But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

Clyde Haberman can’t say it so I will — Charles Barron is totally fucking disgusting for apologizing for Robert Mugabe in 2008. Wow:

Foreign leaders aren’t routinely honored with receptions at New York’s City Hall. In the last two decades, as best as we can tell, only two Africans have received this red-carpet treatment.

One was the revered Nelson Mandela. That was in 1990, when David N. Dinkins was mayor. Mr. Mandela had been released four months earlier from his 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

The other leader was President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Not many people put his name and “revered” together.

Perhaps they once did, when he led the liberation of his country, then called Rhodesia, from oppressive rule by its white minority. But by 2002, when he was ushered into New York’s seat of democracy, he was a certified human rights disaster.

Rights groups condemned him for jailing and torturing political opponents, for repressing independent-minded judges and journalists, for starving many of his people by denying government food aid to opposition-dominated districts.

His signature program, the seizure of white-owned farms, was blamed for contributing to mass hunger and for amounting to a land grab that benefited only his loyalists.

This was the man warmly welcomed at City Hall under the aegis of the City Council’s Black, Hispanic and Asian Caucus. His main host was Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, a former Black Panther who has lost none of his zest for revolutionary oratory, 1960s-style.

Only a dozen of the Council’s 51 members attended the event. But the many who stayed away, fearing the third-rail potential of a racially sensitive issue, acquiesced with their silence. Gifford Miller, then the Council speaker, issued a statement calling the reception a matter of free speech.

Six years later, the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe has hardly improved. A runoff presidential election set for Friday has been marked by violence, with dozens of opposition supporters reported to have been killed. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, though he won the first election round, withdrew from the race and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. On Wednesday, no less than Mr. Mandela registered strong disapproval, condemning the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe.

Given all that, might Mr. Barron harbor second thoughts about having brought Mr. Mugabe into City Hall?

“Absolutely not,” the councilman said.

“Does he do things that I disagree with? Yes,” Mr. Barron said. But he clearly still regards Mr. Mugabe as a liberator more than an oppressor. “You didn’t care about black Africans when whites were killing them in Rhodesia,” he said. As he sees it, the real reason that Mr. Mugabe has come under strong attack from the West is the confiscation of white-owned farms.

Echoing Mr. Mugabe’s party line, he suggested that Mr. Tsvangirai is a tool of “British imperialism and the United States as well.” As for political violence, “I don’t think we can deny people are dying,” Mr. Barron said. “Who’s responsible and how many — we need to really get reports other than from the opposition.”

*Or do you not read the paper, moron?

Wow — they should have a black diamond line for all sorts of things — entering the subway, walking in Midtown, navigating the counter at Katz’s, etc.:

The Transportation Security Administration introduced a new screening system at La Guardia Airport on Wednesday that tries to speed things up — and reduce anxiety and frustration — by asking travelers to choose a line based on their familiarity with checkpoint procedures.

The system relies on travelers to sort themselves into three groups, each assigned a color and shape: a green circle for families with small children and strollers, groups, people needing special assistance and those new to flying; a blue square for casual travelers who are familiar with security checkpoint procedures and have multiple carry-on bags; and a black diamond for expert travelers who are well-versed in the procedures.

Expert travelers fly more than twice a month, travel light, and are “always ready with items removed” (no metal, no shoes). Elite-status members of frequent-flyer programs are included in this category.

La Guardia is the 24th airport to implement the program, which began in Salt Lake City and Denver in February.

. . .

Skeptics have suggested, however, that people are likely to overestimate their abilities to get through a line quickly, and that relying on passengers to sort themselves is a recipe for failure.

Those in charge of the Self-Select Lanes program, as the authorities are calling it, said such worries were unfounded.

“It’s kind of like going to the line for 10 items at the grocery store,” said the program’s national director, Earl Morris. “Nobody wants to be that person with 20 items holding everyone else up. It’s peer pressure.”

This just in — U.N. diplomats still haven’t paid their parking tickets:

More than a decade after Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared war on diplomatic scofflaws over unpaid parking tickets, the city is still owed more than $18 million, leaving many New Yorkers enraged.

“They should pay,” said Carmen Mercer, 35, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, standing outside a midtown DMV office. “Everybody else has to pay. It comes with the responsibility of having a car.”

Deadbeat nations are clearly in no rush to pay off their debts, the vast majority of which were incurred before a 2002 agreement provided more parking spaces for them. That deal has cut the number of new tickets issued by 94 percent and helped lower the total owed to the city from more than $21 million.

Nevertheless, the total owed has been stuck at $18 million since at least 2005. Some 175 countries are to blame for the missing pot of money, with Egypt and Kuwait leading the list of offenders.

After all, $18 million could be used to build one-tenth of the High Line:

City officials and the Friends of the High Line presented the final design on Wednesday for the first phase of the High Line, the $170 million park that is under construction on the West Side of Manhattan and has been called one of New York City’s more distinctive public projects.

The park, modeled loosely on the Promenade Plantée in Paris, is being built on a 1.45-mile elevated freight rail structure that stretches 22 blocks, from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, near the Hudson River. The rail structure, built to support two fully loaded freight trains, was built from 1929 to 1934 when the West Side was a freight-transportation hub, but has been unused for decades. The tracks are 30 to 60 feet wide and 18 to 30 feet above the ground.

Ground was broken in April 2006. Over the past two years, crews have been constructing the first, $85 million segment of the 6.7-acre park, which is estimated to cost $170 million and is financed by federal, city and private money.

Location Scout: UN, High Line.

. . . but I can’t believe someone is actually named “Jay Gooch”. I can’t believe he’s come this far since the days of terrorizing Gary Coleman:

Gotham took first for overall sweat production in a new study — although it came in only 68th among sweatiest cities per capita. The shining Apple produces an estimated 1.3 million gallons of sweat per hour — enough to fill the Central Park Reservoir in one summer month.

New Yorkers collectively outsweat Los Angeles, Chicago and even Houston.

For the fifth year in a row, Phoenix, Ariz., was named the sweatiest U.S. city with an average summer temperature of 95.1 degrees, according to sweat expert Dr. Jay Gooch.

And Gooch said New York’s humidity doesn’t make New Yorkers sweat more — it only increases the “misery factor.”

Cutbacks at the Times; appearances-oriented couples hardest hit:

Meanwhile, a Sunday institution, the weddings and celebrations pages in the Styles section, is also planning to scale back the number of wedding announcements it has in its pages after two staffers were lost from this year’s round of buyouts/layoffs. “We contemplate a small reduction in the number we run compared with last year at this time,” wrote Catherine Mathis, the paper’s spokeswoman, “but last year represented an expansion of our columns somewhat from the historical norms in our pages.”

And since when is it OK to use the term “guido”? I had no idea:

Making my first trip to the Jersey shore, rattling along the ol’ local North Jersey coast line, felt a bit like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I was journeying farther than civilization’s reach, in search of something mysterious, powerful, awe-inspiring. In short, I hoped to glimpse the mighty and legendary Guido.

Okay, forgive the melodrama, but my New York friends did a good job of hyping this stereotype. “Asshole Jersey folk are cheesy and rude,” they warned, adding that “they have a name for people like you too: Bennys.”

For a Londoner, this sounded all too familiar. Jersey translated to me as Essex. Always in London’s shadow, also by the coast and populated by shirtless lads who love to pound the daylights out of each other, Essex natives tend to be drunk off their heads on luminous-colored alcopops while dancing to some primal beat. To be avoided at all costs. This Jersey voyage promised to bring all of my cowardice flooding out. Thus, when I passed a pack of Guido-looking guys outside a summer house recently in Belmar, I quickened my pace and looked straight at the pavement. Except soon I was unsure of my bearings (I was looking for a place called Bar A), and these guys’ beer-strewn yard made me think they would know the location of virtually every bar on the Shore (they did), so I doubled back and approached with caution.

Within a few minutes, I was kicking back in a deck chair and shooting the breeze with beer in hand.

. . .

I also got to witness the famed (yet still inexplicable) pride. “Jersey’s great, I love Jersey,” one declared. And at that moment, I couldn’t help but agree. So as I said goodbye to my new Guido friends, I’d like to think I bid farewell to some lazy stereotypes as well.

Oh, what I would give for a stronger dollar . . .

That’s a tough one. But does this mean that the state is trying to figure out a way to implement congestion pricing that would cut the city out of the revenue collection process? That would be a gas:

New York City’s congestion pricing plan has new life, and that may mean another major hit to your wallet.

CBS 2 HD has obtained exclusive information on the plan drivers love to hate.

Albany shot it down, but congestion pricing may get the green light anyway.

“I thought Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan was unique and well thought out,” Gov. David Paterson said on Tuesday.

Paterson told CBS 2 HD in an exclusive interview that the controversial proposal to charge drivers who enter the Central Business District of Manhattan a fee between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Friday is back.

It may be just the ticket for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget woes, and a way to hold down fares and improve service.

“I think it’s a viable solution,” Paterson said.

Months ago Richard Ravitch was named by the governor to lead an independent commission to find ways to fund the MTA. He told CBS 2 HD he’d like to take another look at congestion pricing, too.

“I agree with (the governor) fully,” Ravitch said.

“The idea of raising revenue through the use of automobiles in this city is something that would have to be considered as one of many options.”

. . . stay for the soy milk:

In 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was filing suit against 27 out-of-state gun dealers. He called the gun sellers a “scourge on our society,” and claimed that they were illegally selling weapons that kept ending up on the streets of New York.

Most of the dealers Bloomberg sued quietly settled their cases, agreeing to allow the city to place monitors in their stores to oversee transactions. Others shut down their operations or had their cases tossed out of court. But one man, Jay Wallace, owner of a 12,000-square-foot firearms supermarket outside Atlanta, decided he was willing to pay any price to keep New York from sending someone to monitor his store.

So he borrowed $700,000 and moved to New York — a city he’d never been to before.

In May, Wallace, his wife, and three grown sons rented an apartment in Brooklyn, determined to wage war against the city’s lawsuit right from the belly of the beast itself.

And then two strange things happened.

First, on June 2, the very morning that his case was to be heard in court, Wallace threw in the towel, convinced that he wouldn’t get a fair trial from a judge he considered too biased.

And second, even more surprisingly, by the time he decided not to show up in court, Wallace — a gun-loving, rock-ribbed, Second Amendment–quoting Georgian — had fallen in love with the city he’d vowed to fight to his “last breath.”

He’s even thinking of moving here permanently.

“When you sneeze on the street, five New Yorkers say ‘Bless you’!” Wallace says, wearing a satisfied smile. To his surprise, none of the negative things he’d heard about the city conformed to reality.

On a blazing Sunday afternoon, he’s distractedly picking at a chicken sandwich at the Smoke Joint, a Southern-style barbecue place in trendy Fort Greene. The 51-year-old is wearing a green plastic “Save Our Troops” bracelet and an NYPD baseball cap, a gift from a sympathetic police officer who’d contacted him after reading about the case in the news. The cop had even driven the Wallaces out to Long Beach the day before.

Wallace’s wife Cecilia, a blonde in a bright-pink top and wearing a silver necklace with a cross, eats barbecue pork at his side. After three years of obsessing over the lawsuit, the couple would soon be heading back to Georgia, having given up their day in court. But at least they’d always have New York.

. . .

Now that the Wallaces are no longer preparing for trial, they’ve had time for some sightseeing: Times Square, Central Park, Broadway shows, two pilgrimages to Ground Zero. But Wallace wanted more than a tourist’s perspective; he wanted to experience the city the way the locals live it. And he found that some of the best spots were right in Brooklyn. At Red Bamboo, a vegetarian restaurant, Wallace sampled fake meat in the form of “chicken” Parmesan. He also tried soy milk: “I came here, and I noticed New York had a lot of soy milk. I’d never had it before, but I tried it — first the sweetened kind. It was good!”

Even the nursing staff at the hospital on DeKalb Avenue, where Wallace spent Memorial Day weekend because of chest pain, proved to be some of the loveliest health-care professionals he’d met. (He’s composing a thank-you letter to the hospital director. As a small-business owner, he says, he knows the value of a customer’s kind word.) And despite being somewhat “mustardy,” the barbecue sauce at the Smoke Joint deserves an A, he points out.

Wallace is so impressed, he says he could actually consider living here one day. Not that some things don’t need improvement. He and Cecilia are worried about the destruction of the old Coney Island — where they’d eaten a Nathan’s hot dog — and about the taxi drivers who can’t afford the price of gas. Mostly, Wallace finds it unfortunate that such a wonderful city is suffering under a despot-in-chief for a mayor, one who is turning New York into a playground for the rich. “Living here, I know how New Yorkers feel — overtaxed!” Wallace exclaims, half-furious, half-smiling. But nothing seems to detract from his down-to-earth Southern charm.

New Yorkers’ libidos hit hardest:

Only 11 percent of Big Apple residents reported having more than one sex partner in the previous 12 months, according to a report released yesterday.

That left 89 percent in the “faithful” or “not getting any” categories.

And only 5 percent of married couples or those in a relationship reported cheating during the last year. Seven percent of men said they had multiple sex partners, while 3 percent of women reported extra-marital activity.

If the milk price gouging law isn’t working, do the next best thing — raise the price ceiling. Problem solved:

The state-controlled price for a gallon of milk in New York City will rise to $4.37 next Tuesday, state regulators said, in the wake of rising fuel costs and diminishing corn supplies.

State agriculture authorities set the loose ceiling of milk prices, based on the cost of farm production. Individual stores can top the milk-price threshold — now at $3.93 a gallon — if they can show financial hardships, such as extraordinarily high wholesale, rent or delivery costs.

So in practice, the state-set threshold generally applies to the large supermarkets, while neighborhood bodegas tend to have higher prices, officials said.

Next time you’re escaping the police and some buttinsky, keep in mind that this ploy does not seem to work:

The pajama-clad super of a ritzy lower Manhattan high-rise chased a burglar but was mistakenly grabbed by security guards when the wily thief screamed for help, police sources said.

“The guy was yelling at no one in particular, ‘Stop this crazy guy. He’s trying to kill me!’” said super Bobby Gardocki, who admitted he looked somewhat bizarre running barefoot in his jammies after the burglar Saturday night.

Gardocki was grabbed by Manhattan Community College police, who thought he was the culprit.

A building tenant convinced the guards they had the wrong guy and cops arrested the suspect, Michael Estrada, 38, of Queens, nearby.

He allegedly looted a woman’s apartment of more than $3,000 in jewelry before trying to get into the super’s flat.

Next up for New York’s san-men, a sexy calendar:

New York’s Strongest may be showing a lot more leg this summer.

For the first time, city sanitation workers will be allowed to wear shorts during the steamy summer months.

Don’t expect any crazy striped Bermudas or short shorts, though. City sanitmen and sanitwomen will be wearing modest green uniform shorts that hit right at the knee.

“Everybody thought it was a myth, that shorts will never happen,” said sanitation worker Liston (Benny) Judge, who gamely modeled the new shorts for the Daily News.

“This makes a big difference on those humid, 96-degree days.”

. . .

The shorts may be ideal for sanitation workers who sweep the street, or drive vehicles long distances, said Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association.

They may not be as useful for workers who lug plastic bags — a favorite target of neighborhood dogs and cats — or metal baskets that can scrape against their legs.

We’ve heard of giving birth in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, but giving birth in the East Broadway F train station is even better:

A baby girl named Soleil — French for sun — lit up a Manhattan subway station with joy Monday.

The little bit of heaven — 6 pounds, 7 ounces and 15 inches from head to toe – was born on the East Broadway F train platform with the help of more than a dozen concerned New Yorkers.

Home attendant Max Alfontent and his wife, Francine, both 27, left their Brooklyn home and hopped an F train about 3 p.m. after the mom-to-be started feeling her first child was thisclose to arriving.

“We were going to Bellevue Hospital,” said an ecstatic Max, “but we didn’t make it. My wife started feeling funny on the train so I told the conductor and he called ahead to the station.”

“When we pulled in I put her down on the platform and her water broke. I was happy the baby was coming, but I have to admit I was a little bit scared.”

Moral of the story: When your pregnant wife is in labor, it is best to take a cab.

Location Scout: East Broadway Station.

Want me to do a good job? Pay me, sucker:

A controversial city program that gave kids money for high grades paid a dividend yesterday — it dramatically improved test scores.

The number of seventh-graders reaching proficiency in English shot up in 34 of 35 schools participating in the program. On math tests, the number rose at 32 of the 35 schools.

Seventeen of the schools did better than the citywide average improvement in English, and 21 did better in math.

Principals credited factors like teacher quality, class size and curriculum. But they acknowledged the cash may have played a role.

“I think it had a little bit of effect,” said Principal Virginia Connelly of The Bronx’s JHS 123, where 25.1 percent of seventh-graders improved in English and 27.6 percent improved in math.

Educators say the privately funded Spark program, run by the Department of Education, has gotten kids more focused.

“Anything to get them in the seat and attentive, we’ll take it,” Connelly said.

Earlier: The Conditional Cash Transfer.

The Bad Old Days or a Law & Order set? What the MOFTB hath wrought:

Times Square tourists were stunned yesterday when a 23-year-old Manhattan man was stabbed, leaving a blood-splattered crime scene that had some wondering whether it was real or a movie set.

Police said the victim, Juan Garcia of Riverside Drive, was stabbed in the back on 46th Street at about 7:20 a.m. Garcia managed to get away, but his knife-wielding assailant pursued him on foot to 45th Street and Broadway, where he stabbed Garcia again.

Witnesses said they saw Garcia collapse to the ground and then saw police running to the scene where they quickly handcuffed Antoine Poprilo, 37, of Manhattan, who they said was still holding the knife.

. . .

Scattered on the corner of 45th Street was blood-stained medical gauze, the victim’s breakfast sandwich and coffee, as well as his broken headphones and shirt. Confused tourists walking by did double takes, and some stopped when they realized they were walking by a real New York City crime scene that was cordoned off by yellow tape and uniformed police officers.

Marianne Wedgeworth, 43, of Lake Charles, La., said she heard emergency vehicles’ sirens as she was leaving her hotel.

“I wasn’t sure. I thought they were shooting a movie,” said Wedgeworth, who stopped to take a closer look at the scene.

Ayveq the masturbating walrus has died suddenly at age 14:

Ayveq, the walrus whose bizarre, though oddly compelling, masturbation rituals made him an international sensation at the New York Aquarium, has died. He was 14.

Though well-liked long before he discovered the habit that would make him a star, Ayveq’s frequent public self-gratification made him the Coney Island institution’s singular attraction.

“We are all still in shock about it,” Aquarium Director Jon Forrest Dohlin said. “He was an absolute delight. He had a magnetism and a charm that was totally his own. He loved people and he knew how to work a crowd and entertain guests.

“And himself,” Dohlin added. “He did have a raffish charm, no doubt about it.”

Ayveq The Masturbating Walrus, New York Aquarium, Coney Island, Brooklyn, October 20, 2007:

Location Scout: New York Aquarium.

Fearful of the loss of business opportunities at Queens Plaza, Councilmember Eric Gioia turns the attention of his bully pulpit towards Craigslist:

New York City law enforcement officials need to crack down on the new “Wild West” of prostitution, the Internet — and specifically the popular Web site Craigslist, City Council Member Eric Gioia said yesterday.

“What used to happen on seedy street corners and brothels has now moved to the Internet,” Mr. Gioia, who is a likely candidate for public advocate in 2009, said at a news conference.

He drew particular attention to Craigslist, where he said the majority of ads for “erotic services” in New York are thinly disguised solicitations for sex.

A civic-minded group starts the heavy lifting of eradicating vomitous female gingkos from the city:

Ten per cent of all trees in Manhattan are ginkgos, making it the borough’s third-most-common species. There is also the matter of its odor. Each fall, the mature female — as dioecious gymnosperms, ginkgos come in genders — produces ovules that, once fertilized, develop into bunches of seeds, each consisting of an inner kernel encased in a soft, fuzzy skin. The seeds look like green cherries and contain butyric acid, the smell of which has been variously described as “rancid butter,” “sour milk,” “sh*tberries,” and “dog crap.” The Anti-Ginkgo Tolerance Group put it this way, in a recent proposal:

We are here to solve the problem of the Ginkgo tree commonly known as vomit trees. . . . The Ginkgo tree is widely known by most people but not by name. Walking down the street on a beautiful October evening your moment of tranquility is rudely demolished by the smell of old cheese and vomit.

The members of the A.G.T.G. are few but spirited. The committee was formed in January, under the aegis of Teens Take the City, a Y.M.C.A. program designed to teach young people about local government, and one recent afternoon at the Grosvenor Neighborhood House, on the Upper West Side, its ranks numbered three: Tevin Perez, seventeen; Jackson Sansoucie, seventeen; and Daniel Maldonado, eighteen. The plan was to pass out pamphlets urging citizens to call 311 if they encountered the smelly seeds.

Perez, wearing a rumpled white button-down, khakis, and a puka-shell necklace, was the first to arrive. Seated at a table in a basement room with pocked blue walls, he and the group’s adviser, Stephen Lehtonen, said that, walking to a pizzeria one afternoon, the group had been inspired by a forty-foot ginkgo, on the front lawn of the nearby Frederick Douglass Houses, that particularly stunk. Perez likened its scent to “rotten eggs in a rare form.”

I’m guessing it is already in the works:

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, had a problem. The murder convictions of two men in one of his office’s big cases — the 1990 shooting of a bouncer outside the Palladium nightclub — had been called into question by a stream of new evidence.

So the office decided on a re-examination, led by a 21-year veteran assistant, Daniel L. Bibb.

Mr. Bibb spent nearly two years reinvestigating the killing and reported back: He believed that the two imprisoned men were not guilty, and that their convictions should be dropped. Yet top officials told him, he said, to go into a court hearing and defend the case anyway. He did, and in 2005 he lost.

But in a recent interview, Mr. Bibb made a startling admission: He threw the case. Unwilling to do what his bosses ordered, he said, he deliberately helped the other side win.

He tracked down hard-to-find or reluctant witnesses who pointed to other suspects and prepared them to testify for the defense. He talked strategy with defense lawyers. And when they veered from his coaching, he cornered them in the hallway and corrected them.

“I did the best I could,” he said. “To lose.”

Annotation: The baseline is 101 days.

And it wouldn’t be a protest at City Hall without Sheldon Silver:

The group scrambled under the portico at the top of the steps outside City Hall, seeking shelter from the rain. Paul Nagle, communications director for Councilman Alan J. Gerson, checked his cellphone for the time — 10:18 a.m. — and turned to the reporters gathered to cover the first of two back-to-back news conferences on the steps.

“O.K., we’re going to start as soon as Sheldon Silver gets through the magnetometers because we don’t want to lose New York 1 to the fire in Queens,” Mr. Nagle said.

Flustered, he had found himself juggling a competing news story and a delay by Mr. Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly and the news conference’s guest of honor, as the clock ticked toward the end of his allotted hour.

At 11 a.m., State Senator Eric Adams was scheduled to take over the spot.

“I’ll just wait for my turn,” Mr. Adams said as he stood off to the side.

The steps of City Hall — once the scene of loud, colorful protests and even a few violent riots — are now available only by appointment and must be booked much like a Saturday morning tee time.

With the public banned from City Hall Plaza, the only potential audience is the overstretched press corps, and only a few time slots — clustered around noon — really matter. Competition for them is intense.

Severe ramifications from the recent writers’ strike continue to wreak havoc on a fragile American culture:

Dreaming of showing it all on reality television? A new school has opened to show you the ropes.

The New York Reality TV School — brainchild of theater coach Robert Galinsky, who has trained reality-TV stars for years — began classes on 19th Street in Manhattan yesterday, offering lessons in jumping from real world to “reality.”

The school — which claims to give students a “competitive advantage” over other potential contestants — provides one-time workshops for $139 and five-week workshops for $299.

Technology is so, so cool:

A mugging victim spotted pictures on the Internet of people wearing the jewelry snatched from him after a night of clubbing, authorities said yesterday.

A short time after the May 6 heist, Charles Zamian, 24, found a Web site with pictures of people posing in his stolen jewelry, police said.

He forwarded the images to the cops, who sent investigators to the club where the victim had been partying the night he was mugged.

On Tuesday, they spotted one of the men in the pictures, Shamel Corbett, 23, of Brooklyn, hanging out in the club.

After Corbett left, they followed and arrested him, along with pals Fernando Francis and Jerome Davis, both 23 and from Brooklyn.

The unregulated Five Points-like atmosphere of the city dog run starts to resemble rush hour at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel:

Two men rumbled at a Brooklyn dog run in a fight over their beloved pooches — ending when one whipped a water bottle into the other’s face, breaking his nose, cops said yesterday.

The heated canine clash erupted on June 13 at 10 a.m. at the Manhattan Beach dog run.

Ira Levine’s bull mastiff, Max, tried to take some water that Sergey Uzilov was squirting from a bottle so his boxer, Lola, could drink.

Levine, 66, of Sheepshead Bay, and Uzilov, 55, of Midwood, had almost come to blows once before when their dogs fought, so the exchange escalated quickly.

“He has a water bottle, and he’s giving his dog some water and some of the other dogs,” Levine said.

“My dog is thinking, ‘Where’s my water?’ and [Uzilov] yelled, ‘Get away! Get away!’ ” said Levine, who was also walking his other dog, a French mastiff named Jake.

“I grabbed a hold of my dog, and I said to him, ‘You’re a real a- -hole. He’s just a dog. He doesn’t know,’ ” Levine said.

Levine, a retired police officer, said Uzilov shot back, “Get your dogs out of here! You don’t belong in here!”

“We’re yelling back and forth at each other. I lean over — I have my gun on me at all times — I don’t want to do something and get really pissed off,” Levine said.

“The bottle of water that he is giving to his dogs, he throws at me from 10 feet away. I couldn’t react fast enough.”

As the bottle bounced off the ridge of Levine’s left eye, others quickly intervened, and cops were called.

You can’t get on the Today Show or photographed with Governor Schwarzenegger for it, but you know sometimes governing isn’t all bells and whistles — finally, something that actually might reduce traffic congestion:

Big Apple motorists who “block the box” at major intersections will be targeted by a massive new enforcement effort — and higher fines — under a bill given final approval yesterday by the Legislature.

The measure, backed by Mayor Bloomberg, changes blocking the box from a more serious moving violation, which can be ticketed only by cops and a small number of traffic-enforcement agents, to a category akin to illegal parking, which can be enforced by all 2,800 enforcement agents.

It also raises the fine for violating the new law to $115, compared to the previous $90.

A bad week for the MTA means a good time to pull this one out of your back pocket:

A city lawmaker yesterday blasted the MTA for rerouting two bus lines to serve a Queens shopping mall developed by the agency chairman’s son.

Councilman John Liu said the MTA should formulate a new procedure for public input to determine bus routes, citing the controversial effort to extend lines to The Shops at Atlas Park.

“In the case of expanding bus service to Atlas Park, people have every reason to suspect favoritism and nepotism,” Liu said after a City Council hearing.

The Shops at Atlas Park is owned by Damon Hemmerdinger, son of MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger.

But the younger Hemmerdinger and MTA officials countered that they began working on one of the proposed routes years before the father was appointed board chairman in 2007.

“Discussions about rerouting the bus began about five years ago,” Damon Hemmerdinger said.

Atlas Park was served by the Q29, but officials moved the Q54 from a lightly used terminus to the mall.

It wouldn’t be a frustrated spring-fall night of sleep without the beepbeepbeep of the carting trucks:

Veronika Conant considered abandoning her midtown co-op after years of being awakened by privately owned garbage trucks, crunching refuse at all hours of the night and early morning.

“The day after I moved in I wanted to move away,” said Conant, who instead of packing her bags invested in double-paned windows. “It was just unbearable. I couldn’t even hear the 11 o’clock news on the television I was trying to watch –that’s how bad it was.”

Privately-owned garbage trucks that bang, grind and beep while they pick up commercial waste and construction debris have become an unwelcome alarm clock for a growing number of New Yorkers, according to city Department of Environmental Protection data. These noise complaints have shot up 40 percent in the past year.

The department said the spike in noise complaints is due partly to the growing number of residential units sprouting up in formerly commercial areas, including parts of lower Manhattan and midtown.

. . .

While the Department of Sanitation picks up residential garbage during the day, the private carting industry picks up commercial garbage and construction debris after hours, when city streets are less congested.

The private-carting problem is largely found in Manhattan, where a number of community boards said the noise is chronic, and a few boards are investigating a recent uptick in complaints.

The boards, at least one City Council member and environmental department investigators have successfully convinced businesses that use these carters to schedule pickups earlier or to use the same company to limit the number of pickups.

One East Side community board drafted a resolution last month, asking the City Council to prohibit private carters from picking up garbage and construction debris between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The noise code now restricts the level of carting noise to 85 decibels within 50 feet of a residential building between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. That’s about the amount of heavy traffic generates. That number will decrease to 80 in 2012.

Hmm. Doubtful. I say milk it for all it’s worth:

Mayor Bloomberg is balking at a proposal by City Council members to increase the hotel tax to 8% to avoid budget cuts to public schools.

“We don’t want to have more taxes that would hurt the economic well-being of this city. For example, a tax on tourists is a terrible idea. We desperately need tourists from around the world,” he said yesterday. “International tourism is down throughout our country something like 17%. It is up 9% in New York. Killing the golden goose is not a smart thing to do.”

A council member of Queens, John Liu, said the hotel tax increase is a serious proposal that some members find more “palatable” than cutting $450 million from the Department of Education budget.

Yeah, that was an untenable position:

David S. Mack, a vice chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, backed off on Thursday from statements he had made defending the use of unlimited free travel passes for the authority’s board members and said he would now vote to curtail the perk.

Mr. Mack’s reversal came just hours after Gov. David A. Paterson issued a scorching statement saying that continuing the free travel privilege at a time of economic difficulty would show “an utter contempt for average New Yorkers.”

Mr. Mack, a wealthy real estate executive from Long Island, prompted a storm of controversy on Wednesday when he told reporters that if the free travel passes he received as a transportation authority board member were taken away, he might not ride the Long Island Rail Road any more.

Well, when you put it that way:

Two Willets Point business owners have signed agreements to sell their land to the city, marking the first major property acquisitions the New York City Economic Development Corp. has made in its bid to raze and redevelop the 62-acre industrial district.

The EDC announced Wednesday afternoon that Sambucci Bros. Inc. and BRD Corp. have each reached agreements with the city to sell their combined 74,000 square feet of land if the city wins approval from the City Council later this year to redevelop Willets Point.

“NYCEDC is pleased to have completed the first property acquisition agreements,” President Seth Pinsky said. “They provide tangible evidence that we will make good on our promise to achieve fair, negotiated deals with as many businesses and owners as possible in connection with the Willets Point redevelopment.”

But while the deals were trumped as substantial benchmarks of progress by the city, the excitement was not universally shared.

Shortly after the news was released City Councilmen Hiram Monserrate (D-East Elmhurst), John Liu (D-Flushing) and Tony Avella (D-Bayside) sent a letter to Community Board 7, urging its members to vote against the plan when the board issues its recommendation. This is expected to take place June 30.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.