. . . decisive action is taken.

Pelosi, you’re killing me here . . .

Mets coach Jerry Manuel, striking notes of concern, obvious concern:

Almost incomprehensibly, the Mets are facing the same predicament at the same point in the schedule against the same team as last season. “Obviously, I would have to say I’m concerned,” Manuel said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Then let’s reinstitute the commuter tax:

Mayor Bloomberg issued a full-throated call for the tax to be reinstated yesterday, after the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, reportedly said he was open to reviving the measure, which some supporters estimated could bring the city $500 million a year.

Several City Council members also are pushing for a return to the commuter tax, saying such a move could help stave off the 7% increase in city property taxes that the mayor has warned could be necessary to balance the budget in the middle of this budget year. The city is facing projected budget gaps of $2.3 billion next year and $5.2 billion the following year.

The tax of 45/100ths of 1% on the earned income of people who work in the city but commute from elsewhere had been on the books for 33 years, but was repealed in 1999, over the objections of Mayor Giuliani. It is estimated that the city has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues since state lawmakers repealed it.

When asked yesterday about Mr. Silver’s openness to a new commuter tax, Mr. Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference that he could not agree more with the speaker.

“I’ve been screaming about commuter taxes for as long as I’ve been here,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg said he would be happy to try to lobby the Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos, to revive the tax, but cautioned that an effort to bring it back would likely provoke opposition from state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. A reinstatement of the commuter tax would require the approval of Albany lawmakers.

(Is congestion pricing to the commuter tax as Harriet Miers was to Samuel Alito?)

Next thing you know, the EDC will want to build a mall there, but for now, smart entrepreneurs step in:

Recently, a small jewelry store opened at 19-10 Hazen Street in the East Elmhurst section of Queens, a location that gets a highly specific type of traffic, being right next to the bridge that leads to Rikers Island.

One might question the wisdom of putting a jewelry store so close to one of the world’s largest penal colonies. But the owners of the shop — Michael’s Gold Market (”The Leader in Extravagant Jewelry Design”) — selected the location with care, said a man who sat in the shop last week behind bulletproof glass.

“We get inmates’ relatives coming for visiting hours, and they shop here, especially if they have to wait around a while,” said the man, who refused to give his name but said that he and his brother owned the shop. “Our best customers are corrections officers. They cash their paychecks right there and come here.”

He pointed to the adjacent business: a check-cashing outlet that offers Western Union, with special rates for wiring money into Rikers Island, which on any given day has about 12,000 inmates, a staff of about 9,000 correction officers on the job and an average of 1,500 visitors.

Another local entrepreneur, Christopher Samolis, 26, of Astoria, operates a food truck parked daily near the Rikers bridge, and he also offers many insights about the conditions under which a businessman operates just outside the largest prison in the city.

“They were smart to open the jewelry store,” Mr. Samolis said. “You really have to have a niche to survive in this location, and they have it.”

“This location” would be where 19th Avenue meets Hazen Street, the northern end of which turns into the Rikers Island Bridge, just west of La Guardia Airport. Mr. Samolis has his niche. He is the only food vendor at the entrance to the jail, where visitors can spend all day trying to get in to see an inmate.

“The higher the crime rate, the better off I do,” said Mr. Samolis, as he hustled, with his brother Michael, 19, to provide hot dogs to customers who had just come off the Q100 Limited bus that runs a loop from the jail to Queensboro Plaza. There are also privately operated vans that shuttle visitors on and off Rikers Island for a $2 fare each way.

Location Scout: Rikers Island.

Someone please stop the headline writers at the Brooklyn Paper: Today there is both “Hookers to get BJ’s in a mall” (about plans to open a BJ’s box store in Red Hook) and “Oral text” (about an oral history project being undertakne by a Brooklyn high school) posted at the paper’s website.

Juvenile smut.

Yada yada yada:

The latest sign of the rising cost of everything greets shoppers at the registers of Eli’s fine-food warehouse on the Upper East Side like a slap with a wet fish.

“Attention customers,” the sign reads. “An energy surcharge of 1.8 percent will be added to every purchase.”

Look down at the receipt and sure enough, there it is, right below the totaled items: another add-on that yanks the price of an $8.99 pound of fresh figs to $9.15.

. . .

[Eli] Zabar, whose greenness quotient is such that he uses the excess heat from his bakery a few blocks away to warm his rooftop greenhouses, said that joking was the last thing on his mind.

“I could have easily just raised prices in the store — which we do all the time anyway,” he said.

“But I’m making a statement here. This is to make my customers aware of the differences of running a food business, as opposed to any other kind of business. The infrastructure that powers a supermarket is huge — the perishability, yada yada yada. The ice that keeps the fish fresh. It takes a lot of energy to roast coffee.”

Not only do they start track fires and precipitate floods but they also are creating a dangerous moral hazard for our youth.

I found the simple life ain’t so simple:

The hours for Ikea’s free shuttle bus and water taxi will be reduced because of a drop in customers, said officials for the Swedish home furnishing giant.

Beginning Oct. 1, the buses and boats will cruise between downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope and Ikea later in the day and less frequently, officials said.

“After Labor Day, it [use of the service] kind of tapered off in the morning,” said spokesman Joseph Roth.

“We’re trying to make sure the service can be provided when needed, but we may find the winter is different than fall so we could adjust it again.”

The service, which began when Ikea opened in June, has drawn gaggles of commuters eager to take advantage of a free ride — many with no intention of visiting the store.

. . .

The slashed hours didn’t go over well with commuters or shoppers.

“I [am] . . . angry . . . they cut the hours for the bus,” said Nicky Jackson, 20, who uses the Ikea service to commute from her Red Hook home.

“It’s way better than the city bus.”

For Marquice Jenkins, the abbreviated bus schedule isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a threat to his punctuality.

“You’ll probably be late to wherever you have to go,” said Jenkins, 20, a student who lives in Red Hook and rides the bus twice a week.

“It’s free, so you can’t really complain.”

On the one hand you have a worldwide financial meltdown followed by perhaps the greatest structural changes to the economy since the 1930s. On the other hand you have a dirtier Bowery. And that’s something all of us understand:

Lizzy Goodman was one of the fortunate ones of the class of 2002; upon graduating from Penn, she had a job lined up as an assistant teacher at Buckley, the all-boys school on the Upper East Side. Six years later, she’s an editor at large at Blender. Like some of her peers, she seems hopeful that, instead of being a harbinger of utter doom, this crash will instead level the playing field just a little bit.

“I don’t think anyone is hoping for American financial collapse just so that the Bowery can be seedy again,” said Ms. Goodman, who lives in the West Village. “But on the other hand, if in the wake of this collective shuttering and fearing comes a return to old school ’80s boho New York, I would certainly be in favor of that.”

Fortunately for her, there are literally hundreds of us who consider our subscription to Blender to be utterly indispensible.

Figures:

Efforts by the Bloomberg administration to add accountability to the public school system have included moving quickly to shut down schools deemed beyond repair, and rewarding those that make significant progress on standardized tests. Those initiatives seemed to collide last week, when teachers and principals at five of the failed schools earned cash bonuses for their successes.

The Department of Education explained the apparent contradiction in its judgments largely as a question of short-term versus long-term goals. Students at the five schools — four of which closed last spring, the fifth scheduled to close in 2010 — consistently lagged far behind their peers citywide on state math and reading tests, often with less than 20 percent meeting state standards. But during the 2007-8 school year, each of the schools met the improvement targets set by the Education Department on their report cards, making them eligible for performance bonuses of about $3,000 per teacher and $7,000 for principals.

And in case you were wondering about that bailout:

There are hundreds of storefront clairvoyants and high-end spiritual advisers in the city ready to quench the thirst for insights into the forces that control one’s life.

And now with the turmoil engulfing the financial markets, some psychics say they have been experiencing a boom in business linked to deep worries about money.

. . .

In an apartment in the East Village, opposite Tompkins Square Park, another psychic, Rosanna Schaffer-Shaw, a former belly dancer, offers her insights under the name Fahrusha, which she translates from Arabic to mean butterfly or moth. “I prefer butterfly,” said Ms. Schaffer-Shaw, who specializes in tarot card reading and palmistry, as well as photograph interpretation and communicating with animals.

“People are concerned about their jobs,” said Ms. Schaffer-Shaw, sitting in her brightly painted pink room devoted to readings, where she charges $150 per session. On a shelf were a couple of crystal balls, candles and a feather. “I hear more questions about jobs lasting even if the person is not in the financial sector,” she said.

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Schaffer-Shaw advised three clients, all of whom requested that they be identified by a single initial, some because they worried that their turning to a psychic might cause problems at work.

Mr. S was an artist who said he hoped to reap a windfall from the stronger market for contemporary art. Ms. Schaffer-Shaw told him, “In the past, you have been neglectful of the business aspects of your career.” Mr. S laughed and replied, “Have I ever,” as Ms. Schaffer-Shaw conjured up the names of Manhattan galleries that might be interested in his artwork.

She pointed a lavender-painted fingernail to two tarot cards, the Six and the Nine of Pentacles: “This card says you are worried about your finances. You won’t want to spend money on luxury items. You also will not be able to be as generous to others as you would like.” She advised against buying stock in financial firms and urged him to consider investing in utilities or water purification systems.

Ms. E, who is planning a business venture with another client of Ms. Schaffer-Shaw’s, a Chinese investment banker, asked questions about the Shanghai economy, where the two plan to open a frozen yogurt company. She wanted to know whether the media stock she had bought on the Chinese market would go up after its recent loss, and even what flavors and toppings her company should offer.

On the one hand, sure, just 11 out of 190 of those arrested in Belmar this summer were from Staten Island. On the other hand, fully 11 out of 190 of those arrested in Belmar this summer were from Staten Island:

It turns out most of Belmar, N.J.’s unruly troublemakers don’t come from Staten Island after all.

After Belmar Mayor Ken Pringle famously sparked a furor this July by writing a screed about “SI girls behaving badly” and “guidos,” his own police department’s crime statistics ended up telling a very different story about Islanders’ behavior in the Jersey Shore town.

Just 11 of the 190 people arrested in Belmar between May 29 and Sept. 1 hailed from Staten Island, according to a published report.

One of those arrests — an incident where a Staten Island woman allegedly attacked another patron at a bar popular with the borough’s visitors — spurred Pringle to write about “Staten Island girls” in the “Belmar Summer Rental News.”

“As the Staten Island girl was pummeling the Boonton girl’s face, she used the hand she was still holding her drink glass in,” Pringle wrote in the newsletter. “Now, we’re not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand cause of all the hair spray or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies, but we are thankful she left her brass knuckles and straight razor in her other purse.”

The remarks sparked a firestorm of public opinion — Pringle soon apologized, then toured the borough’s cultural landmarks in an attempt to mend fences.

Pringle didn’t return a phone call yesterday seeking comment about the police stats.

Earlier.

No, seriously.

Putting your utility lines underground:

Community Board 11 district manager John Fratta explained the call for action saying, “We’ve been getting complaints about the shoes on the telephone wires.”

More than a street-beautification effort, Fratta said area residents are deeply concerned with the connotations, false as they may be, the hanging footwear represents.

While no one really knows the reason behind the telephone line-sneaker trick, numerous theories have come to pass.

Most widely believed to be the sign of gang activity or site of street drug sales, folklore also denotes the sneaker sling as a celebration for men who lost their virginity.

Though more than a dozen explanations continue to claim the reasoning behind the obscure act, all continue to remain inconclusive.

. . .

Not knowing where else to turn, he said he looked to Councilman Jimmy Vacca for some needed assistance.

Though eager to get involved, Nivardo Lopez, constituent liaison in Vacca’s office, said their immediate response for involvement quickly turned into a drawn out investigation.

With Cable Vision, Verizon and FDNY wires, among others, creating a web of unmarked territory over the neighborhood, Lopez said determining which company owned the wire that coordinated with the hanging footwear was an increasingly difficult task.

Then, to his great luck and appreciation, Cable Vision stepped in.

“They took care of theirs right away,” Lopez explained about their cooperative efforts to remove the sneakers.

Lopez further explained the company took initiative to compile a master list that clearly identified which line was which company’s responsibility.

From then on, they soared.

“We’ve gotten a good response from the different utilities about removing the sneakers,” Lopez commented, pleased with results of the unique initiative.

See also: Hanging Sneakers.

More tourism:

Authorities say a resident of the Netherlands who came to New York as a “graffiti tourist” has been indicted on charges of spray painting a subway car and leading police on a dangerous chase.

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said Thursday that 23-year-old Robbert Boxem of Zwolle, Netherlands — who uses the graffiti tag “KRAE” — faces charges including criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. If convicted, he could get up to four years in prison.

Part of the police chase occurred on subway tracks.

Brown says it’s believed Boxem, who was arrested on Sept. 9, came to New York for an international graffiti event known as Meeting of Styles.

The tourism board luvs u in the Bronx!

And I’m guessing Dick Wolf is anxiously rewriting an episode as we speak:

A bunch of chickens and a big white turkey appeared near the corner of 125th Street and Second Avenue last week and began pecking in traffic.

The chickens were loosely gathered in a vacant lot next to a gas station on the northwest corner, but they roamed the gas station on Thursday and strayed all over the sidewalk and the street. They darted into traffic and amused passers-by and people waiting at a nearby bus stop.

. . .

Don Newcomb, a construction worker renovating a building across the street from the lot, said that “some guy” keeps dumping chickens in the area.

“This crazy guy keeps buying them from the market — some animal-rights guy, but I think he’s messed up in the head — and he keeps leaving them here,” Mr. Newcomb said. “He thinks he’s saving them, but it’s not like they’re safe around here. Somebody told me the hawks swoop down on them, too. Eventually, the health department comes, or whatever, the A.S.P.C.A., and they pick them up.”

“They run out in the road,” he said. “I’ve already seen two of them get run over. It’s a shame, because they’re cool chickens.”

. . .

An animal care official said that a note was left on a nearby fence. “Please do not bother the animals,” it read.

The note continued: “I removed them from the chicken market and they are sickly and unfit to eat. Please provide them with food and water if you think they need it.”

A phone number was listed. The man who answered that line said that he was Alex LaForte, 38, and that he had been feeding and caring for the chickens for almost two years. He said he had kept them in a henhouse in the vacant lot, but it was taken down.

Mr. LaForte, who said he had no job and was staying with friends and relatives in East Harlem, said he picked up castoff food from supermarkets and fed it to the chickens each night.

Asked about the note, Mr. LaForte denied having released the chickens. He said: “I don’t know who’s putting them out there, probably some rescue group, but whoever it is is saving them from suffering. I’ve seen the way they’re mistreated and made to suffer in those slaughterhouses.”

“We’re all struggling through these hard times, and the chickens are struggling to survive, too,” he said. “They find freedom on the city streets, and once they find freedom, they can eat and survive, rather than be put in a pen or slaughtered and eaten. I’m a struggler, and I try to help others struggling. If I feed them, they’ll survive.”

I still can’t understand why that thing costs $1.3 billion:

New York City and the Yankees may have violated federal tax regulations and state laws in using $943 million in tax-exempt bonds to build the baseball team’s new stadium, according to a report issued on Tuesday by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky.

Saying the taxpayers are footing the bill for the $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and are getting little in return other than higher ticket prices and the loss of parkland, Mr. Brodsky, a frequent critic of the deal, said that the report stems from a review of thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents.

Although city officials and the Yankees hotly disputed many of the findings, the report concluded that the city and the state invested as much as $850 million in cash and tax breaks in the new stadium, which sits across 161st Street from the team’s historic home in the South Bronx.

. . .

Mr. Brodsky and other critics have argued that the city violated federal tax regulations by manipulating the assessed value of the land beneath the stadium so that the team’s annual payment in lieu of taxes would effectively equal the annual payments to bondholders, or debt service, of $56.7 million beginning in 2010.

. . .

The Yankees and the Bloomberg administration have always insisted that the team is paying for the new stadium, unlike almost every other professional sports team. The use, however, of tax-exempt bonds, will provide the team with savings of about $181 million over the life of the bonds, according to the Independent Budget Office.

Mr. Brodsky contends that because the Yankees will pay the city an annual sum in lieu of taxes, that money, in turn, is being diverted from city coffers to pay the debt service on the bonds.

There is no question that taxpayers are making a sizable investment in the new Yankee Stadium, as well as a new stadium for the Mets in Queens. The city and the state agreed to provide the Yankees with more than $300 million in cash subsidies for garages, a Metro-North train station, replacement parks and road work. But the teams do not pay rent for playing on city land, nor do they pay property taxes.

The Bloomberg administration successfully lobbied the Internal Revenue Service to approve the use of the tax-exempt bonds for the stadium, which did not initially qualify. But the I.R.S. later issued a proposal that would tighten the rules governing such bonds so it would be nearly impossible for this kind of financing to be used again by a profitable sports franchise.

Another Music In A Different Kitchen, for comparison’s sake.

A lot of condoms. A lot:

The Mayor’s Management Report, issued yesterday, showed that the Health Department gave away 39,070,000 male condoms to community groups in fiscal 2008, which ended on June 30.

That’s enough for every man, woman and child in the city six times over.

It was more than double the previous year’s 17,770,000.

The price tag of the rubbers was put at $1,054,228, which doesn’t include the bill for some 2 million female condoms.

Proponents argued that’s not much compared to the $350,000 lifetime cost for medicating a single person with AIDS.

. . . black car companies hardest hit:

A Brooklyn-based livery cab company is feeling the pinch more than most after the dramatic collapse of Lehman Brothers this week.

Corporate Transportation Group, which has a fleet of 1,400 vehicles in the city, had a contract with Lehman to shepherd thousands of the investment giant’s employees around town.

Now many of its drivers, who would normally line up for hours outside Lehman headquarters waiting for workers, have to spend more time driving to make up for the loss of income.

“We’re getting hammered,” said Eduard Slinin, 44, who started Corporate Transportation when he was 17 years old in 1982. “Lehman was one of our biggest clients. We would do 800 rides a night. We never believed Lehman would collapse. It’s like a bad dream.”

This must have been what the mayor was worried about.

All aboard the vomit comet:

They are off into the night as another group of revelers — mostly young ladies — comes off the 10:32 from Mineola. They don’t want to give their names, but one is glad to share the recipe for the cocktail she is sipping from a plastic Starbucks cup on the sly: Smirnoff Blue (100 proof), a little 7 Up and cranberry juice.

These must be the “beauties” that a Long Island Rail Road engineer speaks of a little later at Tracks Bar & Grill, where he is convening with two other co-workers at the end of a shift. They would only talk if their names weren’t used.

“It’s beauty coming in and the beast coming home,” the train engineer says of the transformation partying commuters make when they come in fresh and leave haggard.

The engineer and his conductor buddies know too well the iniquities of the weekend ride, a shift usually reserved for rookies.

“At the 12 o’clock hour, there are a lot of fights. At the one o’clock hour, it’s the ‘vomit comet,’” one of the conductor says.

“And by 2 or 3, they’re zombies; the leftovers that couldn’t make the ‘vomit comet.’”

Fabio Bari and Phillip Prado, both 23, are familiar with the weekend routine. It’s barely 1 a.m. and they are making sure to hit the 1:19 a.m. to Manhasset, which if they miss leaves them only with the 3:19. Not an option. “It’s full of drunken animals,” Bari says.

There are worse possibilities, however, than missing the 1:19: “God forbid you miss the 3:19. You’ll be contemplating all the wrong directions you took throughout the night and your life,” Bari says.

Location Scout: Penn Station.

And incidentally, a darn good way to make people forget about all those advertisements for councilmembers that are currently found on trashcans across the city:

As the city struggles to close a growing budget gap, lawmakers are proposing selling advertising rights to garbage bins, scaffolding, and even city park facilities, efforts they say could bring millions of dollars a year to city coffers.

Council Member David Yassky of Brooklyn is calling for the city to begin allowing advertising on municipal trash cans and suggested that such a move, which he estimated could bring $2.5 million in revenue, would help during difficult economic times.

“We need to be as creative as we can about finding sources of revenues to ease the burden on taxpayers,” Mr. Yassky said yesterday. “We sold advertising on newsstands and bus shelters and other so-called street furniture. There’s just no reason not to extend that to trash cans.”

There is now a post-Katrina response to nearly everything, including the worldwide economy:

The banking crisis that gripped Wall Street this weekend is sending a shudder through City Hall. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his top deputies plan to gather this morning to assess the potential economic fallout from the liquidation of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch, which together employee 85,000 people, many of them in New York City.

Mr. Bloomberg was worried enough about the situation that he canceled a high-profile trip to California, where he was to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today.

The mayor’s biggest challenge: how to deal with thousands of likely layoffs over the next few weeks, and the resulting loss of tax revenue on personal income, corporate profits and real-estate transactions. If Lehman, which employees 25,000, files for bankruptcy, as expected, most of its employees could lose their jobs. And once Merrill is sold, to Bank of America, the new owner is expected to cut many workers to avoid overlap. Merrill employs 60,000.

Wall Street firms — and their wealthy employees — account for about one fourth of the city’s personal income and 10 percent of the taxes — so as Wall Street goes, so goes the city’s economy.

I was wondering who exactly was agitating for the repeal of term limits, since it seems to be a relatively arcane argument, but now it makes sense:

The elected leaders pushing to overturn New York City’s term limits say they are motivated by principled objections to the 15-year-old law.

But should they succeed, many stand to gain a significant financial perk: lifetime retiree health insurance that costs the city up to $12,600 a year.

Those benefits could amount to millions of dollars in expenses over the next few decades, especially as health insurance costs surge, according to interviews with city officials.

Under current rules, city employees must work 10 years and pay into the pension system to become eligible for retiree health benefits. But the term limits law restricts members of the City Council, the mayor, public advocate, comptroller and borough presidents to two consecutive four-year terms — two years shy of the requirement.

Changing term limits to three consecutive terms instead of two, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and members of the Council have hinted they might, would allow those officials — and members of their staff — to hit the 10-year mark without having to look for a new job with the city.

Were federal terror funds used for this, I wonder? Oy:

Among the hundreds of New York City police security cameras installed throughout the city are three in front of the Brooklyn home of Chief of Department Joseph Esposito, according to police sources.

Esposito, the highest-ranking uniformed member of the department, lives on a quiet block that residents say is virtually devoid of crime and trouble, other than the occasional rowdy teenager.

Police sources said the cameras — two aimed at his property and one that can rotate and capture images farther up the block — were set up as a precaution and not because the chief had received any legitimate death threats.

Esposito referred questions to the NYPD’s press office. Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said it is the department’s policy not to discuss security matters.

. . .

One high-ranking police source, however, said the cameras in front of Esposito’s home are not among the 505 being placed at a cost of $9.1 million throughout the city to fight crime.

Esposito is highly visible, often seen at the side of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly during news briefings and known to respond at all hours of the day and night to major incidents.

Kelly has a camera outside his apartment door in the Battery Park City building where he lives, and there is a stepped-up police response whenever officers from the First Precinct respond there, regardless of the nature of the call.

It was unclear if any other police officials have cameras outside their homes.

One politician who does, city Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., said one was installed in front of his Astoria home because someone opposed to his public denouncements of graffiti put his address on a Web site and encouraged taggers to vandalize his property.

Hey, pointy-headed technocrats — our economy depends on the right to double park:

As mass transit riders continue to enjoy a quicker commute with the Bx 12 Select Bus Service, business owners along the route are calling it quits.

Norman Ephron, longtime owner of Imperial Linoleum and Carpet Co. Inc., said within 30 days of the lane instillation, seven stores along E. Fordham Road were forced to close due to lack of business. He said the Select Bus Service is to blame.

“Why should customers come to Fordham Road if they can’t park,” the storeowner questioned, referencing the lane that eliminated 40 parking spaces from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare, including a handful in front of his 361 E. Fordham Road establishment.

. . .

After 40 years operating at the same site, he said he’s never once experienced the enormous decrease in business that’s occurred since the Bx12 express bus went into operation at the end of June.

“A lot of my business came from people picking up their carpet and taking it home. Now they can’t pick it up anymore.” His loading area now services the Bx 12.

Ephron said that also for the first time in four decades, nearly 90% of his 35-employee staff is working half days, down from their previous full-time hours.

“I don’t know who thought of the idea but they’re killing us,” he said. “I’ve been sitting her all day and haven’t seen a single customer.”

Come on, “golden boy”:

The traders at the New York Stock Exchange went berserk on Tuesday over the hottest commodity at the Beijing Olympics, circling Michael Phelps like sharks.

There was barely room to breathe on the floor as people pushed to get close to Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals and set seven world records.

Phelps rang the opening bell, or at least that was the original plan. On the platform alongside his fellow United States Olympic swimming champions Ryan Lochte and Natalie Coughlin, Phelps was so tired that he was tottering, so Coughlin discreetly did the honors.

“Michael was just kind of jet-lagged,” Coughlin said.

On the floor, he was besieged by autograph seekers. One trader held up a magazine with Phelps on the cover for him to sign and said, “My wife wants to marry you.” When told that Phelps, who was in the middle of a television interview, would not be signing anything more, the trader said, indignantly, “Is his hand broken?”

Or was that Las Vegas trip a little draining?

Just like a three-card monte game where the rube walks away a winner:

I was trying to find out from a very harried looking cameraman why a full film crew was following around the worst dressed group of young people at last night’s packed Semi Precious Weapons show at Rebel.

“They’re nobodies,” said the cameraman trailing them around the club. A friend whispered to me that they weren’t just any nobodies, they were the cast of the new The Real World in Red Hook. The lights, cameras, VIP status, bottle service and fawning by wannabe socialites was explained.

MTV had the kids well trained. “I’m sorry I can’t divulge that,” the cast members would tell me when I pressed them for any details on life in the Pier 41 house. But Chet Bannon, the Mormon who the producers are trying to have de-flowered, was too nice not to talk. By far the most suave of the yahoos, he was wearing an H&M scarf, Elvis Costello glasses and had his short blonde hair spiked. Best of all, he admitted that they were indeed the cast of The Real World.

“I love glam rock,” Chet told me as he sipped a Shirley Temple, “you just don’t see anything like it in Salt Lake.” As if on cue, Justin Tranter, the mascara-wearing, teased, peroxide-haired frontman of the Weapons, put a medallion around Chet’s neck, whispered something in his ear, then strutted off.

“Wow, that’s just so cool,” Chet — who’s engaged to a girl back home — gushed.

There was trouble in paradise, however, and the young man needed to get something off his virginal chest. “When we go to Williamsburg we get harassed. The hipsters throw things at us and say ‘Why are you here? Go home! Ten years ago none of them were there either.’” He looked hurt and wondered, “Why are the hipsters so small minded?”

Believe me, the Mayor can hang with the best of them:

The city has urged the United Nations to stop all public tours of the East Side complex until fire dangers are dealt with — and is stopping public-school tours there, officials said yesterday.

The city had no choice but to make the move for this school year, after the UN spent over 12 months promising heavy-duty renovations to make the complex safe — only to drop many of them, citing the high cost, according to a letter from Marjorie Tiven, the city’s commissioner to the UN.

“The city has no choice but to suspend public schools’ visits to the United Nations,” Tiven, Mayor Bloomberg’s sister, wrote in the letter dated Monday.

The complex lacks a full complement of fire doors that could seal off each building, officials said. Fires could spread quickly in the many open corridors, officials said.

When the United Nations abandoned its promise to install such major fire doors last May, Tiven wrote, the FDNY came up with a suggestion — stop all public tours.

FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told The Post, “Until certain things happen [by way of safety measures] . . . we suggested that there not be visitors allowed into the United Nations.

“And so far the UN has not abided by that recommendation,” he said. “And we have no authority over them to order that, but we do have authority to keep our children from the public schools going on tours.”

Location Scout: United Nations.

How about millions in the nation’s largest media market! Another NYC Teaching Fellow success story:

A Harlem teaching fellow who vanished nearly two weeks ago may have gone into hiding because she was afraid to return to the troubled school where she was assigned, sources told The Post.

“Apparently, she was petrified of going back to school. She just wigged out and went AWOL,” a law-enforcement source said of Hannah Upp, who failed to return for her second year at the Thurgood Marshall Academy.

The worst had been feared for Upp, 23, until she was caught on surveillance video using a computer at the Fifth Avenue Apple store on Friday. Witnesses told cops she returned to the store on Monday.

Upp, 23, a Bryn Mawr College graduate, hadn’t been seen since Aug. 29. Her wallet and ID were left in her Hamilton Terrace apartment.

Believe it:

Even while Governor Paterson is expressing doubt that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion project will go forward at any time soon, the state is collecting large amounts of revenue — more than $100 million so far — from a hotel tax passed for the sole purpose of funding the expansion.

. . .

As of the first quarter, the $1.50-a-night Convention Center Hotel Unit Fee had brought in $103.3 million in revenues since its inception in 2005, according to the State Tax Commissioner’s office.