The Sun explains why it costs $1,100 to plant a tree:

The high cost can be attributed in large part to an increase in labor costs, which date to a 2003 decision by the city comptroller, William Thompson, to raise the pay of tree planters more than threefold. Today, tree planters make about $55 an hour, up from the $15 hourly wage they were paid before the change. Prior to that decision, the price of planting a tree was about $700.

“That seems like a lot,” the current commissioner for the parks department in Westchester County, Mitchell Tutoni, said when told of the $1,100 price tag in the city.

. . .

In addition to rising wage costs, one contractor, Angelo DeBartoli, said a second change in the contracts contributes to the high price of planting a tree in New York City. A new rule requires contractors to replant trees that are felled by vandalism within two years of their planting, he said in a telephone interview. Mr. DeBartoli, the owner of Robert Bello Landscaping, said it was “insane” that contractors had to guarantee the trees against vandalism once the plantings were finished.

Still, Mr. DeBartoli said the sudden rise in cost was largely caused by the required wage increase for tree planters.

The decision to raise the wages came as the comptroller’s office reclassified the job of planting trees to labor from gardening.

But that classification is in question today, as it was when it was made.

“We got lumped into the laborer category, but we’re landscapers,” Mr. DeBartoli said. “We don’t come out with cranes and all kinds of fancy equipment. We come out and dig a hole and plant a tree and put stones around it.”

Yes, an actual carny:

The decomposed remains of a carnival worker who was reported missing 10 years ago were found in a Bronx home after a water pipe sprung a leak, authorities said yesterday.

Dwayne Perkins said he went to 911 Ogden Ave. to check on his grandmother Monday evening and stumbled upon the ossified corpse of Michael Johnson in the basement.

As Perkins peered into a dank corner of the basement to inspect a pipe that was spitting steam, he spotted the old bones.

“I was ready to leave when I looked down, and I saw a ball covered in dirt, but when I looked closer, I [realized] it was a skull,” said Perkins, 40.

“It just blew me away.”

He called the police, who discovered a jacket among the heap of bones and rotting flesh. Inside the jacket was Johnson’s identification.

“The cops said the bones were in a disarray, probably because some cats, rats and dogs may have gotten to it,” said Perkins, whose family has owned the house for 35 years.

His uncle, Ray Stirrup, even had a workshop in the basement and was flabbergasted by the disgusting discovery. “Man, just thinking about it — I’ve been sitting here, doing my little projects, and he’s 15 feet behind me. I never smelled him,” said Stirrup, 56.

Johnson had been reported missing in his native state of Ohio and in New York in November 1997. He was 50 years old at the time.

He had been renting a $40-a-week room on a third floor of the three-story, 106-year-old house that’s just a stone’s throw from Yankee Stadium, after befriending fellow carnival worker Charles Byrd, Stirrup’s stepson.

Wal-Mart finally decides that it can make boatloads of cash elsewhere without all the bullshit:

Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.

Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart in cities like New York is led by unions. Organized labor, fearing that the retailer’s low prices and modest wages will undercut unionized stores, have built anti-Wal-Mart alliances with Democratic members of city councils.

And then there’s this:

Yesterday, labor leaders, upon learning of Wal-Mart’s apparent retreat from New York — or at the very least Manhattan — returned Mr. Scott’s sentiment.

“We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”

We do? Which ones? Oh yeah, the ones where you pay more for a box of cereal than you would for a movie ticket. Or the ones where a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas — in France. Such paragons of public service. Thank god none of them have to worry about competition. I myself enjoy being gouged at the one bodega (doubtless unionized — yeah, right) that’s open in my neighborhood — and I can even somewhat afford to spend more to preserve my lousy small footprint. I’m sure those at the bottom of the economic feeding chain feel even better. There’s a reason the middle class is disappearing in the New York area and it’s only partly because of high housing costs.

Then again, I’m sure Bentonville will get a kick out of seeing the New York Times frame it like this:

. . . Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.

But really, Wal-Mart shouldn’t feel so bad because they’ve still got scoreboard. And that’s something even Philadelphia defied. New York City — frequently, often — is incredibly full of itself. Manhattan deserves all the Food Emporiums it gets.

Now here’s a story to tell the folks back home in Ohio (or London* or Ireland** or Moscow***, as the case may be):

The dining room at De Marco’s Pizzeria and Restaurant on Houston Street was empty Sunday evening, save for one couple sharing a pizza and a table by the window.

They were tourists, they said, and unknowingly were among the first customers to visit the restaurant less than two weeks after a worker there was shot 15 times in the back, and two auxiliary police officers were gunned down while chasing his shooter through the streets of Greenwich Village.

But seriously — why back down from the notoriety? Everyone knows that people love to gawk:

Being the scene of violent crime has sometimes boosted business at city restaurants, according to crime historians and restaurateurs, while in other cases establishments have seen their reputations irrevocably damaged.

“In a strange sense, the notoriety can actually help,” a New York restaurateur, Drew Nieporent, said. “People will likely come to De Marco’s as voyeurs. . . . It might even gain a national reputation.”

Restaurants sometimes undergo cosmetic changes following a traumatic incident, a professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Robert McCrie, said. “Fast food places where shootings have taken place often shut for a day, or undergo a name change,” Mr. McCrie said. He described these venues as “forbidden kinds of places” whose notoriety attracts customers.

“There’s a certain cachet associated with going to a restaurant where something bad has happened,” a sociologist at Indiana University, Thomas Gieryn, said. “We have a morbid fascination with places where impossible things happen.”

Some restaurants capitalize on the drama that transpired within their walls, Mr. Gieryn said. Sparks Steak House became a Midtown landmark after a mob boss, Paul Castellano, was murdered there in 1985.

*

**

***

Is there a correlation between walking between subway cars and crime? Steven Levitt is never around when you need him:

The MTA’s rule banning people from moving between subway cars has helped put the brakes on crime and increase arrests, including 166 people busted for outstanding warrants, the NYPD said yesterday.

NYPD Chief of Transit James Hall said the subway rule, created for safety reasons, has been “extremely effective” for transit cops nabbing some rough riders.

“When we looked at that [regulation] and then looked at our complaint reports, we see a lot of victims tell us that when they were victimized that the bad guy or the bad gal walked through the cars,” said Hall. “So we’ve attempted to put a lot more officers on the trains looking for that offense.”

Since January, transit cops around the city have issued 1,953 summonses for people moving between cars, and have arrested 166 for a return on warrants, four for loaded guns and 45 for illegal knives, an NYPD spokesman said.

But it’s not so much a safety issue as it seems to be just another way to harrass bad people:

“We’re really stopping people with bad histories,” said Hall. More than 100 “people already with outstanding warrants — that’s huge.”

Now where’s the ACLU when you need them?

The MTA joins countless other douchebags searching for “no fee UES” on Craig’s List:

If you’re looking for a cheap apartment on the Upper East Side, you’ll likely be competing against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Second Avenue Subway construction will claim 59 units in mostly rent-stabilized buildings around 72nd and 86th streets. As apartments in these buildings become vacant over the next two years, the MTA will attempt to stockpile as many units as possible, renting the empty residences on a month-to-month basis until the property is acquired through condemnation or negotiated purchase with the landlords. The landlords are not obligated to rent to the authority, explained MTA director of real estate Roco Krsulic yesterday, but the authority is reaching out to the landlords to avoid relocating tenants in rent-stabilized apartments.

That’s because under federal law the MTA must find replacement housing for all of the displaced tenants.

“The rules are rather specific,” Krsulic said. “We have to find them comparable housing and preferably in the same community board, which is Community Board 8 in this case. So we are trying to do all we can before the time comes about that we have to accommodate the housing needs.”

This means signing leases on rent-stabilized units now.

Just think — by 2013 the MTA will not only have delivered 33 whole blocks of subway but a tighter rental market too!

This, however, is brilliant:

The “T” train — which someday will run on the Second Avenue line — won’t begin service for years. In fact, the tunnel isn’t even dug.

But a prankster created a realistic T train “service announcement” and hung it in the Canal Street station yesterday. It reads: “No trains between 63 St. and 42 St., 9 AM to 5 PM, Until 1/22/17.”

If lately you have been perplexed by the concept of the “celebrity chef,” take heart — four out of five velvet ropes agree:

Mario Batali and Wylie Dufresne may be celebrities to the foodie set, but to the doorman at Downtown Cipriani, they don’t make the cut. On a recent snowy evening, Jean-Georges Vongerichten hosted an intimate dinner for his 50th birthday upstairs there. Phil Suarez, Daniel Boulud, and John McDonald were on hand to sip Cristal. But when Dufresne arrived, followed by Batali (in his trademark shorts and clogs), both were refused entry. When Vongerichten explained their credentials, the doorman merely shrugged. “I work for the Ciprianis. I do not know chefs.” Dufresne says, “It was brutal outside. Don’t underestimate my ability to dress inappropriately, so it’s no surprise I was left to stand out in the cold.

As Astroland prepares for its final season, some city officials are worrying — without attribution — that developer Joe Sitt is simply in it to change the zoning and then flip the land for, as some might say, big buck$:

Several officials told The Post they’re concerned that Joseph Sitt’s next selling spree could involve the massive assemblage of beachfront land his Thor Equities has bought up in Coney Island — especially if City Hall doesn’t allow his planned $2 billion entertainment complex to include luxury housing.

“The guy has a track record of flipping land for big bucks,” said one source close to the project. “He’s done it already in Coney Island and other Brooklyn projects like [Downtown Brooklyn's] Albee Square Mall, and who’s to say he won’t play the city again?”

Chuck Reichenthal, a member of the city’s Coney Island Development Corp., is worried Thor will hold up the plan either by selling out or by holding out to see if the next mayor is willing to allow the housing.

“I look out my [Surf Avenue] office window, and what I see now is very sad,” he said. “They’re beginning to create a ghost town.”

. . .

[Officials] note that when Sitt bought the Albee Square Mall on Fulton Street five years ago for $24 million, he talked about giving the gritty site the same type of Vegas-style makeover he’s now pitching for Coney Island.

Instead, Sitt spent $10 million rehabbing the mall — which he renamed The Gallery at Fulton Street — but never followed through on his grand plan.

Then after the city rezoned to allow for larger development there, Sitt sat on the mall before finally agreeing last January to sell it for $125 million.

“It’s a great deal for him and it’s going to bring larger-scale development there by the new buyer, but it’s not going to be the ‘Bellagio of malls’ that Sitt said he was going to turn it into,” a source said.

In Coney Island, Sitt last year sold one of the properties he bought for $90 million — a 168,000-square-foot tract known as the Washington Bath House site — after the city said it would allow residential development there.

A spokesman for Thor Equities, Lee Silberstein, insisted that the company isn’t planning to back out of Coney Island.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core, Albee Square.

But it won’t be a total sell-out until Atria begins advertising there:

The city’s public hospital system is considering putting the names of big-bucks donors on some of its facilities in exchange for cash — which means Bellevue could soon be home to the Bloomberg Trauma Center and Elmhurst the P&G Pampers Pavilion.

“We are exploring that,” said Frank Cirillo, vice president of operations at the Health and Hospital Corp., of the advertising scheme.

HHC — which oversees 11 hospitals, four nursing facilities and 80 clinics — also is looking at selling ad space on outdoor billboards and building and campus signs, as well as through digital media and TV flat panels.

New York Post readers find “rap wars” stories strangely satisfying:

The city’s rap wars are on the brink of exploding after a thug performer allegedly beat up a 14-year-old kid for wearing a rival’s shirt — and the boy turned out to be the foe’s son, officials said yesterday.

G-Unit artist Tony Yayo was released on a $5,000 cash bond after being arraigned on charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors. Prosecutors said he roughed up the teenager on a Manhattan street for wearing a sweatshirt promoting a rival company.

Yayo, an associate of rap star 50 Cent, vented his rage on the son of Czar Entertainment chief Jimmy “Henchman” Rosemond, who represents rival rapper The Game, cops said.

. . .

The criminal complaint against Yayo, 29, who is nearly twice the teen’s size, said he hit the kid so hard with the back of his ring-studded hand that the boy’s head bounced off a wall.

The youngster told cops that two men with Yayo brandished guns during the assault, after 50 Cent allegedly sicced his crew on the kid.

A source close to Rosemond, 42, said the father, a former gang member, was fuming.

“If he wanted Yayo dead, he’d be dead already,” the source said.

Cops are not convinced the boy was attacked simply for wearing a Czar Entertainment sweatshirt. The source said cops believe Yayo might have known exactly whom he was hitting.

Rosemond’s son is a rap-star wannabe, and has made industry connections through his father.

. . .

[Family lawyer Jeffrey] Lichtman said the teen was on his way to an after-school internship at his father’s West 25th Street office last Tuesday when 50 Cent, whose Violator Records office is across the street, spotted the boy and signaled to some members of his entourage.

Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, allegedly pushed the youth up against the wall and hit him.

“F - - - Czar Entertainment!” Yayo reportedly yelled.

Lichtman said he had as much contempt for 50 Cent as the man who carried out the attack.

“He was the one that gave the hand signal that started the whole thing,” Lichtman said. “He wasn’t there during the hitting, but [he] . . . started it.”

The FDNY exam for recruits covers all the important situations a firefighter must face on the job:

“As a rookie firefighter you are responsible for cleaning the kitchen. You arrive for the beginning of your shift to find the kitchen area is a mess. And there is a bowl of chili spilled on the floor from the firefighters from the previous shift. The reason the kitchen is such a mess is due to the previous crew having gone out on a call to a fire during their dinner, and they are still actively fighting the fire … What should you do with the following circumstances?”

Families of 9/11 victims worry that roads in Staten Island may be paved with human remains:

Families members of Sept. 11, 2001, victims filed court papers last week charging hundreds of thousands of tons of debris at the Fresh Kills landfill were not sifted for human remains — and have even been used to pave roads and fill potholes on Staten Island.

The claims were part of a lawsuit submitted in Manhattan Federal Court, and include affidavits by the city’s chief medical examiner, a former landfill director and Eric Beck, a city contractor who oversaw the separation of the pulverized debris or “fines.”

“I observed the New York City Department of Sanitation taking these fines from the conveyor belts of our machines, loading it into tractors and using it to pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts,” Beck said.

Beck was a senior supervisor for Taylor Recycling Facility, hired to sift through debris brought to Fresh Kills after the World Trade Center attacks, between October 2001 and July 2002.

The 9/11 family members are suing the city to force them to continue the separation, and to create a worthy burial place for them. Some groups estimate there are about 223,000 tons of debris that were not properly sifted. The city filed to dismiss the lawsuit, and the families filed to counter that motion Friday.

Those documents contained a 2003 letter by chief city medical examiner Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, who wrote it was “virtually certain” that at least some human tissue has been mixed in the dirt at the landfill.

Since I don’t much care whether Joe’s Falafel Cart has adequate hand-washing stations or if his ingredients are stored too close together, I wonder whether this could perhaps work:

Restaurant-goers would know if they’re in for a fine or filthy din ing experience under a new A-to-F rating system proposed by a state lawmaker.

State Sen. Jeff Klein has reintroduced a bill that would overhaul the state’s restaurant inspection system, modeling it after California’s, which requires stricter inspections and violations posted right on the restaurant’s entrance.

“It’s a simple system that would allow people to see clearly what the grade is as they enter — A, B, C, D or F,” said Klein, a Bronx Democrat. “The only way to ensure cleanliness and food safety is to make a restaurant’s grade public knowledge. That forces the owner to get it right.”

The measure would allow the city Health Department to devise its own criteria.

The legislator criticized the city’s current inspections, which use a Byzantine scoring system that allows eateries to remain open even if live rodents or rat droppings are found.

This is what they do in Los Angeles County, and there eating at a “B” or lower is sometimes even considered a sort of badge of honor.

Don’t feel too dumb if you don’t recognize the person who your street is now named for — the Brooklyn Paper explains that they’re mostly bureaucrats:

In the grand tradition of naming city streets after people no one has ever heard of, DUMBO’s own Main Street is slated to be co-named for former Department of Transportation assistant commissioner Dolores Barbieri.

Who?

What?

Huh?

The street co-naming would be the first for DUMBO, a distinction that puts it on the map — in the sense that the neighborhood now has enough residents to attract the attention of politicians who want to honor ex-colleagues.

Under the proposal, the block between Plymouth and Water streets would be co-named for Barbieri, who died last May. Barbieri — a Brooklyn native — was a Pratt Institute graduate and an assistant to former Borough President Howard Golden.

Her biggest achievement at the DOT was the reconstruction of both Staten Island Ferry terminals, neither of which is in Brooklyn.

Her connection to DUMBO? She was living on Main Street when she passed away.

“We nominated her for the street-naming because she had an outstanding record of public service,” said Evan Thies, spokesman for Councilman David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights).

Community Board 2’s transportation committee overwhelmingly approved the co-naming on Tuesday in advance of a full board vote on March 26.

And that’s OK with some DUMBO enthusiasts.

“Paying homage to people who devoted their lives to public service is always a good thing,” said Tucker Reed, executive director of the DUMBO Improvement District.

And yet everyone knows the real reason is to get people to stop thinking about the other great Barbieri:

In the past three and a half years, Lloyd Joseph has been in and out of hospitals, undergone multiple surgeries and struggled to make ends meet as the injuries he sustained in the October 15, 2003 ferry crash prevented him from working. On Monday, he rejoiced when he learned he can finally move ahead with a lawsuit against the city.

“I am very happy with that reaction; it’s been four years now and I am still suffering,” said Joseph. “I have another operation today. I have already taken three operations, and I still have one more to go. And it’s time for my wife and my kids to get some kind of closure on this.”

Joseph is one of dozens seeking damages from the crash of the Andrew J. Barbieri, which claimed the lives of 11 people and injured scores of others. The city wanted to use an old nautical law to cap civil claims to the cost of repairs to the ferry, at about $14 million.

But in a 25-page decision, Federal District Court Judge Edward Korman denied the city’s request, saying a rule requiring two pilots to be in the pilothouse at the same time was simply ignored at the time of the crash, leaving the city liable.

Korman’s ruling says, “enforcing the rule was cost free and the City’s failure to do so constituted a breach of the duty of care owed to the Barbieri’s passengers, who entrusted their safety to the city. This breach of duty was a substantial factor in causing the deaths and injuries suffered by the plaintiffs.”

Remember that horrifying, disgusting story about the 58-year-old janitor accused of raping an eight-year-old girl repeatedly at school? You know — the janitor whose picture was all over the evening news and in the tabloids. Yeah, well that was basically all made up:

A judge yesterday tossed out the case against a man accused of raping an 8- year-old girl in the school where she was a student and he a janitor — as prosecutors admitted that her story had fallen apart.

Francis Evelyn, 58, who had maintained his innocence, sobbed as he left the Brooklyn courthouse.

“He’s been through quite a bit this week,” defense attorney Richard Spivack said.

The girl’s mom told police on Monday that her daughter said she’d been repeatedly assaulted over the last month in a school bathroom.

Evelyn was arrested later on that day after the girl identified him as her attacker. Bail was set at $150,000.

But on Wednesday he was suddenly released without bail, prompting speculation that the case was considered shaky.

Prosecutors said yesterday that during further questioning, they concluded that the child’s account had too many inconsistencies to be credible.

That’s a wire story in the Post (classy!), who should feel at least a little sheepish about running this story. The Daily News coverage is a little more contrite:

After days of falsely being portrayed as a child rapist, a Brooklyn school custodian broke down in tears yesterday as the charges against him were dismissed.

“Just kill me,” a distraught Francis Evelyn, 58, muttered to family members who tried to soothe him as he left Brooklyn Criminal Court.

Evelyn had been led out of Public School 91 in Wingate in handcuffs on Monday and spent two days in jail at Rikers Island after an 8-year-old girl said he had repeatedly molested her in a basement bathroom between Feb. 1 and March 9.

But the Trinidad native knew he was innocent.

“I went through hell,” Evelyn later told Channel 7 news.

He said he would never forget being in jail — his first time ever behind bars, the station reported.

“They were threatening me, and tell me they’re going to take me out, they’re gonna cut my throat,” he said. “It’s their sister, their niece. It was hell.”

Now that a little time has passed*, the Times can finally address the salient fact of that particular story:

She worked at the Red Lobster in Times Square and lived with her husband near Yankee Stadium. Yet one night, returning home from her job, Odine D. discovered that African custom, not American law, held sway over her marriage.

A strange woman was sitting in the living room, and Ms. D.’s husband, a security guard born in Ghana, introduced her as his other wife.

Devastated, Ms. D., a Guinean immigrant who insisted that her last name be withheld, said she protested: “I can’t live with the woman in my house — we have only two bedrooms.” Her husband cited Islamic precepts allowing a man to have up to four wives, and told her to get used to it. And she tried to obey.

Polygamy in America, outlawed in every state but rarely prosecuted, has long been associated with Mormon splinter groups out West, not immigrants in New York. But a fatal fire in a row house in the Bronx on March 7 revealed its presence here, in a world very different from the suburban Utah setting of “Big Love,” the HBO series about polygamists next door.

The city’s mourning for the dead — a woman and nine children in two families from Mali — has been followed by a hushed double take at the domestic arrangements described by relatives: Moussa Magassa, the Mali-born American citizen who owned the house and was the father of five children who perished, had two wives in the home, on different floors. Both survived.

. . .

But the Magassas clearly are not an isolated case. Immigration to New York and other American cities has soared from places where polygamy is lawful and widespread, especially from West African countries like Mali, where demographic surveys show that 43 percent of women are in polygamous marriages.

And the picture that emerges from dozens of interviews with African immigrants, officials and scholars of polygamy is of a clandestine practice that probably involves thousands of New Yorkers.

*It makes you wonder whether someone at early editorial meetings yelled out “Too soon!” as if it were a tastelessly ill-timed 9/11 joke.

Now if I could only remember what I did with my library card:

In what would be a first in the United States, the Brooklyn Public Library hopes to team up with Netflix to deliver DVDs and videos to anyone in the borough with a library card, The Post has learned.

The price would be unbeatable — free.

The disclosure was made by John Vitali, the library’s chief fiscal officer, following an announcement at Brooklyn Borough Hall that Dionne Mack-Harvin had been named executive director of the borough’s library system.

. . .

“What we want to do is work with Netflix and really get that inventory together, really use Netflix as the delivery mechanism,” Vitali said.

“We’re getting some good vibrations back. Nothing formal has been settled. What’s really exciting is — it’s my understanding — really the first of its kind, a model for that kind of corporate partnership.”

Netflix has an inventory of 75,000 movies.

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said he knew nothing about a possible partnership with the library and seemed surprised by the news.

Vitali said that if the partnership works out, the library and the movie-delivery service would develop a separate list. But it would include popular films.

“DVDs are very expensive to buy, and they’re also very expensive to move because they’re delicate,” Vitali said.

“Instead of buying the DVDs, we’d be outsourcing from Netflix to, in effect, create a free inventory of DVDs that would be available to our customers.”

[Emphasis added but let's skip the details, shall we?]

Many many years from now, this is the sort of detail that historians will repeat over and over in their books about Brooklyn:

Hampton Jitney, which has been driving New Yorkers to the East End of Long Island from the Upper East Side since 1974, announced earlier this week that it will pick up passengers from Park Slope and downtown Brooklyn beginning on Memorial Day. The same fleet of forest green coaches that now services the Upper East Side will be used in Brooklyn, a company spokeswoman said.

This disturbs status-conscious Upper West Siders, who long, long ago became parodies of themselves:

As New Yorkers scramble to nail down the last remaining Hamptons summer shares over the next few weeks, many Upper West Side residents who will soon be escaping to the beach say they feel overlooked by Hampton Jitney, which stops only on the Upper East Side and will expand its service to Brooklyn this summer.

“It’s just really surprising that they’d do a route in Brooklyn first,” a psychoanalyst who works on the Upper West Side and sometimes visits friends at their weekend homes in the Hamptons, Judy Bernes, said.

Jacqueline Jankoff, a bubbly, curly-haired Upper West Side resident, stocks up on groceries at Zabar’s every Friday during the summer before catching the 86th Street crosstown bus to Lexington Avenue, where she boards the Jitney and relaxes in the roomy bus on the way to her Amagansett beach house. After 18 years of this weekend routine, Ms. Jankoff says she could make the crosstown trip with her eyes closed, but that doesn’t lighten her grocery load.

“I come here, and then I have to schlep my shopping bags across town on the bus,” Ms. Jankoff said over a sample of goat cheese at Zabar’s. “I love the Jitney, but I wish it came here.”

Now that Moscow is the most expensive city on the planet, I suppose it makes sense to lure more people to the bargain that is the Big Apple:

New York City has become the first American city to have a tourism office in Moscow.

NYC & Company, which runs New York’s tourism industry, commissioned the Aviareps Group to do advertising and public relations work in Moscow. The office will be staffed by three people currently living in Russia.

Another city tourism office opened Tuesday in Stockholm, to serve Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It is all part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to increase the city’s visitor numbers to 50 million by 2015. It is estimated that about 44 million tourists visited New York last year, 46,000 from Russia.

The city’s director of public relations for travel and tourism, Christopher Heywood, said Russians “have a propensity for the luxury goods market — they love the furs and diamonds, and they love the luxury hotels.”

Copenhagen is 8 on the list and Oslo is 10 . . .

A fertilization specialist claims that race is a condition that diminishes over time:

A Park Avenue fertility clinic’s blunder has left a family devastated — after a black baby was born to a Hispanic woman and her white husband, the couple charges in a lawsuit.

The mistake, made during in-vitro conception, wasn’t discovered until Jessica Andrews was born — and it became clear she didn’t look anything like her mom, Nancy, or dad, Thomas, the suit says.

The baby’s complexion was much darker than that of her mom — a light-skinned native of the Dominican Republic — or dad.

“Jessica doesn’t look like them,” said the couple’s attorney Howard Stern, of Long Island.

When Thomas and Nancy Andrews asked their doctor, Manhattan obstetrician Martin Keltz, what was going on, he allegedly told them that Jessica’s condition was an “abnormality,” and assured them she would “get lighter over time,” according to the couple’s suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

But they found out the truth when DNA tests proved that Jessica — born in October 2004 — was not conceived with Thomas’ sperm.

“Three DNA test were taken, and each one excluded the father,” Stern said.

On account of a single tea shop and one lousy chipper Community Board 2 is being pressured into giving the British their own Little:

In an effort to join the city’s pantheon of ethnic neighbourhoods such as Chinatown and Little Brazil, the Campaign for Little Britain — a coalition of Virgin Airways and local businesses such as Tea and Sympathy and A Salt and Battery — announced its plans yesterday to officially rename the area between West 13th Street and Greenwich Avenue “Little Britain” to honour one of America’s closest and politest allies.

“Officially recognising cultural communities throughout the borough has been a constant throughout the decades,” said Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, who with his wife Nicky Perry, owner of Tea and Sympathy, created the campaign more than a year ago. “But despite the number of British residents in New York City, and the large number of travellers between here and the U.K., there is no Little Britain.

. . .

With slogans such as “Sir Michael Bloomberg. Know What We Mean, Bloomie?” and “What’s One More Queen in the Village?” the campaign will rely on a very British sense of humour to make its argument heard.

The initial stages of the plan include an online petition and viral advertising campaign. Then, it’s off to Community Board 2 and, if approved, City Hall.

New federal census figures show that New York has a lot of work to do if it is to fulfill Mayor Bloomberg’s shocking 1 million-more-people figure. City officials are not happy about the disappointing fourth quarter growth:

New federal Census figures assert that New York City’s population grew by a total of 587 people between 2005 and 2006, a number the Bloomberg administration says substantially underestimates the city’s tremendous growth.

Before the numbers were even public — they were slated for release today — the city vowed to contest the figures, claiming that the methods the Census used aren’t the best way to get an accurate count in a city as dynamic as New York.

At stake are tens of millions of dollars in federal and state funding each year, as population in part determines the apportionment of aid for various programs. After the city successfully contested the 2005 figures last October, adding 70,000 to the initial estimate, Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement that an additional $23.1 million for affordable housing would come to the city.

Challenging the Census’s estimates has become something of an annual tradition for the Bloomberg administration, as this will mark the fourth year straight the city has contested the federal numbers as failing to capture thousands of New Yorkers. The Census Bureau put the city’s population in mid-2006 at 8.21 million, up 2.6% from 2000.

Late last year, the city released a report projecting that its population would grow by more than 1 million by 2030, bringing the city’s total population to 9.1 million, with an increase of nearly 400,000 people expected between 2000 and 2010.

Mr. Bloomberg routinely cites the figures as justification for various large projects and infrastructure improvements, as the city needs to make room for an extra million people.

You can’t really cut corners when it comes to keeping Kosher:

A handmade matzo factory in Brooklyn is facing questions over whether some of the ritual flatbread it produced is kosher enough for observant Jews to use at Passover seders. At issue is whether a former employee at Lubavitch Matzo Bakery, which each week produces thousands of pounds of round “shmura” matzo, is Jewish.

According to some rabbis, matzo used during Passover seders must be made by Jews who utter a Hebrew phrase before rolling each batch of dough. Matzo consumed at other times during the eight-day holiday need not be mixed, kneaded, rolled, or baked by Jews, according to those rabbis.

Last week, a court of Jewish law, the Beth Din of Crown Heights, ruled that while the bakery’s matzo is kosher for Passover, some religious Jews should consider purchasing seder matzo elsewhere or from batches baked after the woman was laid off. Passover begins at sundown on Monday, April 2.

An inquiry into the woman’s religious background is ongoing, said Yitzchok Tenenbaum, who has been an owner of the Lubavitch Matzo Bakery for more than 20 years. “We told her that until we find out for sure, we couldn’t have her working here,” he said.

. . .

The employee at the center of the controversy, a Minsk native, was hired in October, when the bakery begins preparing Passover matzos. Her employment was terminated about two weeks ago. “From the information we have, it seems like she’s Jewish, but we still don’t feel 100% comfortable saying for sure,” Rabbi Zalman Osdoba, rabbinical coordinator of Crown Heights Kosher certification, said.

Rabbi Osdoba said he has fielded dozens of calls from people looking to clarify the kosher-for-Passover status of the matzos. “Rumors have been flying,” he said. “We’ve had many phone calls from people who are worried. We asked people not to panic, and that a letter of clarification would come out.”

Given Brooklyn Brewery’s past labor strife, is its new bottle-conditioned “Local 1″ beer kind of like a big inside joke? Either way, it sounds like it will be good:

Brooklyn Brewery introduced their newest beer — Local 1 — last week at a breakout party at Rockefeller Center.

Their new beer is the first 100 percent bottled-conditioned Belgian inspired ale, crafted by Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garret Oliver. Oliver, a well known “beer connoisseur,” is very excited about his new beer, and gave reasons the new Local 1 is a classier and more distinguished beer than other brews.

“What people don’t realize is that aroma makes up 75 percent of a beer’s taste,” expalined Oliver. “I like to think that Local 1 is Belgian-inspired, but also very Brooklyn in spirit.”

Local 1 is Brooklyn Brewery’s 13th beer, and the public should be able to get their first taste within the next year.

Location Scout: Brooklyn Brewery.

Time was, Columbia University owned massive amounts of Manhattan real estate, including multiple parcels in Lower Manhattan and the land on which that humble little development known as “Rockefeller Center” now sits. Today, the university club is forced to share facilities with — oh, the indignity! — Princeton:

The Columbia University Club of New York, consisting of roughly 2,000 members and open to all current students, faculty, and alumni, shares a building with the Princeton Club at 15 West 43rd St., while Harvard, Cornell, and Yale own buildings of their own nearby.

“We do not have our own clubhouse and the sense of identity that comes with a clubhouse,” said Young Alumni board member Michael Foss.

Walking past the Princeton-orange, rugged entryway, one walks into the Tiger-covered walls of a bar and grill decorated with Princeton paraphernalia, including napkins, cups, and accordingly attired waiters, leading to questions about what claim Columbia has to the building.

Tracy Chung, CC ‘08 and a student council presidential candidate of the REBEL CC party, said: “This is our city, and it’s ridiculous to share a clubhouse with Princeton. We need to establish Columbia’s identity outside of the immediate campus, and this needs to be a main concern.”

“We are anxious to increase the membership,” said Foss. “We believe that our strongest growth will come from recent graduates, but the club pursues and has new members join monthly, of all ages and schools.”

But the Princeton presence creates potential difficulties for recruiting new members. “The reason for sharing the address is mainly financial,” said John Celock, a member of the Board of Governors, a committee that runs the club.

Chung said that financial reasons shouldn’t force the club into its present situation. “In light of the capital campaign and a $4 billion budget, why is it that we can’t afford our own clubhouse?” Chung asked. “The intellectual environment that Columbia students spend years fostering during their studies deserves a rightful place outside of campus after graduation.” She later added: “Columbia pride! We need to make our clubhouse a priority.”

No doubt, that mighty intellectual environment deserves its own building:

With such speakers as the executive producer of Brokeback Mountain, the Teachers College admissions director, a former contestant on CBS’ Amazing Race, and University President Lee Bollinger, the club is host to many events open to members.

Emphasis added (snark factor: 7).

Those of you who think NYU students are still upset about being waitlisted at Harvard are just dead wrong:

In the 5,000-plud-word March 4 [New York Times Magazine "Campus Exposure"] feature, Harvard’s H Bomb magazine was one of a selection of sexualized, student-generated “literary” publications spotlighted as “a fact of campus life.” If you haven’t heard, H Bomb is a self-proclaimed “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues” founded by Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy (who, by their powers on the Scrabble board combined, are Captain Planet!), and is for all intents and purposes pornography meets The New Yorker in a way Tom Wolfe could only dream of. The pair are out to rebel against those Puritanical attitudes in Cambridge in exchange for the dawning of the age of Aquarius, or something like that, and they are doing it with the $2,000 rubber-stamped approval of Harvard’s undergraduate student government.

Yet the point concerning the relatively unsexy nature of the reputation of Harvard students still stands. Sexy Harvard? It’s not just politically untenable. It’s not apropos at all.

. . .

Well, the pictures (sorry, “artwork”) aren’t anything a Tischie photographer couldn’t do in the midst of a serious drug trip. Or sober. Depending on the guy. You know what I mean.

OK, so neither groundbreaking nor tasteful. Amusing, at least? How about the writing?

The fine fountain pens of the H Bomb contributors have produced pieces that ponder the big issues in life (”How could anyone continue to use such [free] shitty condoms [from the on-campus counseling service] on a regular basis?”), teaching valuable life lessons that The Learning Channel can’t shake a stick at (”They say sex is a kind of power, and that if you know how to use it, it can make you stronger.”) and waxing poetic (”I carved a snail. I ate like a sinner”).

Let me ask you this — what’s “eating like a sinner”? Devouring a half-gallon of Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream in 20 minutes, or haphazardly munching unborn children while watching The O’Reilly Factor? Either way, it’s not very sexy.

So let’s get it straight: H Bomb ain’t nothin’ but a big bag o’ tame lame expectorated by a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who come to Manhattan on the weekends to get their Manolo Blahniks.

Staten Island further solidifies its position as the most suburban of the five boroughs:

Teen-agers on Staten Island are abusing alcohol and drugs at a rate substantially higher than their peers in the other boroughs, according to a city Health Department study released yesterday.

In 2005, some 24 percent of Island high school students reported binge drinking, defined as five or more alcoholic drinks on a given occasion, compared with about 14 percent of city teens in general.

While the city’s rate of teen binge-drinking dropped from almost 16 percent in 2003, the Island’s rate stayed flat in the same time span. And Island teens were more likely to smoke marijuana and use cocaine in both 2003 and 2005 than were their other-borough peers.

“The drug use is crazy out here,” said A. K., a 19-year-old from Mariners Harbor who moved to the Island from Brooklyn 12 years ago. “I see more drug dealing and drug use here than in Brooklyn,” he said yesterday, adding that he began selling drugs and smoking pot after arriving in this borough.

. . .

Several young adults blamed the lack of activities for the borough’s high levels of drug and alcohol use.

“There was never anything to do on Staten Island,” said Gary DiBenedetto, 20, of Great Kills. Boredom, he said, led him and his friends to hang out on corners, smoking marijuana and eventually using cocaine.

. . .

John Coleman, [Camelot Counseling Center's] director of operations, said it’s difficult for young Islanders to get jobs, adding that they face a dearth of constructive, after-hours activities. He also urged the courts to be tougher on youths who abuse substances.

“Boredom is a devil’s playground,” he said. And Island teens “really don’t have much to do.”

So this is what American democracy has come to — alliteration and a single obfuscating vowel:

Were Todd Tabacco to capture the South Shore Assembly seat in the March 27 special election, the 26-year-old hopeful (with the emphasis on hopeful) would be the first write-in candidate in Assembly history to secure a victory.

No matter. The young candidate, sitting in his makeshift campaign headquarters in Eltingville, curled his puppy-dog eyebrows upward last night and said:

“I think I’ve got a good shot.”

Tabacco, who is not related to the Republican nominee, Lou Tobacco, is likely to bring added confusion to any Islander who ever stumbled over the Molinaro/Molinari distinction in local politics. T-A-bacco, who highlights the “A” on all his signage, believes he and Tobacco both could benefit from the name recognition they each are garnering on the campaign trail.

Opponents have suggested the “O” Tobacco could be ineligible to run because he spent part of last year living and working in Arizona — but that aside, Tobacco has the advantages of the Republican nod and a week’s head start in the campaign. Still, Tabacco says he is mobilized for a fast and effective surge.

The Annadale resident and Eltingville native, a registered Republican and a graduate of Monsignor Farrell High School and Villanova University, announced his candidacy on Sunday, a week after he decided to run.

“The light bulb turned on: The opportunity was there and I felt if I didn’t run, I’d regret it,” said Tabacco. “Republicans in this area continue to win, but no real change happens. … [I take a similar stance on the issues, but] I wanted to be the candidate who would bring change.”

. . .

In the space of a week, Tabacco has put together the Web site, enlisted at least 50 volunteers, distributed signs and fliers, phoned and greeted potential constituents, and created headquarters next to DeMonte’s Richmond Avenue pork shop — computers predominate where two days ago a deli slicer and a cheese grater sat at the ready. Using cell phones and Myspace.com to network, he has also in that time started a campaign that is geared especially toward a younger generation of voters — a group often cited for political apathy.

“Our generation wants to be interested, but feel left out of the political process,” said Tabacco. “I want to get them to vote for me and to feel like they can make a difference.”

When you put it this way, would an unmitigated real estate collapse really be so bad? I’m not kidding:

In the past decade, the price of the average Manhattan apartment has surged by nearly $1 million, a threefold increase to $1.3 million, a new report says.

The report, an analysis of Manhattan apartment sales by Miller Samuel, an appraisal company, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm, illustrates the seemingly endless increase in housing prices over the past 10 years, especially between 2000 and 2005. Despite the financial slowdown after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and a national cooling of the housing market, Manhattan has attained levels that may have been considered unfathomable 10 years ago.

“Three-hundred dollars a foot 10 years ago was the number — that was the Manhattan number,” an author of the report, Jonathan Miller, said. In 2006, the average price per square foot of a condo or a co-op was $1,031 — the first time the price had reached that high, and a 214% increase over 1997.

Both the average and median sales prices have increased by more than 200%, with the average Manhattan apartment selling for $1.3 million last year, compared with $431,000 10 years ago.

What if instead of engaging in tragedy carpetbagging Al Sharpton held press conferences decrying douchebag cops who take advantage of their position in order to flood vulnerable communities with pounds and pounds of cocaine? I know, I know — not pathetic enough:

A crooked cop pleaded guilty yesterday to chauffeuring his bad-news brother on cocaine deliveries and picking up dirty cash for a Bronx drug ring — all while brazenly toting his NYPD-issued gun along for protection.

Disgraced former Manhattan Transit Officer José Torrado, 31, admitted in Manhattan federal court that he drove his brother, Edwin, on drug deliveries and picked up the drug money between 2002 and 2005.

He quietly hammered out a plea deal with prosecutors last month.

Torrado’s role in the illicit operation surfaced after his brother and four other ring members were busted in September 2005, when authorities seized 135 kilograms of cocaine — worth about $4 million on the street — that had been stashed behind a false wall of a truck in The Bronx.

Torrado was a transit cop for five years before he was forced out last November.