Of course it’s just the Queens Gazette, but with all the talk about how the NYPD may have actually bungled the FBI’s recent terror bust, I kind of can’t believe the Gazette’s “editorial board” is arguing what they’re arguing:

Three weeks ago, suspects with ties to terrorist groups abroad were arrested here and in Denver, Colorado. The investigation that led to the arrests continues as we speak. Those arrests and the ongoing investigation that continues to ensure New York City’s ranking as the safest big city in America are due in large part to the efforts of the man the Gazette endorses for a third term as the city’s chief executive. Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office on Jan. 1, 2002, and for the last seven years has made the counter-terrorism measures of the New York City Police Department at home and abroad of equally high priority to police street and index crime eradication efforts.

Maybe it’s meant to be an ironic endorsement.

Tom Robbins details the chronology of the mayor’s Tonkin Gulfing of the democratic system*:

[M]any months before economic disaster struck in September 2008 — the crisis that Bloomberg said prompted his reversal on term limits — the mayor was already pondering the move.

You know, the Seal of the City of New York has the words “Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci” on it. “Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci” just means “Seal of the City of New York” — in other words, grandiose Latin bullshit. Why not change it to “Progressio Non Politics”? It’s got a nice ring to it — like “Ordem e Progresso,” “Gangseong Daeguk,” “Patria y Libertad” or “Allah Is Great.”

*Don’t forget how piqued the mayor became at Azi Paybarah’s “disgraceful” questioning about the state of the economy and the rationale for a third term.

U2, the masters of the generous gesture bound to look good on videotape, provide Mayor Bloomberg with another generous gesture that looked good on videotape (or YouTube, as the case may be), but the real question is how much that carbon offset is worth:

CBS 2 caught Bloomberg’s chopper buzzing the Meadowlands as he searched in vain for the right place to land the chopper so the mayor could go to the U2 concert. It was a test run, and the pilot botched it, so when he came back with the mayor, he had to land farther away.

But it left the oh-so-green mayor’s face oh-so-red on Friday. CBS 2’s Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reminded Bloomberg that it takes a lot more energy to fly a chopper than a car, wasting a lot of energy.

“I suppose you could say that, but there’s other ways to get around,” he said. “Some are more energy efficient, I could have walked or swam across the river as well, that would have used less.”

It was a “gotcha” moment for an avowed environmentalist. He regularly takes the subway and appeared Thursday with former Vice President Al Gore to say painting rooftops white saves energy. On Friday, he talked about teaching building supers energy-saving practices.

“I believe government should lead by example,” Bloomberg added.

The mayor was anxious to get to the U2 concert for a meeting with Bono, who later praised the mayor’s philanthropy.

. . .

The mayor is so green that five different environmental groups refused to comment about the story.

How can we be so sure that they’re not really a type of Stephen Colbert-style performance art group?

World-famous incomprehensible op-ed writer Bono makes the case for suspending term limits at the Meadowlands. Ready-made campaign video ensues. I gather this Boldface Name Campaign is supposed to be impressing us? Just tell me where to land the helicopter.

Note that they wouldn’t need to sit down with merchants and “retrain” their agents if City Hall wasn’t trying to balance the budget on dubious double-parking tickets:

“New instructions have been given to our traffic agents. The way we issue summonses will be different and we ask our agents to be patient,” said Frank Sepulveda, the NYPD’s director of traffic enforcement for the city. “By the end of this month all our agents should have the new training. We will look at how we can handle difficult summons situations differently.”

. . .

On problems, businessman Dan Texeira led the complaint barrage. “I stopped my car to let off my son. Just then a traffic agent cut off in front of my car and gave me a ticket.

“That wasn’t right,” said Sepulveda.

Top down trees, killer trees — maybe it’s simply a case of vigilante justice:

Dozens have been destroyed in the past few months — their roots torn up, branches snapped and trunks hacked.

But if we don’t pay attention to them, they don’t exist.

First, set aside the inconvenient facts that owning a dog in a cramped city apartment is inherently cruel and that installing dog runs (i.e., red-light districts for dog defecation) constitutes a ludicrously generous surrender of precious public space. The big problem is that a vocal minority of dog owners are pushing public debate in favor of pets over humans, and we must give huge credit to the state parks department (and not the permissive city parks department, which was infiltrated by dog apologists when the agency’s animal policies were gutted) for putting an end to dog dominance; they are absolutely doing the right thing, and they absolutely deserve our support:

A grassy knoll is the latest territory causing friction between the state Parks Department and Long Island City dog owners after the agency barred canines from the area in Gantry Plaza State Park. Dogs were also banned from the old piers when the rest of the new, six-acre grass area opened up in July.

Rachel Gordon, a state Parks regional director, said the manager of Gantry Plaza saw the grass at the “knoll,” a small strip of grass with a picnic table next to an athletic field, had been turned brown by the effects of dogs relieving themselves there. The ban went into effect last week.

Dog owners can still walk their dogs on the cement areas or in the community garden.

But dog owners in the Queens West towers have not taken the situation lying down. After they said parks [employees] shooed them off the wooden piers in July, they formed DOG LIC to push for more pooch-friendly facilities in the rapidly evolving neighborhood.

. . .

There are three dog runs in the Hunters Point area of Long Island City: one near the now-defunct Tennisport on the site of what will become the Hunters Point South Development; one on Vernon Boulevard between 48th and 49th avenues; and one on 31st Street [actually, 21st Street].

The bottom line is that dog owners will let their animals shit on the grass you sit on, even if there is a dog run directly across the street — because dog owners don’t use the grass except to tear it up around a turd. Additionally, they think nothing of destroying trees, completely ignoring what “curbing your dog” actually means*. Instead of agitating for more permissive policies, they should really be teaching their fellow owners how to be less inconsiderate. As for the rest of us, we shouldn’t give up and we shouldn’t give in — these people’s animals are disgusting and we don’t deserve to have them in our faces . . .

*And even that is a generous allowance — walk through any dog-friendly neighborhood on a hot summer day and the tell-tale scent of dog urine wafts through the streets . . . the smell is horrible, like a pungent chicken broth, and it makes our streets way more pedestrian unfriendly than most other quality-of-life obstacles that the city spends time worrying about.

Location Scout: Gantry Plaza State Park.

*That’s from Bloomberg’s statement to the 9/11 Commission in May 2004, and the sad thing is that he was talking about the lack of inter-agency cooperation, not even intra-agency cooperation:

The New York Police Department has removed a senior official from one of its two sometimes competing antiterrorism units, after it played a role in disrupting a sensitive federal terrorism investigation, current and former police officials said on Wednesday. He was replaced by a top official from the other unit.

The investigation was disrupted two weeks ago when detectives from one of the units, the Intelligence Division, sought assistance from a Queens imam who then alerted the central suspect in the case to the inquiry.

The transfers, which removed one official from the Intelligence Division and replaced him with another from the Counterterrorism Bureau, came in recent days amid intense activity in the case. Federal agents and police detectives have been hunting through New York City and other places for operatives in a suspected Qaeda bomb plot.

Again, the NYPD is playing with the security of all Americans. When they’re good, oh they’re real good, but there’s also a huge lack of oversight here. People in California, Denver or even New Jersey don’t vote for Michael Bloomberg, much less Ray Kelly, and when the NYPD fucks up, it affects them, too. I’m surprised more people aren’t more pissed . . .

Go, Wayne, go:

Rod Blagojevich, who was selling his just-published book in New York last week, has a lot to say about Bradley Tusk, the former Deputy Governor of Illinois now running Mike Bloomberg’s campaign.

Maybe the State Assembly is good for something after all:

Assemblymember Michael DenDekker (D-Jackson Heights) wants city Traffic Enforcement Agents to warn operators of vehicles first before they can be issued parking summonses.

DenDekker has introduced Assembly Bill A9135. This bill requires traffic agents or other law enforcement authority to verbally direct the operator to move immediately or be given a parking violation summons.

“This legislation has become necessary ever since Traffic Agents have become armed with these hand-held scanning devices. These Agents walk up to vehicles while the drivers are waiting for someone to pull out of a parking spot, scan the registration sticker, and issue them violations for double parking,” DenDekker declared. “Other agents have acted more like Starsky and Hutch; they pull in front of the vehicles blocking them in, jump out, scan the sticker and issue a summons, leaving many motorists scared as well as frustrated.["]

Did the NYPD’s vaunted* counter-terrorism unit blow the FBI’s cover? Who knows:

Zazi had been under FBI surveillance, but the criminal complaint against him suggests NYPD officers acting without the bureau’s knowledge may have blown their cover by questioning Afzali, who is an imam in the New York City borough of Queens.

“They came to ask me about your characters,” Afzali told Zazi in a secretly recorded Sept. 11 telephone conversation. “They asked me about you guys.”

At least one of those New York Police Department detectives, referred to in the recently unsealed criminal complaint, works for a division that operates independently from an FBI-run terrorism task force.

The complaint also suggests investigators may have tipped off Zazi, a 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle driver, by towing and searching a rental car he was using on a New York City trip that heightened fears of an attack.

The maneuver, authorities say, produced evidence of bomb-making instructions retrieved from a hard drive on Zazi’s laptop.

But it also apparently didn’t get by the suspect: In the phone conversation with Afzali, Zazi said the car’s disappearance convinced him he was being watched.

NYPD and FBI officials have denied that the potential missteps forced their hand in a series of high-profile raids last week, prompted Zazi to abort his New York visit and caused friction between the two agencies, which work together through the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And the Times notes that it’s actually misleading to consider the NYPD one monolithic entity because there is infighting within the department:

Current and former police and federal officials said the approach to the imam, and the resulting disruption, added to a long history of tensions and rivalry between the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in recent years have developed a new dimension: a clash of sorts within the Police Department, between its two primary antiterrorism units.

Those tensions, according to police and federal officials, have led to communication and coordination problems between the two police units and between one of them, the Intelligence Division, and the F.B.I. The other unit, the Counterterrorism Bureau, oversees the more than 100 detectives assigned to work with the F.B.I. on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Bumbling police departments are a time-honored tradition — see Seasons 1-5 of The Wire! — but imagine the Congressional hearings that will take place if one day something like this actually costs lives . . .

*The New Yorker published one of the worst puff pieces during the Bush Administration.

Eid-al-Fitr at Chuck E. Cheese:

For at least five years, Muslim families originally from Beirut and Bangladesh to Khartoum and Kuala Lumpur have flocked to Chuck E. Cheese on Eid, which marks the end of the month-long Ramadan fast. The tradition has spread from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Bay Ridge entirely by word-of-mouth.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips*:

As a billionaire in one of the dining capitals of the world, he can eat anything he wants. But he is obsessed with his weight — so much so that the sight of an unflattering photo of himself can trigger weeks of intense dieting and crankiness, according to friends and aides.

His food issues have become New York City’s. Although he has described his battle against unhealthy foods as common-sense public policy that will shed pounds (and save lives), many of his targets overlap with his own cravings.

“I like a Big Mac like everybody else,” he confessed the other day, explaining the city’s warts-and-all approach to fast food. “I just want to know how many calories are in it.”

Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit” by asking waiters for food without added salt.

But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.

Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.

And then there’s the concept of Asshole-In-Chief:

When he does not like the food, he rarely holds back. After dining at Blue Smoke, Mr. Meyer’s barbecue restaurant on East 27th Street, the mayor told Mr. Meyer, “I just don’t like it.”

Mr. Meyer tried inviting him back, but the mayor would not budge. “It never feels good when somebody tells you they don’t like your restaurant, but it’s nice when a politician does not pander,” he said, adding that the mayor has heaped praise on Union Square Cafe.

*In fact, Thompson should consider making this a slogan of sorts, e.g., you think it’s OK to suspend term limits just this once, but consider the deleterious long-term effects . . .

At the risk of making Thomas Farley weep fat hypertension-inducing tears, as Tom Colicchio might say, this is undersalted:

Nothing perhaps encapsulates the approach of the Bloomberg campaign better than its primary night event, where people were invited to “celebrate” the evening with the mayor, essentially congratulating themselves for supporting his decision to put himself on the ballot again. In a space big enough to park a few airplanes, with enough drink tables and salt-free pretzel carts scattered between the sign-up tables to make the scene seem more massive multicultural bar mitzvah than political rally, people picked up the buttons or posters that fit them best, whether African-Americans for Bloomberg (written in African national colors) or Ferry Riders for Bloomberg. They stuffed themselves full with free brownies and blondies. They cheered every time Padma Lakshmi, the model and Top Chef host, arrived at a pre-selected face in the crowd to talk up another aspect of the volunteer effort.

The safe, scrubbed atmosphere of the event, for which the campaign is not disclosing a price tag before the scheduled Oct. 2 filing, paralleled Bloomberg’s vision of the city as a place that is easy, non-intrusive and wholesome, one perfectly encapsulated by Lakshmi’s introduction, which began with the Indian beauty confiding, “I sleep at night because Mike Bloomberg is my mayor.”

She grasped for reasons why, beyond being able to use credit cards in taxis instead of having to carry around a wad of cash and being able to go to a bar without having her hair smell like smoke afterward. But Bloomberg helped her along when he took the microphone, delivering an unusually cutting speech keyed to match with the “Progress, Not Politics” placards that had been distributed through the crowd he called his “grassroots supporters.”

*In fact, Wolfson should start integrating this Reagan-esque concept into campaign appearances — e.g., “Is your dry cleaning bill cheaper now than it was four years ago?”

Maybe I’m cranky having seen Bloomberg’s “New York Minute” ad — you know, the one where the narrator says how running New York is “the second toughest job in America” — right after the actual president was on David Letterman, but I think there are a lot harder jobs out there than installing lawn furniture on Broadway.

First, the phrase “second toughest job” has pretty clearly always been used in either a self-deprecating way of referring to serving as the mayor of an “ungovernable” place or as an “Aw Shucks” euphemism for the mayor of New York in AP reports reprinted in far-flung places. But I don’t think any of these people actually thought being mayor of New York was that tough — or at least has been since the bad old days of Abe Beame.

For the record, here are some people in the public sector that I think have a marginally more difficult job in 2009: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is somehow managing California’s $25 billion debt (see here for relative sizes of economies); Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who is managing a military undertaking two difficult wars; how about General Stanley McChrystal? — while Obama said little on Letterman about New York’s traffic congestion, he did have a lot to say about Afghanistan; Tim Geithner’s job seems like it has been pretty tough; even Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s job seems tougher than Bloomberg’s; and while we’re talking about mayors, I think both Adrian Fenty (D.C.) and Cory Booker (Newark) have it a little tougher.

And because the campaign ad either skipped or overlooked that portion of the phrase that usually indicates “elected officials,” that means we can meditate on which people in the private sector also have “tough” jobs. That friendly man on the GM ad seems like a good place to start! Any of these jobs seem about fifty times as complicated as walking in a parade or banning smoking. We could go on . . .

All of which is kind of a symbol of the Bloomberg Era of New York: If Jimmy Walker or, I don’t know, Mad Men has taught me anything, New York was once kind of a swinging sort of wink-wink place that didn’t take itself all that seriously. Bloomberg (and not 9/11) has made New York insufferably earnest — from nanny statist initiatives to this absurd notion that anyone west of Morristown or north of Milford gives a shit about what the mayor of New York thinks. Bloomberg’s campaign using the phrase “the second toughest job in America” sincerely is the quintessence of Bloomberg’s megalomania, not to mention a perfect snapshot of his humorlessness. To make matters worse, running that ad right after Obama was doing something historic on television (e.g., spending an hour on a talk show) showed a complete lack of self-awareness. Do you really want four more years of that?

Yes he can:

“But what the hell do they know about management and dealing with people? Nothing. If you look at my company, why, after all the success that we had before I ran for office would you not think that I couldn’t run the government? What the hell do I gotta do to prove myself? Or, after the success my company has had and our administration has had, why do you think I wouldn’t be qualified to be president of the United States? I mean, for God’s sake, I’m not running, but this is not different.”

Reads like a cross between a Talk of the Town piece and the New York Post:

Jessica Weinschenk and her boyfriend Justin Urra, 24, woke up at 3 pm and were shocked to learn that Mormons had briefly descended on their neighborhood.

“Really? Mormons?” asked 22-year-old Jessica Weinschenk. “I guess it’s not that weird because religious people do stuff like that. And hey, it’s cool if someone wants to clean our park for us. But why Williamsburg?”

. . .

The act of largesse confused Weinschenk, who said she had not volunteered since high school. Urra has never done community service and even chose to go to jail rather than do a court-mandated subway cleanup.

“I threw my bike through some guy’s window who hit me and they ordered me to clean-up the Houston street station. I got the date, and went there, and some guy handed me cleaning stuff,” he said. “I sat down for a minute, thought about it, and was like, ‘I’m out of here.’ So I went to brunch at Café Colonial.”

Lest you think stealing copper from buildings is strictly for tramps, vagabonds and drifters:

They came to clear overgrown brush from the yard in what they might have thought was an abandoned building in Tompkinsville.

But the building’s owner says workers from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene were filching copper pipes, tools and whatever else they could grab from the former American Legion post at 43 Van Duzer St.

One Health Department worker, Edwin R. Torres, 54, of Queens, was arrested this morning, according to a law enforcement source, after building owner John Galarza called police when he said an employee saw the men begin hauling their alleged booty into a private van as well as a city Department of Health vehicle.

Three other Health Department workers were questioned as well.

“All the copper pipes are gone,” said Galarza as he walked through the building, which smelled of urine, where the toilet and boiler had pipes removed. He pushed his toe against a buckled wood floor, showing how it had sustained water damage after the pipes were removed. “I’m going to talk to the legal department of the Health Department.”

Start fining stressed-out Mets fans puffing in front of Citi Field:

The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, announced on Monday that the Bloomberg administration would seek to ban smoking in city parks and beaches.

Remember this as Wolfson makes mayoral control a centerpiece of his campaign:

For many students, bungling more than half the questions on a test would mean an F and all that comes with it — months of remedial work, irksome teachers and, perhaps, a skimpy allowance. But on New York State’s math exam this year, seventh graders who correctly answered just 44 percent of questions were rewarded with a passing grade.

What gives?

Three years ago, the threshold for passing was 60 percent. In fact, students in every grade this year could slide by with fewer correct answers on the math test than in 2006.

In math this year, 86 percent of students statewide passed the test, scoring at least a Level 3 (of 4), and 82 percent passed in English, the highest percentages in many years. But the lower passing scores, especially for math, have provided fodder for skeptics who believe the state has made it easier for struggling students to pass.

In New York City, which saw some of the largest gains, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used the scores as evidence of his successful leadership of the schools. The jump in passing rates also helped 97 percent of the city’s schools earn A’s or B’s on their Department of Education report cards this year.

If you overindulge on tall boys, be warned that the Staten Island Ferry may now be legislating good behavior:

To make at least one leg of a long journey a little more serene for commuters, State Sen. Diane Savino has been pushing for the creation of a “Quiet Deck” aboard the Staten Island Ferry, where riders can be free from loud cell phone conversations, chatter, and, of course, the ferryboat preachers who have long rankled a captive audience.

After reviewing legal issues surrounding free speech and how it applies on public transportation, the city’s Department of Transportation, which runs the ferries, has agreed to adopt the Quiet Deck, with signage posted on the Bridge Deck of the three newest Molinari-class ferryboats.

Based on similar quiet areas aboard Long Island Railroad and Amtrak trains, Sen. Savino suggested the idea for a “place for people who just want to sit and decompress” before or after a long day at work.

Location Scout: Staten Island Ferry.

Time was, the government of Afghanistan harbored terrorists that cost us thousands and thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars. Now they’re propping up our flagging real estate market. America, fuck yeah:

The Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations has a lovely new apartment. According to two deeds filed Friday, the group spent $4,235,000 on a 2,840-square-foot apartment at Trump World Tower, plus a $5.4 million commercial space at 633 Third Avenue.

H.E. Zahir Tanin, whose title is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations, is listed in the deeds. “We did purchase a residence for the ambassador,” his assistant said. She said the office space is “going to be used both for the Consulate and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations. We are two separate things, but they’re both part of the government of Afghanistan, and it was the government of Afghanistan that’s making these purchases.”

Case in point:

While in Times Square launch a public service drive called “I Participate,” the mayor told MTV that he’s betting on Lady Gaga to take home the most trophies at the upcoming Video Music Awards.

I hate my body.

Do you give a fuck what drove these assholes to kill thousands of people? I’m not sure I really care:

The museum being built at the site of ground zero will display photos of the 19 men who hijacked the four airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, and may also include printed quotations from the so-called martyr videos they made before the attacks, in an effort to “create an accurate historical record,” the museum’s president said Friday.

The images of each hijacker will be roughly 4 inches wide and 6 inches tall, and mounted on a wall of the underground museum’s primary exhibition. The museum is exploring the idea of displaying some quotations next to the pictures, but no final decision has been made, and no text has been selected, said Joseph C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center.

“We will not, and we do not, want to hide the truth of what happened, and identifying those who did it is core to that,” Mr. Daniels said. He added: “It answers the question of who did this. Let’s show the world the 19 individuals who boarded planes and murdered so many. To not do that would be a major disservice to the public.”

We really do live in the greatest country in the world.

And we all become extras in campaign ads, and our homes turned into locations for shoots:

Hizzoner wanted a blue-collar house in Queens for his newest TV ad — and paid an eye-popping Manhattan rent to use it Thursday for just seven hours.

Bloomberg’s campaign shelled out $3,000 to a Forest Hills homeowner to shoot scenes in the garage, living room and bathroom of his 2-1/2-story, single-family residence on a tree-lined block.

. . .

[The homeowner] wouldn’t say how much he was paid. But location scout Robert Chemtob, who was hired by Epand Media to find a working-class home for the mayor’s ad, estimated the fee at $3,000.

. . .

[The homeowner] insisted he didn’t know the content of the ad.

Chemtob would only say it included a scene with a man singing in the shower. He said the spot is expected to hit airwaves in a few weeks.

Pensioners steal the Salvation Army’s red kettle from a Staten Island cafe:

Workers at the Corporate Grind Cafe in Bloomfield kept the Salvation Army’s red kettle campaign going long after the holidays, with staff agreeing to direct any tips from customers into the familiar collection bucket on the counter.

Every few weeks, just as the kettle fills to capacity, store owner Darren Smith delivers its contents to the Christian charity he’s had a relationship with for several years. Smith’s father, Realtor J. Delbert Smith, is on the board of directors for the Staten Island chapter of the Salvation Army.

The bucket was almost full Tuesday when a couple — a man and woman who look more like grandparents than thieves — ordered a salad and a sandwich wrap and ate before walking out the door with the bucket and an estimated $200 in donations.

New York is another character in another book:

One recent afternoon, the writer Amy Sohn sat at the Third Street Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a few blocks from her apartment, and explained the central paradox of her neighborhood. “Every mother knows what a Park Slope Mother is, but no one thinks she is one,” she said.

. . .

Ms. Sohn and Mr. Miller moved to Park Slope in 2005, paying around $600,000 for a two-bedroom third-floor walk-up in a co-op on a block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West — prime north Slope territory, though Ms. Sohn prefers not to reveal the exact street.

. . .

The apartment has a graceful layout, and the sort of prewar details sought after by the characters that populate “Prospect Park West,” like a working fireplace and an antique wood radiator cover in the living room. The kitchen was recently renovated because Mr. Miller likes to cook. The walls are covered with his paintings — striking portraits of old-time boxers. A pair of boxing gloves dangles from the fireplace mantel.

It’s a masculine look for a home where a 4-year-old girl is often running the floors. “I like the fact that it doesn’t feel like a day care center,” Ms. Sohn said. It’s difficult to be totally chic with a toddler, however. Asked about the peculiar, low-rise coffee table, Ms. Sohn explained that it has a chalk surface, which is used by the youngest in-house artist.

That Ms. Sohn has such concerns might come as a surprise to people who remember her “Female Trouble” column from the late-’90s in New York Press. In sexually explicit language, she chronicled her escapades as a single woman in New York — dates and dalliances with a litany of pale, wispy, downtown artist-types. One reader, in a letter to the newspaper, likened her writing to Penthouse Forum in that “I can’t believe it’s true, but I can’t stop reading, either.”

Ms. Sohn was a literary girl-about-town, but she said that even then she wanted a family. “When I was 25, I felt like a spinster,” she said. “That was where a lot of the comedy from my column came from — I wanted to marry every guy I met.”

In the span of two dizzying years, Ms. Sohn met and married Mr. Miller and became pregnant. Asked if she misses her old life, she said: “I don’t miss the anxiety. My joke is that the conversations around infant sleep are like the conversations around when-should-I-call. It’s like, ‘Last night he slept from 9 to 12, and then he woke up at 12.’ It’s the same as: ‘He said he’d call on Thursday. Then Friday came. By Saturday I called him.’ It’s ultimately very boring.”

After threatening to close the cookie factory where an extended strike took place, Stella d’Oro announces it is moving operations to Ohio:

The owners of Stella D’oro, the longtime Bronx Italian cookie and breadstick baker, said Wednesday they have sold the company — and its operations will be moving to Ohio by the end of the month.

Some 150 union and other plant workers will be out on the street.