The grand plan to have your pet accompany you on your journey in the afterlife is a nice idea, but the path to heaven seems to be full of dog poop:

Haughty hotelier Leona Helmsley will be denied her final wish to be buried with her unpleasant pooch — because it’s illegal for a human cemetery to entomb an animal in New York, The Post has learned.

An official with the Department of State’s Division of Cemeteries was asked if a dog can be buried in a cemetery meant for people.

“Absolutely not, there’s no question about it,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

“A dog would not be allowed to be buried or interred in a cemetery. It’s for human beings.”

Officials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester, where the Helmsleys have a $1.4 million crypt in the mausoleum, told The Post yesterday they never had an intention of honoring the will. It specifies that when Trouble dies, her remains should be buried next to Leona and her husband Harry, who died in 1997.

“We’re not allowed to bury any pets in the cemetery,” said a Sleepy Hollow rep.

Helmsley, who died earlier this month, left $12 million to the 8-year-old Maltese.

. . .

“I was surprised to see that there was no mention of it in the media,” said Manhattan attorney Mark Borten, who had read about Leona Helmsley’s plans for the fluffy, four-legged heiress.

“Just because it’s in her will doesn’t mean it’s necessarily legit.”

Now that people know more, they’re wildly intrigued:

Opposition to congestion pricing has increased over the last month, and is fiercest in The Bronx, according to a poll released yesterday.

The Quinnipiac University poll reported that 57 percent of city voters now give a thumbs-down to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge $8 a day to motorists to enter Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays.

Only 36 percent support the proposal.

In a previous poll last month, the split between opponents and supporters was a closer 52-41 percent.

The only borough where the majority of residents stood with the mayor was Manhattan, 54-36 percent.

In every borough, however, congestion pricing took a heavy hit. Opposition reached 74 percent in The Bronx, 61 percent in Queens, 60 percent in Brooklyn and 56 percent on Staten Island.

And over the course of 30 years, that comes out to $65,520. Then again, they did win twice in 11 years*. Just don’t tell the poor saps you see each Friday down at the lottery bodega:

Lottery lightning has struck twice for a former Bronx couple, who won the state lottery for the second time in 11 years.

“It’s a great feeling,” Eugene Angelo Sr., 81, said yesterday when he learned that the ticket he bought with wife Adeline, 74, last week was the sole winner in the twice-weekly Lotto game and is worth $5 million.

In December 1996, the family bought one of four winning jackpot tickets and received the lump-sum payout of $2.5 million after sharing a $10 million jackpot with three others.

“We’re a little older, a little wiser, and there are a few more of us when you count the grandkids,” said Angelo, a retired construction worker who sold his Bronx home and moved to Mahopac in Putnam County after winning the lottery the first time.

“But we’re still the same old people. Still very excited.”

Eugene Jr. said his father spends about $42 on lottery tickets each week — and has done so since the state lottery began nearly 30 years ago.

. . .

The chances of winning once are 22 million to 1 — so the odds of doing it two times are “galactically astronomical,” said New York Lottery spokesman John Charlson.

Acting Lottery Director Gardner Gurney said the Angelos are “living proof that lightning, or in this case, random luck, can strike twice.”

When pressed for duty, New Yorkers find a way to call out sick:

On Wednesday morning, a pair of women in shorts and tank tops sat on the No. 7 train as it ran from Grand Central to Flushing. They were also AWOL, more or less, and they were planning to watch “a friend of a friend of mine from London who’s playing Rafael Nadal today,” said one of them, Jamie Lewis, 31.

“I sent an e-mail to my boss at midnight, said I’ll be out tomorrow and you can reach me on my cell, and turned my computer off. The markets are crazy and I work at a hedge fund, so I thought I’d escape.”

Ms. Lewis’s friend, who identified herself as Patricia, said she works for an Internet company and added, “I called in sick. Can’t you tell?” She held the back of her hand against her forehead. “I canceled some meetings.”

Others were at Flushing Meadows by dint of a range of alibis and measures, and a lot of these involved the notion that because they were using corporate seats, or accepting the tickets as a gift from clients, or bringing clients, it counted as work anyway.

One man in shorts and loafers gestured to the young woman beside him on the No. 7 train and said that they both worked for banks, “and she’s my client.” This explained his declaration that the Open “is a good corporate event,” but not the fact that he was hugging and kissing the woman throughout the train ride.

Colleen Channer and a friend, who were watching the Nathalie Dechy-Francesca Schiavone match from an upper row of Louis Armstrong Stadium, the better to simultaneously keep an eye on the match between David Nalbandian and Ivan Navarro-Pastor on the adjacent grandstand court, said that she had taken a vacation from her job at a law firm. “But I have a friend who’s an I.T. guy who told his boss last year that he was running a new program, and then he put the program up and came to the Open the rest of the day,” she said.

There are at least two acts in there somewhere (some enterprising whippersnapper needs to supply the third):

The Carroll Gardens widow who fought to die in the home she’d lived in her entire life, won a Pyrrhic victory this month — dying in the apartment on Aug. 12 and defeating a developer’s two-year-long quest to evict her.

Angelina Visconti, 88, died of natural causes at Long Island College Hospital, though she was still a resident of the Cheever Place rowhouse.

“She got her wish, and that was what it was all about,” said Leonard Visconti, her son. “She always said she was born here, she wanted to die here.”

Visconti’s residency became an issue in 2005, when her nephew Joseph DeLeonibus, the son of Visconti’s late twin sister, tried to evict her so he could make a killing in the booming Carroll Gardens real-estate market.

The house was eventually sold for $1.13 million to developer Wayne Warnock, who picked up the eviction proceedings where DeLeonibus left off.

Earlier: Notices To Quit Thicker Than Blood.

It’s the American Songbook . . . and it always goes back to poor old Robert Moses:

The city wants to use its power of eminent domain to push out an almost-finished arts venue in Fort Greene to make way for a Manhattan-based dance troupe and 150 new housing units that comprise the centerpiece of the so-called BAM Cultural District.

“Our goal was to create a live music-and-arts venue,” said Todd Triplett, one of the three friends behind the Amber Art and Music Space, which is being built in a former liquor store at Fulton Street and Ashland Place.

Lured by the promise of the burgeoning “Lincoln Center of Brooklyn” that the city envisions for the area around BAM, Triplett and his partners invested more than $1 million, and spent a year and a half turning the run-down, three-story space into a performance venue, recording studio and an arts non-profit.

That grand idea was shattered on Aug. 21, when Jack Hammer, the director of Brooklyn Planning for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, informed the three partners that the agency wants to seize the site by eminent domain to make way for the Dancespace Project, a Manhattan-based dance group.

“We were four weeks away from completion, and we get this letter. The city is f–king us,” said Triplett, who has already gotten a liquor license and booked musical acts into 2008. “I’ve never seen anything this egregious. This is in the tradition of Robert Moses.”

The partners claim that no one — including the broker who secured them the space and the landlord, who let them sign a 10-year lease and has collected $200,000 in rent so far — informed them of the city’s plans for the site.

“We refinanced our homes to do this,” said Triplett, standing shell-shocked amid construction materials in the area that would have housed the main lounge. “We took second jobs.”

. . . the lameness of art trolleys:

A think tank cited the Queens Culture Trolley, which was shut down in October 2005 due to poor ridership, in a recent study as an example of how the city’s cultural trolleys hold great promise but need to better address conceptual and operational issues.

. . .

The Queens trolley, which carried passengers for free on weekends around a 90-minute loop of arts and culture stops in and around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, was discontinued after it drew a mere 2,144 riders during its 17 months of existence, a study by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future found.

The trolley, which was owned by the Parks Department, made stops at the Queens Museum of Art, New York Hall of Science, Queens Zoo, Queens Theatre in the Park, Queens Botanical Garden, Louis Armstrong House, parts of Jackson Heights and hotels near LaGuardia Airport.

“It had wonderful potential, but the practicalities were problematic,” Queens Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz said. “It was a great innovation, but as a practical matter you can’t do that with one trolley given the size of the park.”

The study found that when the trolley was launched in May 2004, it “debuted to high hopes and a slew of press coverage, but the sponsors realized that very few people were actually riding it and most of the institutions felt the trolley had no impact on their attendance.”

The capacity for the trolley was 40 passengers per trip, giving it the potential to transport 240 people during its six weekend trips. But the average weekend ridership was a mere 32 people, the study found.

(What’s the civil service title for “art trolley operator”?)

Apparently the previous employee left a bunch of crap in his desk:

U.N. inspectors found vials of poisonous gas in one of their offices near U.N. headquarters, a spokesman announced today.

Two plastic packages containing gram-sized amounts of liquid were discovered last week as U.N. inspectors were archiving old files in a room at 866 East 48th St. Yesterday, an inventory report revealed that the packages contained the chemical agent phosgene, an old warfare agent that was used in a majority of chemical deaths during World War I.

The chemicals were recovered in 1996 from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, Al Muthanna, and sent to the wrong office, the U.N. said in a statement. Normally, they would have been sent by military transport to a laboratory equipped for analysis.

The U.N. said that chemical weapons experts had sealed the packages and placed them in a secure location on the sixth floor. The floor was evacuated this afternoon as a Hazardous Materials unit responded to remove the materials and bring them to a military facility outside of New York, police said.

Baseball people may be superstitious, but baseball writers are just out of control:

If a scholar of Norse mythology had been in the stands of Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, he or she probably would have advised Yankees fans to not make too much out of the 5-3 victory against the Red Sox.

The result, after all, still left the Yankees trailing Boston by an imposing seven games in the American League East. But more significant, perhaps, was the pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during the game and that, according to Norse mythology, just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season.

Believe it or not, the squirrel’s actions closely resembled those of Ratatosk, or “gnawing tooth,” a squirrel in Norse mythology that climbed up and down a tree that represented the world. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic scholar and poet, recorded the story in his 13th-century work “Prose Edda.”

As the story goes, Ratatosk carried insults as it traveled to opposite ends of the tree, fueling a rivalry between the evil dragon residing at the bottom of the tree and the eagle perched at the top.

. . .

The Yankees said the squirrel came down about 20 minutes after Tuesday’s game and was allowed to go on its way. It joins a cast of baseball creatures that includes the black cat that crossed in front of the Chicago Cubs’ dugout during their ill-fated pennant-race battle with the Mets in 1969 and the bird that Dave Winfield killed with a throw in Toronto in 1983.

This should be easy to monitor because it’s not like the Staten Island Ferry is one of the three top tourist attractions in New York City or anything. Yup, right:

Taking pictures aboard the Staten Island Ferry? Watch where you’re pointing that camera, bub.

The recent scare in Washington state — two men, apparently of Middle Eastern descent, were spotted photographing sensitive areas of the ferryboats that ply Puget Sound — has triggered heightened sensitivity to shutterbugs.

Photography is officially permitted onboard and in terminals here, and with so many tourists enjoying the views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty from the boats each day, “picture-taking is a part of the experience,” acknowledged city Department of Transportation spokeswoman Molly Gordy.

An official memo sent to ferry staff in 2005 indicated that crew members were “not to prohibit anyone from taking photographs in any areas open to the public,” while remaining vigilant and informing security and supervisors if anything seems unusual about a passenger’s photo op.

“If pictures are being taken that seem suspicious, just as if a person is acting suspicious, NYPD on board would be alerted and the parties would be questioned,” Ms. Gordy said.

When it comes to offering hourly rates, just say no:

A new Quality Inn Hotel featuring sleek, modern accommodations for tourists and weary business travelers located just minutes from the Queens Plaza transportation hub has been opened in Long Island City.

The hotel opened its doors at 30-03 40th Ave. last weekend. Owner/manager Vipul Patel and his staff welcomed Big Apple visitors to its 48 units — each featuring a complimentary Internet connection, a daily complimentary breakfast and a 32-inch plasma television for use via complimentary satellite dish TV service.

. . .

Tourists will find that rates at the new Quality Inn will save them valuable vacation dollars, too. Introductory prices include a queen-size unit for $129 per night and a double-double unit for $149 to $169 per night. Grand opening prices will be adjusted at a future date, he added.

Patel guaranteed that the hotel would not offer short-stay rates. “If our staff is approached by anyone seeking such accommodations we will tell them ‘No,’ and suggest they go elsewhere.”

But does that big hole in the ground really count as “access” to Penn Station?

Patel said, “This is the perfect location for tourists and business travelers seeking quick, easy access to all subways, buses and highways. We are also just minutes away from Long Island Rail Road access [to] Pennsylvania Station. Who could ask for more?”

Nice:

Leona Helmsley’s dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley’s grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire’s estate.

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer — so long as they visit their father’s grave site once each calendar year.

Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each.

Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer’s other children — Craig and Meegan Panzirer — for “reasons that are known to them,” she wrote.

Not only is having a work cellphone intrusive but it could actually cost you your job:

A 21-year employee of the school system could lose his job after officials accused him of repeatedly leaving early - and stunned the worker with data it got by tracking his movements with a city-issued cellphone, The Post has learned.

In a precedent-setting case, administrative trial judge Tynia Richard recommended the firing of John Halpin, a veteran supervisor of carpenters, for cutting out before the end of his shift on as many as 83 occasions between March 2 and Aug. 9, 2006.

The evidence against Halpin, whose base pay is $300 a day, included time cards that suspiciously appeared stamped on the same machine, even though his duties placed him in different locations each day.

But there was a clincher: data gathered through the GPS system on Halpin’s cellphone, which he accepted in 2005 without being told it might be used to trace his every move.

On March 8, for example, supervisors determined that Halpin was last in Manhattan at 1:31 p.m. and was home in Levittown, L.I., at 2:40 p.m. On March 29, Halpin was found at home at 2:38 p.m.

The earliest he was caught in Levittown was 1:40 p.m. on June 22.

But his shift wasn’t supposed to end until 3:30 p.m.

Some workers refused the free-phone offer, saying they preferred to use their own cells.

Richard said the unsuspecting Halpin “admitted he took the phone because he liked the walkie-talkie and other functions it has.”

And a good reminder why it’s always better to start late than end early:

Halpin questioned the reliability of the data and argued that his privacy was invaded, since officials tracked him when he wasn’t at work.

In fact, the data found Halpin on numerous occasions turned up early for his job, sometimes at 6 a.m. His shift started at 8 a.m.

Despite the extra hours Halpin put in without pay, Richard ruled that it didn’t mitigate his early departures and recommended he be fired.

In a strange twist, being a total jerk driver actually may help you in the long run:

Pedicab drivers busted by police for running red lights and hitting pedestrians may have better odds of winning coveted licenses to “pedal” their wares in the city than drivers who bother to obey the law.

Tickets for moving violations will be accepted as proof a pedicab business was in operation prior to the new regulations passed by the city this spring.

This proof, which can also come in the form of insurance or incorporation documents, gives operators of bicycle rickshaws first dibs in the lottery to distribute 325 licenses later this year.

The dollar is like the weakest it’s been since the Civil War, they’ve turned our housing stock into pied à terres . . . what more do we have to give them? Oh right — a milfy Julianne Moore:

Speaking at the newly constructed American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the mayor said that international tourists complain that American immigration officials are “rude” and “disrespectful.”

“This is one more of those things that is diminishing our competitive edge,” Mr. Bloomberg told a crowd that included more than 45 international journalists. “Poor customer service is not what this country needs. We have to welcome people from around the world. We have to change this at the federal level.”

But the city, he said, is not going to wait for Washington. To improve New York’s competitive edge in the race for international visitors, Mr. Bloomberg unveiled a campaign to make them feel welcome.

The initiative, which is being called “Just Ask the Locals,” will feature billboards throughout the five boroughs with advice from celebrities — including Robert DeNiro, football star Tiki Barber, and others — on where to go and what to do in the city. Movie star Julianne Moore, for example, is pictured in a café with the caption “Even if your kids say they want to walk, bring the stroller.”

Drugs, bombs and pirated DVDs. It’s all about priorities:

DVD piracy costs New York City about $50 million in lost sales taxes each year. Drawing on his background as a federal prosecutor, John Malcolm decided to try a low-tech solution to the high-tech crime.

“Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs. Lo and behold, they can.”

At a demonstration here yesterday, two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo were able to pick out boxes full of DVDs. They made no critical judgments — for them, all movies stink. They can’t tell the difference between legitimate or pirated products, DVDs or CDs. But their ability to unearth discs makes the jobs of police and customs officials much easier.

“We’d like to get law enforcement interested in using similar dogs,” explained Malcolm.

And here I thought those higher office rumors had all been unfounded*:

With a nod to Senator Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg is putting to rest that pesky gossip about a bid for national office: He says he does not want to be the nation’s next attorney general. “Despite any rumors you may have heard, I did not come to Washington as part of a stealth campaign to become the new attorney general,” Mayor Bloomberg quipped to an audience at the National Press Club that appeared well-versed in the rampant speculation about his aspirations for the White House.

. . .

[T]he mayor did poke a little fun at [Senator Schumer] over some “nasty comments” Mr. Schumer made about the condition of New York City’s bridges following the collapse of the Interstate 35W span in Minnesota earlier this month. Drawing laughter, Mr. Bloomberg recalled pointing out that three weeks earlier, Mr. Schumer’s wife, who was the city’s transportation commissioner, had pronounced the bridges in “great shape.”

After delivering a speech on poverty, the mayor issued his ritual denial of a presidential run. But he was spotted outside the National Press Building posing for photographs with supporters holding “Bloomberg ‘08″ signs.

*Is a MBA a good enough substitute for a law degree (not that you necessarily need one . . .)?

Perhaps the “multi-user dungeon” part might hold some people back:

Being poked on the subway is annoying. On Facebook it’s a compliment. A new application on the site hopes to bridge that divide.

Subway Status allows riders to post updates, meet their neighbors and read service announcements pulled from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Web site. Users can check for delays, complain about local transit issues — such as the campaign for an F train express — and keep track of weekend changes, all without leaving their social network.

“The interesting thing about the subway experience is that everyone has it, but no one shares it,” said Amos Bloomberg (no relation to the Mayor), who designed the application. “There’s currently no forum for this discussion, and it certainly doesn’t happen on the train itself. I’m trying to explore that issue.”

. . .

“I see it like those ‘multi-user dungeons’ from the early days of computers,” he said. “The idea is that you are exploring a system with lots of rooms and different people. There are tribes of people on each train, and I want them to organize themselves into little pockets.”

In the recession years of the early 90s Harlem’s real estate was in much better shape compared to that of the East Village simply because of Upper Manhattan’s excellent subway access, something people on Columbia Street in Brooklyn are realizing today:

Two years ago Freddy Saint-Aignan and his wife, Angelika, found the perfect location for their fledgling bar/restaurant, the Sugar Lounge: Columbia Street in Brooklyn.

The building was just the right size, had a spacious backyard garden and sat beside Upper New York Bay. The city had big plans for the area: green space and parks, cruise ship piers a few blocks away

The Columbia Street Waterfront District, as it is called, was going to be resurrected to its past stature as a social and commercial hub. It was going to rival Smith Street in Boerum Hill, which had gone through a renaissance, attracting high-end boutiques and specialty stores, restaurants and a steadily swelling flow of shoppers and diners.

But that was two years ago, and instead of a silver lining along the Manhattan skyline, which the Saint-Aignans can see from the lounge’s front window, they see the outstretched arms of backhoes, cranes and industrial containers. Where there was to be a park across the street there is shredded earth, construction vehicles and exposed sewer pipes. The sidewalk is dirty and ragged, and aside from the occasional dog walker, jogger or in-line skater (along smoother stretches) there is very little foot traffic.

At night, the street outside the lounge is dark, the street lights dimmed by damage and disrepair. The promises of better days for Columbia Street have crumbled like the sidewalk in front of the Sugar Lounge, Mr. Saint-Aignan said yesterday.

“Smith Street has everything,” Mr. Saint-Aignan said from his cozy lounge, pointing out the contrast with Columbia Street. “With all the construction, there is no place for parking. We have no access, no subway, no buses. At night we have no lights.”

The Columbia Street corridor has struggled to propel itself into the orbit of the Brooklyn revival. Depending on whom you ask, the Columbia Street commercial strip is in Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens or — more recently — Red Hook. It is bordered on the west by New York Bay, on the east by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, on the north by Atlantic Avenue, and on the south by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

Mr. Saint-Aignan, formerly the general manager of Bar Tabac on Smith Street, said he had had to take on two other jobs to stay afloat.

The wishful thinking about Columbia Street’s being the new Smith Street goes only so far. The magical combination that makes one street hot and another tepid can seem elusive, but not here, where the reasons for the stalled revival are painfully clear. Continuing construction, a sense of geographic isolation and waning buzz continue to hush the “pop” that speculators had predicted.

For a while, “everyone wanted to come,” said Frank Manzione, who owns a real estate company on Columbia Street. “There were new condos being built, more people were moving in. A lot of the stores that were closed up started to get rented.”

Gives added meaning to the concept of damage control:

A construction firm involved in the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building is the same company that assured Minnesota officials a highway bridge was safe before it collapsed this summer.

The firm, URS, which stands for United Research Services, was hired to investigate the stability of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis in 2003. After finding numerous weaknesses, URS engineers told Minnesota transportation officials in January it would be able to find cracks and fix them before they became dangerous, according to news reports.

The eight-lane bridge collapsed seven months later, taking with it about 50 cars and killing at least 12 people.

So perhaps Fashion Week is an attempt to cook the books:

[O]n most weekdays, there are more women in the park than men. This is how . . . Dan Biederman, would like it to be. Biederman, the longtime president of the Bryant Park Corporation, was a protégé of the urban sociologist William (Holly) Whyte, whose theories about the dynamics of public space included the idea that the presence of women indicates civic health.

“Women pick up on visual cues of disorder better than men do,” Biederman said the other day. “They’re your purest customers. And, if women don’t see other women, they tend to leave.” Biederman visits the park several times a day and sometimes goes undercover. (Look out for a fit, middle-aged gentleman in a pin-striped suit, reading “The Red Badge of Courage.”) He has discerned that women notice homeless people more than men do, object more to crumbs on picnic tables, and are more sensitive to foul odors, such as that of urine, which signals that there are no clean, functional bathrooms nearby. Twenty years ago, Bryant Park was an infamous shambles. Few women — or men — would go near it. Now it’s a handsome place, with flower beds, pétanque games, a lending library, a carousel, thousands of portable chairs, theatrical performances, and many other inducements. And so the women come. Presumably, a female preponderance not only emboldens more women but also entices more men. “There’s great girl-watching,” Biederman acknowledged.

. . .

“Go to any public space in the world,” Biederman had said. “If it’s skewing overwhelmingly male, get out as soon as possible.”

Location Scout: Bryant Park.

Lance Bass has only been here like a matter of days but he’s complaining like he’s been here for years:

Lance Bass is here for a few months to star as Corny Collins in Hairspray. He’s not sure he likes New York so much.

. . .

He’s not hanging out at fellow ‘N Sync alum Justin Timberlake’s barbecue joint. “I’ve been a few times,” he says. “But it’s really up there. The Upper East Side? I’m not in college anymore.”

Beats the heck out of State College, College Station, or College Park — that’s for sure:

Freshman orientation used to be about language placement exams and finding the way to the dining hall. But as thousands of freshmen at private colleges and universities in New York City begin orientation today, they are embarking on what may seem to outsiders like an extravagant eight-day vacation.

First-year students arriving at Barnard, Columbia, and New York University have many activities to choose from this week, including: yoga classes, exclusive tours of the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, chartered Circle Line cruises to the Statue of Liberty, mini-manicures and aromatherapy at on-campus spas, Coney Island beach parties, scavenger hunts in Times Square, walking tours of the East Village and Park Slope, shopping expeditions to SoHo, outings to popular local eateries such as Magnolia Bakery, and a chance to compete for free tickets and reservations to the city’s hottest shows and hard-to-get-into restaurants.

The emphasis at orientations in New York City is as much on introducing students to their new urban surroundings as it is on preparing them for class. School officials are billing the multimillion-dollar “welcome weeks” as one of the high points of the college experience.

. . .

While college freshmen enjoy all the culture, food, and sightseeing Manhattan has to offer this week, not all residents are entirely pleased with their arrival.

“My first thought this morning was — ‘oh my god, they’re back,” a Greenwich Village resident of 31 years, Michelle Calise, said. “It keeps the neighborhood youthful and contemporary, but they don’t know how to walk, they take up five abreast on the sidewalk, it’s nerve-racking. They should have a class on how to live in the city.”

(”You can only be young once. But you can always be immature,” is attributed to Dave Barry.)

When the Dow drops, the ice plops — or, scotch as economic indicator:

Just as a storm of change has been rattling the New York Stock Exchange of late, so has there been a change in the weather at the New York Wine Exchange, a well-stocked shop on Broadway near Battery Place, just a few blocks from its namesake.

. . .

According to Paul Couto, the owner, sales of hard liquor have risen several percentage points since Aug. 16, the day the major stock indexes plunged to more than 10 percentage points below their July peaks.

Are the gods of finance smiling down on Mr. Couto even as they chuck lightning bolts at the financial companies that employ many of his customers?

More than a decade’s experience selling wine has taught him otherwise. He has found that when finance workers go for the hard stuff, it’s not because they want to drown their sorrows, but because liquor is a better bargain than wine.

“You open a bottle of Scotch,” he lamented, “it lasts you a week.”

. . .

Mr. Couto said that he wouldn’t be able to fully gauge the effects of the recent financial turbulence until next month, when many of his regular customers return from vacation. But even if they don’t all switch to hard liquor, he worries that some of them may soon exit the neighborhood.

You’re a New Yorker — so you stand next to people . . . get real — it’s sink or swim here:

A crowded subway platform and hundreds of aggressive commuters “pushing and shoving” their way on and off trains was a deadly combination for a 63-year-old woman who fell to the tracks, hit her head and died from her injuries.

Earlier this month, the woman’s daughter filed a lawsuit against the city and the MTA, blaming them for not doing enough to protect her mother.

On May 22, 2006, Maria Navarro, who walked with the help of a cane, exited a train at the Roosevelt Avenue-74th Street subway station in Jackson Heights, Queens, and was overcome by the crush of people.

She fell to the tracks and died a month later.

Combining the bicyclist’s smug cluck with the businessman’s argument that everyone is entitled to make a buck, we have the pedicabs:

The law cuts the number of pedicabs by a third, from 500 to 325; bans them from bike lanes and bans their use of an electric-assist motor the size of a hair dryer. Police can also ban the bike taxis’ operation from any area determined to be congested, which covers most of Midtown.

The law also forbids pedicabs from traveling on bridges, meaning operators living in the outer boroughs would face the expense of hiring a truck to transport their wheels into and out of Manhattan.

Doug Korman, co-founder of Green Transporters Association, was wearing a cap with the number 326 on it.

“I’m number 326,” he said as drivers stood behind him on the steps. “Three hundred and twenty-five for a city of 8 million is unfair and un-American.”

. . .

After the rally, George Bliss, a founder of the New York City pedicab movement, stood by his green pedicab on Broadway. Bliss suggested that as the police, firefighters and sanitation workers are known respectively as New York’s Finest, Bravest and Strongest, the city’s pedicab drivers are New York’s Greenest.

“Politicians can’t keep green transportation from happening,” he declared.

New Era, the supplier of Major League Baseball caps, is accused of exploiting gang rivalries in designing new merchandise:

Angry East Harlem activists took to the streets yesterday, demanding that New Era baseball caps designed with the colors and symbols of three notorious gangs be pulled from shelves.

The protesters say the headwear, which they claim evoke the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings gang colors, will add to the violence that already plagues their neighborhood.

“Young people who don’t know the meaning of these hats will fall prey to gangs and wind up beat up, shot or worse,” said Johnny Rivera, who led the group of 20 protesters to apparel stores along Third Avenue near East 107th Street.

. . .

Rivera first discovered the caps while shopping with his son for back-to-school gear last week.

He offered to buy his son a black New Era baseball cap with a gold Yankee logo and embroidered crown. The 11-year-old explained to his then-clueless father that the hat was “a gang thing,” and wearing it would put him in danger.

“This is not something I was aware of as a 45-year old father buying a hat for my 11-year old kid,” he said.

His son pointed out two other New Era-brand Yankees hats, both white with red or blue bandannas wrapped around the sides, that he said represent Bloods and Crips.

In an era where people are eager to find new ways to compromise their privacy, it’s difficult to see how striking over ostensible civil liberties concerns will appeal to the masses of people who only care about getting across town:

New York cabbies are threatening to go on strike for two days next month — an action that could wreak havoc across the city.

The union representing Yellow Cab drivers said yesterday cabbies should strike for 48 hours to protest Taxi and Limousine Commission orders that they put Global Positioning System devices in their cars.

Cabbies claim the devices rob them of privacy by letting the city track their movements, and cost them money.

“This is an issue that is affecting every single taxi driver on the street,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of strike organizers the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “I have never seen drivers this angry before.”

The union yesterday told drivers to stop work for 48 hours starting at 5 a.m. Sept. 5, unless an agreement is reached before then.

The last time city streets were emptied of yellow was in May 1998, when an estimated 11,500 of the 12,187 licensed cabbies stayed home. That strike, also led by Desai, aimed to take on then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s attempt to introduce more ironfisted rules for licensing cabbies.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management yesterday confirmed it was drawing up a contingency plan to ease chaos the strike could cause.

Remember, even the TWU couched their arguments in terms of “preserving health care for all working Americans” and look what that got them.

But at least one of the taxi driver unions gets that:

In competing Manhattan press conferences yesterday afternoon, rival advocacy groups said that (1) there could be a citywide taxi strike in September, and (2) there would not be a strike.

. . .

“We are ready to have a 48-hour strike on Sept. 5 and Sept. 6,” said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, as she stood near a line of taxis outside Pennsylvania Station. “We are ready, willing and able to walk out.”

The Taxi Workers Alliance said in a press release that it wants to work out a resolution with the Taxi and Limousine Commission to avert a strike.

Two hours later, Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said no walkout was ahead.

Standing in front of the Taxi and Limousine Commission office on Rector Street in Lower Manhattan, he said: “Read my lips: There will be no strike.”

. . .

Ms. Desai said drivers had also complained that they were required to pay 5 percent of credit card fares to their garages as a service fee, and that meters sometimes malfunction when they are connected to global positioning systems.

Mr. Mateo praised the credit card systems, saying they would encourage more trips and higher tips. He dismissed concerns about the tracking systems.

“We don’t have to be radicals,” he said. “You want privacy, you don’t drive a cab.”

“Ready, Willing and Able” — nice way to co-opt a good cause! That’s Bush-like!

Earlier: Privacy Concerns — Quaint Like A Checker Cab.

When the story of who killed the Red Hook Ballfields is written it will turn out that we are all guilty:

Honduras Maya, a restaurant owned by one of the vendors that serves Latin American food on weekends at the Red Hook Ball Fields, was closed down by the Health Department this week after an inspection stemming from the city’s crackdown on the vendors.

The shutdown could merely be a taste of what’s to come if the 13 food vendors at the ball fields fail to meet strict health code requirements by this weekend. And the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation may not extend the vendors’ temporary permit — which officially expires after Labor Day — until the soccer season ends in late October, as earlier promised.

. . .

Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, said health inspectors are expected to start issuing fines — or shutting down vendors — this weekend for not meeting requirements like providing hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and preparing food in commercial kitchens rather than at home.

Suany Carcamo, the owner of Honduras Maya, has been operating a Honduran food stand specializing in baleadas at the ball fields for more than a decade. Fuentes said her restaurant was investigated by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a follow-up to a letter she submitted to prove that she was preparing her food for the stand in a city-certified commercial kitchen — her own restaurant.

The Park Slope restaurant received 122 violation points, compared to the citywide average of 14 points, according to the inspection report. Among the 20 violations listed were: missing Choking First Aid, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Wash Hands signs; evidence of flying insects and mice; toilet facility not maintained and provided with toilet paper; and wiping cloths dirty or not stored in proper sanitizing equipment.

The owners were not available for comment by press time. An employee, when reached by phone, confirmed that the restaurant had been shut down.

But Carcamo could be viewed as one of the lucky vendors. She is one of only two that also owns a restaurant, while many of the others are struggling to find a commercial or community kitchen certified by the Health Department where they can prepare their food.

“The report from my vendors is that it is basically very, very difficult to do,” said Fuentes. After word traveled that Honduras Maya was shut down, “a lot of people were denying vendors the use [of their facilities] out of fear that the Department of Health would enforce harshly.

“Anyone who doesn’t have that letter wouldn’t be allowed to sell,” he said.

(The vendors do nothing to conceal it, we visit there because we want to eat it, we blame the Health Department for being there, but we are all there . . .)

I guess it’s back to those old reliable subway churros for us . . .

The Brooklyn brand is sometimes freaky, sometimes brash, sometimes pizza and yet strangely evocative of a home-brewed melange of essential oils:

Brooklyn, that icon of industry, labor and pollution, now has its own scent. Not a smell (we always had that), but a scent, a nice one, one that Coco Chanel herself may approve of — Eau De Brooklyn.

. . .

“It all started in the kitchen . . .” explained Dr. Emilio Oribe, who began mixing essential oils purchased from health food stores with his wife and kids about a year and a half ago.

“It seemed whatever we liked, others didn’t like and whatever others liked, we couldn’t reproduce,” he recalled.

So after much consultation with friends and neighbors the Oribes got an idea of what they wanted and brought it to professionals, “to make sure it had a shelf life and all those chemistry details that are very important.” By last July, Eau de Brooklyn was on the shelves of area boutiques.

. . .

“You tell me, what should we do with it? Should we really go beyond Brooklyn?” he wonders. Right now, the product line, which consists of two different scented soaps and a perfume, is only retailed in boutiques in southern and western Brooklyn and on their Web site. “We never thought there would be interest anywhere else,” he says.

*Just kidding! They totally don’t find that funny.