Another year, another crop of Type A parents struggles with getting ahead in this competitive city:

Among some New York parent circles, it’s considered normal to spend $6,000 on a consultant to help toddlers get into private school.

The spending is spreading to public schools on the Upper West Side, where parents jostling for the seats in a few “it” schools are increasingly willing to drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get an advantage.

Maggie Ganias said she used to scoff at frantic pregnant New York City women applying to competitive private nursery schools before reaching their sixth month. She decided she would be sending her child to public school so she wouldn’t have to go through all that. When her son, Alexander, turned 4, she realized her mistake.

“I had always laughed at that cliché of parents in New York. But here I was just a public school mom and all these choices were in front of me,” she said. “It’s overwhelming.”

Faced with a staggering array of decisions and deadlines as her son prepared for his first day of kindergarten a year away, she did what a growing number of parents are doing each year: She turned to Robin Aronow.

Ms. Aronow is an elementary school admissions consultant who has created a niche by charging parents to help them apply for choice public schools. She is based on the Upper West Side, where public elementary school admissions are arguably the most competitive and complicated in the city. Autumn is Ms. Aronow’s peak season: Applications become available, and school tours and testing begin.

. . .

“I couldn’t have done this without her,” a mother of a 4-year-old, Brett Hill, who lives on the Upper West Side, said. “Friends call me crying, saying, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ They go to Robin’s seminar and they come back better and calmer.”

. . .

Ms. Aronow charges $50 a season to join the e-mail listserv, nearly $200 an hour for phone calls, or $2,000 for an annual all-inclusive package. She says she charges less than some of her competitors, who focus more on private schools. This year, she is also doing a pro-bono presentation at a nonprofit center for immigrants.

“Whatever it was, it was worth it,” Ms. Hill said of the costs of Ms. Aronow’s services. “It alleviated so much stress.”

See also: Manhattan Preschool Admissions More Competitive Than Harvard.

You can’t tell the Patsy’s without a scorecard:

Patsy’s Italian Restaurant on West 56th Street — Frank Sinatra’s favorite — asked a federal judge yesterday to stop a restaurant from opening in Syosset, Long Island. The reason for the request, according to a legal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, is the “Patsy’s” sign above the new storefront.

If the dispute sounds familiar, it is because Patsy’s on 56th Street, which opened in 1944, guards its name as jealously as it would any family recipe. Earlier this year, it went to court to force a Staten Island restaurant doing business under the name Patsy’s to shut its doors.

Another Patsy’s, a pizzeria on 118th Street, which opened more than a decade before the 56th Street restaurant, feels the same way about its name. The pizzeria filed suit against a Patsy’s in Brooklyn, obliging the Brooklyn Patsy’s to change its name. The restaurant now does business as Grimaldi’s Pizzeria.

The 56th Street Patsy’s is known for its pasta; the 118th Street Patsy’s for its pizza. But the culinary interests of the two have overlapped at times, leading to a lawsuit over which establishment had the right to market marinara sauce under the name.

In light of the past cases, the suit over the Syosset restaurant hardly seems a surprise, though it does suggest that the 56th Street restaurant will guard its name against alleged impostors even beyond the five boroughs.

I guess someone has to perform the unenviable chore of screening sex offenders’ Netflix queues:

As part of the state Division of Parole “Operation Halloween: Zero Tolerance,” 1,983 paroled sex offenders across New York also will have their DVDs and CDs searched for pornographic or other banned materials as part of conditions of their release. Using portable players, investigators will make unannounced visits to view parolees’ collections to ensure they are in compliance.

“This is a new tool we’ve provided parole officers with,” said Scott Steinhardt, a NYS Division of Parole spokesman. “They may see DVD cases that say ‘Caddyshack’ or ‘Top Gun,’ but they’ll be checked to make sure there’s not really pornography or other contraband on them. This is part of our proactive measure and has been successful already.”

Do you load the homeless with transfats or nothing? It’s a sticky issue:

The Health Department’s war on trans fats may have an unintended victim — the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens that feed hungry New Yorkers every day.

Canned meats and beans, jars of peanut butter and other pantry staples donated from around the country include the artery-clogging trans fats.

“We support the ban, but people need to understand this will mean less food in the food pantry,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

During yesterday’s lengthy public hearing, Berg told the Board of Health that any plan to ban food with trans fats should provide extra money for pantries and soup kitchens to buy trans fat-free foods.

“It’s a painful dilemma,” Berg said. “Our folks get less quality or they get less food?”

The debate then turned philosophical:

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden has asked the board to change the Health Code so that trans fats can no longer be used in city eateries. Another proposal would force some restaurants to post caloric contents of its food on menus.

“Trans fats increase the level of bad cholesterol and reduce the level of good cholesterol and by doing so they increase your risk of heart attack and stroke and early death,” Frieden told reporters during a break in the hearing. “Keeping toxic items out of our food — this is a core role of government.”

Hm. At least one constituency disagreed with that definition of the proper role of government:

Outside the hearing, Luis Nunez, president of the Latino Restaurant Association, with 4,000 member restaurants in the city, said that health officials had not prepared them for the proposed ban on trans fat cooking, and were now threatening them with fines or other penalties.

“This big brother policy does not work,” Mr. Nunez said.

Bad news for those who worry that New York is becoming more and more like LA everyday:

City and state transportation officials are planning to give highway drivers real-time travel information, calculated in part with E-ZPass technology and displayed on a network of roadside message boards in the five boroughs.

Motorists on major thoroughfares like the Belt Parkway and the FDR Drive will get forecasts of how long it will take to go between various points in the city based on the average times of other drivers.

Currently, such level of detail is being displayed only to drivers on the New Jersey approaches to the George Washington Bridge and at two Metropolitan Transportation Authority bridges. The plan is to have real-time travel information displayed along highways in all five boroughs within about three years, a spokeswoman for the city Transportation Department said.

It will begin with a pilot program along the Staten Island Expressway by the end of the year.

We’re desperate, get used to it.

I still don’t understand what the “R” stands for but at least the Post is generous enough to share their picture of the victim with us:

Samir Sara, 23, allegedly had a one-night stand with 21-year-old Kristina Caban two years ago. When she called him afterward, he supposedly never phoned her back — becoming only one in a long line of men who had wooed and then mistreated the hot-blooded art student, a friend told The Post yesterday.

Caban is now charged with hatching the sick plan that led to Sara’s being branded on his torso last week with a four-inch “R” as revenge for the slight.

“She flocked to a- - - - - - guys,” said the classmate of Caban at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. “She’s a talented person. She’s also a genuine person. For her to do this, she must have been deeply hurt.”

Caban’s lawyer yesterday tried to minimize his client’s role in the searing Oct. 22 attack, which also resulted in the arrest of the suspect’s current boyfriend, Robert Testagrossa, 25. Testagrossa has been suspended from his $60,000-a-year civilian investigator job in the MTA’s Inspector General’s Office in the wake of the assault.

“Let’s get off the branding thing,” said Caban’s lawyer, James Friedman, shortly after his client was indicted by a Manhattan Supreme Court grand jury. “There’s a tremendous amount of speculation, innuendo and rumor. . . .”

Friedman called Caban “a good kid from a good home” and urged the public to “sit back and wait for the facts.”

Then again, you’ve got to like how the boyfriend somehow finds a way to misuse his position with the MTA to help his girlfriend (allegedly!) assault the man:

Sources have told The Post that Caban reconnected with Sara and made a date to have drinks with him in a Chelsea bar Oct. 22.

She then allegedly lured him to a room at the Chelsea Inn, where Testagrossa and the unnamed man were waiting with a gun and Taser.

There, sources allege, the men stole Sara’s cellphone and cash. Testagrossa shouted that he was “a Long Island police officer” while displaying a badge and ordering Sara to get on the floor. The men then allegedly bound Sara and branded him.

Although Testagrossa is no cop, the former high-school varsity wrestler carries a badge as part of his work for the inspector general of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency.

I can’t believe they found a way to make Coney Island classier than it already is but somehow they have:

Architectural renderings obtained by The Post show a grand vision of the famed summer amusement area’s rundown streets being transformed into a glitzy year-round playground and public attraction.

In one image, Stillwell Avenue becomes a fantasy-filled boulevard marked by larger-than-life street furniture, such as a mermaid swimming in a martini glass and a gigantic tattooed elephant.

Hey Magic 8 Ball, are the mayor and his staff preparing for an economic slowdown? Outlook not so good:

In a surprising pullback, Mayor Bloomberg has asked agency heads to draw up plans to scale back spending on announced construction projects, The Post has learned.

One source said the cut could amount to as much as 25 percent of the four-year, $36.5 billion capital budget adopted in June. But Stu Loeser, the mayor’s spokesman, said that no such figure has been discussed and that, in any case, “no decisions have been made.”

He said agency heads received letters on Oct. 12 asking: “If what you had to do in the next four years was spread over five years, what would your priorities be?”

Just five months ago, Bloomberg and the City Council approved record expense and capital budgets and an ambitious list of projects throughout the five boroughs.

Over $10 billion was set aside for school construction and expansion and $2.6 billion allocated for rehabbing the four East River bridges and 68 other bridge structures.

The city was so flush that the mayor even found $2 billion for a new Retiree Health Benefits Trust Fund to help defray the future cost of city workers’ health benefits.

He also spent $200 million a year for each of the next four years to pay down debt service on bonds sold to fund the capital budget. Debt service is expected to cost taxpayers $4.8 billion this year and $6.1 billion in 2010.

MTV’s “True Life: I’m A Staten Island Girl” continues to have repercussions on the island:

MTV’s recent “True Life” documentary, “I’m a Staten Island Girl,” hit a nerve when it portrayed the borough’s youth as catty, road-raging, privileged and Gottiesque. Then the show cut deeper and compounded that unflattering list of stereotypes by portraying Islanders as — cringe — tanning-salon-orange.

. . .

After the episode first aired on national television on Oct. 18, viewers posted more than 230 comments to the entertainment forum on the local Web site silive.com.

Bloggers ranted.

Some recorded the episode to watch again. Others couldn’t bear to watch.

Islanders wrote in to the Advance calling the episode “embarrassing,” “horrible,” “hilarious” and “emotionally disturbing.”

“We are not orange,” was their cry.

. . .

Said Ms. [Danielle] DiPietro [one of the show's three subjects]: “I know a lot of people are really p.o.’d about the show and they have a right to be. But they should have been at the auditions for the show.”

Both aspiring actresses and publicists, these two “Staten Island girls” have no regrets. They also thought the show was pretty accurate.

“Not everybody has spiky hair. Not everybody has an orange tint to them. Not everyone does, but the majority of Staten Island does,” said Ms. [Lauren] Laner [another of the show's subjects].

This is precisely why they hate our freedom:

New York’s most ubiquitous drugstore quietly got sexy two weeks ago by stocking erotic toys and passion oils, according to Crain’s New York Business magazine.

Among the items for sale from the upscale Kama Sutra line of sex aids are feather ticklers, edible honey dust, vibrators and flavored condoms.

A Kama Sutra executive said selling through Duane Reade was an easy choice, and predicted New Yorkers won’t blink at seeing “pleasure” products next to the pharmacy. “We figured the Manhattan customer was sophisticated enough for our products,” said Beverly Pollington Sirjani, senior VP of California-based Kama Sutra.

Wouldn’t you also love to know how many calories are in that Foie Gras Stuffed Scottish Grouse at Daniel? I would:

Without a doubt not all diners who order a Burger King Whopper or a Domino’s pepperoni pizza or a Taco Bell chalupa really want to know exactly how many calories they are consuming. Whatever the amount, it is probably more than they should be eating.

But the New York City Board of Health, the city’s powerful arbiter of public health rules, is considering a plan to make it much harder to avoid the cold, hard numbers by requiring some of New York’s 20,000 restaurants, including outlets of the nation’s fast-food chains, to list calories on menus and on clearly displayed menu boards.

The idea is to give diners a dose of reality along with their fries.

The proposal was lost amid the other much splashier recommendation the board is considering to prohibit the city’s restaurants from serving food containing more than a tiny amount of trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

But the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is also intent on creating the nation’s most rigorous system of calorie disclosure in restaurants. It is intended to combat what is widely regarded as an epidemic of obesity, aggravated for the city’s 8 million residents by their reliance on restaurant meals and take-out food.

“Presenting nutrition information on restaurant menus empowers consumers and influences food choices,” the department says in a description of the proposal on its Web site at NYC.gov/health.

A public hearing on both proposals is scheduled for today before the Board of Health.

The two initiatives have thrust New York City to the forefront of a national debate over the extent to which public policy should be used to improve people’s diets. While health advocates say the proposal for menu labeling is overdue, restaurant executives call it unfair and impractical, and some civil libertarians argue that it intrudes into the rights of free speech and private enterprise.

The rules would apply only to restaurants with highly standardized menu items and portions that already make their caloric content available on the Internet, in brochures or in some other format.

Health officials say that only about 10 percent of the city’s restaurants would be affected. But those include many popular chains, like McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin’ Donuts, that have mechanized American fast food, designing systems ensuring that each component of every serving is the same.

October is high season for tourists and . . . drag queens:

At a busy wigmaking studio in Hell’s Kitchen on Tuesday, half a dozen craftspeople could be found hunched over synthetic mesh scalps, tying individual human hairs into them as fast as they could. Hair was everywhere: draped across tabletops in horsetail lengths, clinging to the fabric of chairs, scattered across the floor in unruly clumps.

The artisans had seen and even built wigs of all descriptions, from flowing brown manes for classical operas to buoyant white up-dos for fantastical Broadway musicals. But even the veterans looked up from their needles when Maurice Neuhaus, a 28-year-old German-born wigmaker, actor and sometime drag queen, pulled out a neon-blue extravaganza that looked at first glance like an otherworldly wild animal being released from its cage.

. . .

During Halloween season, the demand for professional drag performers rises, so Mr. Neuhaus has been busy doing performances booked by a talent agency called Screaming Queens Entertainment. Yesterday, Mr. Neuhaus expected to wear a black, Asian-style wig with bangs while entertaining guests at a bar mitzvah reception in Midtown. On Friday, he planned to wear his over-the-top blue wig for a Halloween gig at a game arcade in Englewood, N.J.

For all its high camp and artifice, his wig possesses an exceptional degree of realism — when he wears it, it looks as if “real” blue hair is growing from his head.

Such artistry is much admired by those in the know.

“Only certain very meticulous and experienced drag performers have custom-made wigs,” said Alex Heimberg, chief executive officer of Screaming Queens, who performs as Miss Understood, a character for whom Mr. Neuhaus built oversize wigs in both bright pink and bright green. “You have to reach the point where you know you’re serious about what you’re doing.”

Who has a drag queen at a bar mitzvah?

The halo effect claims another victim:

An early-morning argument over cutting into line at a popular Midtown falafel cart turned deadly yesterday when a man stabbed a teenager in the chest, cops said.

Tyrone Gibbons, 19, of Short Hills, N.J., was standing in line at a falafel cart at 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue at around 4 a.m., when he and his friends got into an argument with Ziad Tayeh, 23 about cutting the line, police said.

After a heated exchange, Gibbons and his pals hopped in their car, and Tayeh got in his. But when they stopped at a light on 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, they started arguing again.

“They were not happy with each other,” a police official said.

When the light changed, they turned south onto Seventh Avenue, but again stopped at a light at 52nd Street, and the fight erupted all over again.

Then Tayeh jumped out of his white Lexus and allegedly plunged a blade into Gibbons’ chest, cops said.

Tayeh hopped back into his car and sped off, and Gibbons was rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 4:40 a.m., police said.

Is the MTA getting paid to have its subway conductors advertise Rockefeller Center’s new observation deck? Officials are mum:

A Transit Authority bulletin directs train crews to mention the “Top of the Rock” observatory when pulling into the 47th-50th St./Rockefeller Center station. Veteran motormen and conductors said they believe the order is unprecedented — and some riders are less than thrilled.

Scott Gocherman, 30, a retail manager waiting for an uptown F-train yesterday had this message for transit managers: “Get me from here to there. I want to get to work. I don’t need you to be trying to sell me anything.”

Some riders said they didn’t even notice the pitches. Others thought the new plugs could be a good way to generate extra money for system maintenance or upgrades.

But Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Tom Kelly said the spiels are a free “courtesy” to let riders know of the tourist attraction. He couldn’t immediately say who requested the “Top of the Rock” mention.

A spokeswoman for Tishman Speyer, co-owners of Rockefeller Center, was tight lipped. “We are declining to comment,” the spokeswoman said.

Riders have been asking conductors what the heck is “Top of the Rock,” conductor Ronald Brockington said.

But nobody bothered to explain to train crews what their announcements were about, he added.

“It’s making us look like buffoons,” Brockington said.

The Health Department reveals the fattest, skinniest and drinkiest neighborhooods in a new study:

If you live in Sunset Park, it might be time to get off the couch.

A new city report found people who live in the Brooklyn neighborhood are least likely to exercise of all New Yorkers. In fact, 57% admitted they are sedentary, while residents of Greenwich Village and SoHo hit the gym on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Staten Island is still the smoking capital of the city, especially the South Shore and Mid Island sections, where 33% of residents smoke,

The updated Community Health Profiles released by the Department of Health use yearly phone surveys and other data to measure health indicators such as depression, asthma, diabetes and smoking in 42 neighborhoods.

Some conclusions:

East Harlem residents may exercise a bit more than those in Sunset Park, but they should lay off the fried foods — 31% say they are obese.

Binge drinking — defined as having five or more drinks in a night — is highest in Chelsea.

Using its limited resources wisely, the City Council confirms what anyone who has ever rented an apartment quickly realizes — no-fee listings are a scam:

Beware online ads promising the perfect rental apartment with no broker fee - nearly one-third of them are lying, a City Council report revealed yesterday.

The Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee recently contacted 223 real estate agents who advertised “no fee” apartments on two popular online Web sites: craigslist.org and backpage.com.

The investigators discovered that 31% of the so-called “no fee” apartments did, in fact, have broker fees.

“There’s no place in this city for deceptive and misleading sales practices,” said Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens), the committee’s chairman, during a news conference at City Hall.

“We need to make sure that — however it is that you’re searching for an apartment — the deal you’re getting is an honest one,” Gioia said.

God willing, that cruddy old hipster flask can finally be retired:

As far as National Amusements sees it, Whitestone residents and moviegoers at College Point Multiplex Cinemas “have a love for entertainment and an excellent dining experience.”

With that thought in mind, the Massachusetts-based company applied to the New York State Liquor Authority in April for a liquor license at its 12-screen College Point movie theater.

The application, which is currently being evaluated by the SLA, is for the theater’s new Chatters Bar & Grill. Chatters is just one feature of National Amusements’ new signature theatre concept, Cinema de Lux.

. . .

Chatters is a full-service restaurant featuring American fare, and would include a full service bar with beer, wine and signature specialty drinks. “Anyone is welcome to dine at Chatters; it makes a great place for lunch, meeting friends for a snack or enjoying a meal before, during or after the movie,” the spokeswoman added.

According to the SLA, a movie theater alone cannot apply for a liquor license, but if a restaurant is present on the premises an application may be processed, whether or not the film is shown in the restaurant or separate rooms. National Amusements could not confirm the configuration of Chatters as of press time.

When things are going really, really well, renting someone an apartment is better than sex*:

There was a long pause. Neither one of us said a word. I could tell she was seriously thinking about something, but at the same time, she was staring directly at me. There was little I could do but stare back. Another few moments passed before she finally snapped out of whatever she was lost in and walked over and leaned on the window sill next to me. I started to realize that it was on and that she was going to do it. All I had to do was sit back and let it happen. I love those moments more than the actual close. “Holy shit,” I thought, “She’s going to take this place.”

I took a deep breath. So did she. I smiled. She smiled back. She was nervous, and so was I. We both began to understand how bad she wanted it. It was only a matter of making sure she didn’t feel guilty afterward. They often do when it happens this quickly. But this is my favorite part. It can still go either way, and I’m not sure of what is going to happen next. I guess it’s the uncertainty that makes it so exciting. She finally nodded her head, “Yes.” I made my move, “Really? Great, let’s get ought of here. I’ll grab a cab, and we’ll head back to my . . . office.”

*If we didn’t enjoy Rental Dementia so much, this whole metaphor would be highly disturbing . . . damn these provocative sweeps-week sex issues!

Not only do they start track fires but they cause floods as well:

From fires to floods, the MTA says the thousands of free newspapers distributed in the subways each day cause many of the problems that plague the system.

In February, officials blamed stray copies of amNewYork and Metro New York for a spike in track fires. Bundles of unread copies get blown onto tracks, they said.

Yesterday, flooding was added to the papers’ rap sheets.

The drain-clogging freebies were largely responsible for a massive flood in September 2004 that shut down much of the system, MTA board members said yesterday.

The MTA inspector general earlier this year cited the agency’s neglect of its plumbing. But MTA board member Barry Feinstein said the cause was a combination of near-biblical rainfall and litter clogging drains.

“We have bitterly complained for a long time about what we call the free newspapers,” Feinstein said after presenting a report to Chairman Peter Kalikow.

. . .

“The free newspapers are a problem to us,” Kalikow agreed. “We don’t mind them giving them out, we mind the way they are giving them out.”

In part because of the added trash from the papers, transit officials say they had to hire an additional 118 cleaners.

The free papers say the agency is making them a scapegoat for its own problems.

“I certainly hope it’s not us,” said Lori Rosen, a spokeswoman for Metro New York, noting that this has not been a problem at other transit systems around the world.

Each Metro now encourages its readers not to litter, she said.

Metro New York, for its part, reported the findings a little differently:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday blamed free newspapers for clogging subway drains, which contributed to the flooding of the city’s underground on Sept. 8, 2004, when three inches of rainfall shut down or delayed 18 train lines. Last February, the MTA attributed a surge in track fires to free papers.

But yesterday’s report contradicted the findings of the MTA inspector general’s office, which had faulted the transit authority for not reacting to the weather forecast. The inspector general also blamed “historical neglect” of system maintenance and a failure to keep drains clear.

. . .

Feinstein called the “25-year storm” an “act of God” but didn’t refute most of the previous report: “We did agree that debris on the track bed was a contributing factor to the level of flooding.”

That debris came from a variety of sources. “It was not simply newspapers, but that was the bulk of the problem,” Feinstein said. “There were also lots of MetroCards.”

Rider advocate Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said the subway’s real problem was a lack of cleaners.

It’s not clear whether Sheldon Silver’s intransigence is due to the removal of the original roof trusses, but the Times’ David Dunlap notes that plans for the proposed Moynihan Station have changed over the years:

To judge from architectural renderings, the design is much less imaginative than it was two years ago, and far more utilitarian.

It has been easy to lose track of the design in recent months. The political battle over Penn Station between the Republican governor and the Democratic speaker has demanded attention. So has the real estate intrigue over the future of Madison Square Garden, which may also move into the Farley building, permitting an expansive renovation of the station in its current location. All of this is complicated by the prospect of a new governor.

But design is critical in what would be one of the most important public spaces created in New York in a generation. Its name, Moynihan Station, would commemorate Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who cared deeply about civic architecture. And many New Yorkers probably don’t realize how much the plans have changed.

. . .

The best-known design for Moynihan Station, by David M. Childs and his colleagues at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (architects of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site), was unveiled in 1999. It would have involved removing the sorting room floor and creating a multilevel concourse in which passengers waiting above could glimpse the train movements below. The original roof trusses would have been preserved under a new skylight.

Last year, that was supplanted by a design from James Carpenter Design Associates and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. Their plans showed a single-level hall under an undulating skylight supported on slender columns. This was intended to evoke the concourse of the original Penn Station by McKim, Mead & White.

This year, Skidmore returned with the sparest design yet: a single-level hall under a barrel-vaulted skylight. Absent any other bold architectural flourishes, it seems to defer to the original facades facing the inner court, which are historic but aesthetically undistinguished. After all, they were never really meant to be seen.

“I remain partial to the more ambitious (and expensive) scheme,” said Prof. Hilary Ballon of Columbia University, an architectural historian who devoted 45 pages to the original Skidmore project in her 2002 book, “New York’s Pennsylvania Stations.”

Eric Marcus, an author who was working on his own book about the reconstruction of Penn Station until the development project became hopelessly delayed, described the latest version of the train hall as an “uninspired matchbox covered with a glass roof.”

The New York Press may have jumped the gun back in 2005 by saying that “by summer 2006 much of Coney Island will be gone, and gone forever”, but it looks like that prognosis finally will come to pass:

Close the Zipper and shoo the Spider.

Those amusement rides — along with go-carts, batting cages and carny games — have been ordered out of a Coney Island site as redevelopment begins.

“Everybody’s heartbroken,” said Eddie Miranda, who has owned the W. 12th St. rides, including the Zipper and the Spider, for eight years. “We were all hoping for one more season.”

Eight renters received notice last week from their properties’ new owner, developer Thor Equities, telling them to be out when their leases expire Dec. 31.

Six tenants are in the Henderson Building on Stillwell Ave., a turn-of-the century structure that once housed a dance hall and hotel. The other two are are along W. 12th St. and Stillwell Ave. Combined, they operate more than a dozen businesses.

. . .

The redevelopment plan calls for a new promenade on Stillwell Ave. along with residential, entertainment and amusement components, Thor Equities spokesman Lee Silberstein said.

“The effort to transform Coney Island and recapture its past glory involves the demolition of a number of existing structures,” Silberstein said. “Therefore, to allow the new development to proceed in a timely manner, occupancy agreements with some of the tenants are not being renewed.”

Then again, it could just be a matter of perspective:

Some beloved Coney Island boardwalk mainstays — facing the bulldozer because of a proposed $1.5 billion renovation project — are getting a reprieve, The Post has learned.

Thor Equities — which purchased 10 acres of waterfront land hoping to create a glitzy amusement complex — said yesterday that 11 boardwalk businesses would be allowed to remain open at least one more summer.

Thor spokesman Lee Silberstein said the attractions — including Ruby’s Bar and Grill, Cha-Cha’s and Shoot the Freak paintball — will be given the opportunity to move into the proposed complex.

Location Scout: Coney Island.

And we’d watch but the infinity mirror started to hurt our head too much:

The Burg is a single-camera scripted series filmed mostly inside this apartment and on a few street corners around the block. The episodes, ranging from one to 15 minutes in length, can be viewed at www.theburg.tv or downloaded through iTunes. Or observed in real time at any number of stops along the L train.

“The thing about Williamsburg,” said Kelli Giddish, a blond aspiring actress who plays a blond aspiring actress on the show, “is all the ugly people are trying to look pretty and all the pretty people are trying to look ugly.” She paused to let the observation sink in, then pulled a faded white satin nightshirt over her starlet-thin frame, belted it up tight with an oversized tan suede sash, topped it off with a white crocheted shawl and pronounced the new look “Granny Chic.” Several of her co-stars applauded.

The Burg is about the precious scenesters of Metropolitan Avenue and the silly things they do to be cool. Ms. Giddish has another soap job, on actual television, playing a onetime stripper named Di Kirby on ABC’s All My Children. On the Web, she plays Courtney, a sporadically anti-capitalist ditz.

Courtney’s friends in the Burg are more of the same: Spring, played by Lindsey Broad, is a youthful brunette who cares about the environment and wants to break her generation’s credit cycle. Jed, played by Bob McClure, wears thick black plastic glasses and forcibly prevents his friends from drinking anything other than Pabst. Xander, played by Matt Yeager, is a starving artist with a huge inheritance.

In place of holding steady jobs or contributing to the local economy, Spring, Xander and the gang spend their days coordinating their American Apparel leggings and their thrift-store cowboy boots with 18 plastic bracelets and two vinyl headbands from junior high. Their days are occupied with chemical boycotts, bike trips to Astoria, auditions for independent films and hours spent cursing gentrification and analyzing the complicated etiquette of modern bohemia.

It’s like Rent, only instead of AIDS, some of them have trust funds.

This year features borough-specific haunted houses:

Last Halloween, [Timothy] Haskell, a theatre director, staged a public haunted house on the Lower East Side, and so many people showed up that hundreds never made it inside. “We realized that we had to turn away a lot of local people,” Haskell said. So this year he put up haunted houses in all five boroughs, tailored to prey on the fears peculiar to each one.

For months, Haskell and his crew polled residents of the five boroughs to find out their worst nightmares. . . . People from the Bronx and Queens, they said, tend to fear things that might actually happen, like being mugged (harpaxophobia), while Manhattanites are frightened of fantastical and unlikely occurrences (flying sharks, riding in an elevator that rockets through the roof of a building). “In Manhattan and Brooklyn, we heard ‘fear of the homeless,’” [chief designer Paul] Smithyman said. “Then, in the Bronx, we heard ‘fear of becoming homeless.’” Staten Island residents apparently dread chemical spills and gas leaks.

. . .

The challenge of creating a tableau representing acrophobia, the fear of heights (and the seventh most common fear of Manhattan residents), almost stumped the designers. “One idea was that we’d have people walk up a staircase and onto a Plexiglas floor and see teeny-tiny furniture beneath them,” Haskell said. “But there were liability issues.” Instead, they paired a video of someone falling off a ledge with an evocative sound effect: vroooooom, splat. For illyngophobia (fear of dizziness, No. 11 among Manhattanites), the team installed a giant spinning tunnel; for entomophobia (insects, No. 3), they glued a thousand dead cockroaches onto a wall; and for musophobia (mice, No. 6), they ordered an essence of dead rat from an outfit in Chicago called Sinister Scents.

The New York Marathon is making local doctors rich:

The marathon is 11 days away, but city doctors specializing in sports medicine are already seeing a run on appointments. Physicians say strenuous pre-marathon regimens, such as 20-mile training runs, can take a toll on the body.

Knee pain is the most common complaint of long-distance runners, the marathon’s medical director, Lewis Maharam, said. Dr. Maharam, who has a sports medicine practice on West 57th Street, estimates that his business increases by an average of 35% in the two weeks before and one week after the annual 26.2-mile race.

This year’s ING New York City Marathon, sponsored by New York Road Runners, is slated for Sunday, November 5.

On the day after the race, Dr. Maharam schedules no appointments. “People come in, and they get a number,” he said. “It’s like a bakery line, stretching down the hall.”

The director of sports medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia, William Levine, said the marathon is “not very good for your body.”

. . .

Tendonitis and cartilage tears resulting in knee pain are common marathon-related injuries, according to Dr. Levine. “There are patients who don’t really recover, and end up with chronic orthopedic problems,” he said. Earlier this week, Dr. Levine said he treated a patient who ran last year’s marathon and has been experiencing knee pain ever since.

Also seen are more serious problems, such as stress fractures in the hip, thigh, and calf bones, Dr. Levine said. He recalled operating on a marathon entrant who fractured a thighbone in the middle of the race several years ago.

Last year’s slowest bus was the M34 (3.4 mph). This year we see some improvement, as the M14A checks in at a 3.9 mph clip:

The crosstown bus moves — if you can call it that — across Manhattan’s 14th St. at an average speed of 3.9 mph, earning it bottom honors in the annual Pokey Awards, handed out to the slowest coach in town.

Dishonorable mentions also were handed out yesterday to New York’s most unreliable and off-schedule routes by the Straphangers Campaign and other public transportation advocates.

“There are 2.5 million New Yorkers who ride the buses each day, and they deserve better,” said Paul White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

The ceremony took place in Union Square, just feet from where the M14A crawls by, and featured advocates dressed in tuxedos and handing out Golden Snail awards after each drumroll.

Cue elderly and/or infirm:

“They go slow because of the traffic,” said Phyllis Casper, 79, a retired bookkeeper from Manhattan. “I could walk faster if my feet didn’t hurt.”

The subways are not an option because Casper has difficulty with the stairs.

“I hate to say I’m an old lady, but I am,” she said.

The best double-barreled middle finger of the day comes from the Transit Authority:

The Transit Authority agreed traffic is a problem, but in a statement tried to put the ultimate positive spin on the daily bus commute trauma: “Slow and unreliable bus service is very much a product of the city’s vibrancy.”

Part and parcel of the NYU experience is waiting for film crews to finish a take before you are allowed to continue on to class:

For the past few weeks, the line between day and night has been blurred in Washington Square Park: Enormous floodlights have lit up the park, making it glow from blocks away. Production equipment often sits unused in the day, and hundreds work through the night.

This is the production scene of “I Am Legend,” starring Will Smith. The science-fiction action film, slated for release in fall 2007, is based on a 1954 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson.

But some NYU students say the excitement — which will end Friday when production moves to another part of the city — is backfiring.

Though filming has been mostly at night, the park has been closed periodically during the day. At night, other lighting in the park often has to be turned off — while the lights from the production itself dominate.

“The lights shine through my windows at night,” said Boris Tartakovsky, a Stern freshman living in park-adjacent Goddard residence hall. “They have just taken over Washington Square.”

Steinhardt freshman Melanie Field said the production is cool, but the inconvenience isn’t.

“The other day, it was raining, and a guy with a walkie-talkie said, ‘Wait five minutes, we’re filming,’ so I had to stand there in the rain waiting to go to class,” she said. “They may be filming, but I’m living.”

See also: “Big Willie Style” — Read: Two-Story Luxury Trailer.

Location Scout: Washington Square Park.

Order your American Museum of Natural History fraternity paddle:

The American Museum of Natural History, which plays host to about 400,000 schoolchildren each year, is about to become a graduate school.

The New York State Board of Regents yesterday authorized the museum, on the West Side of Manhattan, to grant master’s degrees and Ph.D.’s in comparative biology, making it the first American museum with its own doctoral degree.

It expects to recruit students next year and enroll its first class in 2008.

. . .

Johanna Duncan-Poitier, deputy commissioner for higher education in New York State, said the museum was already “one of the world’s foremost centers of research and training in the natural sciences, the physical sciences and anthropology,” and clearly met state standards for doctoral-granting institutions.

About 30 students a year already conduct doctoral research at the museum through partnerships with Columbia, Cornell, New York University and the City University of New York. Its staff includes more than 200 scientists, some of whom will become the school’s faculty.

The program plans to accept four or five students a year — reaching a total enrollment of about 20 — who will receive tuition and a stipend. It has raised more than $50 million for the program, from the Gilder Foundation, the Hess Foundation, an anonymous museum trustee and New York City. It will be named the Richard Gilder Graduate School, for Richard Gilder, an investment manager and museum trustee who is one of the school’s major donors.

Location Scout: American Museum of Natural History.

Answer: about $20 million:

Five bus routes, one in each borough, will be part of a pilot program that will use special lanes, computer-controlled stoplights and other means to speed bus travel, in an effort to change the prevailing image of tortoiselike service.

. . .

The program is known as bus rapid transit, which may seem an oxymoron to people accustomed to buses that crawl rather than sprint through traffic.

The new souped-up service would replace current limited-stop buses on the five routes, but current local service would be retained, according to plans.

Stops would be spaced from one-half mile to a full mile apart. The bus lanes would be painted a special color, and the buses would get a distinctive paint job, to differentiate them from their pokier cousins. Cameras would be mounted on buses and bus stops to photograph trucks and cars blocking the bus lanes, so tickets could be sent to the vehicles’ owners.

To help speed buses along, on some of the routes they will have devices that transmit their location to a computer system that controls traffic lights: a green light could be kept on a few seconds longer, or a red light could turn green a few seconds earlier, to let the buses pass. At some bus stops, passengers would pay their fare at sidewalk turnstiles rather than on the bus, to make boarding faster.

For all that, the projected increases in speed are less than heart-stopping.

A report prepared for the city’s Transportation Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimated that the greatest time saving would come on the route along First and Second Avenues, where the new buses would run as much as 22 percent faster than the limited-stop bus service currently available. That means that if a trip on the current First Avenue limited bus takes 30 minutes now, it would take about 23 1/2 minutes on the new buses.

The smallest saving would be on a route that would run along Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx, where the projected difference was only 8 percent, according to the study. There, a trip that takes 30 minutes now would take about 27 1/2 minutes on the revamped buses.

The other buses are the Merrick Boulevard route in Queens, where buses would move an estimated 16 percent more quickly; the Nostrand Avenue route in Brooklyn, with an estimated time saving of 20 percent; and the Hylan Boulevard route in Staten Island that would run across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with the time saving estimated at 21 percent.

The transportation authority has earmarked $20 million for the program.

Buried in there is the novel and probably controversial concept of buses equipped with cameras to ticket scofflaws . . . can this work?

The question remains who would ever want to see Santa in an airplane, much less a Santa dressed in Yankees gear:

A new Yankee Christmas ornament sanctioned by Major League Baseball and bearing the team’s official logo features a beaming Santa waving — as he pilots a plane.

“My reaction at first was, ‘I don’t believe it,’” said Midtown lawyer Denis Guerin, who yesterday received glossy literature touting the “Yankees Victory Plane” — “a limited-edition annual holiday treasure” — in the mail.

Guerin shuddered as he recalled the horrific events that unfolded Oct. 11, when Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle was killed after crashing his small plane into an Upper East Side high-rise.

Guerin said he and his wife were “shocked and dismayed” again when they opened the mailing featuring the Yankee Santa in a plane. He said the plane appears to be “going into a Christmas tree.”

According to the advertisement, “The 2006 Annual Yankees Ornament makes the ideal gift for every New York fan on your Christmas list.”

“Your team spirit will soar” with the plane on your tree, it says.

“We looked at it with our mouths open and said, ‘How could this have happened?’ It’s very insensitive,” Guerin said.

“I don’t think it was intentional,” the season-ticket holder added. “It’s just a terrible mistake and terrible coincidence.”

2001 versions were going for big money on eBay as of yesterday . . .

The healthiest choice at a Bronx bodega? It’s a tough one:

All this week, nine western Bronx restaurants and five bodegas will be offering free samples of the healthiest dishes on their menus or shelves.

The bodegas, near schools, will offer samples of such healthy products as baked chips, low-fat milk and fruit. Organized by Bronx Health REACH and its sister program, Bronx Healthy Hearts, the Bronx Food Festival hopes to potato-chip away at the borough’s burgeoning beltline, with an estimated 27% of its residents considered obese.

We’ve got a long way to go when “baked chips” are one of the healthiest options . . .