When small talk means value-added:

Damien, 27, who quit doing coke almost two years ago, has been contacted by three different cocaine dealers, all wanting his business, since June. “None of my friends mess with that anymore,” Damien says, “It’s like they grew up overnight when the banks died.” Eddie was one of the dealers who has recently contacted Damien. When demand first dropped, Eddie took a vacation. But when the situation failed to improve, he decided to call every name in his phone book until he’d arranged a deal. “It worked,” he says. “I’ll keep doing it until it stops working. But I don’t like small talk. I don’t like having to ask them how their day was.”

Setting aside the way the question was worded — after all, isn’t all advertising basically “annoying”? — there’s an opening here, too:

The poll of 1,290 registered voters, conducted Aug. 18-24, found that nearly 80% have seen the mayor’s TV commercials.

Those who saw the commercials were asked if they were annoying or informative, and 47% said annoying, 41% informative and the rest didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

Asked if the ads made it more or less likely they would vote for Bloomberg, 18% said less likely, 15% said more likely, 64% said no difference and 3% didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

“Mayor Mike might be wasting his money on that zillion-dollar TV buy,” said Quinnipiac polling director Maurice Carroll.

Maybe I am, maybe I’m not:

On Sunday afternoon, a few dozen ashen-faced night owls — looking for a respite from 90-degree temperatures — took to the beach. They plopped themselves, fully clothed, onto striped lounge chairs and stayed there for hours drinking free PBR. Daniel James, a tattooed nightlife promoter, flipped burgers on a big grill. Showing off bedbug-bitten legs, a girl splashed into the water alone, bouncing a beach ball. “Come on in guys, the temperature’s perfect,” she said, eliciting only confused stares from three tattooed friends.

Forget about Suffolk County’s famous sand though, it all took place in a 700-squarefoot sandbox on Suffolk Street — and the body of water was a two-foot kiddy pool. James, for one, said he’d choose the space — called the “Beach Bar” and located at the back of the Clemente Solo Voce Center — over real sand and surf any day. Kicking up his black motorcycle boots he lit up a Parliament. Exhaling, he said, “The Hamptons is way too far.”

The Post does the heavy lifting, getting inside of the Standard Hotel and uncovering the horrible truth about the Standard’s viral campaign:

“We don’t discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it,” a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

After the hotel opened late last year, the bellhop said, naked and semidressed staff members were encouraged to pose in front of the windows. The point, he said, was to create a buzz with the unexpected peep show.

“One of the managers even got naked in a room, and filmed it — they were considering a live feed for the Web site,” the staffer said. “She’s an exhibitionist, too.”

Because of course nothing delights a parkgoer more than catching a middle-aged European tourist jacking off in the window . . . so edgy!

Location Scout: High Line.

All this and you can piss with a view? That’s what dreams are made of:

At CityView Racquet Club, high above Long Island City, members can play a few games of tennis or squash, then relax in the sauna or grab a bite prepared by the in-house chef. They can bump into pros like Andy Roddick and have their racquet strung by the same master. And they can use the urinal — not just any urinal, but one that sports stunning eye-level views of that other borough beyond the East River.

Usually New York Magazine’s Daily Intel “Sex Diaries” feature just makes you feel icky. This entry, however, about a laid-off banker who has no sex, may be the first one to evoke schadenfreude:

I used to be such a romantic, but NYC has left me bitter and jaded at the age of 24.

Hahahahahahahaha!

There are strategies and then there are strategies:

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which supports Mr. Thompson, the city comptroller and the leading Democratic candidate in the race, has begun a cheeky, defiant advertising campaign urging the mayor to “spend it all.”

You let me drink hooch down on the corner, and I’ll think about voting for you. More, please:

“I never understood why we don’t let you drink in the park.”

The brown-bag phase of the mayor’s campaign . . . Avella, you sure you still want to ban foie gras?

And I guess he’s had a better year, so far at least:

Robert R. Hammond, 39, an artist and entrepreneur who had no experience in the world of public parks, has been paid about $1.2 million over the years of the High Line’s development — the vast majority of it since 2005. And his salary of $250,000 a year as president and executive director of the nonprofit he helped found, Friends of High Line, makes him one of the most generously compensated leaders of the 10 major park conservancies in the city.

. . .

Mr. Hammond’s salary, found in the organization’s tax filings, falls short of that of Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy and administrator of the park. He earns a salary of $364,000 a year. But Mr. Hammond’s salary is considerably greater than his counterpart at the 526-acre Prospect Park in Brooklyn and about $45,000 better than the city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, who oversees approximately 1,700 parks, playgrounds and other recreation facilities.

. . .

The High Line said that Mr. Hammond’s compensation stems from the challenges of operating a park perched roughly 30 feet in the air with a fire code capacity, managing major fund-raising campaigns and working with the city to oversee the design and construction of the High Line, among other duties.

Wow, 30 whole feet in the air . . . maybe if you divide that by 15 feet, which seems to be how wide the thing is, and multiply that by 20 blocks long, you get some sort of formula that comes out to $250,000 a year . . . good thing they decided not to tax everyone within a mile of the place. But then again, you can’t get a peep show as easily in any other park in the city.

You could call it an elevated train track that was converted into a park. Or you could conceive of it as an “urban catwalk,” if you prefer:

Gaspar Libedinsky, one of the High Line park designers, was all for the voyeurism: “It is like an urban catwalk. It is a place to see and be seen.”

Location Scout: High Line.

No shirt, no shoes, no justice:

“This is unbelievable — and super,” said Dalvin Jan, 21, who rents bicycles for a living on Central Park South. “I’m going to tell my wife to join in.”

With Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” blaring from speakers and chants of “free your breasts, free your mind,” the troupe of bare-breasted women — and their enthusiastic male supporters — paraded their way along Central Park South.

“We’re all here for the same reason — to allow women to be free in the park like men,” organizer Sylvie Chabot, 54, of Montreal, told the crowd at a midday rally at Columbus Circle.

. . .

New York is the only state in the country where women can be topless legally, after a 1992 ruling in the state’s highest court. That means any woman can walk around the city at any time with no shirt on.

. . . who overstates his own sweatshop life story:

Queens City Councilman John Liu adamantly insisted Sunday that he worked in a sweatshop as a child, despite denials from both of his parents and two of his mother’s longtime friends.

Wow, a placard that lets you park anywhere, so cool:

A car sporting an official NYPD placard issued to cops blatantly blocked a fire hydrant yesterday in The Bronx — as a blaze broke out in the apartment building directly in front of it.

Instead of being able to hook up their hoses to the hydrant, frustrated firefighters had to rely on handheld fire extinguishers to put out the kitchen blaze that broke out on the top floor of a six-story building at 206 East 198th Street in Fordham.

. . .

The vehicle displayed parking credentials for Queens’ narcotics bureau.

A Post photographer trying to take a picture of the placard was forced to move away by cops.

Because of course when you open a nice new $150 million park, you want people coming out in droves to enjoy the view:

Grandparent Gwen Barrett said the neighborhood has always been edgy.

“That kind of stuff here is anticipated,” she said.

Still, “I definitely wouldn’t want to bring my grandkids here,” she added.

See Also: “Two Parks” . . .

Location Scout: High Line.

Then there’s the Mets, who instead languish in fourth place. Maybe you can explain why you’d execute a hit and run down by two runs with two runners on and no outs in the ninth inning:

The sight of the Phillies’ Pedro Martinez pitching against his former team was supposed to be the most unusual aspect of the game. But that notion was quickly proved wrong before the top of the first inning was over, only to be reinforced exactly three hours later when the game ended on an unassisted triple play with the potential tying runs in motion. It was the first unassisted triple play to end a game since 1927, and only the 15th in major league history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Many of New York’s weeklies have stopped printing sex ads but at least one is now embracing the content:

Many city magazines court singles and sex-related advertising. Time Out New York has decided to make it part of its editorial content.

The magazine, a weekly better known for its exhaustive cultural and restaurant listings, introduced a “Sex and Dating” section in early July. Along with articles on finding strippers and getting checked for sexually transmitted diseases, it features photos of local singles in the hunt, with e-mail contact information.

“I want sex and dating to be another brand for us, just like we cover theater, music, film and museums,” said Michael Freidson, who became editor in chief of the magazine in February 2008. “But I don”t want it to be the dominant category.”

Still, “[n]ot everyone who opens the magazine to find a movie to go to wants to find a photo of a veterinarian posing nude with his cats” . . .

Buried in the reaction to Cintra Wilson’s gratuitously obnoxious Critical Shopper piece about J.C. Penney in today’s Public Editor column is this admission exposing the Thursday Styles section for the sleazy high-end advertising vehicle that it is:

Wilson told me she usually writes about “obscure stores that don’t exist outside of Manhattan,” and she thinks of her audience as “1,300 women in Connecticut and urban gay guys in Manhattan.” She said it was “kind of provincial of me” not to realize how big The Times was and how her audience would expand when she reviewed a store like Penney’s. She said she also thought she hit a raw nerve with people already disposed to think of The Times as disconnected and unsympathetic. “It was dumb on my part not to see this coming,” she said.

But give bonus points to Wilson for ripping on Connecticut ladies in the process . . .

“The Senate coup that jammed up Albany for weeks, costing taxpayers millions and lowering voters’ already abysmal opinion of state government, was sparked by Democratic leaders’ decision to deny $2 million to Sen. Pedro Espada for two mysterious, newly established charities.”

You can’t win with these people:

It’s O.K. if P.S. 1 wants to show vulvas in extreme close-up. (I don’t believe in censorship.) What’s not O.K. is that the only warning to parents was a tiny sign at the entrance to the gallery. The wording was clear — “These galleries contain graphic imagery. Parent/adult discretion is advised” — but the size and style of the sign made it unlikely that any harried parent would even notice it.

P.S. 1 is hardly the only local museum that has let me down. A Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008 was a major draw for parents and kids. The first piece on display, a teaser in the museum’s lobby, was a playful sculpture of cartoonlike characters, which made my sons want to see more.

So it came as a shock when, entering the main exhibition space, we were greeted by a masturbating cowboy spinning a lasso of his semen.

The lesson being, if you ever start a sentence by sneering “the last time I checked,” you probably should have actually checked:

Mayor Bloomberg Friday interrupted a radio health care discussion to blurt out that drug companies — and their execs — don’t make big bucks.

“Last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don’t make a lot of money,” he said on his WOR-AM radio show. “Their executives don’t make a lot of money.”

Someone must have quickly rechecked, because he backpedaled after a commercial break.

“I looked up the top pay of some of these executives in big pharma,” Bloomberg said.

“Some of them are making a lot of money. Some of them are making a decent amount of — more than a decent amount of money.”

Corollary: Voters probably don’t care about what you think about R&D costs . . .

Of course people are going to want to take pictures:

The dirty and creepy character demanded money from people and, when he didn’t get it, swore and jostled them.

“No picture. No picture. You have to tip Elmo. You have to tip Elmo or Elmo gets angry,” the imposter shouted as he stuck a filthy red paw over a Texas tourist’s camera lens.

“What the hell, Elmo? Keep your hands to yourself,” shouted Victoria Vought, 47, pulling away.

Wide-eyed at the loud to-do, Vought’s son, Dylan, 4, asked, “What’s wrong with Elmo, Mommy?”

“That’s not the real Elmo. That’s a bad Elmo,” she quickly explained.

“Couple becomes first to get married at new Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.”

After the Wolfson campaign went after Bill Thompson’s comptrolling, the Observer’s Azi Paybarah points out that not only did Bloomberg endorse him in 2007 but there are also several of the mayor’s appointees on the pension board.

Another possibility is that they’re just being more “efficient” by hanging out and waiting for every tiny infraction:

Merchants and drivers in Riverdale and Kingsbridge say an ongoing city ticket blitz is bad for business — but the NYPD denies that there’s a ticket blitz at all.

By the NYPD’s count, the numbers of parking tickets given out this year are down by a sizeable margin across the city and a considerable one in the Bronx, with 874,541 tickets issued so far, compared with 905,428 during the same period in 2008 — 122,055 of those in the Bronx compared with 136,926 during the same period last year.

How is it possible to reconcile what many people say they see on the streets with the police’s accounting? How do the numbers from the last two years match up with those over a longer period of time? A representative of the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner, Public Information says the police no longer have data from 2007, so they say there’s no way of knowing.

Bloomberg proposes tough new campaign finance reform ideas. Howard Wolfson saves the day:

“Mike Bloomberg doesn’t take a dime in special interest money,” Wolfson said. “No one will ever have to wonder whether contributions influence his decisions….He works only for the taxpayers.”

Yawn-fucking-yawn. If we think for ourselves, these people no longer have profiles written about them. The fiction that they have some sort of special power is what drives political observational media. And PBS shows.

Look, the guy has one of the shittiest jobs in city government, given the last couple of years, but you just can’t cut him any slack now, can you:

The New York city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., is staking his mayoral campaign on his skills as a financial manager, which he says are exemplified by his supervision of the nation’s largest municipal pension system.

But a review of how the $80 billion system has performed since he took office shows it has consistently lagged behind many of its public pension peers even as the city tripled the number of money managers it uses and the fees that it pays those firms.

Over the last seven years, four of the five city pension funds performed below the median for similar funds around the country. In fact, more than two-thirds of the nation’s large pension funds did better than the city’s largest fund, the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the data shows.

City lifeguards have been on the “hot seat” for a while now, and today Denis Hamill uses a drowning to go after them again, but not before the Post catches another somehow continuing his tax work at the beach, which is strange, considering it’s August and all:

An Aug. 13 letter from the City Conflicts of Interest Board warned Williams, a lifeguard since 1984, that he’d violated board rules by using a Parks Department phone to call clients and meeting a client at work.

. . . he didn’t really say that much to DC37 about the Taylor Law, which, yes, if you spin it right, makes people remember the TWU strike, but besides, where did you get this anyway, because it has the Bloomberg campaign’s pawprints all over it?

Mayoral candidate William Thompson owns lizards and David Yassky, candidate for comptroller, owns guinea pigs.