VERY SUNNY AND BRIGHT BUT YET WITH LOTS OF PRIVACY

Craig Newmark himself spends way too much time handling problems related to New York City real estate listings on Craig’s List:

In New York, real estate is a blood sport. It has always been that way. A few years ago, I started to notice that it was a problem, that we were getting a lot of complaints about [fraudulent ads]. So it is a special focus of mine.

New York is the only city where we have the $10 listing fee for brokers. In terms of time, I would say I spend maybe 20 to 30 minutes a day dealing with New York real-estate problems. A lot of what I do is make sure the right person is taking care of the problem.

Mormons Movin’ On Up . . . (And This Isn’t Even A Mitt Romney Update, Although He Is Mentioned In The Article)

Mormons on the Upper East Side — no kidding:

In suburban communities, missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints go door-to-door in pairs, preaching their gospel to prospective converts. While doormen on the Upper East Side make it more difficult to save souls, the organization informally known as the Mormon church is making inroads in the neighborhood — recently opening a five-story, 39,000-square-foot building on East 87th Street.

The multimillion-dollar, Gothic-style structure, which opened to worshippers in October, houses two wards, or congregations: One is composed largely of young families, and the other is made up of singles ages 18 to 30. The brick church was built with ambitious expansion plans in mind — it could easily accommodate at least two more wards, each made up of 300 or more people.

The Upper East Side family ward, which serves residents living between 50th and 110th streets, met across town until last fall. Since moving into the new building, attendance at the group’s Sunday service has grown by about 25%, to about 150 people, its spiritual leader, Bishop Joseph Jensen, said. The bishop said the Upper East Side is home to a growing number of young Mormon families. He attributed the growth to good schools and some reasonably priced housing stock — relative to other Manhattan neighborhoods. He predicted that at least one other ward would open at the East 87th Street church within five years.

Church doctrine emphasizes proselytizing, and neighborhood missionaries hoping to convert new members have their work cut out for them. “This area is tough, because missionaries just can’t get access to so many buildings,” Bishop Jensen said.

. . .

The two missionaries assigned to the Upper East Side, Trey Reed, 19, and Gabriel Ferreira, 21, rely heavily on old-fashioned pavement-pounding. Each week, the cleancut, suit-clad Messrs. Reed and Ferreira approach about 200 people on the streets and on the subway.

While most of those people reject their efforts out-of-hand, Mr. Ferreira, who grew up in Brazil and Orem, Utah, said some New Yorkers can be surprisingly open-minded. “Sometimes I find someone and think, ‘He would never talk to me,’ and then he’ll sit down and listen and talk,” he said, noting that in the past month he and Mr. Reed have convinced one person to convert.

What’s Yiddish For “The Fuck I Can Park There, Asshole”?

With the sharp rise in the number of film shoots in the city comes a new worst job ever:

“We get cursed on in every language in New York City,” said Matthew Ancrum, 49, a production assistant who lives in Bedford Park in the Bronx.

Rafael Diaz, 43, also from the Bronx, recalled a day last year when a woman in Washington Heights was so angry that his television crew was restricting parking in the neighborhood that she “spat in my face.”

In New York City, most workers on film and television crews belong to a union. But the people who testified yesterday at the forum, organized by the City University of New York, are non-unionized workers known as parking production assistants.

Their duties include putting up fliers the day before a film crew comes to a neighborhood, dropping orange parking cones on the street, safeguarding a site before filming begins and shooing drivers away from parking spaces at all hours.

. . .

Last year, according to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, more than 250 films and 100 television programs were shot in the five boroughs. The productions contributed at least $5 billion to the city’s economy, and parking production assistants played a small but essential role in that effort.

And “for the record,” said Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the city’s film office, “we don’t close down streets. A production may or may not hire parking production assistants to reserve the permitted spaces.”

How do the assistants reserve the spaces? “Well,” she said, “that’s a question for the production assistants.”

For Mr. Ancrum, who has been a production assistant for 15 years and now works on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” it sometimes takes street diplomacy, with a dash of blarney.

“I’ve been cursed in Dominican, Colombian, Italian, people from Paris, Irish, Jewish, black, Cuban — and all because I tell them they can’t park their car here,” he said.

The toughest are the drug dealers.

“I know you’re looking at me all crazy,” said Mr. Ancrum, re-enacting the parking pitch he uses on drug dealers. “But, listen, I’m working production here. They’re going to have police officers here and police tow trucks for the cars that are still here. If you want to argue, that’s fine, but the police commander is going to shut you down, and you ain’t making no money.”

Lionel-Industrial Complex Claims Another Victim; Parents Shaken

The lure of the 7 train was too much for one tot as he escaped the clutches of his harried mother and jumped on a Manhattan-bound express train yesterday:

Stuart [Tito] is quite a handful — constantly curious, perpetually in motion and absolutely fearless. Trains are his passion; he points whenever one roars above his Queens neighborhood.

That’s why [Blanca] Amarilis held his hand tightly as she and husband Victor Tito, 32, waited at Junction Blvd. on their way to a doctor’s appointment for their 9-month-old, Derrick.

As an express pulled into the station, Amarilis noticed Derrick’s nose was running, and she leaned down over the stroller to wipe it — letting go of Stuart.

In that instant, the little imp scooted away as fast as his sneaker-clad feet would take him, darted through the closing doors of the train and was whisked away.

Fortunately for Lionel, they do not have blood on their hands . . . this time:

“I thought that someone would take him,” she said. “I prayed to God to protect my son and let me find him again.”

She didn’t know it, but her prayer was being answered. A woman who saw Stuart board the train, scooped him up, got off at 61st St. and took a train back to Junction Blvd.

When they arrived, she spotted the boy’s father looking frantic and asked, “Is this your son?”

“Yes!” the Ecuadoran-born cook answered, wrapping his errant explorer in a hug. The woman melted into the crowd.

[In Sultry Voice Of Samantha] Never Mind His Ad Campaign, Tell Me About His Briscoe!

If everything goes according to plan, millions of Europeans will one day flock to New York 2.0, the birthplace of Carrie Bradshaw:

George A. Fertitta has helped sell a lot of pricey Belgian chocolates and French cognac to New Yorkers. Now he has to sell New York to Belgians, Frenchmen and others who may consider the city too costly, too dangerous or too American to visit.

Mr. Fertitta is spearheading Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign to lure 50 million visitors a year to the city by 2015. That would be about six million more out-of-towners than the city, which is riding a long wave of tourism and economic growth, attracted last year.

. . .

To increase the influx, the city is spending more money than ever to promote itself overseas. Fueled by the mayor’s commitment of an additional $15 million a year, the city’s marketing operation, known as NYC & Company, has begun placing billboards in some European cities declaring that with exchange rates in their favor, New York is a relative bargain.

Those ads are aimed at knocking down one negative perception about New York: that it is prohibitively expensive.

An international ad campaign in the works, a first for the city, will try to dispel two other stereotypes: that New Yorkers are exceptionally rude, and that crime is rife in the city. Mr. Fertitta said he would rather foreigners picture “Sex and the City” than “Law & Order.”

Under Mr. Fertitta, NYC & Company has hired an advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, to create the campaign, which is expected to begin later this year.

. . .

To change people’s negative views of New York’s grime, crime and prices, he said, the city can piggyback on the invaluable boost it gets from pop-culture cynosures like Carrie Bradshaw, the lead character in “Sex and the City,” the internationally popular TV show.

“To some people, New York City is ‘Sex and the City’ and the best shoes in the world,” Mr. Fertitta said. “They want to see where Carrie Bradshaw sat on the stoop.”