Illegal outdoor advertising is an aesthetic crime, perpetrated by smarmy third-party outfits who are no better than real estate brokers (sure, beat up on brokers!):

Under the cover of construction, ads for some of the world’s biggest brands are taking up residence at many of New York’s most prestigious addresses, including many buildings designated as landmarks. So far, Stringer’s PR campaign seems to have had little affect on the number of illegal ads vying for public attention.

Why do these blatantly illegal ads flourish in plain sight, despite the vocal opposition?

It’s one of those urban paradoxes: Some of the most conspicuous objects in the city are affixed to some of the most famous addresses in town, but it’s not clear to the casual observer how they got there. We know the brand in the ad, we know the address. But the middlemen are the mystery.

Upon further investigation, some of the mystery is revealed: It turns out that the recent construction site blight has a lot to do with a group of firms known as outdoor advertising companies (OAC).

Outdoor ad agencies are like real estate agencies for outdoor ad space. They are the brokers who bring landlords and brands together.

While you stand there wondering whether to pull the trigger on a rental, the broker may or may not be thinking something along the lines of the following:

We had narrowed her search down to two buildings around the corner from each other. The units were almost identical; one was a little larger, but the building lacked any kind of character, and the approval process was long and ridiculous. It was also a sketchy co-broke where my fee would get chopped in half. The other unit was nice, it was an easier deal, and I would keep the entire fee. She wanted my opinion on which apartment she should take.

In the rental market, the difference between right and wrong is often a hazy shade of grey. There I was with the nicest client I have ever had, being asked what I thought was the better apartment when my paycheck doubled if she chose the second one. Shouldn’t I at least nudge her in that direction? You want to do the right thing, but on the other hand it’s one less deal I have to make that month . . . if she goes the right way.

Will the agent do the right thing? In this case, of course. Whether he gets a date out of it is another issue.

MTA officials complain that the “panic bar,” already misused by stroller pushers, have become a pain in the ass:

“People are using them indiscriminately, to get out quicker,” Andrew Albert, a rider representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, said yesterday. “I’m just really concerned if there is a real emergency, as it was with the car alarms that go off, you are going to hear this bell going off and you’re not going to pay any attention to it.”

Shrill alarms at subway station exits have become common since June, when the MTA started installing the panic bars on all service gates next to regular and floor-to-ceiling turnstiles. People have used the gates, which are meant only for emergencies, as a regular exit.

In addition to the stroller dilemma, apparently a new problem has emerged:

“They haven’t run any kind of public education campaign. It’s not fair to criticize riders,” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. “They don’t know anything about the gates.”

But transit officials disagreed, saying riders are warned that they can be ticketed for opening the gates.

“Summonses have apparently been issued to individuals holding the gates open and selling rides,” said New York City Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges.

Exact details about the number of summonses given were unavailable yesterday.

No word on whether the guys on the subway qualify as such a retailer:

Starting tomorrow, consumers must take their used rechargeable batteries — such as those that power laptop computers, cellphones and digital cameras — to retailers who sell them.

The batteries will go back to manufacturers for recycling.

The goal is to keep toxic metals like cadmium, lead and mercury out of landfills.

“Every one of these rechargeable batteries is a latent poison pill when thrown into a landfill,” said City Council member Michael McMahon (D-S.I.), chairman of the Sanitation Committee.

Conventional, nonrechargeable batteries are not affected by the law because “they are devoid of any of the toxic heavy metals that are still found in rechargeable batteries,” McMahon said.

The law requires people to take their used rechargeable batteries to any retailer who sells that type of battery. Individuals can be fined $50 for the first violation — and $200 for three or more.

The city Sanitation Department “will not go through garbage or recycling containers” to find violators. “You have to be caught in the act,” said department spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins.

The dearth of bookstores in Astoria** is odd and Councilmember Vallone wants to do something about it:

After years of disappointment and frustration because his vibrant community of Astoria does not have a bookstore, City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. recently renewed his campaign among the major bookstore chains to establish one here.

In letters to Barnes and Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks and others, Vallone pointed out that the closest major chain store is in Forest Hills, five miles from Astoria and Long Island City, even though there’s an existing market of 200,000 residents.

In addition, Vallone wrote: “Astoria is a vibrant neighborhood, full of young professionals, artists, writers and senior citizens — a perfect location for your business. Students need a place to buy their books; children need a place to explore their imaginations, and adults need a place to take a break from the world, sip coffee and read quietly.”

In his letter to Barnes & Noble, Vallone commented: “Within that [five mile] radius, there could be close to a million residents without a place to peruse the latest novels, magazines, music and movies. To put it into perspective, the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Edgewater, New Jersey is closer to Astoria than any bookstore in Queens. A Barnes and Noble in Astoria would serve not only the needs of my community and other undeserved neighborhoods, but also offer you an excellent business opportunity to capitalize on this untapped market.”

*Is it because of a high non-English speaking population? Relatively more expensive rents? Amazon.com?

**Not none, but few.

But it’s still unclear whether even the performance will have enough for a minyan:

Impressive, those names in the sanctuary of the little synagogue on West 47th Street in Manhattan: Joe E. Lewis and Sophie Tucker on the stained-glass windows, Jack Benny on a plaque in the rear. The names tell you why, in its golden age, this synagogue became known as the Actors’ Temple. They also tell you something about when that golden age was.

Recently — say, oh, during the last half-century — this temple, with a declining membership and a vanishing budget, has not been doing so well. So starting with an official opening night tomorrow, the Actors’ Temple, for the first time in its 89-year history, will be moonlighting as an Off Broadway theater.

. . .

The temple was a tough sell, with restrictions over and above the usual constraints of a small theater. Sets need to be flexible enough so they don’t interfere with services; food taken into the temple must be kosher; and shows must go dark on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. (The Saturday matinee is a sore point at the temple, but sometimes you’ve got to give an inch.) Holidays are booked, too, of course.

“You can’t move Yom Kippur because you have a show on,” Mr. Kifferstein said.

Board members talked with the producers of “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn,” a nostalgic comedy that seemed like just the thing, but negotiations broke down, and that show went to the 37 Arts, an Off Broadway theater on West 37th Street.

Which is more likely — that something spectacular and “outside the box” will be built at Coney Island or that they can pull this off in Jamaica? Both of course much easier said than done:

A shabby stretch of downtown Jamaica, sitting in the shadows of the LIRR station, will be transformed into a bright commercial hub, officials said yesterday.

Critics charge that the city’s chronic lifeguard shortage is its own doing:

Bullies conduct the testing for lifeguard positions at city beaches and pools, said parents of kids who claim they were humiliated by City Department of Parks and Recreation workers.

An ad hoc committee has been formed to get the City Council to investigate the allegations. Committee members say abuses include grown men cursing at young girls, testers purposely failing swimmers who met qualifications and closed-door trials out of public view.

. . .

The committee report recommends that training and testing be expanded beyond the department’s 59th St. pool in Manhattan. It also suggests open testing and improvements in recruitment efforts.

The committee additionally called for the ouster of Peter Stein, president of Local 508, the lifeguards’ union. The committee charged that Stein has run the lifeguard program for decades as his own “little fiefdom.”

Be sure to take a last thrilling ride in the Astrotower before it’s too late:

It’s the last ride for Astroland as New Yorkers know it.

A big-bucks developer bought up the gritty Brooklyn amusement park yesterday in its bid to turn Coney Island into a sparkling new $1.5 billion year-round resort.

The 2007 summer season will be Astroland’s last under the plan, which would leave the historic landmark Cyclone roller coaster intact.

Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert sold the 3-acre Astroland site to developer Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities for an unspecified amount.

. . .

Albert said she hopes to relocate some of the rides like the Tilt-A-Whirl and Tea Cups elsewhere along the Boardwalk.

Even if Albert is able to relocate rides like the Pirate Ship, Top Spin and the Scrambler, one of the most popular, the Astrotower, will have to leave Coney Island for good.

“That I can’t move,” said Albert, who noted it would cost as much as $400,000 to move the 200-foot, World’s Fair era attraction. “You can put it on eBay for me.”

Thor spokesman Lee Silberstein said the famed Cyclone roller coaster, which sits on city land, would not change hands and would continue to be operated by Albert.

The rest of Astroland would be cleared for new rides and an indoor entertainment complex, but Silberstein declined to reveal specific plans.

Thor also envisions luxury condos, and turning Stillwell Ave. into a tree-lined pedestrian mall filled with cafes and shops.

“We’re thinking totally outside of the box,” said Silberstein. “We’re thinking something spectacular that would be really great for New York City.”

Location Scout: Coney Island.

Like Budweiser, New York has to keep piling on:

Hoping to turn the Big Apple into a global brand, the city’s tourism office has picked an ad agency for the first time to handle its marketing worldwide.

Independent shop Bartle Bogle Hegarty beat out two other firms — Interpublic’s Lowe and Havas’ Arnold Worldwide, sources close to the review said.

In June, Mayor Bloomberg said the city would set aside an additional $15 million to meet its goal of attracting 50 million visitors a year by 2015. That’s a 16 percent increase from the estimated 43 million this year.

*Sorry, I guess that one has already been used.

Reverend Sharpton and Mayor Bloomberg show us how it’s done:

It was an odd moment in the aftermath of the police shooting of Sean Bell: the Rev. Al Sharpton posing with Mayor Bloomberg before TV cameras at a City Hall press conference but then bolting before the first word was uttered.

Bloomberg explained Sharpton’s hasty departure Monday by saying the reverend had to rush to a meeting with the victim’s family.

In fact, Sharpton hadn’t wanted to attend the press conference at all — but was persuaded by the mayor to put in a brief appearance, sources said.

With Sharpton at his side, Bloomberg could demonstrate that he had reached out to the most fiery critic of the NYPD.

But by leaving early, Sharpton avoided putting himself in an awkward situation where he might have to publicly disagree with the mayor, whom some had expected to defend the police.

Undercover police officers working in nightclubs are under strict orders to adhere to a two-drink limit:

It is an upside-down kind of police work, the opposite of the men and women in blue on sunny streets. There is no uniform, and often no gun, no badge, no bulletproof vest, no radio car with lights and sirens. Instead, officers drive rental cars and are armed with city-issued money and a two-drink limit.

Undercover police work in the city’s nightclubs is a dangerous and vulnerable assignment, the sort of work assigned to the new citywide Club Enforcement Initiative. That unit is under new scrutiny after a police shooting outside a Queens strip club shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday.

According to the police, five officers on the club detail shot into the men’s Nissan Altima, killing a bridegroom and wounding two of his friends. The officers fired 50 rounds, the police said, after the men struck an officer with the car and twice slammed it into an unmarked police van. Officials have said the officers believed there was a gun in the car, but none was found.

Wait, wait — what’s that about a “two-drink limit”?

The officers are allowed two drinks. “We authorize them to have two drinks, and no more,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference. “This initiative started at one in the morning, so they were there for three hours.”

To abstain from or refuse alcohol, said those familiar with the unit’s tactics, could conceivably tip off other patrons that an undercover operation is taking place.

. . .

At least one of the two undercover officers inside the bar had had two beers between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., Commissioner Kelly said. That officer was one of the two who did not fire in the shooting. Five officers from the team of seven fired at the Altima. One officer with 12 years of experience fired 31 rounds.

The other undercover officer fired the first shots. Those familiar with that officer’s account have said he believed the men were armed. It is unclear if that officer drank in the club. The police have not yet been able to question him while the Queens district attorney conducts an investigation, Mr. Kelly said.

A commanding officer found all the officers fit for duty — meaning they showed no signs of being impaired by alcohol — during the operation outside Club Kalua in Jamaica, the police said.

Urban students lack even a basic understanding of science, perhaps due in part to fewer (and less!) hands-on learning opportunities:

A physics demonstration landed a Queens teacher a suspension from his job and he now faces allegations of improperly touching a student.

Teacher Leonard Brown says he’s done the demonstration on Newton’s Third Law of Motion in countless physics classes in an 18-year teaching career. But when he called a female student to the front of his class at Benjamin Cardozo High School on Nov. 15 to help illustrate that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he got a reaction he didn’t expect.

He asked the student — from Cardozo’s elite Da Vinci Math Science Institute — to hold her hands up against his and lean against his hands with all of her weight, he said. He also put his hands on her shoulders before the demonstration.

Brown said he heard the girl claimed he touched her breast during the process — an allegation he denies.

“Assuming I wasn’t moral and ethical, I’m not stupid,” he said. “Do they think I’d be stupid enough to molest a girl in front of 34 witnesses? To me, this is absolutely insane.”

He was yanked from his classroom on Nov. 16, he said. Special schools investigator Richard Condon requested Brown’s removal from the classroom until the investigation is complete.

Kids — so touchy these days!

Councilmember Tony Avella won’t take the pay raise the Council voted itself. Something about “principle”:

After denouncing a recent pay hike for his colleagues, Queens Councilman Tony Avella said yesterday he won’t accept the $22,500 raise to his current $90,000 salary.

“For me this was a matter of principle, and I believe in putting my money where I put my mouth,” he said.

But he admits, “My wife isn’t too happy.

Previously, the maverick Democrat had said he was considering accepting the raise but donating the money to charity. Had he done that, he could have boosted his tax deduction for charitable contributions and also hiked the eventual value of his pension, which is pegged on gross earnings.

I don’t get it — what’s the point of grandstanding then?

The Santiago Calatrava-designed glass hall at the Fulton Transit Center — the one Nicolai Ouroussoff once called the “only promising design” at the World Trade Center site — is reduced to a mere “fancy roof” by MTA board members upset at the lack of funds for — I guess — more useful features:

The long-delayed and overbudget Fulton Transit Center is slated to have a 20-foot-tall glass dome, envisioned as a beacon to travelers and symbol of post-9/11 renewal.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t have the funds for an underground passageway that would provide faster, and simpler, transfers among several subway lines, an official said at an MTA committee meeting.

“I won’t support a project like this that’s going to discombobulate tens of thousands of daily riders every single day because you want a fancy roof,” veteran board member Barry Feinstein said in a rare burst of anger.

The Fulton Transit Center will replace the confusing and antiquated Fulton St./Broadway Nassau complex where trains on nine lines — the A, C, J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4 and 5 — now stop.

. . .

The passageway that critics say is missing from current plans is a north-south underground “connector” passageway between the R/W Cortlandt St. station and the E train terminal at the northern edge of the Trade Center site.

Without it, riders looking to take the Broadway or the E lines would have two options: Go up to the streets and brave the elements, or take a more circuitous underground route through the PATH station.

Mysore Nagaraja, president of the MTA’s Capital Construction Co., said his engineers would search for solutions, but he said money is tight.

The psychological principle of hating in others what you most see in yourself, writ Sunday Styles:

For status-conscious New Yorkers, Saturday has become synonymous with hordes of pleasure dilettantes wearing gelled hairstyles and quaffing Red Bull, creating hourlong lines at clubs that city dwellers may line up for on Thursday or even Monday, but will not get within five stretch-Hummer lengths from on Saturday. Instead, Netflix and Vietnamese takeout sounds good, or maybe that new Bond movie. It’s a night that people accustomed to quoting Andy Warhol or Diddy may summarize by invoking another New York luminary: Yogi Berra, who said, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

. . .

Of course, the Saturday-shy New Yorkers who do go out on the town that night often do so with reservation — and reservations.

Last Saturday, four Manhattanites in their early 30s were huddling over a low table downstairs at Buddakan, the cavernous pan-Asian restaurant in the meatpacking district. “During the weekends, you get a lot of clutter, if you will,” said Brian Kirimdar, 30, an investment banker. He and his wife, Ashley, tend to hide out in restaurants on Saturdays, avoiding all but a few of the Chelsea clubs. “You don’t find too many bridge-and-tunnel people at Cielo or Marquee,” he said. “You really have to pick and choose.”

Indeed, it is no accident that clubs like Marquee, its upstairs V.I.P. room packed with models even on Saturdays, and Stereo, known for its Nikes-only sneaker policy, are more outsider proof.

“No cologne, earrings or hair gel,” said Michael Satsky, an owner of Stereo, standing outside the velvet rope of his club on West 29th Street around 1 a.m., explaining his weekend door policy.

The problem with calling a historical district “DUMBO” is that it’s, uh, ahistorical:

City officials are moving ahead with plans to create a historic district in DUMBO — whose acronymic name was created by developer David Walentas when he started buying up buildings in the 1980s to evoke an earlier uber-hip neighborhood, Soho.

“What to name the district is an ironic question,” said Rob Parris, district manager of Community Board 2.

“We know it as ‘DUMBO,’ but certainly in history there have been names more associated with [it].”

The area between Fulton Ferry Landing (the old name for where the River Cafe now is) and Wallabout Bay (the Navy Yard) has changed names pretty much every 50 years since it first appeared on European maps in the 16th century.

The first name was Rapailie, after the family who owned most of the land. But in the centuries to follow, the area would be called “Olympia,” “Fulton Landing” and finally “Gairville,” after the early-20th century industrialist Robert Gair, who manufactured paper bags and corrugated cardboard boxes at 45 Washington St.

Gairville has the best claim, historians say, but the name is unlikely to even be suggested. Why? Because Landmarks designation is about marketability, just as much as history.

“Can you imagine saying ‘let’s go out for dinner in ‘Gairville’?” said Simeon Bankoff of the Historic District Council.

Location Scout: DUMBO.

Understatement of the day:

To the average person, 50 may seem like an excessive number of bullets fired by police officer.

Interesting idea — what for, I don’t know, but it sounds good:

Aside from taking a nice long swim, the only way to get from Manhattan to Staten Island without paying a toll or the Staten Island Ferry requires a route incorporating two states, three counties, five modes of transportation, three hours and a three-mile walk.

About 30 brave travelers from as far afield as Ireland, California and Pennsylvania, made such a trip yesterday as part of “Terra Incognita: The Great Circle Tour,” hosted by the Municipal Art Society (MAS).

. . .

Beginning at the World Trade Center PATH station in lower Manhattan, the group took the train to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. They then continued by foot with a walking tour of Bayonne, before a lunch stop and the strenuous mile-long walk across the Bayonne Bridge.

Jonathan Peters, a College of Staten Island finance professor and transportation analyst, pointed out the potential for future light rail service to connect Staten Island and Bayonne through the rail easements on either side of the bridge, built into the design by the forward-thinking architect, Othmar Ammann.

. . .

Descending the slope of the bridge on the Staten Island side, Peters reminded the group of the significance of their accomplishment.

“We did something that is actually difficult to do — we got to Staten Island without driving.”

The tour wrapped up with the final two modes of transportation as the group boarded an S44 bus to the St. George Ferry Terminal to complete the circle with a sail back to Manhattan.

The Daily News is shocked to discover that between shutting down the Minutemen and figuring out how to get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit, Columbia University students are engaged in their own sort of horny jerk-off situation:

Famed as a hotbed of debate over academic freedom, New York’s most elite school is also a playpen for sexual hijinks, sophomoric antics and the wacky indulgences of the children of the rich.

While their parents shell out $33,246 a year in tuition, Columbia University students doff their clothes at naked parties, flock to sex toys workshops, broadcast porn on campus TV, bake anatomically correct pies for the “Erotic Cake-Baking Contest” and heat up the steps of the Low Library in a mass makeout session called the “Big Kiss.”

The Staten Island Museum doesn’t need anything fancy like a cohesive theme:

The little museum two blocks from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, formally known as the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, is celebrating its birthday, and its status as just about the only general-interest museum left in the city, with a weirdest-hits show, an homage to the age-old notion of a museum as a cabinet of curiosities.

In the main room of the exhibition, which opened last week, a pickled star-nosed mole shares shelf space with the first blue grosbeak nestling found in New York City, a jar of squid eggs and a four-headed chicken born on a Staten Island farm in 1914. All the items are organized, Mr. Johnson said, according to a rigorous scientific principle: “People like looking at dead things in jars.”

. . .

The curved brown object that was originally labeled a musk ox horn is actually an ironstone deposit from a local cliff. The thing that looks like the innards of a baseball is a hairball from a cow’s stomach. Another horn was labeled “tusk from wild boar which I shot in Louisiana swamp but not until he had killed my dog” and signed Charles Roome Parmele. Mr. Johnson offered no information on Mr. Parmele.

Much of the exhibition is assembled from castoffs from larger museums in other boroughs. A slab rich with dinosaur fossils was trash-picked decades ago from the American Museum of Natural History by a Staten Islander who worked there, Mr. Johnson said. “He had this in his backyard for many years,” he said.

Who are these people, what do they do and are they that un-self aware that they’re willing to be quoted in the paper about how great the Bush tax cuts were? Dogs — no, seriously, dogs:

The pampered pooches of Manhattan have an increasingly popular way of dealing with the stress, and expanded girth, of apartment living — their own personal trainers.

The city now has at least two companies that specialize in taking dogs running for up to 45 minutes at a stretch, helping them to burn off fat that can result from too little exercise.

“Sometimes when you come home from the office and you’re exhausted, you just don’t want to bring your dog to the dog run,” said Therese Virserius, 33, who pays Manhattan-based Running Paws $35 a session to propel her 81-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, Maya, up and down the East River.

After a typical 45-minute jog with her doggie drill sergeant, Maya immediately plops down on the couch for a well-earned nap, she said.

Isn’t this how dealers reel in their customers? It sounds like an after-school special:

Yet, even as many Manhattan women cringe as prices at their longtime salons rise, they are loath to move on. Switching stylists can be an emotional experience, akin to a breakup. And just as in romance, a clean break is not always easy.

Merle Rubine, an adjunct professor of media and film studies and a former network television producer, said she doesn’t want to leave her longtime stylist at Vidal Sassoon. But as the price of her partial highlights has climbed to $190, she has been freer about expressing her unhappiness.

“My stylist feels terrible,” Ms. Rubine said. “I feel terrible. Everyone feels terrible. Does that mean that he’s going to open his own place and do a partial for $50? Probably not.” So her solution is to live with longer hair, and take longer between appointments.

Incontinent cemetery worker story . . . now with added chutzpah:

A Brooklyn man who complained that an 80-year-old cemetery worker urinated on his grandmother’s grave says he was attacked by two thugs who or dered him to shut up — or else.

And, he claims, one of the goons identified himself as the cemetery worker’s son.

“You are a f- - -in’ punk. You are the f- - -in’ guy who got my father fired . . . I will kill you and bury you right by your grandmother and will pee on your grave,” one of them allegedly told Itomor Khaimov during the attack Tues day night.

Police confirmed they are investigating the attack, which occurred at around 10 p.m. near the corner of Bay Parkway and 63rd Street in Bensonhurst.

. . .

Khaimov said the men, one black and one Hispanic, approached him near Bay Parkway and 63rd Street. When he yelled for help, he said, the black man grabbed him from behind and covered his mouth.

“He grabbed my whole face and said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I will twist your head off,’” he said.

“The Hispanic guy said, ‘We want you to go to the New York Post, Fox 5 and Channel 2 to tell them that [you] lied about everything. Nothing ever happened.’”

A Rod Paige type of turnaround* ought to do wonders for Bloomberg’s chances in ‘08 (or ‘12!):

The city’s fiscal watchdog has sounded the alarm over a “significant and sustained” rise in the number of students discharged from public high schools, suggesting the increase could be artificially improving the graduation and dropout rates.

In a recent letter to the schools chancellor, Comptroller William Thompson Jr. noted that the steady climb began following a change in the way the city Department of Education defined discharged students in its annual reports beginning in 2002.

The change involved omitting a disclaimer that said a student could be considered discharged only after the student was confirmed to have been admitted to a new school outside the city public school system.

A spokesman for Chancellor Joel Klein acknowledged the omission but said the confirmation policy stood firm. And advocates who keep close tabs on the discharge policy said they believe the city has become more diligent in tracking discharged students.

Still, Thompson called the change “troubling,” saying that not confirming a student’s enrollment elsewhere “could artificially inflate the city’s high-school graduation rates.”

*See, for example.

Who knows, you might actually like the idea of wearing an official Department of Sanitation cap:

The mayor unveiled a new Web site yesterday — officialnycshop.com — where shoppers can snag all kinds of gear emblazoned with NYPD, FDNY and Sanitation Department logos.

For $14 you can have a “distressed” Sanitation Department baseball cap. An NYPD play set is $14.99 and a Central Park fountain T-shirt is $19.99. Part of the sales go back into Police and Fire Department foundations.

The good news is that the average weekly pay for people in Manhattan is $2,500 a week. The bad news is that this is largely due to the fact that the average pay in the financial sectory is $8,300 a week:

The average weekly pay for finance jobs in Manhattan was about $8,300 in the first quarter of 2006, up more than $3,000 per week in just three years, new federal data show. And with another year’s bounty from Wall Street about to be paid out in annual bonuses, that number is expected to jump again.

The 280,000 workers in the finance industry collect more than half of all the wages paid in Manhattan, although they hold fewer than one of every six jobs in the borough. The pay gap between them and the 1.5 million other workers in Manhattan continues to widen, causing some economists to worry about the city’s growing dependence on their extraordinary incomes.

Despite their recent success, the financial companies that have long formed the economic engine of New York City have not created many more jobs. More of the job growth in the city is occurring in lower-paying service jobs in restaurants, stores and home health care, but the pay for those jobs has been lagging, said Michael L. Dolfman, regional commissioner of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

. . .

For all of the 1.8 million jobs in Manhattan, the average weekly salary in the first quarter of this year was slightly more than $2,500, a rise of about 35 percent from the first quarter of 2003, the federal data show. But the raises are not spread evenly across Manhattan’s job market, economists said.

The average is skewed by the large number of high-paying jobs at investment banks, brokerage firms and hedge funds, they said.

. . .

Mr. Dolfman, whose report is included in the bureau’s Monthly Labor Review, said one negative consequence of the unequal distribution of income gains is that “the middle class is being squeezed out of the city because of the tremendous purchasing power of the people in the global sectors of the economy.”

According to detailed analysis of the Hudson River, residents in the Hudson River watershed consume more cocaine than anywhere else in the world:

Researchers for the Nuremberg’s Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research scoured the Hudson River for benzoylecgonine — a substance produced by the human body while processing cocaine — and found byproducts equivalent to a total of 16.4 tons of cocaine per year.

An estimated 3.4 million people ages 15 to 65 live in the Hudson’s watershed. Nearly three percent of Americans in this age group use cocaine at least once a year, according to the United Nations “World Drug Report.” That equates to about 95,000 people who are consuming the 16.4 tons of pure coke annually.

The researchers also discovered more pure coke in our river than anywhere else — including Washington’s Potomac River and San Francisco Bay.

Someone tell Anthony Weiner now that the balance of power has changed in Congress it’s no longer necessary to keep vapidly grandstanding*.

First, out to the Rockaways to rail against something over which he has no control:

Congressman Anthony Weiner yesterday railed against the state closing one of two hospitals in the Rockaways.

Reacting to word that either Peninsula or St. John’s Episcopal would be recommended for closure by a state panel, the Queens/Brooklyn Democrat argued that hospitals are being punished for an antiquated system that funnels more money into surgical care than preventive care.

“The Rockaways need two major health-care providers,” said Weiner, whose district includes both Queens hospitals. “Everybody agrees that there should be more outpatient care and fewer hospital beds, but the regulatory obstacles are enormous.”

Then it’s off to Jackson Heights to go fuck with some elderly Nazis:

Congressmember Anthony Weiner (DQueens, Brooklyn) grabbed a sign and joined a neighborhood protest in Jackson Heights November 9 outside the home of a former Nazi SS death camp guard who was stripped of his United States citizenship in 2003.

Jakiw Palij, 84, has not been deported because U.S. immigration officials can’t find a country to take him. He was stripped of his citizenship after officials discovered he lied when he applied for an immigrant visa in 1949.

Weiner joined hundreds of high school students at the protest who demanded that Palij open his door and face them.

“No one is going to hide among us,” Weiner said. “This monster is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in the Nazi death camps. He is not paying for his crimes by living a peaceful life on 89th Street in Jackson Heights.”

*What is he thinking seriously about a run for Borough President or something? Oh, right — Mayor. Forgot.

There is open speculation that the City may be selling its iconic Municipal Building:

Speculation is heating up that the Municipal Building, the soaring limestone landmark that overlooks City Hall, could be among the government real estate assets to be sold off and converted to residential buildings as municipal employees prepare to move into a new, privately managed office building planned for ground zero.

The Municipal Building at One Centre St., the home of the Department of City Planning at 22 Reade St., and another large office building overlooking Foley Square at 2 Lafayette St. are among the assets whose sale is under consideration, according to a source familiar with the process.

In September, Mayor Bloomberg penned an agreement with developer Larry Silverstein to take 600,000 square feet in Tower 4 at the former World Trade Center site as early as 2013. Mr. Bloomberg said at the time that the city could sell off some real estate assets, which could be developed or converted into residential buildings. Mr. Silverstein has the right to cancel the deal between now and September 2008 if he finds a tenant that would pay more than the city’s offer of $56.50 a square foot a year in rent.