What a satisfying way to end the year:

Caroline Kennedy’s advisers have told Mayor Bloomberg’s political pit bull to tone down his lobbying efforts for her for fear it will kill her chances to be named to the Senate.

“There had been huge missteps in the way [City Hall] constructed this,” said a source involved in the Kennedy effort to muzzle Bloomberg operative Kevin Sheekey.

“It’s just a dialing down of anything that would be harmful to her,” the source said.

“Anything like very public meetings with people in City Hall or inappropriate calls to labor leaders will no longer take place. He’ll still be involved, just not in the same way.”

Another source said Sheekey was being pushed aside so neither Gov. Paterson nor Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver would think Bloomberg was trying to muscle her into the Senate.

“The Bloomberg support has not been helping, clearly, with Shelly or the governor, whose people have talked about him not wanting to feel boxed in,” the source said.

Or is it a case of you-can’t-fire-me-because-I-quit? Though “pulling back” sounds like complete BS:

Mayor Bloomberg’s top political aide is pulling back on his lobbying campaign to propel Caroline Kennedy into the U.S. Senate because “it wasn’t working,” according to sources.

“Everything was backfiring,” said one source of the intense behind-the-scenes effort by Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey.

Don’t worry — the participants and organizers of this year’s International Debutante Ball are clued in to the pain each of us feels:

Champagne flowed. Men in tails waltzed and fox-trotted with debutantes in long white gowns to music by the 12-piece Lester Lanin Orchestra, a fixture at the ball almost since its inception in 1954. And shortly before midnight, the young debutantes, each flanked by a civilian and military escort, ascended the stage for a deep curtsy.

But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the layout of the hall. And there were fewer debutantes, 47 this year rather than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.

The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more,” she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.

. . .

Looking back on past recessions, she said, “We got through ‘87 and ‘93, and life does have a way of going on.

“I don’t mean it in a flippant way, but romance and having fun and looking pretty — I hope that doesn’t go away.”

Except what happened in 1987 or 1993? I thought the earlier recessions happened in 1980-82 and 1990-91 . . .

. . . just wait until he or she is eligible to receive performance bonuses from the Department of Health:

And echoing the city’s cash-incentive experiments in the school system, the health department will soon start offering doctors bonuses of perhaps $100 for each patient who hits specified targets like controlling blood pressure or cholesterol, up to $20,000 for each doctor.

And then they’ll really start pimping out those statin drugs!

You don’t need a YouTube stunt to see that the economy is bad and getting worse:

In what may be the latest sign of the harsh economic times, five banks in four boroughs were robbed on Monday, four of them within an hour and a half.

But if the robberies, in their frequency and timing, were startling, so too was their brazenness. Most of them occurred in heavily trafficked areas in broad daylight, including one that took place steps away from Lincoln Center in the middle of the afternoon.

Bank robberies in the city are up by 54 percent this year, the Police Department said, to 431 as of Monday afternoon, from 280 at this time last year. Robbery statistics over the past 20 years suggest that the robberies may have been fueled in part by the financial desperation that sets in during a recession and the added pressures of the holiday season.

The authorities took notice in early September, when the number of bank robberies for the year reached 268, compared with 183 during the same period in 2007.

. . .

“It’s well documented that during a recession, bank robberies go up,” [Michelle Renee, a former banking industry executive who tracks bank robbery trends] said. “But also, this time of the year is the busiest time for bank robberies. So you combine those two together and it becomes a dangerous time for bank employees.”

It got a lot less crowded at Scores* now that the Wall Street yabbos are gone and it will become a lot easier to walk around in Midtown when tourism declines in 2009:

Those flocks of tourists clogging Manhattan streets were thicker than ever this year, but the sinking economy will mean fewer visitors in 2009, officials said Monday.

The city estimates a record 47 million people visited New York this year and spent a record $30 billion, Mayor Bloomberg said.

“We do predict that there’ll be a single-digit decline, and no more than that, for certain,” said George Fertitta, head of NYC & Company.

*Whoops . . . be careful what you wish for!

William Safire’s “Office Pool, 2009″ predicts:

Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into . . . suspicion by conspiracy theorists about the unremarked lobbying that led to the expensive renaming, after 72 years, of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge just in time for Caroline Kennedy’s campaign for anointment to an open Senate seat . . . (diehards will still say, “Take the Triborough to Idlewild”)

Location Scout: Triborough Bridge.

“In an event that organizers hope will become a New Year’s tradition, New Yorkers and tourists were invited to bring bad memories from 2008 to Times Square on Sunday and feed them to an industrial-strength shredder”.

OK, here goes:

• Bugs on above-ground public transportation
• Our innovative economy
• The notion that members of law enforcement are somehow unable to keep foreign objects out of perps’ buttholes
• The strong traditions of representative democracy and a free press
• Probably cockfighting, too
• People in their 20s sexing one another
• The bully pulpit
• People who hurt animals
• Posing as a gynecologist
• The cult of trees
• Fucking bed bugs
• Yankees fans
• Pregnant women who smoke
• Shit that just drops right out of the sky
• Jeremy Piven

Location Scout: Times Square.

It sounds like a nonsequitur but I swear it’s not:

Chances are, if you have been counted as part of a moving crowd in Grand Central Terminal, the Time Warner Center or Times Square, the person who clicked the counter to note your presence was a Jewish, retirement-age refugee from Russia or Ukraine who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and may or may not speak English. Before they worked as counters, many worked as accountants, computer programmers or engineers in their home countries.

Location Scout: Times Square.

. . . this piece is for you*:

By the time the bus got to 125th Street at Lexington Avenue, frustration had hit fever pitch.

Passengers on the M60 bus who had already been forced to stand were pressed against the doors. Others, trapped by tall suitcases, could not get up from their seats. Two dozen people with yet more bags tried to board, but a wave of exiting riders, shouting loudly, pushed them right back off. The same scene was replayed at the next stop, Third Avenue.

“They pack us in like cattle,” said Clay Crawford, 40, who lives in Harlem and was commuting to his job as a security guard in Queens. “Who wants this?”

Flo Lyle, 60, an Upper West Side resident, nodded. “If there’s one line in the city calling out for more buses, it’s this one,” she said.

Or, given that the M60 is the only public-transit option directly from Manhattan to La Guardia Airport, at least increased service at travel-heavy times like Christmas, suggested other sardine-packed riders this week as the bus inched its way along 125th Street.

This time of year, the M60 quickly fills up with airline travelers — and their luggage, resulting in a testy mix of passengers and delays that makes the idea of getting home for the holidays a dicey proposition.

Vikaas Sharma, a Columbia University student who was trying to wiggle a blue suitcase out of the way, boarded the M60 at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to catch a 3:45 p.m. flight on his way to San Francisco, where he grew up. But the bus did not arrive at La Guardia until 4 p.m., so he missed the flight, which turned out to be the last one available until Christmas Day — leading to the first Christmas Eve of his 20 years that he spent without his family.

*Grrr.

Me, not so much:

The residence is 6,000 square feet across four floors, with 15-foot ceilings. From a roof deck the size of a tennis court, there is an unbroken view of the Manhattan skyline. The main room is so big it even has a swing — perfect for the frequent all-night parties held there, about which there are no neighbors to complain. Best of all, one can live rent free in exchange for helping to keep the place up.

But there is no insulation and the heating is patchy, so its five residents often see their breath indoors and must sleep under piles of blankets. The power from noisy diesel generators is intermittent and there is no mail delivery. The shower does not work and the toilets flush only if someone hauls a bucket of water from over the side and throws it in.

. . .

Jonathan sleeps in the captain’s quarters, a small cabin littered with power tools and candles. Bruce Beese, who grew up with Jonathan in Montana, moved into the pilot house a few weeks ago, and sleeps next to the ship’s wheel on a bed he got free on Craigslist. “I was a little worried about the possible bedbugs situation, but I think it’s good,” said Mr. Beese, 28, who remodels homes. “It probably helps that it’s freezing in here.”

Jason Menders, 31, who works in construction and is also from Montana, has lived on the ship since the beginning. “Summer is better than winter,” he said. “But even that gets too hot. And you can smell the sewage from the sewage outflow sometimes.”

I buy it.

Christmas Eve is a great day to bury bad news (e.g., murders up 5 percent from last year) or even if you just want to be a dick:

Developer Joe Sitt showed little holiday spirit today as he infuriated business operators along the fabled boardwalk by having locks clipped and replaced — and their storefronts flooded with “For Rent” signs.

“He’s literally kicking us out Christmas Eve by not even trying to negotiate new leases with us,” said activist Dianna Carlin, who owns Lola Staar Souvenir Boutique on the Boardwalk.

. . .

Sitt owns almost 11 acres of prime beachfront real estate, including fabled Astroland Park and nearly the rest of the entire amusement zone — which he is in the process of trying to sell to the city. Astroland’s lease is up at the end of January, but the other business leases are up at the end of this month.

While some business owners allege Sitt is essentially booting them off the boardwalk by informally offering new leases with jacked up rents he knows they can’t afford, others like Carlin haven’t even received an offer.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

The best thing about the soda tax (and probably fishing, too) is that it makes people that much more enthusiastic about the prospect of soaking the rich. Bwahahaha:

New York State voters oppose the so-called “obesity tax” on nondiet soft drinks by a resounding margin of 60 percent to 37 percent, but support, by an even more overwhelming margin of 84 percent to 13 percent, raising the state income tax on people who make more than $1 million per year, according to results of a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.

Even those who prefer diet sodas — which would be exempt from the proposed 18 percent sales tax — said they opposed the measure (58 percent to 39 percent), while drinkers of regular sodas opposed the idea by an even stronger margin (64 percent to 31 percent). Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents surveyed all opposed the proposed tax, though by varying margins.

(In an amusing aside, the Quinnipiac poll noted, “Independent voters are the most weight conscious on the political spectrum as 37 percent prefer diet soft drinks, compared to 27 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats.”)

Meanwhile, support for the so-called “millionaires’ tax” extended even to Republicans, who favored the measure, by a margin of 72 percent to 27 percent. Gov. David A. Paterson has expressed opposition to raising taxes on wealthy voters, but has suggested that there might be no other option if the state budget crisis continues to fester.

The one thing you want to avoid saying is “we want the attention,” and that could be either because you aren’t worthy of the attention and it looks lame to say you “want” it or because what you have is really actually pretty great and then once you finally get the attention you probably won’t want hundreds of gawkers clogging your street each December. But that said, we should definitely check this out:

Dyker Heights, where elaborate Christmas decorations have become as much a holiday tradition as a trip to Mona Lisa bakery, has a new rival in the borough.

Tired of playing second fiddle, a growing group of Bensonhurst residents are making a run on tinsel in a bid to be crowned the new kings of Christmas.

“We got the nutcrackers, we got the soldiers on the pedestal, the carousel, the Wonder Wheel and the musical Christmas tree,” said 82nd St. resident Debra Schempp, all in one breath. “I got my elves with the reindeers, my mouse soldiers — they move — and I got my nutcrackers and I got those new lights that came out this year that go with music, and the ceramic pieces with the Santa on the sled.

“I mean, we got everything they got in Dyker Heights but none of the attention,” added Schempp, who said several other neighbors on her block have been decorating for more than a decade. “We want the attention.”

See also: Dyker Heights Christmas Lights.

[Thx, 8.]

Actual blood, and not figurative blood:

Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a founder of the hedge fund Access International Advisors, was found dead Tuesday in his office in Manhattan. His fund reportedly lost as much as $1.4 billion that had been invested with Bernard L. Madoff, the money manager accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Mr. de la Villehuchet, 65, was pronounced dead Tuesday morning, and a New York City Police spokesman, Paul Browne, told DealBook that he had apparently committed suicide. He was found with wounds to his arms, with one leg propped up on the desk and a trash can nearby to catch blood.

The good news is he’s no longer the super. The bad news is he’s still your neighbor:

Richard Martin was his usual ornery self Tuesday when he told the Daily News his new landlord is just canning him — not evicting him.

“I can stay in my home, but I’ve lost my super job,” Martin said. “That means I’m out $150 a month. $150 a month! So yeah, I’m upset.”

. . .

“Have you seen the garbage out front of the building?” he said with a laugh.

“The doorway is a mess. There are big black garbage bags just sitting on top of the cans. He hasn’t done a damn thing since he became super.

“The new super — he’s a little Mexican man — hasn’t even swept the building yet. Not once. The last time it was swept was Nov. 23, and I should know because it was me who swept it.

“I told the new super that I’m giving him two months before he loses his mind and goes crazy over the sloppy tenants,” he said.

One tenant, who refused to give his name because he’s afraid of Martin, said he’s glad about the changing of the guard.

. . .

“Why would I miss Richard Martin …. He was the crankiest super in Brooklyn. Now he has been downgraded to the crankiest neighbor in Brooklyn.”

Or at least involuntary isolation:

When the cash toll at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge rose from $9 to $10 last March, many Staten Island drivers thought they had seen it all.

But the sticker shock of the sawbuck pales in comparison to a toll hike as high as — get this — $14.

That’s how much the round-trip toll could conceivably cost as part of the MTA’s proposed package of fare and toll hikes.

The authority outlined a variety of options yesterday meant to achieve a projected revenue increase of up to 23 percent, to plug a $1.2 billion budget gap.

Nothing is set in stone; rather, the proposed changes, including a $6.25 express bus fare, a $2.50 or $3 local bus or subway fare and severe service cuts, reflect the outside threshold of pain.

Of the $14 toll threat, MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said, “Is it a possibility? It’s there, but it’s in the upper range. I don’t know where we’ll be in the end.”

So given the history, I guess this means what I think it means:

Proposals being considered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could raise the base subway and bus fare as high as $3, the 30-day MetroCard to $105 and bridge and tunnel tolls to $7 next year.

. . . because everyone on that street knows they only take them on Thursdays:

Police were searching for a killer Monday night after making a shocking find in the Bronx.

A building superintendent found a body stuffed in a plastic bag. He had been stabbed to death. It appears he was put out with the garbage.

Not that that will change anytime soon:

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned yesterday that the city faces budget gaps of $3.5 billion and $8 billion in the next two fiscal years — far higher than previous forecasts.

That’s a sharp increase from the $1.3 billion and $5 billion deficits Mayor Bloomberg projected last month in his budget plan for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years. It even surpasses the state Financial Control Board’s dire figures that came out just five days ago and put the city’s budget gaps at $2.3 billion and $6.4 billion.

The FCB didn’t have time to include the impact of severe cuts in state aid proposed by Gov. Paterson on Dec. 16.

. . .

Bloomberg is scheduled to release his updated strategy for dealing with that possibility next month.

It’s not so much that I’m worried that someone will steal my shoes but rather what if my socks stink . . . not that I’m speculating or anything:

A group of homeless people came in off the cold Manhattan streets Monday to feed their souls with a yoga class at an East Side shelter.

. . .

Her homeless students appeared apprehensive and some were reluctant to remove their shoes as the session of muscle stretching poses started. But by the end of the class, the five participants were peacefully chanting “Om” and most said they felt a calmness coursing through their weary bones.

We know tipping doormen is stressful enough without all this economic meltdown stuff:

“I know tenants have money—in the past some have given me $400,” says one doorman* who works at a historic building on Park Avenue at 62nd Street. “The lowest tip is usually $20. But we’re preparing for tips to be even lower this year.” In an effort to generate larger gifts, staffers say they’re scurrying to deliver packages with a smile. But they’re also employing intimidation tactics.

“I’ve seen the doormen taking notes,” says a nervous 28-year-old writer who lives with her boyfriend on the UWS. She’s been lucky to hold on to her job, but she reports that the value of her investment portfolio has plummeted. “When people give them the envelope, they mark it down. When I moved into the building in 2005, I was planning to give $80 to the doorman, but I talked to someone else who lived here, who said she was giving $200, so I felt guilted into giving $100. I’m sure I give a lot less than others in the building, so when the staff doesn’t come quickly if I call down for help with deliveries, I fear it’s because I didn’t tip enough.”

She’s probably right. At a luxury building at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, the shop steward says, “Anything under $50 is considered a bad tip. Some tenants give $20, a few give $400 and some don’t give at all—and I can tell you the staff treats [the nongivers] differently. If a bad-tipping tenant calls down for help, the doormen make them wait a little longer. The biggest tippers get the best service.” The doorman of a chichi co-op at Park Avenue and 55th Street says that while even chintzy tippers get bare-bones service, he’s developed tactics for exacting revenge: “Let’s say you pull up in a cab with a bunch of packages. Maybe I’ll just happen to be on the phone.”

Alleged Sanitation truck sends wave of slush crashing into storefront, destroying front window:

First they heard a ferocious rumble coming down Jewett Avenue; then came the crash of glass and a spray of ice.

The force of a splash from what witnesses believe was an orange Sanitation truck barreling downhill toward Forest Avenue yesterday just before 10 a.m. destroyed the front of the tiny Port Richmond exercise studio.

Tragedy was only averted because the oversized cardboard sign in the window of Get in Gear at 513 Jewett Ave. blocked the half dozen people inside from the flying debris, and the lucky fact that nobody was outside when the giant wall of slush rose onto the sidewalk and slammed into storefronts, neighbors said.

“Glass came in; two of the women screamed,” said owner John Pepe, motioning to show how close he had been standing the window when it shattered.

By the time he ran outside to try and figure out what had happened, Pepe said the truck was already more than a block away: “He was going so fast, he probably did not even know what happened.”

As John Wayne once said, “Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much”:

The NYPD is making an unusual move to ensure no one notices a decline in the number of cops on the streets — decking out the vehicles used by traffic-enforcement agents, auxiliary police and school-safety agents so they look like regular cruisers.

The move will be phased in slowly with the special units — who have typically used cars painted dark blue — to be given the white cars that are taken out of use from the main fleet.

The only difference will be in the decals affixed to the sides of the vehicles that indicate which unit they are from.

“This is to make this look like there are more cops on the street,” said a law-enforcement official familiar with the decision.

In all, there are about 100 cars used by the auxiliary wing of the department and 200 used by each of the school-safety and traffic-enforcement divisions.

Things you don’t want to be caught doing while your father is under house arrest for bilking investors of billions include last-minute Christmas shopping:

Bernard Madoff’s investors have lost everything, but his son and daughter-in-law seemed without a care in the world yesterday as they dashed around SoHo on a holiday shopping spree.

Andrew Madoff, 42, who worked with brother Mark at their dad’s now-failed financial firm, still drives around in a BMW SUV to do his holiday shopping, loading up with purchases from J.Crew, Longchamp, Kidrobot and other tony stores in SoHo.

Andrew and wife Deborah, 41, who live on the Upper East Side, also shopped at American Eagle and a high-end lamp store, and checked out the windows at Vera Wang.

Right now the problem is not so much that people are taking cabs less often but rather there are too many cabbies:

With thousands of New Yorkers newly laid off there are more drivers than cabs. And many garage owners say they are turning would-be drivers away.

“‘Come back tomorrow, maybe tomorrow,’ is what I’m telling people who aren’t my steady drivers,” said Syed (Sunny) Zahoori, who has managed Harlem Yellow Cab for 17 years. “I’m sending people home every shift without a car. It’s a very bad situation.”

City officials say the number of New York City hack licenses are at an all-time high, with 45,805 taxicab drivers ready to hit the road.

Equally striking, the number of new hack licenses the city issued rose 19% in the past three months – when the brunt of the crisis hit – compared with the same period in 2007.

. . .

Richard Wissak, vice president of 55 Stan Operating Corp. in Long Island City, Queens, said he started to see a surge in applicants in the past few months.

Not surprising, given a new unemployment study showing New York City has lost about 10,000 jobs since employment peaked in August, with thousands more expected.

“They’re coming from more varied backgrounds than before – real estate brokers, Wall Street people, hotel people,” said Wissak, who manages 130 cabs and 600 drivers. “We have to turn people away. You can’t show up on a lucrative Friday night and say, ‘Surprise, I’m here,’ and expect to get a car.”

One driver, who said he was a successful Realtor and mortgage broker in Queens for 20 years, said he started driving a cab a few months ago, after his business went bust. The nicely dressed father of two said he had two college tuitions to pay.

He declined to give his name, “not because I am ashamed, or embarrassed, but my children are,” he said. “We are very well-known in our community and lived a good life for so many years.”

Or an absurdly high caloric intake:

We interrupt coverage of the collapse of just about everything in sight to bring truly shocking news about the seven-digit numbers recently posted in chain restaurants.

It turns out that they are not quite what they seem to be at first glance, said Mahmuda Mukti, manager of a Popeye’s on 125th Street in Manhattan.

“Sometimes the customers look at it, and think they’re telephone numbers,” Ms. Mukti said. “I say to them, ‘That’s not phone numbers, that’s calories.’”

By city regulation, the chains have been required since July to disclose the range of calories contained in each item or meal. So, for instance, a very telephonelike number, 880-1545, is listed next to the three-piece chicken meal combo, with the range depending on the side dishes. You might think that it would be hard to pile 1,500 calories into a single meal — close to the daily recommended amount for many women — but you would be drastically wrong.

Khaliqya Terry, 18, easily hit four digits as she worked through a late afternoon lunch on Friday. She had three pieces of chicken, Cajun-battered fries, a small container of mashed potato with gravy, a biscuit and a medium cup of Hi-C.

“I didn’t know they had the calories up there,” said Ms. Terry, a high school student. “How much is mine?”

At least 1,545, maybe more, she was told.

“Is that bad?” she asked.

Bad or good, it’s close to a day’s worth.

She laughed and slammed her hand into the arm of her boyfriend, who had headphones on. “Michael, this is supposed to be the calories for the whole day,” she said. They would probably eat dinner at McDonald’s, she said.

. . .

At the Popeye’s, Dawn Henry’s jaw actually dropped when she saw that the breast, wings and fries ran from 735 to 1,400 calories.

“This really would make you not want to buy it,” said Ms. Henry, 32. She glanced up again at the menu.

“But, oh well,” she said, stepping up to place her order anyway.

Richard Martin, the craziest super in Bay Ridge, has been fired:

“I’m losing my job as super of the building,” 72-year-old Martin told my esteemed colleague, Matthew Lysiak. “I’m being fired. It’s because of you and all that coverage – some Russian lady is buying the building and she asked me to leave. That means I’m losing my apartment — and my $150 a week — everything. I’ve done nothing wrong — I told the truth.”

By the “truth,” Martin apparently included signs he posted describing the tenants of 278 91st St. in Bay Ridge as “morons” and “retarded.”

. . .

“Fourteen years, 9-1/2 months,” he said. “The new landlord figured I was too much trouble. You know, Russian people don’t mess around.”

. . . and a hopelessly out of date iPod:

Gov. Paterson doesn’t understand all the fuss about the $4 billion in new taxes and fees he has proposed to help close a $15.4 billion budget gap.

“We found a lot of little taxes that are optional,” Paterson said on WOR radio. “In other words, people can stay away from these items and don’t have to pay the tax.”

Amazing. Especially considering that voting — the simple act of filling in a bubble, poking a chad or chonk-chonking that big goofy lever — is basically the easiest thing in the world, and the one way even the laziest, most incurious of us participate in democracy.

Unless you have some bizarre philosophical aversion, not voting (and this from the daughter of one of the most revered presidents in history!) should basically rule you out of ever participating in electoral politics.

Oh wait, I forgot — there’s no election here.

I’m pretty offended.