You know, the one you keep getting phone calls about? It’s even got a 450-foot-long pedestrian bridge:

“For decades, residents of the South Bronx have sought rail service to increase their transportation options and limit the number of people who drive to Yankee’s games,” said Bloomberg. “Today, it has finally arrived. The new Yankee-E. 153rd Street MTA Metro-North Railroad station is the first railroad station open anywhere in the Bronx in decades.”

The new addition to the Hudson Line, a $ 91 million dollar project, began service to the public on Saturday, May 23, and will remain in operation 365 days a year.

A 450-foot-long, 25-foot-wide bridge will connect Bronxites and visitors to the new Yankee Stadium and parks currently under construction along the waterfront, being built as part of the City’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan.

The big bold plastic bag tax (the one whose yearly windfall inexplicably jumped from $16 million in early discussions to somewhere around $100 million) seems to be blowing in the wind like something out of Alan Ball’s head*:

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has decreed the nickel-a-bag proposal “is off the table,” according to City Council sources.

Aides to Quinn privately confirmed the development, which could add to the mayor’s woes of filling a $1 billion revenue gap in the new budget due July 1.

“We’re not going to go negotiate a budget here,” the mayor said when asked about the development.

“And Christine Quinn is certainly pro-environmental. I think that happens to be an environmental thing as well as a revenue-raising thing.”

The mayor warned the budget will have to be balanced, either through “fees and taxes, which nobody likes, or you reduce your expenses, which means less services, which nobody likes.”

*And if Bloomberg has his way, such scenes may be lost forever.

Find a 9 year-old, hope her penmanship is halfway legible and leak it to the press:

A 9-year-old Canarsie girl has penned an impassioned plea to Mayor Bloomberg to save the Brooklyn Public Library as the latest round of budget cuts threatens to reduce service to just 25 hours a week — the lowest level since the city’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s.

The mayor’s budget would slash the Brooklyn Public Library’s budget by $17.5 million — or 21% — and give borough residents the fewest library hours in the city.

. . .

“I thought I should probably write a letter to the mayor. It’s not good that he should be doing this,” she told the Daily News.

. . .

“If the library closes, where are we supposed to go?” she wrote in her two-page letter to Bloomberg.

“The only thing we will have to do is go home. And home is not as fun as the library. Home doesn’t have games, programs and books everywhere.

“Please keep my library open is all I say. Please keep it open everyday,” she went on. “If the library closes it will be all your fault.”

Which is more “disgraceful” — a mayor that suspends term limits, spends $18 million before Memorial Day* and thus knocks out a major contender or a reporter who is doing his job by asking a simple question about what the mayor’s rationale for running again is given that the economy has apparently “turned a corner”?

*Point of comparison: By October 1997, Mayor Giuliani had only spent $9 million, way back in the days when billionaires didn’t spend their way into office**.

**And what has this rugged independence gotten us? A whole lot of lawn chairs. Keep tweaking him, Azi.

A cabal consisting of the City and Mister Softee is conspiring to obesify our children. Parents are defenseless against the large sums of money flying around:

As Mayor Bloomberg takes on trans fat and calorie-laden fast food, some Brooklyn parents are outraged the city rakes in thousands of dollars a year from ice cream trucks parking right next to playgrounds and schools.

“It’s very frustrating that they’re here every day,” said Carroll Gardens mom Meryl Allison, who picks up her son Ben at Public School 58 and has to take him past a Mister Softee truck to go to Carroll Park across the street. “You’re a trapped audience. It’s hard to say no to your kids.”

The Parks Department auctioned off the prime Carroll Park spot on Carroll St. — between the entrance to the playground and PS 58 — for $6,500 a year.

It’s like The Warriors meets West Side Story:

A subway dance troupe turned militant on May 25 when the dancers viciously mugged a 22-year-old straphanger on the J train.

The violent attack began when the victim started conversing with the dancers after they finished an acrobatic performance near the Lorimer Street stop at around 3:40 am.

That’s when one of the perps asked the victim if he would like to “see something mesmerizing.”

The victim said yes, so the perp pulled himself into the air on the train’s metal bars and unleashed a powerful kick to the victim’s chest. Two other dancers then joined in the attack and started punching and kicking the victim in the head and body.

The victim called out to the other two dancers for help, but his pleas only convinced the other performers to join in the walloping.

Eventually, one of the perps demanded that the victim hand over his belongings.

When the next big terrorist attack happens we will be as unprepared as we were on 9/10/01, lulled into a dangerous complaisance by the Old West Main Street facade that New York has become:

Awakened residents thought it was a gas explosion, maybe a sonic boom. Others figured an espresso machine inside the Starbucks had blown up. One woman, walking by the dozens of official-looking law enforcement folks inside the crime-scene tape, explained to her young daughter how similar shows like “C.S.I.” are filmed before realizing the asphalt was no stage.

“This is the real deal?” she said with a gasp. “I’m explaining it like it was a movie.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and hurried away.

The growing realization that the commotion at 92nd Street and Third Avenue on Monday morning derived from a small explosive device rather than a script left nearby residents stunned, curious and ultimately frightened.

. . .

Some noted how much it looked like television, while others experienced an odd collision between fiction and fact.

“It sounded like a bomb, to the extent that I know what a bomb sounds like,” said Casey Mallinckrodt, who was awakened with her family in their apartment one block north on 93rd Street. “It’s confusing. Obviously we don’t live in a bomb-riddled city most of the time. And bombing a Starbucks doesn’t seem like a terrifically pointed act of terrorism towards a community. It seems as though it might be a statement towards Starbucks.”

You can decide if that counts as a “sweeping vision” or just a series of small-bore Clinton-esque tweaks. As for the lawn furniture, the big so-called traffic-reducing Broadway pedestrian mall initiative apparently has met at least one of its goals:

While tourists and others enjoyed moseying around the traffic-free oasis on its first business day as a pedestrian mall, anyone making a delivery around Times Square fumed.

Drivers said streets surrounding the blocked-off areas were clogged with traffic — and pulling in front of a business to unload heavy boxes became a thing of the past.

“This is making my job more challenging,” said Steven McFadden, 48, a deliveryman for Citi Storage. “Longer walks to loading entrances, more competition for parking, more time for fewer deliveries and more parking tickets.”

John Gannon, 55, a mail carrier, predicted a long summer with traffic blocked off.

“For anybody who has to make a curbside delivery, it will be a problem. You’d have to park and walk a block or two,” he said. “If [Mayor] Bloomberg wants it to last, though, it’ll last.”

And you can amend the post title to include “Naked Cowboys” in the mayor’s sweeping vision:

Times Square and Herald Square vendors are cashing in on the car-free Broadway.

Everyone from food and souvenir hawkers to street performers said they were rolling in the dough yesterday thanks to the flood of pedestrians on the Great White Way.

“It is the coolest thing in the world. My business has quadrupled. It is like New Year’s Eve every day,” crowed the “Naked Cowboy,” Robert Burck.

Because when you go down that debate-club road, you start wondering why we should bother with hate crime laws at all:

Police said that they are investigating the strange Nazi-runic graffiti in the hopes of tracking down who’s leaving the coded messages — most recently on the pedestrian foot bridge on East 14th Street and Shore Parkway back on May 13.

While many residents ignored the iron crosses, the number 88 — a code number among neo−Nazis for “Heil Hitler” — and the phrase “Triumph of Will” on the pedestrian bridge, a few concerned citizens in Sheepshead Bay called authorities — especially since the graffiti was found a short distance from Holocaust Memorial Park on Emmons and West End avenues, the only city park dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.

Members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force are on the case, although sources said that the graffiti could not be considered “bias” because it wasn’t solely directed to any ethnic group.

The graffiti was more pro-Nazi than anti-Jew, officials said.

Now that the World Trade Center has already been hit, we need to go for the second-best thing:

The four men arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization, the New York City police commissioner said Thursday.

The men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

. . .

[James] Cromitie, whose parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth, had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to do “something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.

Or you could build three New Yankee Stadiums. Or more than one Wynn Casino in Las Vegas. Or 10.8 Gravina Island Bridges. In other words, you can do a lot with $4.3 billion:

The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is near-certain to bust its $3.2 billion budget — and there’s a chance it will cost more than $4.3 billion to build, the Daily News has learned.

That’s a spike of as much as $1.1 billion from the Port Authority’s “clear-eyed” estimate of only eight months ago, a review of Hub costs obtained by The News under the Freedom of Information Act reveals.

The December report by the Federal Transit Administration says it’s 90% certain the Port Authority will blow a June 2014 deadline for opening the Santiago Calatrava-designed megaterminal.

The FTA study also estimated there’s a 50-50 chance the Hub could cost $3.8 billion, shattering its budget by $600 million — with no funding for the extra costs.

*Cost: $1.1 billion.

Inasmuch that Robert Moses was a product of the car-focused era in which he served, then no, Mayor Bloomberg is not Robert Moses, though I appreciate the blunt-force good-evil dichotomy that underlies the way the mayor’s apologists try to frame the issue of transportation:

Imagine narrow European-style roadways shared by pedestrians, cyclists and cars, all traveling at low speeds. Sidewalks made of recycled rubber in different colors under sleek energy-efficient lamps. Mini-islands jutting into the street, topped by trees and landscaping, designed to further slow traffic and add a dash of green.

This is what New York City streets could look like, according to the Bloomberg administration, which has issued the city’s first street design manual in an effort to make over the utilitarian 1970s-style streetscape that dominates the city.

. . .

Urban planners say that the document is long overdue, and that it promises to be as much a map to the future as it is a handbook for the present: getting people to think about streets as not just thoroughfares for cars, but as public spaces incorporating safety, aesthetics, environmental and community concerns.

Robert Moses, Mr. Bloomberg is not.

“Moses had a sort of utopian view of orderly, suburban places that de-emphasized New York’s ‘cityness,’ while Bloomberg embraces the soul of the city itself and recognizes it as a solution to the region’s environmental, sustainability, and energy problems,” said Robert Puentes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

Some drivers, though, are reserving judgment. Taxi drivers, for one, say that while they appreciate the city’s efforts to beautify the streets, they hope that they do not lead, even indirectly, to fewer parking spots or traffic that is too slow.

Another way to look at it: “Robert Moses” attempted to build infrastructure that spurred economic growth while Mayor Bloomberg seems to prefer tree pits and European-style lawn furniture in the middle of Broadway. Sure, he’ll “calm” traffic . . . by getting it down to the size where he can drown it in the bathtub.

The City Independent Budget Office’s Analysis of the Mayor’s Executive Budget for 2010 is online (.pdf) and unless they’re wrong — and they’re not running for office, so there’s no reason to bookcook — there’s still a lot of work to do on next year’s budget (and beyond, for that matter):

IBO estimates that under the Mayor’s Executive Budget plan a budget gap of $1.1 billion in 2010 remains to be closed. There are some uncertainties in the Mayor’s 2010 plan such as the proposed sales tax increases and the creation of a new pension tier to help reduce labor costs, which if Albany does not approve, could make balancing the upcoming year’s budget more difficult. In addition, contracts with the United Federation of Teachers and District Council 37 expire during 2010 and settlements could increase the level of the gap.

But the tougher challenges now appear to be in the subsequent years of the financial plan, when there is no longer a substantial surplus from the flush years of the recent past to help bridge the shortfalls and the temporary flow of federal stimulus dollars begins to dry up. IBO projects a 2011 gap of $5.6 billion, 12.9 percent of city-funded revenue, and $1.0 billion more than the Mayor estimated. Our 2012 gap of $5.8 billion is 12.7 percent of city-funded revenue, and $666 million higher than the Mayor’s estimate. Based on our forecast that recovery from the recession will be slow, IBO does not expect the financial and real estate markets to surge and boost tax revenues enough to grow our way out of these gaps.

Once, strip clubs had a hard time figuring out how to best give back to the community. Now, they understand where their charity is best served:

As Fleet Week rolls into town Tuesday, one Manhattan strip club will be waiting with a special drink called the Drunken Captain and, the owners say, all proceeds will go back to the troops.

HeadQuarters, located just blocks from the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum on the West Side, is selling the cocktail for $16 during Fleet Week. Military personnel can buy it for $10.

“All of us here at HeadQuarters appreciate all the men and women who put themselves at risk every day to allow us to have the freedom to express ourselves,” general manager Serafina Fiori said.

“We welcome them always so they can see firsthand what they’re fighting for!”

The Drunken Captain is a mixture of coconut, mango and pineapple rums with a little pineapple juice and a splash of cranberry.

Fiori said proceeds from the sales of the drink will go to the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’, Airmen’s & Coast Guard Club in Murray Hill. The club has been housing soldiers and veterans while they visit the Big Apple for the past 90 years.

Yes, sarcasm is a sickness (”We don’t have nearly enough of your campaign offices in our neighborhoods. Really, we don’t.”). Sadly, the only cure is more Weiner:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner has put himself into the maybe category for the 2009 mayor’s race.

So why is he suddenly renting a campaign office? In May, Mr. Weiner spent $8,215 for space in an S. L. Green building in Midtown.

Most leases for commercial office space are long-term (for a year, at least) — a curious commitment for a man who has called himself a “quasi candidate.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Weiner, Marie Ternes, said the lawmaker “has five employees and a multimillion-dollar organization. Of course he needs an office.”

Of course it takes years to build something when you’re excavating dirt by the teaspoonful:

While the Yankees scoop teaspoonfuls of dirt from their old stadium to sell for upwards of $80 each, the community that lost its parks to the new stadium are still waiting for a ballfield of their own.

With the demolition of the House that Ruth Built expected to take nearly a year and a half, it will be late 2010 before work can even begin on Heritage Field, the park to replace most of the ballfields swallowed up three years ago to make way for the $1.5 billion new Yankee Stadium.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

Manhattan as one big photo shoot, not only B-roll for major motion pictures but also fashion shows, and not just in Bryant Park, either:

Critics are calling foul on a plan to rent the fabled West Fourth Street Courts today for a private gala.

Clothing designer Joseph Abboud is paying the city $14,100 to rent the Greenwich Village playground, affectionately known as “The Cage,” for the private launch of a fashion line with JCPenney and the NBA.

. . .

The Cage is widely known for hosting hardcore playground basketball games and helping the pro games of Hall of Famer “Dr. J” Julius Erving and other NBA greats

Paul Lerner, a Joseph Abboud spokesman, said “the setting of the legendary street basketball court really helps us depict” the designer’s new JOE collection — which is tailored for the regular guy.

As promised, the end of term limits has brought more choices, more debate and definitely more democracy:

“He was coming to protest and disrupt the event,” said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg. “Anytime there is intelligence that an individual wants to disrupt an event, that information is circulated and appropriate measures are taken.”

What was this intelligence?

Several days earlier, Mr. Esposito had sent an e-mail message to the other 58 community board managers in the city, the last bastion of local government. The boards have yearly budgets of $189,000 each, but they face the same cuts of 5 percent as most city agencies.

All community board managers had been invited to the mayor’s presentation in the Fort Washington Armory, but Mr. Esposito said he suspected that more than a few would skip making the trip to Upper Manhattan.

“Perhaps we should attend to let our voices be heard about the cuts!” he wrote in his e-mail message. “What do people think?”

That is the entire text of the message that the mayor’s office took to be a signal of his plans to disrupt the event.

And there’s nothing you can do to stop them:

“Don’t worry, they won’t put another tree there,” a very nice city official assured her.

With that pledge, Smith had the pit paved over at her own expense. She was understandably surprised to see a small bulldozer with a pavement-busting attachment take up position there Friday morning.

“What are you doing?” Smith inquired from her front door.

“We’re putting in a tree,” the man in charge said.

“I didn’t ask for a tree,” Smith said. “I told them I didn’t want a tree there. Put it somewhere else.”

“This is going here,” the man said.

“I don’t want a tree there!” Smith exclaimed. “Who’s going to rake the leaves?”

A particularly good-hearted neighbor, Nancy Cardozo, approached and attempted to intervene.

“She doesn’t want a tree,” Cardozo noted.

“Sorry, I have the contract and I have a big payroll,” the man replied. “I have to put the tree there.”

The man’s tone remained remarkably amiable, even though Cardozo positioned herself in a way that might impede the work.

“You can have the tree moved later,” he offered.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense just to put it where we want it?” Cardozo inquired.

“No, this is what I have to do,” he said.

Cardozo dialed 311 from her cell phone. An operator informed her the city owns the sidewalk and has the right to put a tree there.

“Who’s responsible if somebody slips on the leaves?” Cardozo inquired.

“The homeowner,” the operator replied.

The operator then connected Cardozo to somebody in the Parks Department who did not answer. Cardozo left a message that would not get a reply.

Meanwhile, the man in charge was on his own cell phone to the Parks Department forestry office. He handed his phone to Cardozo.

“The tree’s going in,” an instantly nasty forestry guy told Cardozo. “There’s nothing she can do about it.”

Cardozo inquired if perhaps the work could be suspended until Smith spoke to the city.

“Do you want me to send the police and have you arrested?” the forestry guy responded.

“No, thank you, but I would like you to give me your name,” Cardozo said.

“I need you to move,” the forestry guy said.

“I need you to tell me your name,” Cardozo insisted.

“You’ll find out my name soon enough,” the forestry guy said.

In honor of Bike Month, the police have started to crack down on bicyclists running red lights:

Police cracked down on rule-breaking bicyclists in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill last Friday, issuing tickets for running red lights and then slapping offenders with additional summonses for minor infractions, including one bicyclist who didn’t have a bell.

The dragnet snared 36 bicyclists on the popular DeKalb Avenue bike lane that links the two neighborhoods with Downtown Brooklyn.

Cops said the crackdown was long overdue.

“It was targeted towards enforcing traffic laws,” said a police source from the 88th Precinct. “Running a red light is not safe for the cyclist or anyone else in the street.”

The ticket blitz is a bitter irony for bikers who have complained since the lane’s creation last year that vehicles, including officers at the 88th Precinct stationhouse near the corner of Classon Avenue, but especially delivery trucks, regularly block the lane with parked cars along the busy corridor.

Or are bike lanes actually a backdoor way to balance the budget? Hmm . . .

Those “of a certain age” find great significance in the littlest things:

“When you pulled the cord you had a general feel — the cord in your hand, you heard the buzzer — of contacting the driver,” said Mr. Fischler. “You feel like you were doing something.”

Or funny as in, ha ha your mayor is kind of like a cross between Hugo Chavez and Silvio Berlusconi funny (video at link):

On the heels of much speculation about an endorsement, Obama put Michael Bloomberg in his speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night.

At about the 11:30 mark Obama says, “In the next hundred days, I will meet with a leader who rules over millions, with an iron fist. Who owns the airwaves and uses his power to crush all who would challenge his authority at the ballot box. It’s good to see you, Mayor Bloomberg.”

The camera cuts away to a shot of Bloomberg laughing, Diana Taylor applauding, and reporter Al Hunt looking amused.

Now David Cone is after me about my car warranty:

With the team’s sales department lacking a closer crafty enough to persuade fans and corporations to spend $2,500 on luxury seats in the middle of a recession, the Yankees started handing the ball to the former ace.

“David Cone left a four-minute voicemail on my machine about the seats,” said a season-ticket holder on the fence about the new prices.

. . .

The biggest challenge in making the calls has been getting customers to take him serious.

“Sometimes I get a secretary, and she doesn’t believe it’s me,” he said. “They think it’s a practical joke. Usually, once they get on the phone, they recognize my voice from television and realize the call is for real.”

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Go, Chuck, go — sink these motherfuckers:

Senator Charles E. Schumer has never struggled to find a reason to hold a news conference on a Sunday. But the inspiration for the one on Mother’s Day arrived unexpectedly, when the senator’s cellphone rang during a health care meeting on Capitol Hill last week.

“You are still eligible to reactivate warranty coverage,” said the recorded voice on the line. “This is the final call before we close the file. Press 1 to speak to a representative now about your vehicle.”

Most people react with annoyance as soon as they hear the insistent — and all-too-familiar — voices and simply hang up. But, then, most people cannot investigate who is behind the call and take the information to the Federal Trade Commission.

Mr. Schumer said he received the call on Wednesday as he discussed national health care issues with two other senators, Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

He had received three or four similar calls. But the one on Wednesday was the last straw.

“I’ve had enough,” Mr. Schumer said. “These are scam artists.”

The calls are intended to extract credit card numbers by selling fraudulent car warranty renewals, Mr. Schumer said, and are “invading cellphones at a growing rate.”

Many New Yorkers — even those who do not own cars — have long reported receiving the calls on their home telephones. Now, more mobile phones are getting the calls, and they can eat up valuable talk time.

“It’s bogus,” Mr. Schumer said. “Consumers should not have to pay for this or any other robo-dialed harassment.”

I can almost make out the turnpike in the distance there:

On April 27, a plane that usually serves as the president’s plane was flying low over the New York City skyline, trailed closely by two fighter jets. It was a photo opportunity — authorized by several government officials, including Mr. Caldera — that infuriated Mr. Obama.

Earlier: What Kind Of “Photo Shoot” Involves Air Force One Flying At A Low Altitude Over New York Harbor? Publicity For A Harrison Ford Sequel?

The cost of rebuilding the I-34W Bridge in Minneapolis was $234 million. The cost of rebuilding the dinky City Island Bridge in the Bronx has now risen to $120 million:

After several years of delays, planning and community opposition, the cost of replacing the 108-year-old City Island Bridge has risen to $120 million.

Back on Aug. 20, 2003 — when Mayor Bloomberg announced plans for a new high-tech bridge “as unique as the island itself” — the cost was estimated at $32 million.

The new bridge project has yet to get started, with the latest launch date now set for next year.

“What are they building, the Bridge on the River Kwai?” groaned Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), whose district includes the tiny, isolated community surrounded by Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay.

He and other critics of the city’s plans to build a “signature bridge,” with suspension cables evoking the island’s sailing past, said they’d be far happier with a cheaper remake of the current ugly-duckling span.

“We’ve been handed a bridge that we just hate,” said Barbara Dolensek, vice president of the City Island Historial Society and the Civic Association.

“They wanted something that would put their names on the map.”

Because when you need help in the kitchen, it helps to have a good bookcook at hand:

The percentage of third through eighth graders in the city’s public schools who scored proficiently on state reading tests catapulted an incredible 11.2% upward since last year — from 57.6 percent to 68.8 percent.

Surprisingly, the largest gains were made in the city’s long-troubled middle schools — led by a nearly 20 percent jump since last year in the number of sixth graders meeting state benchmarks, from 52.7 percent to 72.6 percent.

And they have cans of spray paint:

Even ardent neo-Nazis would have a hard time figuring out the bizarre graffiti cops are investigating in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (above). It seems to be written in an obscure alphabet by someone interested in obscure occult ideas that inspired some of Adolf Hitler’s followers.

The characters in the peculiar graffiti tags look like runes, the ancient alphabets of pre-Roman tribes in central and northern Europe. Some people associate runes with magical powers.

One tag says: “Das Geheinns der Runen,” German for “The Secret of the Runes,” a book by Guido von List, an Austrian occultist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

When people start using etching acid to cook up debilitating illegal drugs that tear at the very fabric of society, then maybe let’s talk about giving the police wide latitude to create files on the law-abiding citizens they protect. Until then, this seems like another example* of Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr.’s insane overreach:

In an effort to further combat “scratchiti” — graffiti etched into glass — the city will soon require stores to record the names and addresses of people who buy glass-etching acid.

. . .

The purchase information — which includes the buyer’s name and address, amount of acid and date — must be kept for up to one year and made available to the police on request.

“This will have a deterrent effect if people know their identification will be kept on record,” said Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the Public Safety Committee and who negotiated with the mayor’s office to get the bill passed by the Council on Wednesday.

. . .

“We had an impasse until I went to buy Sudafed,” Mr. Vallone said. Sudafed and other cold medicines are now broadly regulated — and often kept under lock and key — because they are used as an ingredient in methamphetamine, but a license is not required to obtain the drug.

“I went to get Sudafed and they asked me for my identification,” Mr. Vallone said. “I asked how come we can’t do it for etching acid?”

*As in.

Hipster Grifter, meet Hipster Bounty Hunter:

She hadn’t stolen anything from me, but she wasted our time and energy with her cancer stories.

. . .

On Sunday, May 3, she finally agreed to take a bus to Philly. At 9:15 p.m. she said she was sitting on the bus in Manhattan. I immediately called the 6th District police headquarters and told them that a wanted felon with orders for extradition was taking a bus to Chinatown, and that I could help them pick her up. I gave them her case numbers. Then I called the SLCPD and gave them the phone number for the 6th District. When I called the 6th District back, they told me to come down to headquarters to help ID her, so I did.

Officers DeLuca and Green drove me to Chinatown in an unmarked black Explorer. They watched from across the street. When the bus arrived, I waved to Kari to get their attention. I want to say I hugged her, but I was anxious and I don’t remember. I picked her bag out of the luggage storage and started walking behind her. The officers crossed the street and stopped her. I dropped her bag and walked away. They took her aside and questioned her for a moment. She didn’t struggle. I didn’t stay close to hear what they were saying because I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to know it was me who turned her in. Not so much because I cared about her (I didn’t) but because I felt a little cold for betraying someone’s trust.