Lady, I hope you’re not wondering why you’re still single:

Debra Keneally is conducting an experiment that may make you pause before you buy your next bottle of water or cup of coffee. For two weeks, the 37-year-old Brooklynite is carrying around the trash she accumulates.

“It’s definitely getting in the way a little bit,” Keneally said yesterday, in her office at Frog Design Inc. where she’s a program manager.

She was on Day 5 and already had to switch to a larger bag to hold her discarded mail and catalogs, her plastic tomato and berry containers, clanking beer bottles, old shoe insoles, a box for new sneakers and more.

She is trying to be unobtrusive on the subway, putting the bag between her feet.

“I took the bag to Midsummer Night’s Swing at Lincoln Center, but then I left because it was too hot,” she said. “I took it on a date to Central Park.”

Keneally is following the rules of a project called “Trash Talk,” started in May by a woman in Austin, Texas, who works for the same global design consult. Another Frog Design employee in Seattle and one in Shanghai did the two-week garbage hauling stint before Keneally picked up her bag.

If you want to make money selling crap on eBay, hawk comic books, baseball tickets or even your wife’s Lladro, but whatever you do, please try to avoid trafficking in hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals:

Fears of home-grown terrorism shuddered through a large section of Staten Island last night when local and federal authorities uncovered about 3,000 pounds of potentially explosive chemicals stored in a Graniteville home and nearby storage facility.

Potassium nitrate, sulfur, mercury and peroxide were among the 21 different types of chemicals discovered during a raid of 199 Ada Drive, police said. Quantities ranged from 5 to 215 pounds, according to one law enforcement official speaking on the condition on anonymity.

The disturbing discovery led to the evacuation of more than 200 residents from 56 homes on Ada Drive, which is off Richmond Avenue bordering Baron Hirsch Cemetery.

At the nearby Public Storage Facility at 1107 Goethals Road North in Mariners Harbor, cops found 2,500 pounds of potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder. The chemical, also known as saltpeter, is commercially used as fertilizer, cleaning solvent for septic tanks and meat preservative.

Investigators say Miguel Serrano, 57, the homeowner of 199 Ada Dr. who also was renting the storage space, had purchased the chemicals in bulk and was reselling them for a profit on the Internet.

It is believed that Serrano was also using some of the chemicals, including mercury and peroxide, to clean his pool.

He was charged with reckless endangerment; other charges are pending, police said.

“He was an unlicensed chemical salesman,” said one cop source with knowledge of the investigation. “He has no conscience. Who knows who he was selling to on the Internet?”

Becoming a U.S. Open ball person requires agility, speed, focus and most of all, a belief in oneself:

Making it to Center Court at the U.S. Open requires speed, agility, determination, and focus — that’s true for the likes of such top seeds as Andy Roddick and Venus Williams, and just as much so for the ball boys and ball girls who snatch out-of-play balls off the court.

At least, that’s what I learned yesterday when I tried out to be one at the 2007 U.S. Open.

I was number 263 of nearly 400 candidates vying for 75 rookie slots at this year’s Open. In two weeks, the outstanding among us would be invited back for a callback tryout and an interview. Some will go on to work during the Open’s qualifying rounds, and a select few would make it to the final draws.

. . .

I asked a girl standing next to me, Aishwerya Sharma, 12, how she felt. She said “confident.”

“I hope she will make it,” her mother, Hem Lata, told me. “She’s tall enough and mature.”

(By the way, is everyone planning on doing a first-person story about trying out this week?)

See also: U.S. Open at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

You visit Staten Island for the love*, not just to avoid the Lincoln Tunnel:

They are walking 100 miles — from the Chinese consulate in Manhattan to the birthplace of American freedom in Philadelphia — to raise awareness and gain support for the movement to free Tibet from Chinese rule.

Yesterday, 26 members of the International Tibet Independence Movement walked through Staten Island with signs, T-shirts and Tibetan flags, as part of the “March for Tibet’s Independence.”

Jigme Norbu of Bloomington, Ind., noted the importance of the Independence Day arrival in The City of Brotherly Love as he walked on Hylan Boulevard through New Dorp yesterday. “When we arrive on July 4, it will be very symbolic,” he said.

The group hopes it can rally support to urge the Chinese government to grant Tibet its independence so one day it can celebrate its own day of freedom.

. . .

Upon beginning the march Wednesday, the group delivered a letter to the Chinese consulate urging the nation’s government to grant independence to Tibet, Southern Mongolia and Eastern Turkistan. “We’re trying to let the government in Beijing know they need to end the illegal occupation of Tibet,” said [International Tibet Independence Movement president Larry] Gerstein.

Gerstein is driving the support van, which will pick up the walkers at the end of each day and drive them to a church where they will spend the night, then next morning, return them to the spot where they ended their walk the previous day. They will be driven over bridges, such as the Outerbridge Crossing, that do not allow pedestrian access.

*Don’t forget to visit the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on your way to the bridge!

If he’s done nothing else in office, Bloomberg has mastered the New York City Mayor-ism “Come on, it’s not so bad!” (Giuliani was good at it, too; done properly, the brushoff’s cadence drops down at “on” and crescendoes on the upside again with an annoyed, almost whiny “bad”). This after we find out that he goes to work around 7 a.m., long before anyone else is on the train:

Two days after transit officials announced that some subway lines are operating beyond 100 percent of capacity at peak hours, Mayor Bloomberg questioned the figures and said his own commute isn’t “that crowded.”

“I take the Lex line most days and it’s not that crowded,” the MetroCard-carrying mayor told several hundred people at a Crain’s New York Business breakfast forum in Midtown.

“So you stand next to people. Get real. This is New York. What’s wrong with that?” added Bloomberg.

Two of the lines that the mayor uses to get from his townhouse on East 79th Street to City Hall, the Nos. 4 and 6, were listed at 103 percent of capacity. The third line, the No. 5, came in at 102 percent.

That makes them the most packed in the system, along with the L line.

. . .

Aides said the mayor usually hops on the subway between 7 and 7:30 a.m. That might explain why he doesn’t experience the most intense crowding conditions. Transit surveys show that the passenger load is at its heaviest between 8 and 9 a.m.

A study from 2002 provided by the Straphangers Campaign found 19,348 passengers were carried from 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, one of the stops the mayor sometimes uses, between 7 and 8 a.m. The number swelled to 28,479 between 8 and 9 a.m.

(Actually they’re missing the best part of the Crain’s breakfast, which came when Hizzoner suggested — and didn’t sound like he was joking either — that Robert Caro should write his next great tome about Daniel Doctoroff . . . what masterbuilders these guys are!)

But really, how did you guys find so many quotes in just over half an hour?:

It lasted less than an hour, but a power failure that left big sections of the Upper East Side and the Bronx without electricity yesterday afternoon stirred fears that there may be more dark days ahead this summer for Con Edison and its customers.

The lights flickered and went out shortly before 4 p.m., halting service on several subway lines and reviving memories of the regionwide blackout of August 2003 and the power failure last year that left a large swath of Queens without current for more than a week. With hours of daylight left, some residents rushed out to stock up on candles, water and other emergency supplies.

. . .

At the Family Market on Lexington Avenue near 85th Street, the owners were breaking out an emergency supply of water jugs they kept in the basement. One of the owners, Cindy H. Woo, 48, said that she and her husband were worried that looters might come into the streets if the lights stayed out into the night.

She said that she was not looking forward to a summer that she said could include many more blackouts. “Of course, I was upset,” she said. “It’s not just one time. It’s many.”

A customer in the store, Kariyma Quashie, 21, said that she was unable to go to Brooklyn to pick up her 10-month-old daughter from day care because the trains were not running. She blamed Con Ed.

“They should have learned from the last time this happened,” she said. “They should have had a back-up or something. To be out for an hour!”

OK, now you’re getting greedy:

With the threat of a fare hike looming, a free subway system might seem like a distant fantasy for New York City straphangers.

Some dreamers, however, are pushing to turn the concept into a reality that they say could stimulate the city’s economy and provide an incentive for more motorists to switch to mass transit.

Charging motorists $16 to drive into most of Manhattan at all times — double the amount Mayor Bloomberg has proposed in his congestion pricing plan — and levying $16 tolls on all bridge and tunnel crossings could bring in $3.1 billion annually to subsidize a free mass transit system, the early results of a $100,000 study by a nonprofit group, the Institute for Rational Mobility, show. The MTA currently takes in about $1.96 billion in fares from the subway and buses, the study says, and it could save an estimated $360 million a year that it spends collecting those fares.

“It’s a Platonic ideal,” the chief attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, said.

Then again, it is of course a front-row ticket to the best show on earth:

Cheryl Walter is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master’s degree in forensic psychology, but yesterday, as she addressed the city’s newest class of police officers as their valedictorian, she realized a lifelong dream: becoming a police officer.

“It’s certainly hard to live on the salary,” Officer Walter said, adding, “Things are a little tight.”

Oh my god, that first drop is a doozy:

Two octogenarian thrill-seekers rode the famed Coney Island roller coaster yesterday as part of its 80th birthday celebration.

“It’s the masterpiece of all wooden coasters. You can’t tell what it’s like by looking at it. You have to ride it,” said an elated Ed Murman, 81, of Smithtown, L.I.

Murman hadn’t been on the Cyclone since he was 13, before America entered World War II.

“On this coaster, you get some airtime. It feels like it’s throwing you out,” said Murman, who has braved the twists and turns of about 500 other coasters as a member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts team.

Louis Picariello, 81, of Bellingham, Mass., was so flustered by the Cyclone yesterday that he grappled for the words to describe how he felt.

“I don’t know what I am saying I am so excited,” he gushed before pumping his fists in the air, demanding another ride.

Murman and Picariello were both stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, but they didn’t meet until they joined the roller coaster enthusiasts group.

They each took several rides on the Cyclone yesterday, escorted by Miss Cyclone 2007, Angie Pontani.

Sy Weisberg, 80, of Brooklyn, was also scheduled to ride the coaster yesterday, but his doctor advised him against going on the 110-second ride, which has replicas all over the world.

Still, Weisberg didn’t miss the opportunity to go to Coney Island, where he flirted and danced with shapely stilt walkers as the Sugar Tone Brass Band played big band tunes. “I’m not throwing in the chips yet,” he said.

(Nothing against Miss Subways, but Angie Pontani is kind of sexier. That said, I still don’t think I’d feel comfortable with putting her next to my grandfather on the first car of the Cyclone.)

Location Scout: The Cyclone.

The only thing worse than professional competitive eaters (and try explaining that concept to people in somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, Sub-Saharan Africa) are the walk-ons:

Professional eaters Arturo Rios “Grande” Jr. and Allen “The Shredder” Goldstein scarfed more than two dozen soggy hot dogs apiece yesterday, earning them a spot in next week’s Coney Island showdown.

Rios, 30, of Long Branch, N.J., edged Goldstein, 43, of Plainview, N.Y., by eating 27.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes, a personal all-time best for the divorced father of three who nearly lost his free lunch at the end of the contest at the Manhattan Mall’s food court.

“It’s like any sport, when you try to go that extra mile, try to do that little extra bit, it takes a lot,” Rios said. “And it’s more than physical ability. It’s mental.”

Rios trailed Goldstein — who finished with 26 downed dogs — for most of the match. Both men, who were the only professional eaters in yesterday’s lineup, doused their dogs and buns in liquid (water for Goldstein, fruit punch for Rios) before ramming them down their throats. Watery bits of buns stuck on their faces, and by the final bell, Rios and Goldstein were hovering near a trash can.

“I got it all in and then I had to cough,” Rios said of the final seconds. “My daughter got me sick a few days ago.”

Rios claimed to hold the record for pig feet at 6.6 pounds in 10 minutes.

. . .

The contest had been billed as a chance for an “ordinary eater” or civil servant to join next week’s ultra-competitive field.

City correction officer Edward Ritchie, 30, finished third with 9.5 dogs. Other entrants included Dept. of Homeland Security employee John Sclafani, 34th Street vendor David Brokenbaugh and Loyola College student Donny Lind.

See, this is what you get when you float a possible run for higher office:

Before he was elected mayor in 2001, Michael R. Bloomberg had surgery to have two stents implanted in a coronary artery because of blockage in his heart, a person with knowledge of Mr. Bloomberg’s health said last night.

Mayor Bloomberg has not had heart disease since the stents were put in, according to this person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Mr. Bloomberg had not authorized release of the information. The mayor is in excellent health today, this person said.

Newsweek magazine first reported the implants this week. The person with knowledge of the mayor’s health said the procedure took place in 2000 after Mr. Bloomberg complained of discomfort and tiredness. NY1 News also reported last night that Mr. Bloomberg was advised by a doctor to undergo the procedure and that he recovered quickly.

A spokesman for the mayor, Stu Loeser, declined to comment on the stents or on Mr. Bloomberg’s health last night.

The health of the mayor, 65, as well as other facets of his personal and professional life, have come under new scrutiny in the last week since he spurred intense speculation about his possible presidential ambitions by changing his party registration from Republican to independent.

Crazy to think that today’s vandals are only dimly aware of Sept. 11:

Borough President James P. Molinaro yesterday said that another plaque at the Staten Island World Trade Center memorial was damaged during a recent incident.

In light of the vandalism, Molinaro said he would ask the city to install video surveillance cameras near the St. George memorial.

Initial reports said part of a granite plaque devoted to Jason Christopher DeFazio, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee from Sunnyside, was shattered and its pieces scattered on the rocky shoreline near the memorial. The pieces were later recovered.

Yesterday, Molinaro said the plaque adjacent to DeFazio’s, belonging to Firefighter Jeffrey James Olsen of Great Kills, is missing its silhouette-style profile.

Authorities didn’t initially notice the vandalism to Olsen’s plaque because the layout of the 9/11 “Postcards” memorial can make it difficult to match victims’ profiles with their corresponding nameplates, the borough president said.

“It’s an easy mistake to make,” Molinaro added.

The part of the plaque containing Olsen’s name was not damaged.

Olsen’s mother, Carol Olsen, said the vandalism was “awful,” noting, “Many families rely on that memorial.”

She said her family wanted nothing to do with the memorial planned for Manhattan because it’s “too controversial.” Said Mrs. Olsen of the St. George site, “This is where we come.”

Officials believe that all the vandalism occurred sometime last weekend.

And by the way, how many other surveillance cameras around the city are only decoys?

Molinaro said two surveillance cameras mounted on light poles near the memorial are actually decoys. He said he’d never requested working cameras be installed at the memorial because “I was naive enough to think that people wouldn’t damage it.”

He also didn’t want to potentially invade the privacy of grieving family members by having them videotaped.

“Now I see we’re at a different level,” said Molinaro. “It’s necessary that you do it.”

Location Scout: Postcards Memorial.

An intellectual property suit filed by the owners of Pearl Oyster Bar will test the boundaries of how much you can rip off and then try to accuse others of having ripped off:

Sometimes, Rebecca Charles wishes she were a little less influential.

She was, she asserts, the first chef in New York who took lobster rolls, fried clams and other sturdy utility players of New England seafood cookery and lifted them to all-star status on her menu. Since opening Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village 10 years ago, she has ruefully watched the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers “knockoffs” of her own.

Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo and her sous-chef at Pearl for six years.

The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed’s Lobster Bar copies “each and every element” of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.

God bless Caesar Cardini. But of course it’s not just about the Caesar:

Ms. Charles’s investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for about $120,000 — a cost that in today’s market qualifies as an early-bird special.

She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.

“My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my family,” she said. “That restaurant is me.”

White marble bars — OK, everyone has that — but I totally own the Maine seascape!

All I know is that it’s taken far too long for O.J.’s “If I Did It . . .” conceit to catch on in popular culture:

Street artists have speculated for months about the identity of a mysterious figure who has become known as “the Splasher” because he or she hurled colorful blobs of paint at prominent pieces of art on exterior walls in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan.

The only clues left behind in the paint assaults were bold manifestoes — phrases like “destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere” — that appeared to critique the commercialization of art.

Now it appears that there may be more than one Splasher, and those claiming responsibility for the attacks have offered additional information about themselves.

One hint came Saturday night, when several people showed up at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea during a reception for the artist Shepard Fairey, who is known for his stenciled images of the wrestler Andre the Giant. They distributed a 16-page newsprint tabloid with the title, “If We Did It, This Is How It Would’ve Happened.” The cover was illustrated by a photograph of a piece of art by Mr. Fairey that had been splattered by paint.

In an interview with Metro New York, competitive eating expert and Horsemen of the Esophagus author Jason Fagone guesses that Kobayashi’s jaw arthritis is probably for real though he does seem to suggest while answering a question about the potential for other repetitive injuries through competitive eating that deep down, spectators have a perverse sort of White Bronco infatuation with the sport:

I’m waiting for Joey Chestnut to erupt. I’m waiting for the first stomach rupture. It probably won’t happen with one of the top eaters, because they’ve brought their capacity up so gradually. It certainly can happen with an eater who is doing it for the first time or second time or third time and just overdoes it.

After earlier sounding an alarm about how they would handle all the additional commuters MTA president admits that it actually wouldn’t be that big of a deal after all:

Amid all the bad news, the president of NYC Transit feared an underlying message had been lost about the benefits of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed congestion pricing plan.

During rush hours, the busiest train lines — including the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and E — are running at or over capacity. Yet Roberts insisted the system could still “fully support” the increased ridership projected from congestion pricing. “In fact the current strain on parts of the system is a big argument in favor of congestion pricing, not against it,” he said.

Roberts believes the business-day toll could pay for subway improvements and for such big-ticket projects as the first leg of the Second Avenue Subway, which is already $1 billion short.

On Monday, Roberts proposed quick “fixes,” including adding more cars to trains and extending station platforms. But these remedies would take “four or five” years. More importantly, they all require money the MTA doesn’t have.

“Congestion pricing is critical to putting these fixes into place,” Roberts said yesterday.

The city’s Department of Transportation estimates congestion pricing would dissuade 94,000 current drivers over an entire day, but believes only 7,000 of them will shift to subways and buses at the peak morning rush between 8 and 9 a.m. “Other drivers presumably come from areas where it is more convenient to use commuter rail,” said DOT spokesperson Molly Gordy.

If half of that 7,000 end up in the subway, they would add just 1 percent to the current morning peak-hour load of 345,000 riders. Roberts noted they would also be spread across the subway’s 22 lines.

“This is a minimal bump that the system can unequivocally absorb,” he said.

But doesn’t that also actually kind of undercut one of the main reasons to support congestion pricing — that so many more people will use public transportation?

And what’s more, has everyone simply taken at face value the notion that there will be an increase of one million new people in New York City in just over twenty years? (Questions to ask include but are not limited to: Really? Who are these people? Where will they come from? Will New York somehow magically get more affordable? Will Manhattan turn from a neighborhood of pied-a-terres to a solid middle-class enclave of families exceeding replacement levels? Will there be some massive new industry that will move here?) Or I guess it’s to everyone’s benefit to just assume there will be that many people here:

NYC Transit President Howard Roberts has expressed concern about how the system will handle expected population growth of 1 million people by 2030. Some lines, including the Nos. 2, 3 and 4, already are grossly overcrowded and operating at or above capacity.

“We’ve got to begin to look at how we get to comfortable rides, comfortable capacities, for people in that time period . . . given how long it takes for capital projects to get done, we don’t have a lot of time to do it,” Roberts said yesterday.

The strain on the system is a “big argument” for congestion pricing, Roberts said. The city’s pricing plan would generate billions of dollars to fund mass transit projects by charging drivers to enter Manhattan below 86th St.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign agreed.

“The choice is clear: We either act now to handle the coming million . . . . or drown in the crush,” Russianoff said. “Congestion pricing is the answer.”

If you ever wondered how low-rent businesses like diners survive in high-rent Madison Avenue locations, the answer is they don’t*:

Powerbrokers who make big deals at a little diner on the upper East Side may soon have to go elsewhere — if rising rents strike down the Three Guys Restaurant.

The modest-looking, three-decade-old Madison Ave. eatery — where Gov. Spitzer is a regular and $1 trillion business deals have been hashed out over eggs — is facing an upcoming lease renewal that could send the high-end clientele packing.

“Everything must come to an end,” co-owner Spiros Argiros said yesterday. “Nobody hopes for that. We’re on good terms with our [building's] ownership. We hope that when the time comes, we’ll have a good understanding.”

Argiros wouldn’t say when the lease expires or how much it could rise. But with rents skyrocketing along his posh stretch of Madison Ave. between 75th and 76th Sts., the next hike could be a death blow.

“They’re hurting the little guys,” Argiros said. “It’s unfortunate not only for the owners but for the public. Not everything can be high-end.”

Calls to the owners, Friedland Properties, were not returned.

The restaurant — which has two other locations on the upper East Side — was the site of a trillion-dollar merger between Merrill Lynch’s asset-management business and one-time rival BlackRock. The list of regulars reads like a who’s who of New York.

*Unless you leak the story to the Daily News in advance of negotiations and let public opinion take over.

Is it a case of “jaw arthritis” or is it because he’s scared? Yeah, right — jaw arthritis is for old people:

Could the reign of hot-dog eating dominance be near an end for Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi?

The Japanese competitive eating phenom — and six-time winner of the annual Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest on Coney Island — is listed as “day-to-day” due to jaw pain just a week before the July 4 competition, officials said yesterday.

But Kobayashi, who narrowly defeated American Joey Chestnut last year to win the Mustard Belt for the sixth consecutive year, still plans to compete at Coney Island and in the Pizza Hut P’Zone Challenge July 10 in Manhattan.

According to Kobayashi’s blog, jaw arthritis has hampered the perennial eating champion so badly that he can only open his mouth wide enough to fit one finger without pain. Nevertheless, Kobayashi said he intends to defend his title and “be the pride” of his mother, who passed away in March.

Earlier this month, Chestnut, 22, of San Jose, Calif., broke Kobayashi’s world record by eating 59.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes at the Southwest Regional Hot Dog Eating Championship in Arizona. He won a year’s supply of hot dogs, a trip to New York and a $250 gift card. Kobayashi’s previous best was 53.75 hot dogs during the 2006 Coney Island contest.

Were it not for all this talk of his possible run for president, he might just be another impotent lame duck mayor no one paid attention to — one whose only power lay in encouraging people to save electricity:

He has a degree in electrical engineering, but even Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday he was surprised to learn that portable chargers draw electricity when they’re plugged in and not in use.

“I always assumed that chargers for my BlackBerry, which I had plugged in at one end and there’s no BlackBerry [attached], wasn’t using any electricity,” the mayor said. “I was wrong.”

So the mayor recommended that New Yorkers unplug appliances and charging devices whenever practical, one of 10 suggestions that will be part of a multimillion-dollar multimedia campaign to create more environmental awareness in the city through small steps.

The MTA reveals* what you already knew — rush hour subway trains are packed beyond capacity. But you may not have known what constitutes “capacity”:

Crowding is so bad that on the 4, 5, 6 and L lines, trains during the morning rush exceed the transit agency’s loading guidelines, which posit that every rider should have at least a three-square-foot space to stand in (that translates to a square patch of car floor 20 inches on each side).

*Revealing it why? Maybe as a favor to their allies in Albany who seem to be against the city’s end-run congestion-pricing fundraising ideas? It’s not that far fetched:

[New York City Transit president Howard H.] Roberts said the data had particular significance in light of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal for a congestion pricing system that would charge most drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street — with the intent of moving people out of their cars and onto mass transit.

Mr. Roberts said that on many subway lines, especially the heavily used numbered lines, there is little or no room to accommodate more riders.

“It’s bad news,” Mr. Roberts said. “There’s no room at the inn.”

Kevin Sheekey should take heart in the numbers and the unqualified support in the highest reaches of the 10021 zip code for Hizzoner’s bid for higher office:

While nobody outright endorsed Mr. Bloomberg, the enthusiasm from the city’s heavy hitters offers an indication of just how seriously the mayor would be taken if he ran. Mr. Bloomberg is still insisting he is not running, but his decision to drop his Republican Party affiliation last week is being interpreted as a precursor to an independent bid.

Yesterday, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found Mr. Bloomberg would garner 17% of the vote in a matchup against Senator Clinton, who would get 41%, and Mayor Giuliani, who would get 38%.

The president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, a former New York Times correspondent, praised Mr. Bloomberg, saying the mayor has shown that he “masters issues” and adding that “he is at least as qualified as the hordes in the ring now.”

“None of them would do a better job,” Mr. Gelb told The New York Sun. “In terms of qualifications for the job, they don’t overmatch him at all.”

And if that’s not a resounding plug for the man — “I don’t see anyone better” — there’s the tried and true “tolerant parent” line, the likes of which you may remember from winter break of your sophomore year:

[Senior chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, Pete] Peterson, the chairman of the board at the Council on Foreign Relations and the president of Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that promotes fiscal responsibility, said, “I think Mike Bloomberg would do a great job at virtually anything he decided to do, including being president of the United States.”

Michael Bloomberg’s not-yet-ready-for-prime-time campaign sews up the all-important Jack McCoy endorsement:

“Law & Order” star Sam Waterston praised a possible White House run by Mayor Bloomberg — but had little to say about co-star Fred Thompson’s presidential aspirations.

Bloomberg is “a very competent, very able, very successful mayor,” said Waterston, said plays ADA Jack McCoy.

Waterston is lobbying for the formation of a bipartisan ticket for the 2008 presidential race. By bolting the GOP last week, Bloomberg stirred speculation that he’s angling to hook up with a Democrat or Republican in an independent White House bid.

“Certainly, Bloomberg is a very likely one,” Waterston said of a “Unity ‘08″ ticket on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday.

Asked about Thompson, Waterston said he had no inside information but thinks the actor will jump in the race soon. A Tennessee TV station reported yesterday that Thompson’s campaign will announce the opening of a Nashville headquarters this week.

And if you were wondering just how irrelevant “Face the Nation” has become, look no further than Ed Koch:

Also appearing on CBS with Waterston yesterday was former Mayor Ed Koch, who said he supports Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and believes she will capture the White House.

But he would consider switching his allegiance to Bloomberg, he said.

“I will choose at the time of choice that person who will be best for the country, irrespective of party,” Koch said.

And this better not be like the drugs-support-terrorism scare tactic because David Chase isn’t buying it:

Looks like this “Beast” won’t be unleashed in Annadale this Fourth of July.

Police chasing after a man who launched fireworks off Woods of Arden Road late Saturday night say they ended up finding a pyrotechnics treasure trove inside the Lenzie Street garage of a reputed mobster.

The stash, which cops estimate at $8,000, looks like it could have come from the shelves of a toy store — dozens of brightly-colored boxes with names like “The Beast Unleashed,” “Fire King Returns,” “New Yorker,” “Midnight Monsoon,” “Screamin’ Meemie” and “Pyrotechnic Motherlode,” decorated with demented clowns, blue monsters and a robed wizard.

. . .

According to police, Frank Russo, 26, of the 100-block of Benton Avenue, was lighting “birthday cake” style fireworks at the corner of Woods of Arden Road and Lenzie Street at about 11 p.m. Saturday.

Three officers and a sergeant from the precinct’s Anti-Crime Squad — Officers Shaun Mortman, William Palmer Brian Laffey and Sgt. Andre Teterycz — saw one of the fireworks go off, and gave chase.

Russo ran down Lenzie Street, to the home of a cousin, 37-year-old Frank (Frankie Steel) Pontillo and led the cops right to the stash, according to police.

Russo and Pontillo ran into the house, through an open garage door, and when police showed up, they saw the fireworks boxes inside the garage.

Pontillo, a reputed associate of the Colombo crime family, is still on supervised release after a 1993 murder conspiracy and racketeering conviction, court records show.

Pontillo was part of a five-man hit crew led by John Pate who rented Hasidic costumes as part of an aborted plan to gun down William (Wild Bill) Cutolo as he entered a restaurant in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Police arrested both men and charged them with multiple counts of unlawful dealing with fireworks, and a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon.

If you strike out in Chelsea with inebriated underage suburban girls you can always troll Moe’s in Fort Greene for inebriated 30-something schoolteachers:

Just after 4:30 p.m. on a sunny Friday, Matt Barnes and his friends were impatiently waiting for someone to let them into Moe’s, a neighborhood bar at Lafayette and Portland Avenues in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Mr. Barnes and his companions, however, were hardly the shiftless types some might associate with afternoon drinking. They are public school teachers, and in late afternoons, especially on Fridays, Moe’s is a place where pedagogues go to party.

“Female teachers are the wildest girls,” said Mr. Barnes, a 35-year-old with a shaved head and thick arms covered with tattoos that surely impress the young delinquents that he teaches at Passages Academy, a public school program that operates in detention centers.

Among those who spend their days at the chalkboard, Moe’s is known as a teacher bar, one of many spots around the city where instructors drink, flirt and gossip about their students after school lets out.

Veronica York, a bartender at Moe’s, takes this distinction seriously. She has marked the last day of school, which this year is Wednesday, on her calendar, to remind her to tell the bar staff to come in early. “We love teachers,” she said the other day, filling a pint glass with beer. “We get them ripped.”

. . .

Among the earliest arrivals at Moe’s this Friday was a clique of young women from the Community Partnership Charter School, a few blocks from the bar. They sat around a low table drinking pints of Hoegaarden, a Belgian white beer, and grumbling about colleagues who brag about their students’ standardized test scores.

Mr. Barnes ambled over, and within a few minutes, he sidled up to Nicole Gunther, a 30-year-old kindergarten teacher wearing a zebra-print top and a chili pepper pendant on a gold chain around her neck. Taking out a digital camera, Ms. Gunther showed off a photograph of some of her kindergartners gathered around a handsome, broad-shouldered man.

“That’s one of the dads,” she said as Mr. Barnes leaned in for a better look. “Hot dad,” she added dryly.

Lingering questions are answered regarding the ubiquitous Yellow M&M vendors on the subway (sometimes they’re stolen, but not always, and no, they don’t get them from Costco, though they probably should), but not the most important one, which is whether New Yorkers are really that enamored with Peanut M&Ms:

Last week, Derrick Cruz, a 17-year-old with thick dreadlocks and a droopy backpack, walked into Delma’s Tobacco Company, a cramped candy-and-cigarette wholesaler on Burnside Avenue in the Tremont section of the Bronx. Across the front room, Francisco Ferrer looked up behind a bulletproof window.

“Yellow M&Ms,” Mr. Cruz said in Spanish, and Mr. Ferrer directed him to a stack of yellow boxes, each containing 48 packages of peanut M&Ms. “That’s the one lots of people want,” Mr. Cruz explained. “I don’t have the money to get a lot of different kinds.”

Few sights are more familiar to New York subway riders than those teenage boys who peddle candy on the train, materializing just as the car lurches into motion and delivering a spiel about a basketball team or an after-school program. But behind every such vendor is a wholesaler like Delma’s, one of a handful of stores around the city that provide the teenagers with their stock in trade. Mr. Cruz now sells his candy on the street, but he was a subway vendor when he started buying candy at Delma’s, which has been in the business for about 15 years. He still encounters former subway competitors at the store. “I see a lot of people here,” he said.

But for the store’s employees, this clientele is a mixed blessing. “Those kids come in pairs, and they’re a pain,” Mr. Ferrer said. “Many times, they come to steal. You’ve got to watch them. One’s talking to you, and the other’s putting it all into his pants.”

. . .

There are certain constants in the subway candy-vending business. One is that the peanut M&M is the staple of subway candy. “Yellow M&Ms are No. 1,” Mr. Ferrer said. “I sell 10 boxes of yellow M&Ms before I can sell one of brown.”

Another is the use of a spiel, which can vary from the shopworn (”I’m selling for my basketball team”) to the ostentatiously candid (”I’m not selling for any basketball team”).

During his subway days, which lasted about a year and ended just recently, Mr. Cruz preferred a third variant: “I’d say, ‘I’m selling candy so I can get some money in my pocket. I’m not selling drugs or robbing anyone.’”

Why did he stop selling in the subway? He paused. “It’s embarrassing, you know?”

Evidently Tom Finkelpearl still harbors some fantasy that MoMA will one day return:

When discussions ranking the boroughs of New York come down to numbers, Queens is near the top of many lists.

At 109 square miles, it is geographically the largest, and it is also the most diverse; 54 percent of residents speak a language other than English. Although second to Brooklyn in population, it is also home to the city’s tallest tree (the Alley Pond Giant at 133.8 feet), the most stations on the Long Island Rail Road (22) and the most historic chrome diners converted into Punjabi buffet restaurants (one).

But in recent months, a phrase has appeared in The Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper, that suggests that Queens occupies only a fair to middling place in the citywide pecking order. The phrase is “third borough syndrome,” and the implication is that in terms of buzz and cachet, Queens is forever resigned to third place behind Brooklyn (recently hot) and Manhattan (traditionally hot).

In response, Queens boosters insist that the borough has other, less obvious charms.

“We feel like Queens is real New York,” said Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, who is believed to have been the first person to use the phrase when he uttered it last year in a Tribune interview. “That middle-class aspect of Queens is one of the things that gives us that less exciting image.”

Mr. Finkelpearl does not accept the notion of Queens as a third-place place. His museum has emblazoned the borough’s name on T-shirts and infants’ onesies, for sale in the gift shop, to counter those shirts from elsewhere that say “Brooklyn” or “New York.” (Ideas like “Queens: We’re Number 3!” and “Come for the Airports and Stay for the Food” were considered but rejected.)

Kids, get to KeySpan Park early for your very own limited edition . . . Marty Markowitz bobblehead:

“This is the zenith of my professional career,” quipped Markowitz. “I’ve been called a lot of things. Now I’m a bobblehead.”

The plastic doll — in a business suit but with a baseball bat — is part of the Met minor-league team’s Legends of Brooklyn series and will go to the first 2,500 fans at that Sunday afternoon’s game [Aug. 5].

“I’m better looking,” Markowitz said upon seeing the doll last week. “I’m certainly younger looking . . . They got the hair right. I don’t know if they made it chubby enough, though.”

He admitted to worrying that this might boost “a caricature of me as a comedic character” but called the promotion “all in good fun.”

“I am what I am, a legend at 62,” he said. “Being a bobblehead has its distinguishing characteristics.”

Cyclone general manager Steve Cohen called Markowitz a “true champion for the borough [and] one of the Cyclones’ most loyal supporters.”

And somewhere, a plot thickens:

James Cooper, a 24-year-old Bushwick resident, was hit with a charge of attempted arson yesterday after police say he tried to ignite a stink bomb at a crowded gallery opening in Brooklyn. Police are searching for his accomplice.

“All I was trying to do was a provide a great space with free alcohol and a lot to look at,” said artist Frank Shepard Fairey, whose opening show with about 1,000 guests was forced to close Thursday night. “It’s offensive to me that anyone would come sabotage my art show.”

It was the second stink-bomb attack at an art gallery in as many weeks.

The local art community was immediately abuzz with speculation that Cooper was the infamous Splasher — who has defaced dozens of street-art creations throughout the city with splotches of house paint.

. . .

Witnesses say that at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Cooper and an unidentified man attempted to ignite an incendiary device in a coffee can during the crowded open-bar reception. A partygoer noticed the smoke and alerted security.

Cooper was quickly caught, but his accomplice got away.

Fairey, who gained notice in the early 1990s by putting up stencils of wrestler Andre the Giant and “Obey Giant” stickers around cities throughout the East Coast, said Cooper shouldn’t get off easy.

“This is serious. I’ve been arrested for doing street art. I knew I would be held accountable for my actions, and he should have considered that jail may be a possibility,” said Fairey, who confronted Cooper after security nabbed him.

“He tried to turn it around and say that he is the victim and that I should feel bad for him.”

. . .

The Splasher has struck 20 out of the 22 murals Fairey created in New York City.

Fairey has his own theory on why his work is targeted.

“Because I’ve moved beyond just doing street art, some have the idea that I’ve been corrupted. I’ve been able to have an art career and a design career, yet I continue to do street art and therefore I should be punished,” he said.

What happens to union leaders and elected officials who run afoul of the law and lose their power? They’re forced to get a real job:

Disgraced former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin returned to work last week. He is an electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 working at a construction site on Manhattan’s West Side.

He’s also awaiting trial on a 186-page federal indictment that charges him with 43 counts of racketeering and corruption. McLaughlin, a former Queens Assemblyman and once New York’s top labor leader, is accused of defrauding the union, receiving bribes and embezzling funds from a number of sources, including a Queens Little League. He pleaded not guilty in October and is out on $250,000 bail.

The pre-trial hearing was scheduled for June 14 in United States District Court Southern District of New York. Numerous calls to the case manager for presiding judge Kenneth Karas to retrieve results of the hearing went unreturned.

McLaughlin was president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the country’s largest municipal labor council. He has not been active in that capacity since August 2006 when he was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence and was subsequently indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

Is it at all strange that Governor Spitzer’s choice to serve as the new head of the MTA is the president of a company that develops shopping malls you have to drive to? I’m just saying is all:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer nominated H. Dale Hemmerdinger on Monday to be the new head of the MTA. The nomination must be approved before the senate adjourns for its summer break next week.

Hemmerdinger, the President of Atco Properties and Management, which owns the Shops At Atlas Park in Glendale — not to mention 2 million square feet of additional residential, commercial, industrial and retail space — is ecstatic about the opportunity, but will take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to any policy upheaval.

“I don’t have an answer that is very satisfying yet,” Hemmerdinger said when asked about what changes he foresees. “I’m not there yet. I don’t want to comment on policy matters. That’s something I get to as I learn the job and learn what’s necessary.”

One issue Hemmerdinger was open about was fares. He explained that “keeping them affordable” is in everyone’s best interest and that’s what he hopes to do.

“Nobody wants to raise fares, but the price of oil goes up, the labor costs go up,” he said. “It’s the world we live in. Our job is to keep them as affordable as possible.”

Still, while he was chairman of the Citizens Budget Commission, the group made recommendations on how to balance the MTA’s budget, including higher fares for riders and more tolls and fees for motorists, published reports said.

Published reports also said that Hemmerdinger’s wife has given $40,000 to Spitzer campaign committees since 2000. She also hosted a Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Hemmerdingers’ Central Park South penthouse in May.

. . .

Hemmerdinger, 62, who spends several days a week at Atlas Park, has known the governor for almost 30 years, saying they likely met on the tennis courts. They have a long-standing relationship, and though he wouldn’t speculate on policy, he said one of his goals is to inform riders of the MTA’s responsibilities so that they can better understand the services afforded.

“Education of the public is what one needs to do,” Hemmerdinger said. “To have people understand as best they can what the MTA does and how it’s funded. I think there is a lot of misinformation about that. The more people know, the more they understand.”

“I think it’s really neat,” he added. “How often do you get a chance to help 2 billion-plus riders every year? What a great way to help your fellow human beings. I think it’s great to be in a position to do that. My only job is to do good for the riders.”