Jackass” is now facing up a year in jail after posting a video on YouTube showing him and some pals posing as cops and randomly searching people on the street.

Gazi Abura, 21, of Astoria, and two other camera-toting pranksters allegedly accosted a 31-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy in July 2005 by donning fake badges and pulling phony “stop-and-frisk”-style police searches. They recorded the encounters and then put the video on the popular YouTube site under the name “Crack DVD . . . The Re-Up//Crack Cops.”

“Amigo, you’re getting thugged right now,” one of the video police fakers told their first victim, Alexis Montoya, 31, of Elmhurst, after stopping him on a sidewalk and “scanning” his driver’s license by putting it into to their car’s CD player.

. . .

The prank video went up on the Web site in mid-August. One of Trivino’s classmates saw it and told him. The teen went to authorities, who later charged Abura with second-degree criminal impersonation, second-degree coercion and second-degree unlawful imprisonment. The charges could get Abura up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

He was ordered held on $3,500 bail at his arraignment last night.

The Post analyzes top Netflix choices by borough and finds it says much about who we are:

Manhattan’s top choice is a documentary about itself, followed by “Barbarians at the Gate,” a film about money and excess, the foreign flick “Divorce, Italian Style,” and the patriotic musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Brooklyn’s top picks are about Hasidic Jews and graffiti, and local hero Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn.”

Queens’ list reveals its mixed personality — with Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” taking the top spot, followed by the counter-terror hit “24,” and the kvetching of “Seinfeld” creator Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Rounding it out is a film about suicide bombers in Israel and “The Chorus,” a French film about a singing troupe.

In The Bronx, the hip-hop crime drama “Killa Season” is No. 1, followed by documentaries about Puerto Ricans in America and the Latin Kings, and the Paul Newman police flick, “Fort Apache, the Bronx.”

And Staten Island is all over the map, starting with the original version of the horror film “The Omen,” followed by the gang-war classic “The Warriors,” a show about plastic surgery, the straight-to-video action film “Covert One: The Hades Factor,” and “Dumbo.”

City Councilman Eric Gioia gets results:

The storage company that riled straphangers with its ads mocking the city’s boroughs outside Manhattan has agreed to pull its posters, though company officials insist they didn’t mean to offend anyone.

“If anything, our posters are meant to poke fun at the excessive prices of self-storage in Manhattan, and certainly not as a cultural critique of the outer boroughs,” an executive at Public Storage wrote in response to a stern letter from City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) last week calling for the ads to be removed.

. . .

“We will take care to develop future advertising themes that are consistent with our commitment to the diversity of New York City,” [Public Storage senior vice president Mark Bilfield] said.

Gioia, who repeated his invitation to the company’s chief executive to tour the city with him, called it “a victory for everyone who’s proud to live in the five boroughs.”

“I’m very happy to see them taking down their ads,” Gioia said. “Everyone can hold their chin up. We stood up for ourselves and we won.”

Backstory: No Offense Taken . . .

Hizznanny wants to ban trans fats — not at schools, not in public facilities, but everywhere:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing.

As you might assume, the restaurant industry was skeptical:

E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 3,500 restaurants in New York City, said the proposal before the city’s Board of Health would most likely lead to litigation. The group plans to fight the proposal at an Oct. 30 public hearing.

“They’re going way beyond the scope of an appointed agency,” Mr. Hunt said of the health department. He added that such an action “could be considered in restraint of interstate commerce” even if it was enacted by the mayor and City Council and that there could be grounds for a lawsuit.

. . .

And Mr. Hunt wondered how small restaurants would adapt. “For a health inspector to walk into a mom and pop restaurant in Queens, where they barely speak English, and find a can of Crisco shortening on the shelf and then fine them $1,000,” he said, “well, that’s unreasonable.”

But at least one local restauranteur went off message, reasoning that since his establishment didn’t use trans fats, he didn’t feel the need to speak out:

Some restaurant owners support the plan. Mark Maynard-Parisi, 39, managing partner at Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in Gramercy Park, said the plan was “wonderful.”

Blue Smoke uses a blend of canola and vegetable oils for frying that was recently certified as trans fat free by the health department, Mr. Maynard-Parisi said. “I’m not trying to pass us off as a healthy restaurant,” he said. But, he said, he and his partners “wanted it to be real and, to us, margarine,” which is rich in trans fats, “isn’t real.”

First they came for the trans fats . . .

Then again, why worry? After all, in large swaths of the city, even the smoking ban is largely unenforced.

Or alternatively, let the Health Department inspect places like Blue Smoke in Manhattan all they want — everyone grandstands, no one is punished, everyone wins.

A future Frank Bruni tackles NYU Dining Hall options. Menus range from “not bad”:

Available every Friday night at Rubin, the seafood-themed dinner serves not only numerous fruitti de mer but also the enticing regular menu items offered every night.

The rustic dining hall is adorned with fishing nets and clamshells in an attempt to play up the theme. The adequately lit dining area does a fair job of creating a comfortable atmosphere. Seafood night starts at 7 p.m. and the lines are not lengthy at all — minus the batch of students hovering around the made-to-order pasta station served with red or white clam sauce. Little did they know the five-plus minute wait would only pay off with a bowl of lackluster pasta doused in an insipid, watery sauce and bottom-dollar clams.

The hand-carved herb crusted tuna — though lacking in a distinct flavor and zest — provided some hope along with a station featuring fresh shrimp station laid over ice.

. . . to “sort of bad”:

True carnivores, on the other hand, should make sure to set aside Sunday Nights for a trip to Third North for its protein-laden menu.

Upon entry, each meal swipe is granted one meal voucher redeemable for either a grilled, mass-produced peppery T-bone or an eight-ounce slice of medium-well ribeye hand-cut by the one and only Tony.

Even with the cowboy-decorated carving station and wooden bucket of potatoes strategically spread about the table, the dining service managers staring down each customer created an apprehensive atmosphere for the steak-hungry patrons.

On top of that, the service, as with most dining halls, requires that the customer utter no more than four complete sentences with the employees before a broken path of communication and confusion ensues. In retrospect, one should grab their food and sit down by utilizing the fewest possible words.

It is often said that for every dollar the State of New York sends to the federal government in taxes, the state receives only 80 to 85 cents in return. That is about to change:

More than 500,000 New Yorkers are passing up food stamps that could add nearly $1 billion a year to the city’s economy, City Council members and advocates for the poor said.

In a new initiative begun last week, Council Speaker Christine Quinn vowed to sign up at least 350,000 additional eligible recipients by December 2009.

And she’s recruiting her fellow councilmembers to go into targeted communities at least once a month to help get the job done by her self-imposed deadline.

. . .

Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) said the city is passing up tens of millions of dollars of federal funds that would be spent in local grocery stores, supermarkets, bodegas, greenmarkets and other food retailers.

Many of those eligible don’t know they qualify or consider the application process too difficult. Still others may feel there’s a stigma to receiving food stamps, officials said.

Because if you’re driving around on the lam the obvious place to escape to is Midtown Manhattan:

Joel Noonan, 36, of Avon, Mass., was driving a Jeep on Lexington Avenue yesterday morning when he collided with a Nissan Pathfinder at 63rd Street, police said. The Pathfinder bounced off the Jeep and struck a woman who was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital and was listed last night in stable condition. Noonan’s Jeep was sent onto the sidewalk where it collided with a group of pedestrians. Their conditions were unclear last night.

Two Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officers were the first on the scene and found Noonan outside his vehicle with a knife in his hand, authorities said. Police said they fired at him and used pepper spray to subdue him.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene.

“He had a knife in his left hand and he’s swinging it at the cops, chasing them around his Jeep,” recalled bystander Raymond Garcia, who said he saw the police pepper-spray and shoot Noonan.

. . .

Noonan — who was shot in the groin and abdomen — is wanted in connection with the stabbing death of his cousin’s husband. East Providence, R.I., police told the Providence Journal-Bulletin that Noonan stabbed 37-year-old Steven Dowaglia to death during an argument Sunday evening at a home there. He then attacked his cousin and her 8-year-old daughter, police said.

Believe it — work is set to begin on the Second Avenue Subway in 2008:

Phase 1 of the project calls for the construction of stations at East 96th, 86th, and 72nd streets, and a connection to existing tracks at 63rd Street.

A giant hole will be dug between 92nd and 95th streets to allow the tunnel-boring machine to launch under ground, said Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction.

The Post warns, however, that if they find too many arrowheads, work will stop:

. . . [A]rchaeologists will be on hand to halt the massive tunnel-boring machine at the first sign of artifacts dating back hundreds of years . . . officials said.

A consultant hired by the MTA told the agency that there is the potential for Native American and Colonial artifacts along the route, which was once closer to the shoreline than it is today, said Amanda Sutphin of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“You don’t know what is there until you start digging and it can actually be tested,” Sutphin said. “The topography of Manhattan was very different back then. Hills were leveled and valleys filled in.”

Fine, Peter Gelb, you win — that little Times Square opera stunt seems to have worked:

The gaudy lights still doused the streets, and nothing could stop a waiter from the Bubba Gump Company from loudly trying to lure in customers — but the honks took a break, and those rushing home from the towers of Midtown stood to the side, taking in the opening night of “Madame Butterfly” on three giant screens. The opera was also broadcast on a screen outside Lincoln Center, though the crowd there was more black-tie than the spectrum of New Yorkers at 42nd Street.

“I think I’ll stay a little while,” a nurse at New York Hospital, Rose Chin, said. She had run into the sleek set-up — an array of more than 1,000 pure red and black chairs set up on the asphalt of Broadway — on her way from the bus to the subway. She said she had seen her share of musicals and movies, but never an opera.

A carpenter at New York University, Jean Demesmin, came across the broadcast on his way back to his home in Spring Valley, N.Y.

“It’s my first opera,” he said, leaning against a telephone booth with his arms crossed. “I’m going to stay for the whole thing.”

. .

The free broadcasts on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s season are part of an effort led by the new general manager, Peter Gelb, to increase the appeal and access of the art form. Last night Mr. Gelb estimated that the opera was seen by more than 8,000 people, compared to the about 3,000 who ordinarily fill the opera house. The company gave out thousands of free tickets to the opera’s dress rehearsal last week.

. . .

A warehouse worker from Ashland, N.J., Don Mackle, stared up at the screen and said, “Never in my life.” By taking a seat he was delaying his commute across the Hudson for several hours, but it was a worthy diversion, he said. “I would never go to opera if it wasn’t free,” he said. “Who knows? I might like it.”

On his recent trip to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collie-fornia, Hizzoner receives rave reviews:

“I just think he’s refreshing,” said Preston Butcher, a real-estate developer who attended the first fund-raiser, at a hotel in East Palo Alto. “He doesn’t talk out of both sides of his mouth. He’s more interested in people than he is in the party.”

Katherine Alden, a hotel owner, said: “His answers are honest, direct, balanced. I was very, very impressed.”

. . .

Don Troppmann, another guest [at a fund-raising dinner at the Stockton estate of Alex Spanos], offered this succinct comment on the mayor: “He was great. He was short.”

Punk rock comes full circle as a former East Village club actually becomes a “dive bar”:

After a 15-year run on Third Ave. near St. Mark’s Pl., Continental celebrated its last night as a punk rock club on Sunday night. Trigger, its owner, plans to convert it into a dive bar, offering acoustic folk music on Sunday nights.

But for Continental’s punk finale, the volume was definitely higher than acoustic. Way, earsplittingly higher.

The final performers included such legendary acts as the Bullys, Lenny Kaye, Handsome Dick Manitoba with most of the Dictators, and C.J. Ramone.

. . .

Throughout the evening, the musicians made references to the neighborhood’s demise and the spread of New York University.

“Can you imagine in 40 years — this will be happening in Bushwick?” Kaye mused, envisioning the end of a future music venue on the current edge of gentrification.

C.J. Ramone, sans Ramones black mop of hair but with a clean-shaven head, blasted through Ramones favorites like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Chinese Rock” with Daniel Rey on guitar. As the familiar Ramones songs blared, young punkers in jeans and black T-shirts started diving off ledges into the crowd and surfing on top of the packed sea of punk fans’ hands.

“N.Y.U. just f—ked the whole area up,” Ramone said in between splashing the crowd in front with beer. “No offense to you guys paying a lot of money to go there — but this sucks.”

Not to ruin the mood, but it doesn’t seem like its NYU’s fault more than it’s just the fact that punk’s not as lucrative as it once was:

After the club’s last show ever ended, Trigger said what killed Continental wasn’t just the neighborhood’s change.

“A punk rock club in this neighborhood — so much has moved out to Brooklyn,” he said. But he also added, “There’s not such a strong scene as there was. I used to get 400 demos a week. Now I get five or 10. Kids are into hip-hop and electronica. S–t happens.”

And not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t Dick Manitoba like 52 years old?

Backstory: No Local Bands From New Jersey But Boy That Plasma Television Has A Great Picture!

Sure, spin it as a way to save the birds:

They spent $1.7 million to re-light the Parachute Jump earlier this summer — but the landmark will soon go dark to save birds.

Last week, the Parachute Jump became the first Brooklyn building to join the “Lights Out New York” program, which encourages tall buildings to douse their lights to protect migratory birds.

“On a foggy night, when the birds don’t have the moon or the stars as a navigational guide, they [can] start circling lighted towers,” said Yigal Gelb, of New York City Audubon.

Once the birds begin circling, they get disoriented, and crash into each other or the tower. And sometimes they get so tired flying around that they drop simply from exhaustion.

. . .

The Parachute Jump is the program’s only Brooklyn member, and one of only six members citywide, a group that includes the Chrysler and Citicorp buildings.

Parachute Jump lightning designer Leni Schwendinger said she was more than happy to re-program the tower’s lighting scheme during the fall and spring migratory seasons.

“I’m happy to be a poster child” for the “Lights Out” program, Schwendinger said.

But careful readers may remember that the lights weren’t all that bright to begin with:

The reviews from those assembled were muted. Phyllis Carbo, 70, who rode on the Parachute Jump as a girl, hesitated when asked for her opinion. “I’m running for Assembly on the Republican line, so I have to be very careful,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Even the evening’s master of ceremonies, Dick Zigun, one of Coney Island’s leading boosters, pronounced the light show “very subtle.”

Others were less restrained.

“Did they light it already? Is this it?” asked Joe Joya, 63.

His wife, Jane, 61, said, “I thought it was going to be a lot brighter. I thought that the lights were going to be more of a Vegas type of thing.”

Those who know me certainly understand that I am not one to talk, but what the hell is wrong with kids today? White socks and penny loafers should never be considered “hot,” no matter who your teacher is:

A ccording to the rankings published on ratemyprofessors.com, college students rate Andrew Beran, adjunct math professor at NYU, Pace University, and Marymount Manhattan, the tenth-hottest professor, male or female, in all of America—and the No. 1 in New York.

Beran explains what this all means:

I certainly get a lot of attention. Students tell me I look like Kirk Cameron, which is nice, because he’s a teen heartthrob, you know? So when one student said to me, “Professor Beran, you are so cute!” I said, “I am so cute . . . damn cute!” Just like Mike Seaver on Growing Pains used to say.

. . .

Once in a while, it’s hard to control the girls. One time I took out my pointer to show something on the blackboard, and a girl called out, “Professor Beran, you have a very large pointer!” I had to keep a straight face, but it was hard! And I put the pointer away, and another girl called out, “You might as well whip it out, we already saw it!” I never took out my pointer again.

Anyone who wants to get a rise out of people only needs to ask subway riders what upsets them most:

They chew like cows, clip their nails and charge open seats like linebackers.

Meet the rudest of the rude subway riders.

The Daily News asked readers last week for their subway bad manners pet peeves — and our e-mail boxes filled up faster than the No. 7 train at rush hour.

There were daily horror stories about door blockers who refuse to move, and sprawlers who spread their legs far too wide, taking up more than one seat.

. . .

One reader snapped at “GUM SNAPPERS. These people try to make as much noise as possible. They sound like cows and act like pigs.” Others took aim at “pole huggers” who wrap themselves around the floor-to-ceiling poles designed to be used by many standing riders.

I prefer the term “subway pole dancer,” but that’s just me.

Some Park Slope deli owners have stopped selling alcohol:

At Stop and Fifth deli on Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street, where Mr. Ramirez had often bought beer in the past, he discovered that the Rolling Rocks had been replaced by organic vanilla soy milk. And two blocks south, Mr. Ramirez found that the Salem Deli and Grocery on Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street was also suddenly going dry, with just a few stray bottles of beer and wine coolers left on its shelves.

As it turns out, the Muslim owners of both delis have stopped selling alcoholic drinks, largely for religious reasons. The move has surprised longtime customers like Mr. Ramirez, leaving some to speculate on whether other Muslim merchants might follow suit.

Although both delis sit squarely in a busy, youthful neighborhood with no shortage of potential customers, the owners were firm about their decision.

But without the lucrative income from selling $10 sixpacks of Rolling Rock, how will they make money? On principle:

“The Koran says no alcohol,” said Abraham Saleh, a Yemeni immigrant who is a co-owner of Stop and Fifth. After he and his partners bought the store in the spring, he explained, they began a gradual upgrade of the space. They stopped selling beer as soon as they obtained a license to sell cigarettes, which helped replace the lost beer income.

An interesting defense — we allow underage girls into our clubs because you expect us to:

The club scene in New York City revolves around young, hot girls who, whether or not they’re 21, are invited into parties to line the pockets of club owners and promoters bringing in six-figure salaries, those in the scene say.

“The key demographic is a young, stylish, hip person,” said promoter Eric Soler, 34, who works all over downtown Manhattan.

He and dozens of other promoters create lists of potential patrons and steer them into clubs with promises of discounted cover charges and bottle service or free-drink tickets.

“For the most part, you go after women, because women are going to bring men who are going to spend money,” he said.

. . .

A Post reporter who responded to an online ad recruiting club promoters was met by a college-aged entrepreneur who told her to target underage girls for upcoming events.

“If they’re hot, we’ll get them in,” he said.

. . .

A 19-year-old clubgoer said promoters sometimes go further by gathering underagers at a meeting point and escorting them into a club to help them bypass security.

On Friday, the Post watched just such an arrangement in action, as a promoter swept two young girls past ID scanners and into BED.

“These promoters are my best of friends now, but it’s not like they’re naive about underagers,” the 19-year-old said. “They know it and they like that we’re young.”