I think the Rubenstein people might start by encouraging you to avoid mentioning that your biggest asset is a boat:

Intent on promoting Staten Island as a “great place to visit, work and live,” a group of the Island’s movers and shakers met last night to formally announce the creation of a marketing campaign designed to boost borough pride and erase negative stereotypes.

Under the banner of “SI NY Proud of it,” backers said their goal is to trumpet the Island as the place in New York City with the best schools, most parkland, lowest crime rate, an array of cultural offerings and diverse housing stock.

. . .

Not only is the Island still regarded in some quarters as the former home of the world’s largest landfill — poised to become the biggest urban park — but it is routinely underestimated by outside media, he said.

Along those lines, public relations giant Howard Rubenstein has agreed to promote the SI NY campaign.

Rubenstein’s Pat Smith, who will shepherd the effort, said the Island needs to “project a better image [so] people want to invest here, locate here.”

“Everything in life is perception,” agreed Borough President James P. Molinaro.

Molinaro said, for example, that while the Staten Island Ferry — with its 1.5 million visitors annually — is the No. 3 tourist attraction in New York City, behind the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, more needs to be done to lure them to local attractions like Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the Staten Island Zoo.

David Chase has a lot to answer for:

He wrote them threatening letters, telling them to stuff a paper bag with $10,000 worth of twenties and fifties and drop it off in a secluded area of Clove Lakes Park.

If they didn’t do as he said, their jewelry stores would be damaged and their families would face the consequences, he wrote.

He signed the letters, “Cosa Nostra.”

The extortionist, police say, was not some mobster or wannabe tough guy.

Instead, they say he was a teen-ager from Sunnyside. The 15-year-old Sunnyside boy allegedly wrote extortion letters to nine jewelry stores, demanding the stores’ owners leave $10,000 in a brown paper bag in Clove Lakes Park or face the consequences, according to authorities. His name is being withheld because of his age.

One letter, sent to Buono Jewelers on Hylan Boulevard in Grasmere last Friday, instructed the owner to drop the cash behind “a rowboat half buried verticaly (sic) opposite the entrance to the lake club” at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

“If Law Enforcement is notified or intervines (sic) with the exchange you can be sure that not just your store will be harmed but also your family,” the teen allegedly wrote. “If you wish that no damage or harm come to your store or family you will pay.”

But when he showed up at the park, the teen found a paper bag filled with nothing but paper — and the police, waiting for him, according to law enforcement sources.

“I thought it was a joke, and I just handed it to the Police Department,” said the owner of Buono, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying that he has been robbed in the past and doesn’t want to speak publicly.

The letter arrived in the mail Friday, he said. ‘The letter came, ‘To the owner.’ It wasn’t addressed to anybody,” he said. “The wording was all misspelled.”

Only in New York is it somehow unusual and newsworthy that someone squirrels away his or her modest income in order to buy a modest apartment:

When Janey Lee and Pablo Agüero were struggling freelance Web designers, buying an apartment in Manhattan seemed like a dream, one clouded by credit-card debt, student loans that had to be repaid and the bills for their wedding.

But now, five years later, they are about to move into a $445,000 two-bedroom condo in Hamilton Heights, in Upper Manhattan, with their 5-month-old daughter, Matilda. Their combined salaries of just over $100,000 qualified them for a mortgage, but it took a lot more for them to come up with the down payment.

In a city synonymous with luxury and spending, Ms. Lee, 30, and Mr. Agüero, 35, decided to do without.

They gave up smoking to cut costs, they stopped meeting friends after work for beers, they didn’t buy new clothes, and they stashed away tax refunds and as much of their earnings as possible. Whenever they wanted to buy drinks, gadgets or cookware, they asked each other: “Do I want an iPod or a house? Do I want a latte or a house?”

“It would be absurd for me to buy things when I wanted a place rather than a frying pan,” Ms. Lee said as she fed Matilda a post-nap bottle.

More impressive, perhaps, than their willpower was that they were able to save $90,000.

Still, Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero are part of the shrinking pool of New Yorkers who have been able to buy apartments for less than $450,000, and the even smaller group who have done so without help from their parents or a Wall Street bonus.

“Most people that I’m working with are getting some kind of familial assistance,” said Tracie Hamersley, the Citi Habitats broker who helped Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero find their apartment. “They were unusual in that they were doing this on their own.”

And this man roots for a team still (for the time being) in first place:

A Queens man who allegedly bludgeoned his mother to death with a barbell blamed the Mets for setting off his murderous rage, authorities said yesterday.

Michael Anthony, 26, was frustrated with the Mets’ 6-5 loss to the Washington Nationals in the second game of Saturday night’s doubleheader when he started arguing with his father, according to a statement he gave police.

Anthony told cops after his arrest for murdering Maria Fischman, 61, that he “was watching the Mets game and became enraged.”

“We started fighting and my mother jumped in,” he said, adding that she took a knife from the kitchen of the Fresh Meadows home. “I took the knife from her and it got stuck in her head.”

Fischman then fled to the bedroom, where Anthony said he thought she was going for a weapon in a dresser drawer. “I grabbed a weight from the top of the dresser, swung it, hit her and she fell to the floor,” Anthony said.

Those post-game cliches never sounded so bad:

And while some may heal faster than others, the Mets can only hope all their injured pieces take a cue from their catcher.

“I’m going to be out there by Tuesday,” Lo Duca said, “unless I get shot.”

The Yankees have always been of the “supersize me” ilk:

Since the New York Yankees, the Baby Bombers’ parent, took full control of the minor league club last year and handed over the team’s day-to-day operation to Mandalay Baseball Properties, the turnstiles have turned at an impressive clip.

Attendance at the halfway mark of the season, a mundane 3,393 per game last year, has spiked 40 percent to an average of 4,763 per contest as of Tuesday, thanks to a stepped-up sales program, a fan-friendly approach and an innovative all-you-can eat ticket package that has customers salivating.

. . .

At each stop, they emphasized wholesome family fun and entertainment at a reasonable price. Tickets range from $5 (reserved grandstand) to $13 (reserved box), and stadium amenities include a picnic area in right field, and a Kid Zone in the left-field stands that features children’s activities. After each game, youngsters get to run the bases.

Yet for all those attractions, nothing, perhaps, has filled the seats more than the alliterative — and wildly successful — Pinstripe Plan.

For $75 — or $15 a seat — fans see five games and get all the hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, soda and water they can scarf down. They also received free admission to a special Yankees Old-Timers game at the Richmond County Bank Ballpark on July 8, plus free tickets to a New York Yankees game in the Bronx later this season that includes a meeting with the big club’s general manager, Brian Cashman.

Location Scout: Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George.

Councilmembers continue the heavy lifting at City Hall:

One down. Two more to go. City lawmakers are now hoping to slap a symbolic ban on the words “bitch” and “ho.”

Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (D-Brooklyn) is calling for a halt on the use of the two sexist slurs, which are popular in rap lyrics.

“When these words are used, they injure all women,” Mealy told the Daily News.

Mealy’s resolution, introduced last week, comes after the Council unanimously approved a similar stance on the N-word in March.

The resolutions are not legally enforceable bans. Instead, they are designed to persuade the music industry and young people to take the insults out of their vocabulary.

Would you prefer Joe Sitt or Tivoli Gardens? I mean, Coney Island and Copenhagen are close to each other in the dictionary, but that’s about it:

Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., flew to Copenhagen last week with other top agency officials to meet with representatives from Tivoli Gardens.

The meeting, he said, was both about Tivoli’s preliminary interest in Coney Island and to learn from the success of the 164-year-old amusement park on how best to transform Coney’s amusement district into a year-round attraction.

He said a Tivoli branch in Coney Island could work without giving up the area’s famous freakiness, adding Tivoli officials promised a future visit.

“We aren’t trying to create Disneyland in Coney Island, but we’re trying to create a demand-oriented model that maintains the neighborhood’s character and economic interests,” Lieber said.

Tivoli, which has more than 20 rides and famous gardens, features the world’s tallest carousel and a 93-year-old wooden roller coaster, called the Rutsjebanen, that is slightly older than Coney Island’s Cyclone.

. . .

With the city planning to rezone Coney Island’s amusement district this year to help future development, Lieber said he’s still not satisfied with developer Joe Sitt’s proposal to build a $1.5 billion hotel-entertainment complex in the heart of the amusement district.

Lieber pointed out that Tivoli is successful year-round without the onsite condos, time-shares or hotels that Sitt has pushed for, despite Denmark’s cold winters and the park’s many outdoor rides and attractions.

“They’ve learned to think outside the box and continuously reinvent themselves,” said Lieber. “They’ve made Halloween a weeklong event and have a two-week event centered around Christmas.”

With Sitt controlling 10 acres of prime boardwalk real estate, both he and City Hall will have to reach a compromise or risk Coney Island remaining stagnant.

The city could theoretically try taking Sitt’s land through eminent domain, but Lieber said he’s “not ready to go there” when asked about condemnation.

(Using eminent domain against a developer . . . now that would be a hoot!)

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

As reports maintain that women commuters are in large numbers threatened, harassed or otherwise somehow sexually assaulted on the subway, new fears emerge that the system is becoming a magnet for sickos and pervs:

A city transit worker was arrested for sexually abusing a woman in a subway car, police said yesterday.

Bus dispatcher Glenn Jones, 37, was off duty when he allegedly approached a 30-year-old straphanger on the No. 4 train as it rolled into Grand Central station on Saturday afternoon.

Jones rubbed against her buttocks, according to police.

Hot dogs have finally gone the way of the egg cream:

Although the city doesn’t collect statistics that distinguish between different types of street food, halal vendors generally agree that their ranks have swelled in the last five to eight years, prompting the obvious question: How did the halal platter become the city’s new hot dog?

“The hot dog now is for tourists,” said a rueful Chafik el-Mokhtar, office manager at 2M Friend Corporation, a hot-dog cart garage and supply store on West 47th Street near 11th Avenue.

“The people usually go for chicken and rice because it’s good for hunger,” he added wistfully.

Mohamed Abouelenein, an Egyptian who used to sell hot dogs, said, “Hot dog is not a meal.” That’s one reason he switched to gyro and chicken in 1992, becoming, he claims, the first peddler in New York to sell halal meat from a cart.

“We figured out that most of the cabdrivers are Egyptian, Pakistani,” he said. “They suffered too much from no halal.”

On some corners of Manhattan, halal carts outnumber hot-dog vendors by as much as three to one. Mr. Abouelenein’s cart, named 53rd and 6th, after the Midtown corner on which it sits, stays open from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., feeding throngs of clubbers, foodies and cabbies. Its success has been such that Mr. Abouelenein recently opened a new cart across the street, supplanting — yes — a hot-dog stand.

The term halal may be applied to any food prepared in accordance with the laws of the Koran, although in New York the term has taken on special connotations: oily chunks of chicken or gyro meat, yellowish rice, some scraps of lettuce, hot sauce and, of course, the mysterious substance known as white sauce.

Is he kidding? Everyone knows the horrible truth about “theater people”:

If all the world really were a stage, Louis Salamone would have no problem getting a liquor license for his new theaters on Bleecker Street, near Mulberry Street.

But many local residents fear that all the world between the Bowery and Broadway north of Houston Street is fast becoming one long bar crawl, and contend that adding yet another place that sells alcohol will produce even more in the way of drunken crowds and late-night rowdiness.

“We are worried that it would be a camouflage for a cabaret and nightclub setting, which we all know is the predominant activity in Lower Manhattan,” said Zella Jones, president of the NoHo Neighborhood Association. The group opposes Mr. Salamone’s effort to sell liquor, and wants beer and wine sales limited to specific areas and times.

Mr. Salamone, executive director of a production company that also owns two Off Broadway houses, plans to open his new performance space, the Theaters at 45 Bleecker Street, in September.

“For a theater to survive, it can’t just be a theater,” Mr. Salamone said. He cited both soaring rents — he pays about $50,000 a month for two floors in a mustard-colored, six-story brick building — and the plight of the building’s previous tenant, the Culture Project, which left in December because of financial problems.

“We’re theater people, not nightclub people or restaurateurs,” Mr. Salamone added. “But the bottom line is we need additional sources of revenue, mainly drinks, a little food, to add to our income.”

Bemused Midwood residents still don’t understand what happens “As The World Turns”:

The show has been filmed in New York for its entire 51-year history, and it’s safe to say that its souped-up world of sex and chicanery rarely resembles life on the sidewalks outside. But seven years ago the producers moved their studio from Midtown to Midwood, and with a healthy dose of real estate irony, the relocation coincided with a sharp growth in the local Orthodox Jewish community. As Midwood’s Orthodox population soared to perhaps three-quarters of the neighborhood, the gap between sidewalk and soap opera became a gulf.

Now, when Oakdale’s powerful, scheming blondes and sensitive, square-jawed men step out of the warehouse at Avenue M and East 14th Street, they encounter women wearing very long skirts and men with very long beards.

In Oakdale, your daily life might include falling into a coma, learning that you have an evil twin, or developing amnesia. Your romantic relationships would be more fleeting and unstable than the average high schooler’s. Above all, you would be in constant danger of getting kidnapped — Lily Snyder, for instance, has been kidnapped no fewer than eight times.

Outside the studio, by contrast, all premarital contact between the sexes, even handshakes, is forbidden, and many residents do not allow television into their homes.

Inside the studio, a woman might be hanging from a bell tower by her fingernails, while in the streets outside, the most dramatic scene is the group of elderly people holding court in the kosher Dunkin’ Donuts.

“We’re strangers in a strange land,” said Christopher Goutman, the show’s executive producer. “There aren’t even any bars around here.”

The studio, which was built in the late 1920s, still features Esther Williams’s old pool and more recently provided the setting for “The Cosby Show.” But the good citizens of Midwood are oblivious to the past and present dramas unfolding within the high fortress walls, and even close neighbors are unclear about the building’s function.

The owner of the Korean deli around the corner was sure that some type of cartoon was being filmed there, and the restaurateur across the street insisted that the warehouse contained “the news.” When informed of the building’s true purpose, most were still in the dark.

“Soap opera?” asked a pale 19-year-old who would identify himself only as Tzviyanky. “Those are the shows where everybody’s cheating on each other, right?”

. . . and now in Brooklyn the latest in travel trends — Gentrification Tourism:

The Brooklyn Paper got a first peek inside Brooklyn’s first boutique hotel — Hotel Le Bleu — and discovered a very modern, tasteful, 48-room, glass-and-steel complex.

But looking out the window onto Fourth Avenue certainly brings you back to the real world. Sandwiched between a taxi depot and a Staples office supply store, it’s not a stretch to wonder if this is really the stuff that four-star hotels are made of.

“We want to be ahead of the curve on everything that’s happening in Brooklyn — particularly [on Fourth Avenue],” General Manager Robert Gaeta said. “There are a lot of exciting things happening in this area. It’s reminiscent of DUMBO or Williamsburg.”

The hotel, which is at Fifth street, will open for business on Aug. 1, though its chic in-house restaurant and rooftop bar won’t be ready until later this year. At that point, Le Bleu — which is owned by Globiwest International, a California-based hotel chain — hopes to draw local traffic to the Gowanus Canal area.

“This could be Venice in the United States,” Gaeta said.

Financially, it already is: Le Bleu rooms will go for the Venice-like price of $300–$400 a night, but, Gaeta quickly pointed out, the tariff includes luxury amenities like concierge service, plasma-screen televisions and botanical bath products in the glass-walled showers.

*And how could we forget graffiti tourism?

Ooh, Nordstrom . . . so fancy:

The borough president who helped bring Trader Joe’s to Atlantic Avenue has set his sights on a new upscale target — a Nordstrom department store.

“Now that [Trader Joe's] is done, we can go to the next one,” Borough President Markowitz told The Brooklyn Paper several days after leading a jubilant parade from Borough Hall to the Court Street bank building where the gourmet grocer is setting up its first Kings County store.

“Nordstrom would be awesome in Brooklyn. Now we have Trader Joe’s, Ikea, Whole Foods and all the other great retailers. That would complete it,” Markowitz said, still exuberant from his Joe’s victory lap.

The beep said he spent several years working to get the California-based purveyor of wasabi hummus and chicken dumplings to the corner of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue before last week’s announcement.

“My mother-and father-in-law, Joan and Jules Snow, would go to the Nassau County store and come back with chips and spreads that they couldn’t wait to bring out and show me,” he said. “I found out about Trader Joe’s and I started pitching,” he said.

. . .

Nordstrom does not have a New York City location. Most of the company’s stores — with their live pianists and marbled-floored restroom “lounges” — are in upscale shopping malls in the suburbs.

But Michael Boyd, a Nordstrom spokesman, said the company appreciated the borough president’s invitation.

“It’s very flattering,” he said. “We certainly appreciate the attention and are always happy to discuss new locations.”

Ah, but what locations? Retail experts said that finding a location for the high-end, mall chain could be tough in economically diverse, tightly packed Downtown Brooklyn.

“A Nordstrom would need the correct neighbors and something like a million square feet of retail space,” said Joseph Aquino, executive vice president for retail leasing and sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Aquino said that Fulton Mall, once a mecca for white-gloved department stores and still home to Macy’s, was not quite fancy enough for Nordstrom.

“The retailers there are not the right neighbors,” he said.

(That makes me want to hear the Beep and Charles Barron debate. Darned term limits!)

MTA CEO Elliot Sander gets the full-on Jews-for-Jesus treatment from commuters at Grand Central; exactly one citizen stops to talk:

MTA CEO Elliot Sander campaigned like a politician yesterday at the Grand Central side of the Times Square shuttle, handing commuters flyers describing the preliminary 2008 budget, which includes higher fares and tolls.

“Keep the fare down, bastards!” one man bellowed at Sander as the transit chief paused for a media interview.

One man heading from a train not only declined to take the flyer info but barked, “You’re blocking the way.”

When Sander told commuter Jean Callaham that the MTA faces $6 billion in deficits over the next four years, the Staten Islander replied that she feels she pays enough already.

“I’m angry they want to raise the fare again,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? How are we going to survive?”

The 30-minute platform campaign highlighted the difficulty the MTA may have convincing riders a fare hike really is needed since the agency has a surplus this year — and past predictions of deep deficits proved inaccurate.

That lady is everywhere:

Mr. Sander, dressed in a dark suit, began handing out leaflets at 8 a.m. to hurrying subway riders on the platform of the shuttle train to Times Square.

Very few people seemed to recognize him, and only one or two stopped for a chat. Most merely brushed past him: New Yorkers in a hurry to get on or off the train.

The leaflet was titled “The Fare Facts,” and it said that growing pension and debt service costs had made “modest increases in fares and tolls” necessary.

It did not mention that the rate increase in fares and tolls would average 6.5 percent. And it also did not mention that for the last year the authority has operated with a cash surplus of nearly $1 billion.

But the surplus was on the mind of one woman who stopped to speak to Mr. Sander. She asked him where the money had gone.

Mr. Sander told her that the authority was facing rising deficits, and he invited her to send her opinions in an e-mail message, through the M.T.A.’s Web site.

The woman, Jean Callaham, said it took her two hours to get to work from her home on Staten Island. She told Mr. Sander that the $20 she pays each week in subway fares and the $9 toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that her relatives pay when they visit her were already high enough.

Speaking to a reporter afterward, Ms. Callaham, who works at a financial services firm, said she leaves her house at 6:15 a.m., drives to the Staten Island Railway and takes the train to the Staten Island ferry. After crossing the harbor, she takes a subway to Times Square and then takes the shuttle to Grand Central. She gets to work at 8:15.

At times she has taken an express bus, which cuts the trip to an hour. But the cost is much higher.

Ms. Callaham said that when she got off the shuttle yesterday morning she mistook Mr. Sander for another public official.

“I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman standing there, and I thought it was Mayor Bloomberg,” she said. “Then he handed me this flier, and I said, ‘Who are you?’”

No, literally everywhere:

Since the MTA is crying poverty it can’t afford a p.r. campaign. So Sander greeted commuters with “Fare Facts” fliers that try to justify the “modest increases in fares and tolls.”

One rider, Jean Callaham, of Staten Island, wasn’t buying the pitch.

“I told him that I’m tired of having to pay, pay, pay. I can’t afford to ride express buses and they want to raise the fare,” she said.

Another rider shouted, “Keep the fares down, bastard!” then stormed away.

After almost a year and a half, the hunt for Vivi moves from a search & rescue operation to the inspiration for a movement:

Vivi, the champion whippet, has been missing in Queens for almost 1-1/2 years and her heartbroken volunteers are now mounting a campaign to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Organized as the Vivi Crusade, a handful of dedicated animal lovers want the airlines to be more responsive to shipped dogs and cats, which they say are being treated like luggage instead of living, breathing creatures. To further their cause, the volunteers have devised a questionnaire to gather information from across the country on airline incidents of injured, killed, misplaced or lost pets.

Bonnie Folz, of Howard Beach, who served as search coordinator during the active stages of looking for Vivi, is co-founder of the new Vivi Crusade.

“We know there are problems (with the airlines) and we are looking for solutions,” she said. “We want to work with the airlines; we don’t want it to be one-sided.”

. . .

Despite the efforts of about a dozen hard-core volunteers, Vivi was never found.

“I think she was out there,” Folz said, “and I hope someone has her and doesn’t realize who she is and is taking good care of her.”

Folz is realistic enough to know that Vivi could have been hit by a car and died and there will never be any resolution.

“If we could just know she’s okay,” she said. “We haven’t had a sighting in almost a year.”

Vivi’s California owners were astounded with the level of commitment by the volunteers, who actively searched for the dog for so long. Aging posters of the whippet still can be found throughout the borough.

“I don’t know if we’d do anything different,” Folz said. “It was a learning experience.”

Despite their disappointment in not recovering Vivi, volunteers were able to rescue 40 dogs in New York City and 20 out of town as a result of the attention brought by the whippet’s disappearance.

Whippets are particularly difficut to recover because they become feral very quickly, go into a survival mode and run extremely fast. They are also excellent hunters.

Trying to turn the experience into a positive, Folz is soldiering on in hopes that other pets won’t meet the same fate as Vivi.

“We are starting off with educating the public and the airlines,” she said, “and improving what’s already in place. We don’t want to go in there like gangbusters.”

She believes reporting incidents of lost, injured or killed pets and proper training of airline employees and pet owners are the key. One possibility is designing a better crate that can withstand rough handling. At this time, Folz noted, it is up to the pet owners to additionally secure crates on their own, even if the cages have locks.

She added that there seems to be no real tracking done on the crates in transit. Although airlines are required by law to report if an animal is not recovered, other cases, where a pet goes to the wrong airport or is lost temporarily are not reported.

“These are not pieces of luggage,” she added. “The airlines must have compassion for living beings.”

Last year, Delta considered Vivi missing baggage and reimbursed one of the owners $2,800.

See also: Vivi the Whippet.

The bicycle helmet industry wins by making fashion victims out of hyper-manly bicycle messengers:

A new bike safety law takes effect today requiring delivery workers to wear helmets on the job, and members of the city’s bike messenger community are in a spin.

“[Wearing a helmet is] something that’s not cool. You look kind of dumb,” said Carlos Ramirez, 32, a 12-year messenger veteran and a Team Puma racer. “I really don’t want to wear a helmet, but I will.”

Ramirez began wearing a helmet last month, motivated by the law and a friend who hit his head in a bike accident. The new law mandates employers provide head gear, but Ramirez didn’t want just any helmet.

“I got a really beautiful $200 helmet worn by [cyclists] in the Tour de France,” he said. “It’s really light, so you don’t really feel it.”

Some messengers don’t care about the $25 to $50 fines. Employers failing to provide helmets could pay up to $250.

“It should be your choice,” said messenger Scott “Ham” Hamilton, 36. “It’s not like you’re on a motorcycle. You’re not going that fast.”

He’s no stranger to accidents in his 13 years on the job. He estimates having hit more than 100 jaywalkers.

“I’ve never seen a jaywalker get a ticket, but when they cross, they don’t look,” he said. “But I’ve got to wear a helmet?”

He wore a helmet once “to make my grandmother happy.” He doesn’t plan to start wearing one now.

Then again, shouldn’t they be a little more worried about the fact that these guys ride around without brakes?

The best way to answer criticism that Times Square has become too Disney-fied is to own it:

An MTA board member yesterday suggested turning to Mickey Mouse’s deep-pocketed owner — which transformed seedy Times Square into America’s backyard — to save straphangers from the doom and gloom of a 2008 fare hike.

Perhaps Disney would pay big bucks for some sort of control or advertising rights to the Times Square subway station, suggested MTA board member Norman Seabrook.

“I would rather try to sell 42nd St.’s subway system underground to Disney for $60 million a year and have them paint it any way that they want to paint it,” Seabrook said at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting.

“They spend $100 million for one minute to be on the Super Bowl on a Sunday. I think that they would spend X amount of dollars in rent for that terminal.”

If the MTA is going to consider a fare hike, Seabrook said, officials must “look at different areas of raising funds” to at least lessen the burden of an increase on riders.

Seabrook’s pitch got amused smiles from other board members, and Mayor Bloomberg dismissed it as a Mickey Mouse idea.

“Disney has a great presence in Times Square. It’s a great brand name, but let’s get serious,” Bloomberg said.

The Advance reports that Staten Island tinting technicians will be devastated by politicians clamoring for a crackdown on tinted windows:

The trade in illegally tinted windows — a goldmine for Staten Island’s auto shops — is now in the crosshairs of politicians who are demanding a crackdown and harsher fines for businesses that cater to both style-conscious drivers and those who perhaps have something to hide.

At a press conference in Manhattan, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens) proposed a state-mandated check on window tint during the annual safety inspections that all New York City drivers must have to legally drive their cars.

. . .

According to New York state law, tints must admit at least 70 percent of available light into the vehicle, but some popular tinting shops in the borough, like Little Vick’s Automotive Toy Store in Eltingville, weren’t even aware of the limit.

“I don’t know if it’s 70 percent,” said John LoPorto, a technician at Little Vick’s.

When asked if he was worried about the legality of the shop’s tinting venture, he replied: “There are no receipts, it just works out for us.”

. . .

Christopher St. Peter, a bookkeeper at General Auto Glass in Elm Park, expressed confusion as to the legality of his newly opened tinting operation.

“My brother takes care of tinting, and he only carries sheets for the legal limit. If somebody comes in and asks for more tint, though, we just apply another layer. Is that illegal?”

Maybe there are some people left in the world who would accept the premise that Council Speaker Christine Quinn represents the tyranny of The Man. Who exactly that would be, I have no idea:

In a move sure to be remembered during her expected run for mayor, the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, cracked down yesterday on a fired council aide, Viola Plummer, barring her from the council chamber floor, with police on hand to enforce the rule.

A defiant Plummer and the council member she worked for as chief of staff, Charles Barron, left the chamber after three police officers and four security guards moved in on them before the official portion of the meeting.

Mr. Barron, a former Black Panther, rolled up his sleeves and stood as a buffer between Plummer and the police before she agreed to walk out. As he strode from the chamber with Plummer, Mr. Barron called out, “Christine, you’ll never be mayor.”

Reporters and television cameras swarmed the pair, who stopped on the steps of the rotunda of City Hall to say the ejection was racist and reminiscent of segregationist policies.

“This was a selective enforcement of the law so that they can continue the harassment, the retaliation, and the discrimination against not Viola Plummer and Charles Barron, but black people in general,” Mr. Barron said. “This is another form of Jim Crow-ism. They want us to sit in the back of the bus, in the balcony, anytime you are an assertive black, and that’s the problem in City Hall.” Plummer, who appeared visibly shaken by the standoff, said it should make no difference where she sits during a council meeting. What Ms. Quinn “thought she could do, and what she almost did, was to provoke me,” Plummer said. “I have a history, I have a history, of dealing with the likes of Christine Quinn.”

You could call it criminal, but really, there’s no shame in simply defending your team:

Anthony Macchirole, a coach for the Midville Dodgers, is charged with assaulting a teenaged player on a team the Middle Village squad was competing against at Juniper Valley Park.

According to a source close to the case against him, Macchirole had gotten involved in an altercation with teen Robert Inzerillo, an opposing team’s base runner, during a July 12th home game at Juniper Park at about 8:10PM.

According the Queens District Attorney’s Office, Inzerillo apparently collided with Midville’s catcher on a play in which it appeared he was going to be tagged out. In retaliation, Macchirole threw him to the ground, causing him to injure his knee.

. . .

. . . [A]nother coach for the Midville Dodgers, who asked not to be identified by name, claimed what happened at the July 12th game did not constitute any big deal. “There was a collision at home plate,” he said. “There was no ‘incident.’”

How one forges a bill that doesn’t even exist is the conundrum of the day:

A bartender at an Astoria tavern thought it was a joke when a man slapped a million-dollar bill on the bar and demanded a beer, according to police sources.

Construction worker Richard Dajti, 31, walked into an establishment on Ditmars Boulevard and 31st Street at about 4:30 a.m. on July 18, slapped the bill on the bar and demanded a brew. When the bartender refused to serve him, Dajti pulled up his shirt, allegedly revealing a gun, and again demanded a beer.

The owner called 911, but as the police arrived, Dajti was in his vehicle, leaving. The officers gave chase, following Dajti as he sped through five red lights at speeds of more than 70 mph. The chase came to an end when Dajti pulled his 2002 Chevy to the curb near the Northern Boulevard exit off the Grand Central Parkway, police said.

Dajti stepped out of the car and announced to police that he didn’t actually have a gun. He was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated, possession of a forged instrument, harassment and resisting arrest.

Police are trying to determine where Dajti obtained the fake million-dollar bill.

Police had yet to use the google machine, I suppose.

(Does the old 1,000,000 bill trick ever work?)

In a time when security cameras and EZPass technology — not to mention whatever they’re planning with congestion pricing — are so ubiquitous arguing that GPS technology somehow invades your privacy seems like a stretch:

Taxi drivers on a collision course with the city over new tracking technology and credit card payment systems may play the strike card today.

The Taxi Alliance is widely expected to warn that medallion cabbies will walk off the job Sept. 1 if the Taxi and Limousine Commission holds to its plan to install the new gear in their hacks.

The 8,400-member Alliance has been moving toward a strike declaration for months.

“If the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg continue to stay silent as drivers’ privacy and economics are trampled on, we will strike,” Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said yesterday.

The TLC said the Global Positioning System tracking devices are meant to be used only to help cabbies get around the city, reunite passengers with lost belongings and perhaps catch criminals who prey on cabbies.

But drivers say the system will invade their privacy, create a new breed of backseat drivers who disagree with GPS directions and cost them money.

Striking over technological changes that actually encourage consumers to use their service more — nice bargaining tactic. Even the TWU didn’t have such a bad public relations position to begin from (it’s about health care for all Americans!) and look where they got.

If Bush ramps up the terror threat level whenever a political disaster strikes, does Bloomberg similarly hype the presidential talk whenever he needs to stay relevant? Got a critical congestion pricing vote Thursday? Unveil mike2008.com today:

Mayor Bloomberg insists he’s not running for President, but he has put a provocatively named mike2008.com Web site on the Internet.

It links directly to Bloomberg’s recently relaunched personal Web site, mikebloomberg.com, where Hizzoner keeps the public posted on the causes he’s supported in business, philanthropy and government.

Bloomberg spokesman Robert Lawson said the mayor’s use of mike2008.com has no connection to speculation he may run for President next year.

“The Web administrators control a number of Bloomberg-specific [addresses] to prevent cyber-squatters and redirect users to mikebloomberg.com,” Lawson said.

Other Web addresses — such as mbloomberg.com, michaelbloomberg.com and mike2007.com — also link to the mayor’s site.

Lawson said the mayor decided to link all those addresses because he wanted to make sure anyone looking for information about him got to his site.

. . .

The mayor is scheduled to travel to St. Louis today to speak at the National Urban League, an organization that will hear from the leading Democratic presidential candidates on Friday.

Of course you do! Of course you do:

Picture this — Mayor Bloomberg, a guy who rarely watches TV, now has the world’s largest high-definition plasma television adorning his famous “bullpen” at City Hall.

The 103-inch monster, which retails for $70,000, was donated by Panasonic and was on display yesterday as the bullpen re-opened after a two-week, $627,000 makeover.

“A lot of people from the NBA would have these in their homes,” said a proud Panasonic executive after posing for pictures with the mayor. He said the company hopes to sell 5,000 around the globe this year.

In addition to the usual news channels, the TV will display 311 call statistics and a video feed from NYC TV’s live traffic cameras.

The idea that this will somehow cut down on graffiti . . . lord . . . but at least it seems slightly more constitutional:

The tools of graffiti vandals — spray paint, broad tipped markers, and etching acid — are on the verge of being banned from the backpacks and pant pockets of anyone under the age of 21 unless carried in a locked container.

The new anti-graffiti rules, proposed by a City Council member of Queens, Peter Vallone Jr., are expected to be approved by the council on Wednesday.

Earlier: There’s That Pesky Constitution Again!

Things are not all hoo-do-lee-doo Transportation Alternatives and everything as city officials tackle the dark, seemy underbelly of bicycling:

“The cyclists hit people left and right and just keep on going,” the president of the 20th Police Precinct community council on the Upper West Side, Sam Katz, said. Ms. Katz and other leaders are counting on a new law that takes effect Thursday to help address the problem. The law, passed in March, requires restaurant managers to provide their deliverymen with safety equipment such as helmets, bells, and headlights. It also obliges restaurant managers to hang up posters — written in both English and the language spoken by the deliverymen — outlining the rules of the road for cyclists.

Deliverymen on bicycles irk residents on the Upper West Side so much that they are the no. 1 complaint heard by the 20th Precinct there, Lieutenant Biagio Carbone said.

“Every community board meeting, they’ll ask us, ‘How are our bicycle summonses going?’” Lieutenant Carbone, who has worked in the 20th Precinct and the 19th Precinct, on the Upper East Side, said. The abundance of restaurants that deliver in the two precincts makes the areas the worst in the city for reckless cyclists, he said.

. . .

“I explain it to them 1,000 times,” the manager of Bagels and Co. at Amsterdam Avenue and 79th Street, Ronnie Wachsler, said. The deli’s deliverymen receive summonses from the police almost every week for breaking traffic laws, he said.

“Riding on the sidewalks, I agree it’s a problem,” Mr. Wachsler said. “But delivery guys in general, the faster they make a delivery and get back, the faster they make another one. Time is of the essence.”

That the 1 train provides the best service, according to the Straphangers Campaign, is reason enough to stop you in your tracks (ugh). (If it’s so good, why bother with that fancy new train station then? Maybe because 1 train service actually sucks?)

So then it must be just a big joke that the G is rated “most reliable”? As in, it’s the most reliably sucky train? Read the report (.pdf) to find that the “G line ranks tied for 5th place out of the 22 subway lines.” No kidding!

The Times explains Manhattan’s good old steam heat and what to look for to avoid trouble:

The gray mist that rises from manholes when water touches the steam pipes below seems as much a part of the New York landscape as hot dog vendors.

But five days after a steam pipe exploded in Midtown, leaving one person dead and injuring dozens of others, New Yorkers had reason to be apprehensive about the vapor, particularly after heavy rains yesterday produced fresh trails of steam from manholes around the city.

Bob Flanagan, a 29-year veteran of Con Edison’s steam division, was particularly careful yesterday as he circled the city in search of vapor plumes, which might indicate a problem with the steam pipes below.

Because water collecting inside a steam pipe or seeping into one has been a cause of previous pipe ruptures, the company routinely checks manholes for vapor after rainstorms and pumps out water that reaches the height of the pipes.

There are several possible causes of vapor streams. One is rainwater, which vaporizes when it hits the hot pipes. Sometimes water mains leak onto steam pipes. And Con Edison sometimes intentionally lets off steam during underground construction.

“I’m looking for something over one foot high but with a little force behind it,” Mr. Flanagan said, before driving his minivan past a swirl of steam at the intersection of East Broadway and Pike Street in Lower Manhattan. Without a map, he drove over the steam mains beneath South Street, Water Street, Broadway and smaller roads, pointing to buildings that buy steam from Con Edison.

Every few minutes, he spotted a “whispering” vapor stream too thin to worry about. But about five times during his one-hour loop, he found a manhole that “gushed” steam strong enough that he radioed a dispatcher, who then sent a crew to pump out the water accumulating below.

Mr. Flanagan is one of 10 Con Edison supervisors who travel the city streets after rainstorms. There are also 12 two-person crews around Manhattan that pump out rainwater.

Any good newsman will tell you some stuff you just can’t make up:

A walk last week through the denuded ex-headquarters of the Times, on West Forty-third Street, was kind of spooky for a citizen already in an apocalyptic frame of mind. The paper’s empty offices, mid-gutting, suggested the twin desolations of war and obsolescence. But in the eyes of the “architecturologist” Kevin Browne, who searches modern ruins for loot, these wastes were full of possibility. Browne had come to the Times Building from another scavenge job (the old Queens County Courthouse — spectacular terra cotta) to look in on some of the spoils he’d been coveting since the Times decamped to Eighth Avenue, last month.

Browne, fifty, is the president of a salvage operation called Olde Good Things, which has showrooms in Chelsea, Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida, and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Olde Good Things is owned by the Church of Bible Understanding, a sect founded by a former vacuum-cleaner salesman. For a couple of decades, the church ran a cut-rate carpet-cleaning business that employed teen-age runaways. About a dozen years ago, Browne steered the church into the junk game. “It was totally Jesus leading us,” he explained. In the Lord’s name, he has salvaged artifacts from demolitions and renovation jobs all over town: the Plaza, Alice Tully Hall, the Morgan Library. The Times had already consigned most of its valuable stuff to be sold at auction. Now Browne had a shot at whatever leftovers he could find.

In the front lobby, Browne, a man with a Tommy Chong beard and a loping stride, put on a hard hat and led the way up some stairs to a vast newsroom. “You see anything you like, you can have it,” he said. There wasn’t much to like, just drifts of paper and trash: computer disks, laser printouts of war photographs, a sci-fi paperback (”Earth: Final Conflict — The Arrival”), a lei. Browne spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Junior, those glass doors to the newsroom that said ‘New York Times’ — they gone?” Junior assured him that they were not. “If it says ‘New York Times’ on it, it has value,” Browne said.

. . .

Down at the loading docks, Browne poked around in the back of his van. It was crammed with booty: a pair of oxidized bronze sconces, some antique iron nail pullers, a laser printer. He pulled out a giant black-and-white photograph, printed on poster board, of a Times reporter, in shirt and tie, sitting in front of a typewriter — a real Mohican. Browne had no idea who it was, but he was determined to find out.

When something should go without saying, you should really consider going without saying it:

Eleven years ago, the musical Rent made stars out of twentysomethings Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal and forever linked them to that squat-filled, polysexual, Alphabet City version of La Bohème that seemed so utterly, tragically of the moment. Rapp and Pascal are reprising their roles beginning July 30 in a musical that’s become as much a period piece as the opera that inspired it. Nobody takes only AZT anymore, and starving artists live in other boroughs, if not other cities. Some changes are for the better. “The show definitely loses some of its resonance because of the fact that teenagers today don’t know a society where lots of people are dying of AIDS,” says Pascal. “But given the choice, I would certainly have fewer people dying of AIDS, and fewer kids connecting to Rent.”