Rain, Sleet And Snow Are One Thing, But Stoops And Smells Are Quite Another

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.

Definitive Proof That, Until 1957 At Least, God Was A Giants Fan

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.”

For $2.1 Billion, We Better Get Expos Up The Ying Yang

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?

When “Helping A Lot Of People” Leads To Temptation

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.”

Head In The Unremediated Sand

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?”