With congestion pricing teetering on collapse and the faltering real estate market, property owners implement back-up plans:

The words “sculpture park” bring the rolling expanses of Orange County to mind (Storm King Art Center) or, at least, the river’s edge in Queens (Socrates Sculpture Park). They do not instantly conjure up the traffic-jammed corner of Varick and Canal Streets.

Yet that is where New York’s newest sculpture park will be established: on a recently cleared block owned by the Episcopal Trinity Church, paralleling Juan Pablo Duarte Square on the Avenue of the Americas.

“When they’re idling in traffic trying to get through the Holland Tunnel, they’ll have something to look at,” said Maggie Boepple, the president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which will curate the sculpture park on behalf of Trinity Real Estate, managers of the church’s extensive holdings downtown.

“It’s a tremendous gift to the city,” Ms. Boepple said.

Because Trinity has no current redevelopment plans for the 37,000-square-foot, trapezium-shaped site, it may remain a sculpture park until 2010 or 2011. “This is a temporary arrangement, but we expect it will be temporary for a couple of years,” said Carl Weisbrod, the president of Trinity Real Estate and a member of the cultural council board.

. . .

“We want to make it very clear to the community that this is a temporary gift,” Ms. Boepple said. “That’s all it is. And I hope that’s respected so we can continue to do this elsewhere.”

And here they are now to entertain us:

You could tell the tribes apart by variations in dress: the tartan kilts and pleated skirts of Nightingale-Bamford, Sacred Heart and Spence; running shoes on the girls who had made their way over from Chapin and Hewitt; leggings and anoraks for students at Dalton, with its relaxed dress code.

Beyond that, the girls looked a lot alike, particularly when it came to accessories: pendant earrings, orthodontia, camera phones. All this week and part of last, the cast and crew of “Gossip Girl,” the CW network series based on the young adult novels, have been camped out on 93rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues. They are shooting an episode at the grand Georgian complex that in its workaday life houses the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

. . .

Three from Hunter College High School, the public magnet school a block away, edged toward the gates of “St. Jude’s.” They said they had been taking all their free periods, plus lunch, here. “Not that we’re obsessed or anything,” Alexa Levy said.

“We saw the person who plays Dan,” said her friend Sophie Zucker. “He’s actually, notoriously, like, nice.”

“It’s really refreshing to see a star who’s like that,” said Charlotte Weiss.

“Because she knows so many, of course,” Miss Zucker said, teasing her.

“Do you want to know the honest truth?” Miss Weiss said. “It’s based on private school girls, and they’re very superficial. The woman who wrote the novels said it’s based on Nightingale. We go to Hunter. It doesn’t relate.”

“So these girls –” Miss Levy gestured around her. “These are the girls it’s making fun of.”

“And I think they’re proud of it instead of being ashamed,” Miss Weiss said.

Staten Islanders question the federal percent-for-art program — because when a project costs billions of dollars, it adds up:

Even as the MTA is raising tolls and tempers on Staten Island, it plans to spend as much as $4 million on art installations for the Second Avenue Subway.

Some Islanders may not know art, but all know what they want: Funds to be spent on sorely needed mass transit improvements here.

. . .

The federal government requires that one-half to 5 percent of a project’s budget be dedicated to art, said MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin.

“Art is one critical element of our stations program that has a considerable impact . . . for a small fraction of a project’s budget,” Soffin said. “We are at the lower end of the recommended guidelines, well below 1 percent.”

So it isn’t possible to eliminate the art requirement without risking the loss of the entire $1.3 billion federal contribution.

Mary DiChiara of Pleasant Plains was in no mood for explanations, “We can’t get off this Island and they put aside $4 million for artwork for Manhattan? Take the $4 million and fix this bridge.

“They think we’re living on Fantasy Island, and nobody ever wants or needs to get off.”

“Just once, I’d like to see everybody on Staten Island who works in Manhattan just stay home,” she concluded. “Then they’ll see.”

Broadway producers look for that lucrative tween market, which obviously has more cash than it knows what to do with:

For Broadway producers, 10-year-old Jamie Carroll looks like an ideal theatergoer: she downloads scores off of iTunes, is a fervent proselytizer when she likes something and has lots of friends, two of whom she brought along to a recent Saturday matinee of “Legally Blonde.” “A lot of my friends say it’s the best musical they’ve ever seen,” she said.

Maybe. But Jamie’s father and her 14-year-old brother would not join them, considering the show too girly. Even her mother, Tacey Carroll, was only present as a chaperon: “This is a little more for them,” she said, echoing several other mothers at the theater, one of whom even dropped off her young charges and went shopping.

And that’s the rub for Broadway producers, for whom teenage and tween girls have become the demographic of the moment, wooed by marketing campaigns and featured as central characters in a flurry of shows in development, including “13,” about a teenager from New York who is transplanted to Indiana; “Princesses,” which is basically “High School Musical” meets “Gossip Girl”; and a musical adaptation of the movie “Clueless.”

Increasingly, though, some worry that the sugar-and-spice enthusiasm may be misplaced, because while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one. For that, you still need grown-ups — lots of paying grown-ups — to want to come to a show.

*Just kidding, Mr. Mamet! We can’t wait for that Duran Duran thing to end to see your next play staged!

This Summer we’ve had floating pools, floating dramatic presentations, floating science barges and now floating opera:

The Mary A. Whalen, a 69-year-old retired tanker, used to deliver diesel, gas and kerosene up and down the Atlantic coast. The tanker — docked at Red Hook’s container port normally off-limits to the public — makes its grand debut this weekend as a cultural maritime center with the Brooklyn-based Vertical Player Repertory’s version of “Il Tabarro.”

The repertory had done a land-locked version of the Puccini opera about adultery, murder and the rough lives of waterfront workers, but wanted to do it again on the water. When it discovered the tanker run by the nonprofit PortSide NewYork, the two groups dove into the production.

“It was our idea all along to use the tanker for performances,” said Carolina Salguero, director of PortSide NewYork. “The concept is to become a waterfront hub” to bring the marine industry together with its inland neighbors.

. . .

Judith Barnes, Vertical Player Repertory’s executive director, enjoyed hearing stories from the stevedores, who will actually share the stage with the performers. The opera, originally set on a barge on Paris, is being transformed as Red Hook circa 1938 — the year the tanker was built.

“We really wanted to ground it — or perhaps I should say anchor it — with a connection to reality,” Barnes said. “The jury is still out on the acoustics. We’re not using amplification and have no band shell, but water is a great amplifier. So is the concrete pier, and the boat is metal, which is good. We have to contend with ambient noise and the elements.”

Despite the challenges, Barnes wants to do it again with other waterfront works. “This is truly bringing art to life.”

Location Scout: Gowanus Inlet.

It’s been the subject of Craig’s List performance art and a television show. Now, there’s the musical:

With its residents already sporting multicolored neckties, cowboy boots and top hats, Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhood already resembles a costume drama. Now Billyburg is about to hit the stage for real, in a musical, no less, featuring songs such as “Craigslist Hookup” and ode-to-the-L-Train “One Stop [To Excitement].”

See also: Williamsburg! The Musical.

Better that they’re talking about it than simply ignoring it like one more tired old David Blaine stunt:

When Clinton Hill artist Travis Clarke decided to spend seven nights sunset to sunrise in the eight-by-eight front window of Soapbox Gallery at 636 Dean St., he came prepared with typed description of the live art installation, titled “Wishing dead trees back to life.”

The piece is about “attempting to do something that seems impossible,” said the artist’s statement posted at the gallery, which sits between Carlton and Vanderbilt — directly across the street from Bruce Ratner’s controversial arena, residential, office and retail project.

Little did Clarke know just how the statement, the dead tree limb in the window and his somnolent, halogen-lit body next to it would resonate with neighborhood residents, many of whom have learned a whole lot about trying do something that indeed has proven to be (so far) impossible.

“Could the tree also be representing the possibility of a future dead neighborhood?” asked one area resident, Lumi Rolley, on her anti–Atlantic Yards blog, No Land Grab.

The owner of the gallery, Jimmy Greenfield, also couldn’t resist the metaphor.

“It’s an homage to nature right across a piece of property that will eventually be covered in tarmac against the wishes of a community that tried very hard to stop [it].”

. . .

“I just don’t believe he can actually sleep,” [Dean Street resident Jim Everitt] said. “A lot of trucks and buses bang around down here.”

Clarke agreed that getting rest was no easy task, even with two mats as bedding.

“The other night someone yelled obscenities at me,” he told The Brooklyn Paper during the daylight hours when he is not imprisoned in the gallery. “He was with his family and children. A couple of people have commented on how the piece is an example of gentrification. People talk about money a lot.”

. . .

Clarke said a connection could be drawn between his art and Ratner’s controversial, state-supported development, albeit not one he made before his nights on Dean Street.

“People in this neighborhood went up against a very powerful system,” he said, adding that the connection wasn’t “the most curious thing” he heard from passing sidewalk critics.

The next Music Under New York class is announced, and it’s a beaut:

Coming soon to a subway platform near you: an insect goddess, a flamenco guitarist and a beatboxer who plays rap music on the flute.

Introducing 21 new sub way stars — musicians who recently won MTA auditions to perform for straphangers, part of the annual Music Under New York program.

“I’m the insect god dess that’s come to lift everybody out of their boring day!” announced Meghan McGeary, who kicked off the 20th year of the program by singing and playing drums in the rock-opera duo Dagmar 2.

Wearing a gold bustier and matching high heeled boots, an aviator cap with goggles and a gold- trimmed set of green mesh wings, McGeary sang a quirky song about a guy who can’t get out of bed in the morning - and the “insect goddess who plunges from the ether to rescue him.”

. . .

Flute beatboxer Greg Pattillo turned heads with his unusual use of the classical instrument, which he uses to play everything from Sesame Street to raps like Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life. “Flute has such negative connotations,” he lamented. “I’m out to make flute cool again.”

The 21 winners were whittled down from 500 who sent tapes to MTA officials. Seventy finalists auditioned before a panel of MTA officials and fellow musicians.

The winners are allowed to perform in the subways for life, including selling their CDs. They include a country singer, Japanese tap dancers, a man who plays the kora, a West African stringed instrument, and a duo that plays the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument.

Next time you bring the kids to the Met, enliven the visit with a game of Where’s Rudy:

Earlier this spring, Mary Carter, a professor of art education at Ball State University, in Indiana, came to New York for a conference. During a break in her schedule, she visited the Met with a friend. Carter is partial to the Renaissance, so they headed directly for the European collection on the second floor, where a helpful docent joined them. He shared a few stories about the museum’s costly purchase, in 2005, of the Duccio di Buoninsegna’s “Madonna and Child,” and then, as they stopped to look at a fifteenth-century Venetian painting of a monk, he leaned in and asked, suggestively, “Don’t you think that looks like Rudolph Giuliani?”

“Gosh, that’s uncanny,” Carter replied. Giuliani, as it happens, had just been campaigning in Indiana. “It was as if someone had Photoshopped Giuliani, but fixed it so the Byzantine conventions were right,” she said. “It was there in the eyes and the mouth. They were exactly him.”

The monk in the painting, by Carlo Crivelli, is St. Dominic, the patron saint of astronomers. He is robed, and clasps a holy book in his left hand and holds a white lily (purity, to an iconographer) in his right. (”I bet his hands even look like that,” Carter said of Giuliani.) He is mostly bald, and, instead of the old Giuliani comb-over, wears a tonsure, with a tuft of hair at the front of his forehead. His heavy-lidded gaze would not easily be confused with that of the stoic Giuliani of September 11th, say, or that of the sardonic Giuliani who faced down squeegee men and ferret owners, but possibly — and it’s a stretch — that of the forlorn Giuliani of divorce proceedings and the Bernie Kerik saga.

*No, check it out.

We are all guilty of giving in to a full season of David Bowie’s arbitrary and capricious tastes:

David Bowie has been a rock god, a philosopher of the pop avant-garde, an actor, a fashion plate and a talent scout. But he has a little trouble taking seriously the job description for his newest gig: curator of the first High Line Festival.

“I love that word ‘curate,’” he said with a slight sarcastic chuckle. “One of the definitions is someone who oversees a zoo.”

To put together the High Line, an 11-day series of music, film, comedy and art that begins on Wednesday with a performance by Arcade Fire at Radio City Music Hall, Mr. Bowie said he followed his own tastes, booking old and new friends like Laurie Anderson, TV on the Radio and the British comedian Ricky Gervais. He also included curiosities like Ken Nordine, the octogenarian “word jazz” artist, and the Australian “kamikaze cabaret” performer Meow Meow.

“The point of the festival,” Mr. Bowie said during a phone interview last week, “is not to dig out as many obscure and unknown acts as possible. It’s to put on what I would go and see. There are certain artists you just never miss; when they come into town you go and see them. That’s how I treat virtually all of the people that are on this.”

. . .

Mr. Bowie’s programming has led to criticism that the festival is somewhat conservative: for a man known as a champion of new music, he has invited many groups that are not exactly uncommon sights in New York, like Deerhoof and the Secret Machines. Several headliners have other, non-High Line gigs booked around their festival appearances.

And the connection to the High Line itself — the 1.45-mile elevated industrial train line on the West Side left fallow since 1980 that is to be developed into a green corridor running from the meatpacking district to Chelsea — is vague. Most of the events take place near the High Line, and organizers describe the festival as partly an awareness-raising event, with some of the proceeds to benefit conservation efforts. For his own part Mr. Bowie said he had never been on the High Line and had “no particular feelings about it.”

The Armory Show is happening this weekend, and struggling artists are hopeful that they will sell something, anything:

Hundreds of electricians and carpenters yesterday were putting the finishing touches on their transformation of Pier 94 into the venue for this weekend’s Armory Show.

While they wrapped up, art handlers began to install works that 150 galleries hailing from 22 countries are looking to sell.

“A lot of people are down on the Armory because everything is packed together like a big supermarket, but I love it,” said Bushwick-based artist Zak Smith, 30, who also performs in porn films under the name Zak Sabbath. “It saves you the trouble of having to go to shows all year long if you’re working all the time like me.”

Smith was helping his Chelsea gallery Fredericks & Freiser tack up a series of intricate ink drawings on small pieces of paper called, “Drawings I did around the time I became a porn star.”

Successful street musicians need nothing more than their own entrepreneurial spirit to guide them:

The intersection of 23rd St. and Seventh Ave. is arguably one of the busiest in Chelsea, a blur of auto and pedestrian traffic that would intimidate most aspiring sidewalk musicians for fear of being drowned out.

Vladimir Laksin doesn’t seem to mind. For a year and a half, the scrappy 55-year-old Polish immigrant with strawberry blond hair and raspy voice has made a second home of the intersection’s southwest corner, slapping away at his honey-colored Fender Squire Stratocaster and crooning his unique combination of blues and rock in front of the stairs to the Downtown 1 subway line, a stone’s throw away from the lively scene surrounding the nearby Hotel Chelsea.

. . .

A graphic designer and photo re-toucher by trade, Laksin fell on hard times three years ago when he was laid off and subsequently had a mild heart attack. While convalescing, he bought himself a guitar to pass the time in front of the television. Soon, he began playing outside the Lemon Lime coffee shop on Sixth Ave. between 20th and 21st Sts., which was owned by a friend.

“I didn’t play well at all, but people start giving me money. So, I says, O.K., that’s great,” said Laksin in a thick Eastern European accent. “That worked for a while, but when they sold the restaurant, I need a new spot.”

The corner nook created by the 23rd St. subway sign and DOCS health clinic appealed to him, with it’s MTV-like electronic billboard and close proximity to the famed Chelsea Guitars store. He befriended the guys at the shop, buying strings, and eventually his current guitar, from them and hanging out during breaks. That kept him coming back, and before long, he was showing up daily for “work.”

Response is generally mixed:

Actor Tim Robbins dropped a few dollars in his tip case and asked him for his telephone number a few months ago, and Laksin regularly runs into celebrity musicians who come by the guitar shop, including Carlos Santana on one occasion.

“I was playing my songs, and his bodyguards went, ‘All right, rock on, man,’ and went on and on and got all excited. Then this other guy just say very quietly, ‘Can you make it weep?’ before going around the corner. I didn’t realize it was Santana until after!” Laksin said wearing a Cheshire grin.

Other passersby are a nuisance at best and an occupational hazard at worst, however.

One man regularly puts a banana peel into Laksin’s tip case, and another came by frequently starting six months ago and tipped him in cash, only to proposition him for a threesome with him and his wife. When the guitarist told him to take his money back and bug off, the man grew hostile until another pedestrian called the police.

And even if the average music fan doesn’t “get it,” celebrities certainly know talent when they see it:

On occasion, opportunity knocks and he picks up more lucrative music gigs. Recently, a photographer snapping pictures of Laksin invited him to play at his exhibition on Varick St., netting the guitarist $150 for three hours’ work. The owner of B.B. King’s Blues Club also asked him to play in front of the famed venue last year; but New York’s Finest sent Laksin on his way for not having a permit, which the owner was subsequently unable to secure for him.

Then there’s the odd recording invitation, one of which was recently proffered by a session musician who used to play with Lou Reed.

“He wants to get together and record some of my tunes with his band,” said Laksin. “We’ll see.”

Meantime, the former bass player, who picked up a guitar for the first time just three years ago, works on his technique, entirely self-taught. He eschews standards, choosing instead to make up lyrics on the spot: “Woke up this morning. My baby’s gone. She took all my money, you know. She’s gone, and I’ve been wronged.”

When he’s feeling his mojo and picks up a head of steam, Laksin knocks his knees together in a butterfly stance like a young Elvis Costello and thrusts his head forward, his pale, gentle face scrunched up into a mean scowl like a true rock ‘n’ roll star.

Spectator Mike Fischer, a Queens resident who spends a lot of time in Chelsea, was less than impressed with Laksin’s playing on Monday, however.

“He needs some tuning up,” he said. “Maybe he can figure out where to go from here.”

The theatrical-industrial complex has American families by the horns . . . and pre-recorded horn sections:

Four hundred and fifty bucks. That’s what it cost the Agnew family for a Saturday night performance of “The Lion King.” Whether that considerable chunk was spent for two hours and 45 minutes of delight or for one flustered and fuss-filled act followed by a hasty escape at intermission came down to one person: Harris Agnew, age 3.

“We’re questioning the thought process at this moment,” said Jim Agnew of Williamsburg, Va., who was standing in line before the show with his wife, Julie, and their children, Clark, 6, and Harris.

“If it goes well,” Ms. Agnew said, “this will be a magical experience.” She looked at Harris uncertainly. “We’re hoping.”

The perception of Broadway as a destination for families with children has been growing for years, keeping pace with the rise of the tourist audience. According to the League of American Theaters and Producers, the proportion of Broadway theatergoers under the age of 18 rose from 4 percent in 1980 to a peak of 11.6 percent in the 2000-01 season. Last season 9.6 percent were under 18, with a third of those — or 384,000 theatergoers — under 12.

. . .

According to several ushers interviewed, most parents understand that they need to do something when a child becomes, well, a situation. But, said Dana Amendola, vice president for operations at Disney Theatricals, ushers try to move in before things get out of hand. In those circumstances, diplomacy is required.

“You can’t tell a parent, ‘This is not appropriate for your 4-year-old or your 5-year-old,’” Mr. Amendola said. “You give the parents an option,” which, he explained, could mean watching the show on a screen in the lobby, or from the back of the theater.

Nevertheless, the prospect of a tantrum is real, and a plan must be hatched. The Agnews discussed a one-parent/one-child split at intermission if Harris, the 3-year-old, became restless. (For the record, Harris stayed for the long haul and enjoyed himself.)

But it’s still unclear whether even the performance will have enough for a minyan:

Impressive, those names in the sanctuary of the little synagogue on West 47th Street in Manhattan: Joe E. Lewis and Sophie Tucker on the stained-glass windows, Jack Benny on a plaque in the rear. The names tell you why, in its golden age, this synagogue became known as the Actors’ Temple. They also tell you something about when that golden age was.

Recently — say, oh, during the last half-century — this temple, with a declining membership and a vanishing budget, has not been doing so well. So starting with an official opening night tomorrow, the Actors’ Temple, for the first time in its 89-year history, will be moonlighting as an Off Broadway theater.

. . .

The temple was a tough sell, with restrictions over and above the usual constraints of a small theater. Sets need to be flexible enough so they don’t interfere with services; food taken into the temple must be kosher; and shows must go dark on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. (The Saturday matinee is a sore point at the temple, but sometimes you’ve got to give an inch.) Holidays are booked, too, of course.

“You can’t move Yom Kippur because you have a show on,” Mr. Kifferstein said.

Board members talked with the producers of “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn,” a nostalgic comedy that seemed like just the thing, but negotiations broke down, and that show went to the 37 Arts, an Off Broadway theater on West 37th Street.

Scranton, PA just sounds like the kind of place a major art heist would take place:

A painting by Goya was stolen on its way from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to a major exhibition that opens on Friday at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the two institutions announced yesterday.

The museums said in a statement that the 1778 painting, “Children With a Cart,” was stolen in the vicinity of Scranton, Pa., while in the care of a professional art transporter. They said the theft was discovered last week but refused to provide additional details on the crime. Officials at both museums said the F.B.I. was investigating the case and had warned them that releasing additional information might jeopardize the inquiry.

The painting was to be included in “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History,” a sprawling exhibition of some 135 paintings by Spanish masters.

And we’d watch but the infinity mirror started to hurt our head too much:

The Burg is a single-camera scripted series filmed mostly inside this apartment and on a few street corners around the block. The episodes, ranging from one to 15 minutes in length, can be viewed at www.theburg.tv or downloaded through iTunes. Or observed in real time at any number of stops along the L train.

“The thing about Williamsburg,” said Kelli Giddish, a blond aspiring actress who plays a blond aspiring actress on the show, “is all the ugly people are trying to look pretty and all the pretty people are trying to look ugly.” She paused to let the observation sink in, then pulled a faded white satin nightshirt over her starlet-thin frame, belted it up tight with an oversized tan suede sash, topped it off with a white crocheted shawl and pronounced the new look “Granny Chic.” Several of her co-stars applauded.

The Burg is about the precious scenesters of Metropolitan Avenue and the silly things they do to be cool. Ms. Giddish has another soap job, on actual television, playing a onetime stripper named Di Kirby on ABC’s All My Children. On the Web, she plays Courtney, a sporadically anti-capitalist ditz.

Courtney’s friends in the Burg are more of the same: Spring, played by Lindsey Broad, is a youthful brunette who cares about the environment and wants to break her generation’s credit cycle. Jed, played by Bob McClure, wears thick black plastic glasses and forcibly prevents his friends from drinking anything other than Pabst. Xander, played by Matt Yeager, is a starving artist with a huge inheritance.

In place of holding steady jobs or contributing to the local economy, Spring, Xander and the gang spend their days coordinating their American Apparel leggings and their thrift-store cowboy boots with 18 plastic bracelets and two vinyl headbands from junior high. Their days are occupied with chemical boycotts, bike trips to Astoria, auditions for independent films and hours spent cursing gentrification and analyzing the complicated etiquette of modern bohemia.

It’s like Rent, only instead of AIDS, some of them have trust funds.

It’s hard out there for an arts organization when prostitutes mistake your donors for johns:

The Bronx River Art Center tries to escape its noisy urban surroundings by facing the lush, green riverfront.

But it can’t escape the drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps and petty criminals who camp in front of its doors.

Visitors’ vehicles have been vandalized. Potential donors have been propositioned by prostitutes, and the number of parents bringing their children to free art classes is down in recent months, according to the staff.

“It’s an infestation,” said Gail Nathan, the center’s executive director. “We fear for the kids coming to the art center. We fear for our staff and visitors.”

She ought to know. Her car has been vandalized five times and her tires have been slashed. She now parks five blocks away from the center to avoid the wrath of criminals.

Things get sort of meta when State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, who represents Astoria, makes a cameo on Law & Order:

The assemblyman said he will make a cameo appearance in an episode of “Law and Order,” which is scheduled to air on Oct. 6 at 10 p.m. In the episode, Gianaris will be seen at the City Hall Restaurant as the date of female defense lawyer Madchen Amick, whose character has a history with star Sam Waterston’s character.

But the assemblyman said he does not exactly know the identity of his character on the show.

“I don’t know if I’m playing myself or a generic guy in a suit,” he said.

Gianaris said he was asked to do a cameo on the show after having an off-hand conversation with an NBC executive several months ago.

“He said, ‘You look like someone who should be on TV,’ so I said, ‘You’re the NBC executive, put me on,” Gianaris said.

While the assemblyman’s cameo is expected to last for just a few seconds, he said he spent three hours doing 10 takes of the scene at City Hall.

Geez, where does this blurring of fiction and reality end? Will Fred Thompson run for office? Would Sam Waterston contribute big money to Robert Morgenthau’s campaign? Oh, wait.

Astoria is set to become a Greek television show titled “On 31st Street”:

“On 31st Street,” created by Woodside writer-director Demetri Demirakos, 26, and Greek Cypriot actor Andreas Georgio, 24, will follow the stories of several 20-something Greek-Americans living in Astoria. It is scheduled to shoot in the Astoria neighborhood as well as parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The episodes, which will be broadcast next fall on Greece’s Mega Channel and available to subscribers of the channel worldwide, will be broadcast mostly in Greek, but with some dialogue in English, said Konstantina Kontalipos, 28, associate producer for the show.

“Our aim is to, through the story, show different perspectives of how people live in New York,” Georgio said. “Greeks want to see how people live in Astoria and what it is like.”

The show’s creators said most people who travel to the United States from Greece end up visiting Astoria, which has one of the world’s largest Greek populations. Kontalipos said a number of Astoria cafes, restaurants and shops will make appearances in the show when it begins to air in Greece in October 2007.

In the show, Georgio, who has acted for several years on Greek television, will play lead character Alex Michaels, while Demirakos will act as writer and director of the episodes. The show’s other six cast members will be made up of local thespians and actors from Greece, but most of the show’s crew will be locals, Kontalipos said.

The show’s creators and producers recently set up their production office for the show on 31st Street near 30th Avenue, where they will be based for at least 1 1/2 years while the 28 episodes of “On 31st Street” are shot around the city. If the show is successful, the company will produce further seasons and possibly films.

I hope it’s not literally on 31st Street since the N train can get pretty loud . . .

The Sun explains the pecking order for subway musicians:

While performing in subway stations and on train platforms is legal even without an MTA-issued pass, freelancers are often forced to surrender lucrative, high-traffic spots to musicians licensed by the [Music Under New York] program, part of the MTA Arts For Transit initiative.

Competition for the good spots can get heated.

“We used to have a problem with acrobats and dancers,” Mr. [Lester] Schultz said. “There’d be 10 of them, one of us, and they could do somersaults, and they didn’t care if we had a pass. They just wouldn’t leave.”

Spats between musicians also arise when freelancers do not speak English and fail to understand why they are being forced to move along, according to other MUNY musicians.

Among subway musicians, there exists a social hierarchy underground that is invisible to daily commuters and tourists. It could be compared with a high school cafeteria, where the cool clique can scare away outsiders from a designated table with a practiced eye roll (in this case, the flash of a MUNY pass).

Subway musician Natalia Paruz, who plays the musical saw, performed as a freelancer for years until she became fed up with countless tickets from the transit police and too much time and money lost while searching for a free spot. “Sometimes I’d get to my spot and someone would already be there. I’d lose an hour just trying to find another place to play,” Ms. Paruz said. Eight years ago, she joined MUNY.

Now, Ms. Paruz performs on the high-traffic mezzanine at the Times Square station. Her lips parted slightly, it is difficult to tell whether it is she or her saw producing the eerie sound (it is, in fact, the saw that is singing).

Fine, Peter Gelb, you win — that little Times Square opera stunt seems to have worked:

The gaudy lights still doused the streets, and nothing could stop a waiter from the Bubba Gump Company from loudly trying to lure in customers — but the honks took a break, and those rushing home from the towers of Midtown stood to the side, taking in the opening night of “Madame Butterfly” on three giant screens. The opera was also broadcast on a screen outside Lincoln Center, though the crowd there was more black-tie than the spectrum of New Yorkers at 42nd Street.

“I think I’ll stay a little while,” a nurse at New York Hospital, Rose Chin, said. She had run into the sleek set-up — an array of more than 1,000 pure red and black chairs set up on the asphalt of Broadway — on her way from the bus to the subway. She said she had seen her share of musicals and movies, but never an opera.

A carpenter at New York University, Jean Demesmin, came across the broadcast on his way back to his home in Spring Valley, N.Y.

“It’s my first opera,” he said, leaning against a telephone booth with his arms crossed. “I’m going to stay for the whole thing.”

. .

The free broadcasts on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s season are part of an effort led by the new general manager, Peter Gelb, to increase the appeal and access of the art form. Last night Mr. Gelb estimated that the opera was seen by more than 8,000 people, compared to the about 3,000 who ordinarily fill the opera house. The company gave out thousands of free tickets to the opera’s dress rehearsal last week.

. . .

A warehouse worker from Ashland, N.J., Don Mackle, stared up at the screen and said, “Never in my life.” By taking a seat he was delaying his commute across the Hudson for several hours, but it was a worthy diversion, he said. “I would never go to opera if it wasn’t free,” he said. “Who knows? I might like it.”

It’s “free” in the sense that the tickets do not cost actual money. Your time, patience and sanity are another matter:

Friday night’s performance of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” began about 8 p.m. at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. David Suker showed up about 8:45 p.m. He was not late. He was early.

Mr. Suker, 38, was the first person in line for tickets to the next night’s performance. He had a long wait ahead of him — some 16 hours before the theater would hand out the free tickets — but he had his blue air mattress and its battery-powered pump, a bottle of seltzer, a sleeping bag, a lantern and his Army training.

. . .

The lines have become a Shakespeare in the Park tradition and the Delacorte’s unofficial second stage, as lively, improvised and quietly dramatic as the plays for which they form. For “Mother Courage,” the lines are two-act plays. The first line starts in the evening on the cobblestone sidewalk of Central Park West at the edge of the park, at 81st Street. The park closes between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., and when it reopens, people in the first line reassemble outside the theater’s box office.

Time is indeed money in New York City: people were selling tickets to last night’s show on craigslist.com for $45 each and up to $150 for a pair. One ticket holder wrote, “$100 for my time on line or best reasonable offer.” But all of those interviewed said they were waiting for hours only to see the play or to get tickets for friends.

The Neue Galerie has scrapped plans for a special no-riff raff $50 off-hours deal:

Less than a week after announcing a special $50 opportunity to view its newly purchased Klimt portrait on a day its doors are normally shut, the Neue Galerie canceled that plan yesterday, saying the offer was misread by the public.

A museum spokesman, Scott Gutterman, said that a wave of callers had contacted the Neue Galerie yesterday leaving the museum with the impression that some found the price objectionable. The Neue Galerie had described the $50 ticket, which was to be offered each Wednesday from noon to 4 p.m. starting today, as a way for visitors to avoid crowds. “It was originally intended for members, who can get in for free,” Mr. Gutterman said of the Wednesday viewings. “But then we thought that we would offer the public a chance to come on Wednesdays for $50, when it would be less crowded.”

Previously on: Congestion Pricing Is Un-American!

Who exactly pays $50 to escape the riff raff? That’s just unseemly:

Want an intimate afternoon with Adele Bloch-Bauer? The Neue Galerie announced yesterday that, on Wednesday afternoons for the duration of the Klimt exhibit that features the most expensive painting ever purchased, it will charge a higher than normal price — $50 — in an effort to keep the crowds down. At other times when the museum is open, Thursday through Monday, its normal price of $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors will be in effect.

“Because we get such a crowd, we thought we might offer a more private viewing,” a representative of the museum explained over the phone yesterday evening. Asked if there were any concerns about offering this more intimate encounter with the paintings only to those who could afford the steep ticket price, she said there were not. It’s an experiment, she explained, “and we’ll see how it goes.”

Ever heard of timed tickets? Jeez . . .

After the Met raised its suggested donation (emphasis on “suggested”) to $20, the Times conducts a sociological experiment of sorts to determine the precise level of scorn heaped upon cheapskates by passive-aggressive ticket booth clerks. Now we know:

The first clerk had clearly heard it all, so many times before: the cheapskate’s whisper, the tone of moral calculus and finally the question, delivered with a sheepish grin: “What do I really have to pay?”

Veteran visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art usually weigh the decision silently, even guiltily, as they stand before the cash register that serves as portal to one of the world’s greatest art collections. Tourists rarely think to ask, and just fork it over.

But on Thursday, the day after word went around that the Met had decided to raise its suggested admission price to $20 — the same lofty figure that has earned the Museum of Modern Art its share of municipal scorn (at the Modern, it is mandatory, not just suggested) — The New York Times dispatched a reporter with a pocket full of quarters to conduct a small, slightly mischievous sociological experiment.

He went up to five different cashiers, asked the question, humbly proffered 50 cents and waited to measure the levels of scorn that would pour down upon his head.

In truth, there was not much noticeable scorn. There was, instead, that brand of aggressive disregard particular to New York that is sometimes much more effective in evoking shame and extracting money. The first clerk who was approached, a large man with a goatee, never even looked up from his screen when asked.

“It’s just suggested,” he mumbled.

“What if I only have 50 cents?” he was asked.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, staring momentarily at the two coins plunked into his palm before ringing up $15 on the cash register, punching in a 50-cent subtraction and sliding over a green metal admission button with the detachment of a Vegas dealer parting with a dollar chip. If he had been trained in a psy-ops camp in the most effective ways of wounding a conscience, he could have done no better.

And if not Rachael Ray, then those notorious cheapskates at $9.99 . . .

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announces it will raise the price of an adult ticket to $20, translating to a 33% increase in guilty feelings for stiffing them on the “suggested donation”:

When the Museum of Modern Art announced in 2004 that admission to its new facility would cost an eye-popping, and wallet-lightening, $20, a symbolic threshold was crossed, and it was only a matter of time before someone else caught up.Yesterday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that, as of August 1, its recommended adult admission would go up to $20 from $15, bringing it onto a par with MoMA.

The Met’s spokesman, Harold Holzer, said that ongoing deficits necessitated the increase. “Ever since 9/11, the museum has faced the ongoing challenge of a structural,operating deficit,” Mr. Holzer said. The deficit for the fiscal year ending June 30 was $3.5 million. “This is a solution that helps us defray the cost of running essentially the largest museum of the country, while still protecting the concept of pay-as-you-wish.”

. . .

Unlike MoMA, or the Frick, or the Guggenheim, or other uptown museums, the Met’s admission fee is only a suggested donation, although Mr. Holzer said, “We’re not shy about asserting that we ask visitors to pay whatever they can.” He declined to say how many people pay the suggested rate.

The suggested-donation policy is a requirement of being part of what is called the Cultural Institutions Group, a group of 34 New York City-owned institutions that also includes the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Zoo. As part of the same deal, the city provides 11% of the Met’s total budget, according the Department of Cultural Affairs. In the last fiscal year, this came to about $24,598,000, an amount that contributed to general operating costs, as well as paying for heat, light, and power.

. . .

A painter and the coordinator of the painting department at the New York Academy of Art, Wade Schuman, said he didn’t mind the fee increase and didn’t think it would discourage artists or young people from going to the museum. “Most artists do not give the suggested donation,” he said. “I’d be curious how many people actually do. I think that changing the suggested donation is mainly going to affect out-of-towners and Europeans.”

The City Council has approved funding for a hip-hop museum in the Bronx:

The City Council has quietly allocated $1.5 million in capital funding over the next two years that will serve as seed money for a hip-hop museum in the northeast section of the Bronx.

The funding came at the behest of a City Council member, Larry Seabrook, who is closely allied with a nonprofit group in his district that is planning a community center and housing development at the corner of 212th Street and White Plains Road. The museum would be part of the project.

Mr. Seabrook said he envisions the museum as a forum to educate future generations about the hip-hop movement as it began on the streets of the Bronx in the 1970s, long before the genre became linked with turf wars and lyrics that advocated violence against women. “We’re not talking about gangster rap,” Mr. Seabrook said. “We’re talking about hip-hop.”

While the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., announced plans earlier this year for a permanent hip-hop exhibition, the project in the Bronx is believed to be the first museum dedicated to the movement.

. . .

Other lawmakers criticized the use of public funds for a hip-hop museum. “I’m the biggest LL Cool J fan in the council, but this is not a proper use of taxpayer money,” the council’s Republican leader, James Oddo of Staten Island, said. He added that he supported a hip-hop museum, but only as a private venture. “If this is such a great idea, then it sells itself,” he said.

. . .

Despite the start-up cash from the city, a hip-hop museum in the Bronx still faces a number of obstacles. Early plans call for the museum to occupy one or two floors of a multi-purpose center being built by the nonprofit Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation. The group is hoping to combine several floors of low- to moderate-income housing with a gymnasium, a small theater, a recording studio, and the museum.

The project is planned for the site of an abandoned transfer station that the group acquired from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority this spring. The corporation has also received more than $1 million in state funding to clean up the site, which Mr. Seabrook said could take up to two years.

Officials at the Met dispute the claims that the Duccio is a fake:

The museum said the work, attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna, “is considered by virtually every expert in the field to be a keystone in the history of Western art.”

It said it “carefully examined” the tempera and gold on the wood panel before buying it in 2004 in the most expensive purchase ever by The Met.

Curator Keith Christiansen said The Met conducted technical examinations, including using X-rays and infrared reflectography and studying pigment samples that established its Renaissance origins.

He said two authoritative conservators also studied the painting.

“They not only gave it a thumbs-up, they said, ‘Boy, we are lucky,’” he said.

Christie’s auction house, which arranged the sale, said, “We and all current authorities on Duccio are entirely satisfied by the attribution of the panel to Duccio.”

But Beck stood his ground.

“They’re trying to say the consensus agrees with them, and that’s correct. But the consensus was poorly informed. The consensus also said the world was flat before 1492,” he said.

. . .

Beck offered to dispute the question of its authenticity with The Met and its experts.

“I’d be glad to debate them — in front of the picture,” he said.

“There’s nothing to debate. Absolutely not,” Christiansen shot back. “Is everyone in the world an idiot except him?”

Meanwhile, the Post’s art critic (yes, they have one!) sheds light on Beck’s history:

Beck has never shied away from controversy. Though last decade’s cleaning of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel won almost universal praise, Beck was the lone voice calling for the work to be halted.

His latest claim is that this much-ballyhooed “Madonna and Child,” which has figured in many of The Met’s posters over the past year, was not painted in Siena around 1300, but probably somewhere else in the 1880s.

Equally plausible is that the work is misattributed. As to that, you’d expect that the first thing The Met would determine, when they bought the work, was whether it is 100 or 700 years old. This is easy to do.

In fact, Beck seems to take great pleasure in loudly proclaiming that every expensive painting is a fake:

A Raphael painting bought by Britain’s National Gallery this month for 22 million pounds ($41.7 million) is a fake, a U.S. art professor says.

The gallery secured the “Madonna of the Pinks,” which it called the most significant Old Master in any British collection, after a fight to keep it in the country.

But James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York and the President of ArtWatch International, told Friday’s edition of the Times the gallery had paid “a record price for a fake.”

“They haven’t done their homework,” Beck said. “It’s a disgrace. The National Gallery never checked any of them physically.

“When you’re spending government money, or anyone’s money it’s an omission. Frankly, it’s a kind of arrogance of the Establishment.”

That’s from February 2004 . . .

An art history professor is claiming that “one of the great single acquisitions of the last half century” — the one the Met just acquired for like $50 bazillion — is actually a nineteenth-century fraud:

A painting the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought for more than $45 million and hailed as a 14th century masterpiece is a fake, according to a leading New York authority.

The “Madonna and Child” the museum attributes to Renaissance artist Duccio di Buoninsegna was really painted in the 19th century, said James Beck, an art history professor at Columbia University.

The 8-inch-by-11-inch tempera and gold on wood panel was the most expensive single object The Met ever bought when it acquired it in November 2004.

“If I’m right, this is $50 million in . . . money down the tube,” Beck told The Post. “And I’m right. It’s incontestable.”

He ridiculed its “low quality” and said it wasn’t “even a good forgery.”

There are no documents proving its ownership before around 1904, and Beck believes it was painted “in about the 1880s.”

Beck said he began to have doubts about the work six months ago and when he approached The Met, where officials expressed confidence the work is genuine.

There was no immediate response yesterday from the museum or Christie’s, which handled the sale for a Belgian family.

But Met curator Keith Christiansen told The Times of London, “There is no reason to doubt the period and the authenticity of the picture.”

Beck said the best proof that it’s a fake is the way it shows the Madonna and child behind a parapet, an artistic use of space and planes that only came later in the Renaissance. He rejected Christiansen’s claim that the work is “the first illusionistic parapet in European art.”

Refresher course: The Missing Madonna: The story behind the Met’s most expensive acquisition (New Yorker, July 11, 2005).

The controversial play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” has found a new theater:

After an Off Broadway production was derailed, resulting in a theatrical uproar, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” the solo show about an American demonstrator for Palestinian rights who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, has found another New York theater.

Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein, partners in James Hammerstein Productions, are bringing the play, critically acclaimed in London, to the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Previews are to begin on Oct. 5, with an opening scheduled for Oct. 15. The play is to run for 48 performances, closing on Nov. 19.

“We both saw the play and both responded to it very strongly,” Ms. Hammerstein said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We identified with the material in terms of being mothers and were struck by the production and the theatricality.”

Ms. Hammerstein, a daughter-in-law of Oscar Hammerstein II, is a longtime friend of the actor Alan Rickman, who created the play with Katharine Viner, an editor for The Guardian, the London newspaper. They put the play together from Ms. Corrie’s journal entries and e-mail messages before her death in March 2003. It ran for two seasons at the Royal Court Theater in London.

“I’m just really looking forward to engaging people on it, an engagement which can only happen, obviously, if the play is on,” Ms. Viner said.