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.

Weiner should have seen this as an opening — the snow wasn’t that bad yesterday:

When he canceled school yesterday for the first time in five years, Mayor Bloomberg had to deal with two storms: one from Mother Nature, which dumped eight inches of snow on New York, and another from schoolkids’ moms, furious the last-minute decision forced them to scramble for child care.

. . .

For Bloomberg, it was a snow-win situation. Knowing that so many parents depend on the schools to take care of their kids, the city waited until the last possible moment, 5:39 a.m., to cancel classes for the first time since Jan. 28, 2004.

For that day, Bloomberg made his announcement the night before — and it caused outrage the next day, when the storm turned out not to be as severe as had been forecast and parents groused that they had taken off work for no reason.

This time, the city wanted to make sure that the storm was not overblown, Bloomberg said, adding the thought should have occurred to most parents.

“If you got up this morning, looked outside, and the question didn’t come to you right away, ‘Hmm, I wonder whether or not school is going to be open today,’ and you didn’t know enough to call 311, I would suggest another day in school’s probably a good idea,” the mayor said at a briefing.

“I mean, come on,”[*] he added. “Looking outside, it’s a legitimate question, and you know how to get an answer.”

*Remember, Bloomberg is at his most unbecoming when he reverts to the “Come on . . .” trope.

The wicked cult of trees will stop at nothing to get its way:

A plan to plant a million trees is being met with opposition from homeowners not in the loop on where they are planted.

Under the city initiative, a property owner’s consent is not a requirement for the city to plant a street tree in front of their property.

“To us it’s identity theft because anybody can request a tree to be planted in front of your house,” said Dyker Heights property owner Sonny Soave, who has been fighting with the city on the initiative ever since a neighbor requested a tree in front of his house.

Soave said he stopped the operation as planters readied to put the tree down in front of his house, but has little hope he will get more than a stay of execution.

Among his complaints is that the tree will take up too much sidewalk space in front of his house. He also says that the gas shut-off main and the sewer pipe are right below that.

Soave said he also complained the tree roots will eventually break or lift the sidewalk and the Parks Department told him he would be long dead by the time that happened.

“We were told the tree costs a thousand dollars each to buy and plant and if you times that by a million that’s a billion dollars,” said Soave. “To him (Bloomberg) trees are more important than anything else. He is cutting back on the Fire Department, Police Department and teachers. Now what do we do when we need help, call a tree?”

The Parks Department is actively courting residents to come forward encouraging them to suggest the planting of trees on their block, even in front of a neighbor’s house.

You can save teachers’ jobs, you can fix roofs in housing projects and you can weatherize homes. Oh, and you can also build a better live music venue next time Okkervil River comes to town:

A section of the House version of the bill provides $1.7 billion to address “critical deferred maintenance needs” within the nation’s park system.

The bill doesn’t specifically mention the big-bucks rehab, but Castle Clinton is on a list of “top priority” projects the feds want to fund, according to a House Appropriations Committee aide who reviewed an agency list.

The aide put the price tag at $5.6 million to begin the renovation of the fort as an outdoor music venue, based on information the administration provided.

Location Scout: The Battery.

You know you’re getting old when this just doesn’t sound like fun anymore:

“Idiots, start your engines!”

That’s what hundreds of contestants heard Saturday at the start of New York’s sixth annual Idiotarod — a local take on Alaska’s Iditarod dog-sled race that replaces dogs with people, and sleds with shopping carts.

Teams of four runners and one driver navigate homemade carts from checkpoint to checkpoint along a mystery route only revealed as the race goes on via text messages. Organizers say the map is kept secret by design in order to keep police from intervening along the way.

An NYPD helicopter hovered above the starting line at E. 60th St. and York Ave. and it followed teams across the Queensboro Bridge to the first checkpoint at Queensbridge Park.

“We just crossed the Queensboro Bridge in a shopping cart!” yelled Floyd Olson, 19, a Tufts University student who came to to the city for the competition.

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

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

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

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

If he’s shopping at the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst to “be with the people” it’s not working because, duh, no one is shopping, and if he’s trying to encourage people to shop, the image of a billionaire skimping on his girlfriend’s Christmas present isn’t doing much for my confidence, I’ll tell you that much:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg went shopping on Saturday, and all he bought his girlfriend was a pair of fleece gloves for $29.99.

Oh, and he bought them at a Modell’s Sporting Goods — specifically the one at the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst. It’s safe to say that most people who live in Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, have probably never pulled their credit cards out at that particular mall.

Though there is a Modell’s on Third Avenue near 86th Street, a few blocks from Mr. Bloomberg’s town house, and another on Chambers Street, close to City Hall, Mr. Bloomberg chose to shop in Queens because “he is the mayor of all five boroughs,” said a spokesman, Jason Post.

. . .

Flanked by aides and police detectives, and with his companion, Diana Taylor, at his side, Mr. Bloomberg arrived at Modell’s around 10 a.m., wearing a stylish navy blue jacket over a baby blue sweater. A phalanx of reporters had come by to witness the occasion and figure out what (and how much) the billionaire mayor would buy.

“I’m going to look very carefully, but I know what I’m getting already,” Mr. Bloomberg told them.

. . .

Modell’s was nearly empty as the mayor shopped. Upstairs, Joann Rice-Daniels, 46, and Adebowal T. Kiladejo, 39, meter collectors for the city’s Transportation Department, were buying gloves. Downstairs, Boris Davydov, 38, and his 14-year-old son, David, were buying socks and dumbbells.

“The mayor is always with the people,” Mr. Davydov said gleefully as he snapped a picture of Mr. Bloomberg with his cellphone.

Mr. Bloomberg paid for his purchases in cash and outside, he joked about the gloves he bought for Ms. Taylor.

“I just got Diana’s gift,” he said.

“I have them,” Ms. Taylor said from behind a cluster of reporters, holding a shopping bag with the gloves in it.

“Look, she’s got them already,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I’ve just got to get a card to go with it.”

Looking on the bright side, we may be returning to some kind of Brokaw-approved work ethic in this country:

It is impossible to quantify how many affluent parents have trimmed allowances in recent months — or how many of their offspring, in turn, have sought either formal employment or odd jobs. But interviews with dozens of teenagers, parents, educators and employers suggest that many youngsters from well-to-do families seem to have found a new work ethic as the economic crisis that has pummeled their family stock portfolios and jeopardized their parents’ jobs has also led to less spending money for Saturday night movies or binges at Abercrombie & Fitch.

On the one hand you have a worldwide financial meltdown followed by perhaps the greatest structural changes to the economy since the 1930s. On the other hand you have a dirtier Bowery. And that’s something all of us understand:

Lizzy Goodman was one of the fortunate ones of the class of 2002; upon graduating from Penn, she had a job lined up as an assistant teacher at Buckley, the all-boys school on the Upper East Side. Six years later, she’s an editor at large at Blender. Like some of her peers, she seems hopeful that, instead of being a harbinger of utter doom, this crash will instead level the playing field just a little bit.

“I don’t think anyone is hoping for American financial collapse just so that the Bowery can be seedy again,” said Ms. Goodman, who lives in the West Village. “But on the other hand, if in the wake of this collective shuttering and fearing comes a return to old school ’80s boho New York, I would certainly be in favor of that.”

Fortunately for her, there are literally hundreds of us who consider our subscription to Blender to be utterly indispensible.

Come on, “golden boy”:

The traders at the New York Stock Exchange went berserk on Tuesday over the hottest commodity at the Beijing Olympics, circling Michael Phelps like sharks.

There was barely room to breathe on the floor as people pushed to get close to Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals and set seven world records.

Phelps rang the opening bell, or at least that was the original plan. On the platform alongside his fellow United States Olympic swimming champions Ryan Lochte and Natalie Coughlin, Phelps was so tired that he was tottering, so Coughlin discreetly did the honors.

“Michael was just kind of jet-lagged,” Coughlin said.

On the floor, he was besieged by autograph seekers. One trader held up a magazine with Phelps on the cover for him to sign and said, “My wife wants to marry you.” When told that Phelps, who was in the middle of a television interview, would not be signing anything more, the trader said, indignantly, “Is his hand broken?”

Or was that Las Vegas trip a little draining?

Broadway Boulevard has been “an instant hit” for thrill seekers:

As if New York wasn’t stimulating enough already, the city has provided a new kind of thrill right in the heart of Midtown: an esplanade carved into Broadway where people can sit and relax as cars and trucks whiz by.

And while the esplanade seems to have become an instant hit with office workers and tourists — the metal benches, tables and chairs (some under red umbrellas) were rarely empty on Monday morning, even though they have been out for only a few days — many eyed the traffic warily.

“I think it’s dangerous,” said Vicki Lee, who nonetheless sat with two friends eating lunch at a cafe table on the esplanade just south of 38th Street. Ms. Lee, a clothing designer at a Midtown fashion company, was careful to sit so that she could keep an eye on the traffic heading downtown.

Her concern, she said, centered on the gray plastic planters arrayed every few feet along the edge of the esplanade as a buffer for the passing traffic. The planters were filled with soil, flowers and other plants and were too heavy for one person alone to budge. Yet they did not make Ms. Lee feel safe.

“You hear so many accidents of the cars going out of control and all they have here is plastic pots,” she said. But she dug into her salad and added, “We’re going to roll the dice and eat lunch here today.”

Not far away, Eric Sachinis and Grace Ong sat on two metal chairs pulled up to the edge of the esplanade closest to the traffic. They ate sandwiches and gazed at the passing cars.

“It’s a death trap,” Mr. Sachinis, a network administrator for a garment company, said with a laugh. “It’ll be up for a month and then somebody’ll get hit and they’ll take it down.”

“I like it, though,” said Ms. Ong, an administrative assistant, who observed that a pedestrian would be no safer on the sidewalk than on the esplanade if a car lost control. Besides, she said, the esplanade was a good spot for people watching. “That’s why you live in New York,” she said, “to watch everything go by.”

Creating Axioms: “New Yorkers Sit Anywhere”

Adam “Jersey City” Sternbergh out-Sternberghs himself:

Until last May, Cloyd and Herbeck were living in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, and they were barely making it. They ate mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. They couldn’t afford to go out with their friends. They wanted a family, but “there was no room in our Brooklyn equation to have kids unless we put them in a closet,” Herbeck says.

Then one night, Herbeck, who’s 30, found herself browsing online listings in Buffalo. (Why Buffalo? She comes from Buffalo. And like many young Buffalonians, she got out as soon as she could.) “We were like, ‘Okay, the prices are great,’” she says. So they looked at some photos. “And we were like, ‘Okay, they’re really nice apartments. They’re really big. And right by the park.’”

And all of a sudden, they found they were staring at a very different what-could-be life: the one they’d be able to have if they were willing to leave New York.

Two things are wrong with this. One, “city proclamations” officially have lost all meaning and two, well, two is quite obvious.

For reasons including but not limited to large vermin:

If you’re coming to this outside cinema, bring a blanket, but leave the popcorn, wine and cheese at home.

That’s because a roving army of hungry rats has been prowling Bay Ridge’s Narrows Botanical Gardens, threatening to shut down the annual movies in the park.

“These rats are so brazen, it can be a nightmare,” said Joan Regan, who first organized the Outdoor Cinema eight years ago.

“The sun goes down and the rats get hungry for food and come bother our show,” said Regan.

It wouldn’t be the first time the four-legged fiends stole the show.

Two years ago, the vermin problem was so bad, organizers had to cancel a sundown showing of “War of the Worlds” after the raging rats launched their own invasion.

“As soon as the movie started, droves of rats poured on to the field. You could see them on the screen and one of them even ran over the foot of the woman sitting next to me,” said Regan, who said she made the unfortunate mistake of spreading out some cheese and wine on her picnic blanket.

Sucking up philanthropic oxygen for not only the cult of trees but NYC-TV, too:

The superstar pop group — lead singer Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland — announced in Times Square Tuesday that they will wrap up their worldwide reunion tour with one last blowout gig in the city where they first performed 30 years ago.

The concert will be held this summer and raise money for New York public TV stations; more details will be released later.

The Police first played in New York in 1978 at CBGB, the legendary downtown club that closed in 2006. The group drifted apart in the 1980s, but reunited last year.

The band also is donating $1 million to Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to plant a million trees in the city by 2017.

“We wanted to leave a gift for our last performance that would keep on giving year after year, decade after decade,” Sting said.

And the group got a gift back. Bloomberg gave each band member the Key to the City.

The city will match the group’s donation, which will reforest 2,000 acres of parkland with 10,000 trees.

Note goalpost shifting — not new trees but reforesting current parkland.

So at this rate, it will only take $545 million more to reach the lofty goal of 1 million new trees:

David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael Bloomberg — two of the city’s biggest philanthropists — spent yesterday afternoon in front of East Harlem’s Thomas Jefferson public housing complex, where they planted a rosebud tree. They hope it is just one of many.

Rockefeller gave $5 million to help fund the mayor’s initiative to plant 1 million trees as part of PlaNYC, his sustainability agenda for the city. Bloomberg matched Rockefeller’s gift with his own $5 million.

“We’re all in this together,” Bloomberg said. “We shouldn’t wait for others to do it.” Not only do the trees provide shade and clean the air, he said, they “also improve property values.”

The $10 million announced yesterday will cover the cost of 18,000 new trees, “nearly three-quarters of all the trees in Central Park,” Bloomberg said.

. . .

He expects to have 250,000 of the 1 million trees in the ground before he leaves office. But then what? The initiative is funded by charitable donations and has no legal mandate.

“They should plant jobs,” added Olga Bernabi, who works at the Jefferson Houses library. “I know a lot of people getting pink slips.”

Central Park has 26,000 trees in 840 acres (31 trees an acre). New York City (at 322 square miles) has 206,080 total acres — 1 million new trees means adding 4.8 trees to each acre of land in the city. A city block is 2.5 acres. That’s 12 new trees on each city block . . . in addition to the 592,130 street trees, which have stocked city streets to 73% capacity, with room for 220,000 more trees. So then there are 780,000 left to be accounted for . . . um, has anyone figured out where all the new trees will go? And don’t tell us that this will simply replace old trees because that’s just cooking the books . . .

Let’s hope this is just irresponsible hyperbole unbecoming of an executive and not a statement of the city’s priorities*:

Sounding like he already knew that defeat would be imminent, Bloomberg challenged the Legislature to vote up or down on the issue today so that individual lawmakers could be held accountable.

“The one thing they can’t do is walk away without a vote,” Bloomberg said. “That would be unconscionable.

“If they’re going to vote it down, then they’re going to be responsible to their constituents to why they don’t have buses — faster, better buses, new buses — don’t have all the technology for all of the improvements to the subway line.

“When we stop work on the Second Avenue subway, they are the ones that are going to have to answer to their constituents.”

*Because apparently we’re already on the hook for a useless 7 train extension.

Census numbers are showing 23,960 more residents between 2006 and 2007:

New York City’s population is nudging upward, according to Census Bureau estimates released yesterday.

The Census numbers show that the five boroughs gained 23,960 people between July 2006 and July 2007, a rise of 0.29%. The growth is consistent with the city’s population trends in recent years: The city gained about 40,000 people during the same period between 2005 and 2006. New York City’s population now stands at a record high, 8.275 million people, according to the Census numbers.

PlaNYC is premised on an additional one million people in New York by 2030. It uses census data and additional factors developed by the Department of City Planning, including an expectation that people will live longer and rezoning (maybe you noticed all the middle-income housing being built in newly rezoned areas?). But census estimates are tricky, and it’s unclear that the population will always continue to grow, or that there may be a built-in pressure valve regardless of how much infrastructure is created.

If the city’s population grew by 40,000 people every year for the next 22 years, we would have 880,000, and then congestion pricing would be absolutely necessary. But if the city’s population only grows by 23,960 for the next 22 years, there will only be 527,120 more people. And if these numbers actually portend a slowing of growth, then all numbers are suspect. What’s more, 2005-2006 was the highest growth in some time — if things get poopy, like they did after 2001, when the population grew by only 14,000 between 2002 and 2003, New York City will only have an additional 308,000 people. Population continually rises and falls, and unless PlaNYC can show definitively that New York will grow like it grew in 2005-2006 (and I wouldn’t trust any demographer who claims to know anything for sure), it seems foolish to move so aggressively . . .

A ticker tape parade is not an excuse to clean out your desk, you slob:

The crowd was good-natured and was filled with teenagers, many of whom were in diapers when the Giants last won the Super Bowl, in 1991, although the police did report a dozen or so arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct. The fans were in such a good mood that they even chanted, “Clean those streets,” as sanitation trucks drove up Broadway (with their snowplows down to collect garbage).

. . .

At 11 a.m., as the parade was set to begin, James H. Cooper, the rector of Trinity Church, emerged in a white robe and yellow cape. He climbed a ladder, hoisted a Giants sign and waved incense to bless the crowd.

The bells of the church rang out. Confetti poured from the highest floors, shredded paper that looked like flaming white meteors. Random sheets of paper in different sizes and colors — white, pink, green, lined and unlined, legal, notebook, post-it notes — were mixed in.

How stupid are New Yorkers? Not only can a cupcake store clear more than enough to pay its $30,000-plus rent but it can open a second Manhattan location, too:

There are few small businesses that can comfortably afford a $400,000-per-year lease in Manhattan.

There are even fewer ones that can do so selling cupcakes.

Magnolia Bakery, the West Village destination well-known for its butter cream-frosted baked goods, celeb appeal and its cameo in SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” digital short, has recently opened a second domain on 200 Columbus Ave. at West 69th Street. Owner Steve Abrams, who is a 20-year Upper West Side veteran, always believed the neighborhood could embrace the business, but didn’t quite anticipate the orders when it opened its doors on Jan. 19.

“It’s been beyond expectations. Opening day, we ran out of product,” Abrams said. “I think the volumes are going to be very similar [to downtown]. Just the way they manifest will be different. Downtown is touristy. . . . . They’re not buying a dozen cupcakes. Here it’s all families. People buy in bulk.”

Because you’re never assured that the amphibians you also get have been raised organically:

A health-conscious Brooklyn mom says she nearly jumped out of her skin when she found a little green frog napping between the leaves of a head of organic lettuce she brought home.

“I jumped away” said 39-year-old Yvonne Brechbuhler, fearing she’d uncovered a dead bug or worse, a slug.

“I didn’t know what it was. But once I realized it was a frog, I was okay.”

The Prospect Heights mom, who doubles as a stage actress, described the tiny visitor no bigger than the tip of her pinky finger as “one tough frog.”

She said first the frog survived a journey from South Florida to the Park Slope Food Coop, then another three days in her refrigerator.

Finally it narrowly escaped being part of a pesticide-free salad she was making last week.