Or is the horrible truth about the ice cream truck business that it resembles Amway? Too many trucks, too little territory:

Few sounds evoke the languorous innocence of childhood summers like the jingle of a roving ice cream truck, its melody drawing streams of children clutching crumpled dollar bills.

In this part of Queens, however, ice cream trucks have become a symbol of sharp elbows, more reminiscent of “Goodfellas” than Good Humor. Martin Price has taken his white and aquamarine Kool Man truck through Maspeth, Glendale and Middle Village for 25 years, but he has complained to the police that a franchisee for Mr. Softee has warned him a dozen times over the past two seasons to stay out Maspeth and Middle Village.

The most recent threats came on July 22, Mr. Price said, when three Mr. Softee trucks and a green Ford Econovan carrying the franchisee converged on his Kool Man truck at 56th Road and 60th Street in Maspeth. The franchisee, who Mr. Price said did not identify himself, was carrying a baseball bat and, according to Mr. Price, warned him: “I bought the area.”

“You don’t own the street,” Mr. Price responded.

But he has been so scared by the possibility of violence that he has been staying away from Maspeth and parts of Middle Village at a cost of 40 percent of his business, he said.

Earlier: This Is No Softee.

It’s not just Staten Island — everyone seems to dislike the “Triboro” label:

For decades, stamps on letters mailed in New York City have generally been canceled with squiggly lines of ink and the name of the sender’s home borough. But this tradition may itself soon be canceled, at least in Brooklyn and Queens and on Staten Island.

Under the Postal Service’s plan, most mail from the three boroughs would be sent to a central processing center in East New York, Brooklyn, where it would be branded with a new emblem:

“TRIBORO, NY

BKLYN-QNS-STATEN ISL.”

The plan was spawned because of a 29 percent decline in the volume of first-class mail over the past decade. Officials say the change would save $6.7 million annually.

This is where a bureaucratic transaction gets personal.

“There are certain things you don’t mess with,” said Audrey Hecht-Stewart, 54, a teacher from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who was standing in line last week at the Cadman Plaza Post Office in Downtown Brooklyn. “The postmark on your letter should represent where you live, like caller ID on your phone.

“You can’t throw Brooklyn in the same pot with Queens and Staten Island,” Ms. Hecht-Stewart added. “When you go and lump us in with those other two boroughs, you take away our individuality.”

A host of elected officials, from the relevant borough presidents to New York’s two United States senators, has decried the proposal, along with postal union officials who translate a consolidated postmark into lost jobs. And dismay is rippling across this proposed new land called “Triboro,” where many who know about the plan resent the prospect of being stripped of their envelope identifier.

*Think about it — it could look cool on a T-shirt!

Lest you assume Mister Softee trucks are only about small-time drug deals or that they’re merely a convenient spot from which pedophiles can operate, know that there is also a dark side to the business:

An ice-cream truck driver and two cohorts gave a Good Humor operator in Queens more than just a cold shoulder when they threatened to put his business on ice, authorities said yesterday.

George Peralta, 27, and his accomplices penned in Ernesto Valverde, 50, by parking an ice-cream truck in front of and another behind Valverde’s vehicle in Elmhurst Tuesday, police sources said.

Peralta, along with Andy Arevalo, 23, and an unidentified man, then took Valverde’s keys and gave a chilling threat, “Stay off [our] route. We know where you live. We know where you parked the truck,” according to a criminal complaint.

Update: Mister Softee Vice President Jim Conway writes in to set the record straight:

The article you referenced in the NY Post is factually incorrect. Ronald Baretela is not a Mister Softee franchisee and the trucks in question are not Mister Softee trucks.

Additionally, we are troubled by your disparaging remarks in regards to our franchisees. In the twelve years I have been in the management of Mister Softee no franchisee has been accused of either selling drugs or improper conduct towards children. Your comments are both false and offensive.

The overwhelming majority of our franchisees are married men and women with families. These people are classic small business people who work hard to provide for their families.

Spending up to 10 or 12 hours a day selling ice cream on the streets of NYC is a difficult and often trying job. To belittle these good people with unsubstantiated myths is irresponsible.

Fair enough! Satirical glibness aside, of course I didn’t mean to say that I necessarily assumed that Mister Softee trucks sold drugs of any kind or that ice cream truck drivers in general are anything less than model citizens, just that, you know, some may have that perception is all . . .

See Also: Mister Softee.

Last year the excuse was that there weren’t enough entrants. And residency requirements are an issue again this year:

Keelie Sheridan, an Irish step dancer who moved here in 2005, is the new Miss Brooklyn — but not without a schmear of controversy.

The 22-year-old student says she’s been in love with Brooklyn ever since she moved into a Sheepshead Bay apartment that’s only seven minutes from the beach.

Sheridan is certainly more familiar with borough life than Leigh-Taylor Smith, last year’s winner, who lived in Manhattan.

Still, some Brooklynites are griping Sheridan hasn’t been here long enough to represent the borough’s 2.5 million people from 150 nations — people who speak 136 different languages.

Seven of the pageant’s nine contestants were born and raised in the borough.

“One of them should have won,” said Makada Lemont, 18, a student at Pacific High School and a lifelong Crown Heights resident.

Lemont’s friend Tiffany Cook, 20, also of Crown Heights, agreed: “She doesn’t know what Brooklyn is all about, like what we go through or anything about our lifestyle, like the clothing we wear, the way we talk, our swag.”

“Assume the risk”:

A Red Sox fan who got pummeled for cheering on his team at Yankee Stadium should have known to keep his mouth shut, the Bombers said in court papers.

Charles Hillios, who is suing the Yanks for the beat-down, “assumed the risk of foreseeable injury based on his own conduct,” according to a federal court filing.

The team also contends that it’s “not liable for the alleged intentional conduct” of the two goons who battered the Bosox booster inside The House that Ruth Built in August.

The city of hot air actually has a fairly small carbon footprint, making Christmas back home that much more unbearable for the families of smug, self-righteous transplants:

Despite New York’s reputation as a city of avid consumption, the carbon footprint of its residents is among the smallest in America, a new report shows.

In 2005, the average New Yorker emitted 0.67 tons of carbon from residential energy consumption, the 18th-lowest amount of 100 metro areas surveyed, according to yesterday’s Brookings Institution and Regional Plan Association report, which examined carbon emissions from transportation and residential sources. The average American emitted 1.16 tons.

The New York area also had the fourth-lowest carbon emissions per capita among the 100 other metropolitan areas.

. . . we all scream, “Hey, jackass, move your freakin’ truck before I bash your head in with an oversized wrench”:

The man in the Mister Softee truck stuck his head out the window and glared at the fellow in the white cap and black bow tie.

The guy in the bow tie grimaced back as he rang the bell on his Good Humor truck, whose bumper sat inches from Mister Softee’s.

“Ching ching ching.”

“This is open turf,” said Jose Martinez, 52, the Good Humor man, yanking at the bell.

Summer is more than a month away, but the ice cream wars have already begun. In neighborhoods across the city, skirmishes are breaking out over which franchise can sell its wares on which route. And the tension between the city’s purveyors of ice-cold treats can at times be thicker than a Chipwich.

There have been harsh words, hurt feelings and even bloodshed between competitors. In 2004, a couple in their 60s who owned and operated two ice cream trucks were ambushed in the Bronx and beaten with an oversized wrench. The motive, the police said, was the couple’s ice cream route. A rival ice cream salesman was charged with assault and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

While disputes between drivers of ice cream trucks rarely become that violent, they can be cutthroat.

(That last line is the mixed metaphor of the day.)

This could only mean one thing — the return of the Good Humor man, which some don’t find funny:

On Tuesday afternoon, new battle lines were drawn on the Upper West Side at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 83rd Street, where Ceasar Ruiz, 50, the Mister Softee man, said he had been selling ice cream without any competition for more than eight years.

He said his routine was the same every season. He arrives at the corner by about 2:30 each afternoon, mostly to catch the students getting out of Public School 9 and the Anderson School, just a few yards from the corner. He stays for about an hour and a half, then moves to his next location, he said.

But Tuesday afternoon was different. When he arrived, there sat the freshly painted Good Humor truck and Mr. Martinez, decked out in a crisp uniform, ringing his bell.

“I sell Good Humor, too,” Mr. Ruiz said. “But his is more cheap. I sell bar for $2. He might sell for $1.50. Not good. Not good.”

. . .

Good Humor trucks all but disappeared from the New York streets 30 years ago. In 1977, the Good Humor company shut down its street vendor operation, opting for supermarket freezers, said Robert Pinnisi, who helped restore Mr. Martinez’s truck. But the company gave drivers the option of being independent contractors. Mr. Pinnisi said he knew of only one other Good Humor truck operating in New York City, and one in Mount Vernon.

See also: The heretofore unchallenged Mister Softee juggernaut.

. . . but until then, please just give these people a stupid beer/wine license already:

Long Island City activists are opposing a popular restaurant’s application for a beer and wine license, fearing alcohol will only add to the troubles they say the eatery has brought to the neighborhood.

Residents said Blend LIC has been a bad neighbor, and accused its management of repeatedly lying to the community about its intentions.

Blend’s management “don’t want a restaurant that co-exists peacefully with the neighborhood,” said resident Tim Lee, a 48-year-old photographer.

“There’s a big difference between a restaurant that serves liquor and a place that’s positioning itself as a bar stop.”

Blend, which bills itself as a Latin fusion restaurant, had its initial application for a liquor license rejected by the State Liquor Authority in November 2006.

Now the restaurant’s owner, Cullen Partners, is preparing to ask Queens Community Board 2 for a beer and wine license.

“The opening of their rear garden would surround our building with noise,” said Tim Doocey, 38, another concerned neighbor.

. . .

“There’s a saturation of bars and restaurants” in Long Island City, said Community Board 2 Chairman Joe Conley. “People are saying enough is enough.”

In a 2006 letter to Cullen Partners, Conley wrote: “Please be advised we have already spoken in a loud and unambiguous voice on this issue and are unlikely to reconsider the decision” in regard to a new license.

Charles Linn, attorney for Cullen Partners, declined to comment and added that no one at Blend would be available for further comment.

The original disapproval states the “application information was misrepresented by the applicant” and that the applicant “submitted an application with misleading information.”

Doocey, a communications consultant, added, “We’re not anti-business. We’re not even anti-bar. But the next thing you know, Vernon Blvd. will become a mess like the lower East Side.”

Super Bowl wins aside, New York seems to be dangerously close to developing the kind of unbecoming inferiority complex usually reserved for second-tier cities like . . . well, Boston, for example:

In Times Square and across the New York region, screaming fans jammed bars and after the Giants beat the New England Patriots, 17-14, in dramatic fashion in Super Bowl XLII, boisterous throngs filled the streets. The police deployed squad cars and mounted patrols to keep the exuberance under control across the city.

“Everybody’s a Giants fan tonight,” said John Johnson, 55, a native Floridian who ran out of the Millennium Hotel in Midtown with a double Crown Royal, neat, still in hand. “We knew there was going to be pandemonium, and we wanted to be a part of it.”

Scores of sports fans stampeded Times Square from neighboring hotels and restaurants, lining the intersection of 43rd Street and Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Officers on horseback yelled into megaphones, “Please do not block the crosswalk,” as they struggled to hold back the raucous, quickly forming crowd, which eventually stretched back four blocks.

. . .

One Sunnyside resident, Luis Pinzon, 27, was overcome with joy. “We finally beat Boston,” he said, wearing a Lawrence Taylor jersey. “That’s all I care about. We finally beat ‘em. Not Boston. Undefeated Boston,” he said with vindictive relish. “That’s who we beat. As long as they won, I don’t care if the Yankees lose to the Red Sox for the next five years. I’m not going to complain. That’s enough. I’ll give my first-born child to — to — to whomever.”

Mr. Pinzon’s wife, Sonia Pinzon, 26, said she was trying to be supportive, but giving up a child was where she drew the line. “I don’t think so,” she said.

After being strong-armed out of Greenwich Village, NYU begins to look for other places to colonize:

New York University wants to build a 1-million-square-foot campus on Governors Island, school officials said yesterday.

The NYU plan would call for a mix of student and faculty housing and space for academic programs, officials said. It’s part of a 25-year, 6-million-square-foot expansion plan that also targets other parts of the Big Apple, including Downtown Brooklyn.

“NYU sees the potential of Governors Island as a place where we can grow,” said NYU spokesman John Beckman.

The state-city Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation says the university is a good fit, but the agency has yet to determine when it will seek proposals from prospective tenants.

. . . but so is Astoria:

A growing number of college students are uniting online to rescue Astoria’s famous Greek culture from “guitar-playing hipsters” they charge are ruining the increasingly artsy neighborhood.

Formed a few weeks ago on the social networking site Facebook, the Save Astoria group urges members — about 150 as of late Thursday — to prevent the hipsters from turning churches and cafes into “wasteful art exhibits.”

Its five organizers, all former or current students at Fordham University, note Greeks’ history of banding together and becoming “a formidable force” during tough times. They ask followers to support only Greek businesses.

“Invite all your friends and bring public attention to this issue before it is too late!” plead the group leaders, who didn’t return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment.

“I guess they have a problem with people who go out and free ourselves with our music,” snarled David Guevara, 18, of Astoria, who sings and plays guitar in a rock band.

. . .

For Jared Koeppel, manager of the Guitar Center at Northern Blvd. and 48th St., the emergence of a hipster base in Astoria has been a godsend.

“I wish that there were more. I don’t think there are enough,” said Koeppel, 30. “We sell more classical guitars than pretty much any store in the world.”

May Queens never lose its charm. A maligned rehab earns top honors from the Chamber of Commerce:

Some people looked at an unused former Eagle Electric Company factory at 19-19 24th Ave., Astoria as nothing more than a derelict shell. Joseph Pistilli, president of Pistilli Realty, saw the building’s potential. Where there was once an empty shell of a factory now stands a residence boasting 186 spacious co-operative apartments, served by a 24-hour concierge and offering spectacular views of the East River, Astoria Park and the Manhattan skyline, with prices starting in the mid- $200,000 range.

The Queens Chamber of Commerce honors Pistilli’s perspicacity and drive at its 95th annual Building Awards dinner this year. Pistilli Riverview East is one of seven buildings deemed winners in the Rehab category, sharing the honor with a single-family residence, a bank branch office, a senior adult center, a branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, an MTA subway maintenance shop and car washing facility and the Visitor and Administration Center at the Queens Botanical Garden.

(Laminate flooring.)

Freakin’ Mets fans are everywhere:

Matt Murphy is now the luckiest man in baseball. The 21-year-old Elmhurst native is the proud owner of Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th career home run ball after attending Tuesday night’s San Francisco Giants game from the centerfield bleachers.

In an exclusive phone interview with the TimesLedger Wednesday, Murphy said he initially bought the ticket because he was excited by the chance to watch Barry Bonds become a baseball legend. Bonds had already tied the all-time career home run record on Saturday, and there was a good chance that Tuesday would be the night he would shatter it.

“All I wanted to do was just be in the building,” Murphy said.

When Bonds hit the homer in the fifth inning, Murphy not only got to be part of the historic moment but was able to take it away with him. While the cameras were on Bonds circling the bases, Murphy and more than a dozen fans scuffled, pushed and fought for the piece of baseball history. Murphy ultimately scooped the ball up and hid it in his Mets T-shirt, which he proudly wore despite the boos and jeers of Giants fans.

Ballpark security immediately escorted Murphy out of the stadium as he raised his arms in triumph, sporting the battle scars of his scuffle: a bloody nose, twisted ankle and hot dog ketchup stain.

Murphy said he was grateful to security helping him out of the ruckus and back to his hotel room, as many of the fans were already peeved that he came in dressed in full Mets paraphernalia, including a Jose Reyes jersey and cap.

. . .

Murphy’s friends from Archbishop Molloy High School were amazed to see their classmate all over the sports pages and television early Wednesday morning. Just hours after the lucky moment, Murphy’s pals a created group on the online social network Facebook titled “Matt Murphy just caught Barry Bonds’ 756th Homerun,” which has already attracted more than 50 members.

“It’s very cool. He was representing both Queens and Met fans and that’s always something to be happy about,” said Murphy’s classmate Joe Sommo, 22, of Middle Village, who is a member of the group.

When tragedy hits, use it:

In the wake of the fatal collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, news reports about the poor condition of the Brooklyn Bridge have brought fears of that tragedy close to home.

The iconic bridge was one of only three run by the New York City Department of Transportation to be given a poor rating in the city’s latest annual bridge report card, according to a report by the New York Times. Despite this rating, the bridge was still deemed safe by city officials. Another crucial piece of Brooklyn’s infrastructure, the Gowanus Expressway, was not included in the report, but is in serious disrepair.

To those carefully observing the state of the Gowanus Expressway, which runs along Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, it is increasingly clear that the 45-year-old structure was not intended to sustain today’s heavy traffic load.

“[The structure] is totally inadequate to handle the weight and volume of traffic that it’s getting now,” said Buddy Scotto, who co-founded the Gowanus Expressway Community Coalition. Scotto added that every time an 18-wheeler hits the airbrakes, it takes off half the concrete.

And then there’s the one-hand-clapping sort of riddle about cars and trucks that enter Staten Island but never leave it:

In late 1980s, a federal highway bill was passed that included a provision that eliminated the Verrazano Bridge’s inbound toll while doubling the price of the outbound toll.

JoAnne Simon, former chair of the Gowanus Community Stakeholders Group and current state committeewoman from the 52nd Assembly District is concerned about the volume of trucks that ride the Gowanus after a free pass on the Verrazano. “One-way toll on the Verrazano encourages extra traffic,” she said, emphasizing that trucks ride it “to save about $40 a day.”

A two-way toll would “reduce concentration on the Gowanus,” Ben Meskin, who found the Gowanus Coalition with Scotto, said. “There will always be bad traffic, but you have to spread it out,” he added.

Is there a special non-tolled route through Staten Island that the rest of us don’t know about?

Doesn’t the legislature have better things to do than ribbing New Jerseyans about how they’re totally not New Yorkers? Then again, it is kind of funny:

The New York Giants and New York Jets may be stripping their famed “NY” insignias from their helmets in the near future if Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette (D-Jackson Heights) get his way.

Lafayette has introduced legislation, currently before the Tourism, Arts and Sports Development Committee, that would prevent any sports franchise that does not play its home games in New York state from including New York or its abbreviation in its name. The legislation also prohibits the sale of team merchandise on which New York is displayed if the team it promotes does not play its home games in New York.

“There are many economic benefits for a sports team to be identified from a particular city or state,” Lafayette said. “Additionally, there are numerous sources of revenue that benefit the state and city where a team actually plays its home games,” he added.

Another week, another Villager story about someone who can’t sleep. Community Media LLC should just save us the trouble and start a separate publication dedicated to stories about Lower Manhattan residents who are angry at nearby bars — they’re all starting to blend together in my mind anyway:

For residents living above the nightclub 46 Grand, life has been anything but.

Kevin Solomon, a resident at 46 Grand St. in Soho, said he and his family are kept awake every Friday and Saturday until 3 a.m. by loud music from the club. The other week, it happened on Wednesday night, too.

“And I live on the fourth floor,” he said. “So you can imagine what it is like for the people living on the second and third floors.”

Family man? Check.

Loud music? Check.

Can’t sleep? Check.

Obligatory “If it’s loud for me, imagine what it’s like for the 85-year-old on floor two” quote? Check.

The question is what we call this new publication. The Village Complainer? The Downtown Bitcher? Let’s brainstorm here.

Parent groups have been vocal about the Board of Education’s plans to increase the number of “schools within a school” — specialized magnet programs — throughout the city. Space considerations are a big issue, but then there’s this:

Park Slope parents are up in arms over a Department of Education proposal to insert a new small school focusing on Arabic language and culture inside the same building as their children’s elementary school.

Department officials faced what is becoming a familiar uproar over new small schools when they announced a proposal to locate the Khalil Gibran International Academy, one of the more than 200 small high schools created by the Bloomberg administration, inside P.S. 282, the Park Slope school.

. . .

Fearing that their children will lose art, music, and science classrooms and a library if Khalil Gibran moves into the Park Slope school’s top floor, parents reacted by “screaming and crying,” a parent who attended the meeting with department officials Monday night in the school’s auditorium, Jennifer Bacon-Fossati, said. She said parents were also concerned about the safety of their younger children, who may have to share bathrooms with the older students.

. . .

Another parent, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her child’s safety, said she feared that the school’s focus on Arabic culture and language may draw a backlash from right-wing groups that could threaten the building’s students.

“There are concerns of the kind of criticism this school could face,” she said. [Emph. added]

Lady, quit overreacting! The students are long gone by the time Sanitation gets there on trash day . . .

East Village residents are going to great lengths to argue against bars operating in their neighborhood:

Death & Co., an upscale new nightspot that serves drinks and appetizers, has attracted glowing reviews and throngs of patrons since it opened at the beginning of January. But the bar and restaurant at 433 E. Sixth St. has also attracted sharp criticism from several neighbors and Community Board 3. In fact, with its ominous name and décor, Death & Co. actually has some neighbors scared, dredging up their worst nightmares — while other neighbors say their nights are literally haunted by the bar’s din.

. . .

. . . Members of Synagogue Anshe Meseritz, at 415 E. Sixth St., object to Death & Co.’s name and appearance.

The windowless bronze facade stands out from the surrounding buildings, and features 100-year-old cedar planks, cast-iron columns and a black flag. Inside, gold-flecked wallpaper catches light from chandeliers and candles, and a long mirror reflects plush booths and the bar’s marble countertop.

“We don’t need another bar on the block,” said Les Sussman, an Anshe Meseritz congregant who attended the meeting but has not been inside Death & Co. “We don’t need one with Nazi devil symbolism, [with a] gothic satanic door and a black flag flying.”

The facade looks like a boxcar used to transport Jews to concentration camps, Sussman said, and disturbs elderly synagogue members who survived the Holocaust.

“They don’t want to pass a place that is frightening,” he said.

“I have a Holocaust relative myself,” [Death & Co. owner David] Kaplan responded. “I am Jewish, and I never considered it offensive in that way.”

Death & Co.’s name comes from the title of a Prohibition propaganda poster, and “has nothing to do with anything dark or gothic, and nothing to do with death itself,” Kaplan said.

But at least it’s not “HoHo”:

Does LoHo exist? Not according to Wikipedia.

An entry for LoHo posted on the popular online encyclopedia was deleted in late January following a series of debates on whether or not the posting met Wikipedia’s guidelines.

LoHo is an acronym for Lower Houston and its boosters say it signifies a specific neighborhood within the larger Lower East Side. However, opponents of LoHo’s being listed on Wikipedia argued that LoHo is not a distinct neighborhood, rather, that it is just a new, fancy name for the Lower East Side.

Juda Engelmayer, who posted the LoHo listing on Wikipedia, explained that LoHo is not all of the Lower East Side, but an area stretching from Houston St. to Chrystie St. and South St. to the East River.

“The Lower East Side is the old neighborhood,” Engelmayer said. The new name, he said, comes as a result of “new generations moving in.”

Engelmayer lives in the area and runs Kossar’s Bialys on Grand St.

. . .

Some criticize the new acronym as merely being a marketing ploy. The popularizing of the name has been connected with LoHo Reality [sic], a real estate brokerage firm located on Grand St. However, the term appears to have been coined by LoHo Studios, a music recording studio that got its start on Lafayette St. in 1983 and moved to Clinton St. on the Lower East Side in the late 1990s. Jacob Goldman, LoHo Reality’s president, disagrees with those who say that LoHo doesn’t exist.

“There is an area within the Lower East Side that is referred to as LoHo. Some people use it and some people don’t,” Goldman said.

Goldman said he thought it was ridiculous for people to act as though the LoHo name wasn’t in use at all.

“Companies use it in their names . . . LoHo Studios, etc. Mainstream media such as The New York Times have used the name LoHo. You can say that not a lot of people use it, but it is in use.”

. . .

Susan Stetzer, Community Board 3’s district manager, said that while the matter of the LoHo name’s validity and right to exist has never come before the board as an issue, she has “never heard anyone on the board use ‘LoHo’; it’s always ‘the Lower East Side.’” Stetzer said people are proud of the traditional name.

I wouldn’t expect New Jersey officials to accept theories about the origin of the mysterious smell without at least a token protest:

Garden State officials slammed New York City bigwigs yesterday for blaming New Jersey for the mighty stench that blanketed swaths of the city on Monday.

“It looks an awful lot like jumping to conclusions,” Lisa Jackson, New Jersey commissioner for environmental protection, told The Associated Press.

. . .

Amid the finger-pointing, neither state was any closer to finding the exact cause of the gaseous smell, which forced the evacuation of schools, stores and offices in Manhattan.

Maybe they should just rename it “Columbia”:

As Columbia University seeks to expand, there is almost as much debate about what to call its target neighborhood — bounded by 125th and 135th Sts., Broadway and Riverside Drive — as there is about the project itself.

Is it Manhattanville, as Columbia contends, or West Harlem?

“It’s an odd sort of a quibble,” said Eric Washington, author of “Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem.”

Actually, on second thought it’s not really at all like Nigeria*:

It evoked what-might-have-been comparisons to a 1985 accident on Staten Island.

The explosion of a gasoline pipeline in Nigeria on Monday killed 265 people.

On Sept. 23, 1985, a backhoe operator working on the Buckeye Pipeline accidentally severed a valve, which caused high-octane jet fuel to geyser 60 feet above Victory Boulevard near North Gannon Avenue in Willowbrook.

Miraculously, nobody was killed. And there was only one injury.

The jet fuel, which travels underneath Staten Island from New Jersey to LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, never ignited.

In the 15 minutes it took firefighters to respond and shut down the pipeline, 75,000 gallons of jet fuel had gushed out of the line.

. . .

The Buckeye pipeline system — comprising two 12-inch lines — carries more than 8 million gallons of fuel to the city every day with few problems, Haase said

“I don’t think people should be concerned,” said Haase, explaining that the 14-mile pipeline is constantly patrolled by vehicle and by foot, and “leak detection and location systems” automatically shut down both pipes when a leak is detected.

. . .

The twin Buckeye pipelines — and another major pipeline, the Transcontinental Pipeline — enter Staten Island from Carteret and Linden, N.J., at points along the West and South Shores and run underground near the Staten Island Expressway before exiting in Rosebank by the Alice Austen House.

Besides transporting jet fuel, the Buckeye pipeline system carries gasoline and home-heating fuel oil to storage yards in Brooklyn.

The Transcontinental Pipeline, meanwhile, carries natural gas from the Gulf Coast, by way of the borough and New York Harbor, to facilities in New York City.

Calls to Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Companies, owner of the Transcontinental Pipeline, were not returned.

A spider web of pipes carries natural gas and fuel across the borough, including about 15 minor pipelines that touch Staten Island as they carry products from Linden and Carteret to Bayonne. Also, the Colonial Pipeline, which runs to the Northeast from Gulf Coast oil refineries, ends at Kinder Morgan Staten Island, formerly Port Mobil.

*See, for example.

For some reason the word “hordes” may come to mind. It’s not your imagination — they actually use that word:

This was not the first time in recent months that Ms. [Sallie] Scripter had noticed the wrought-iron gate [of Gramercy Park] ajar. In August, Ian Schrager reopened the Gramercy Park Hotel, equipped with Italian linen, art by Andy Warhol, and keys to the park. Ever since then, local residents, who also possess keys to the park, have occasionally remarked that the gate had been left open.

An open gate may not seem a terribly pressing issue, but keys to this kingdom are highly prized. The hotel keeps its six keys for guest use on giant silver rings, each about the diameter of a Frisbee and decorated with a showy gold tassel.

Arlene Harrison, a park trustee, says she thought that hotel guests occasionally left the gate open because it was too heavy to close, or simply because they didn’t realize that according to park rules, it must be closed and locked even when visitors are inside.

And anxiety about the open gate may have less to do with the presence of guests at the hotel, where prices start at $525 a night, than of other people. “The terrible threat,” Ms. Harrison said, “is that with the gate wide open, hordes of people may come in.”

All of which precipitated some of the most stringent procedures ever applied to a park:

According to Ellis O’Connor, the hotel’s general manager, park-bound guests will be escorted there by a hotel worker, then educated about the park’s history and rules, including its bans on alcohol, pets, and groups larger than six. The worker will open the gate, close it behind the guests, and give them a key to let themselves out.

Still, Ms. Harrison intends to keep close tabs on it. “I speak to the managers there once or twice daily,” she said. “And I talk to Ian Schrager at least twice a week.”

It is often said that for every dollar the State of New York sends to the federal government in taxes, the state receives only 80 to 85 cents in return. That is about to change:

More than 500,000 New Yorkers are passing up food stamps that could add nearly $1 billion a year to the city’s economy, City Council members and advocates for the poor said.

In a new initiative begun last week, Council Speaker Christine Quinn vowed to sign up at least 350,000 additional eligible recipients by December 2009.

And she’s recruiting her fellow councilmembers to go into targeted communities at least once a month to help get the job done by her self-imposed deadline.

. . .

Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) said the city is passing up tens of millions of dollars of federal funds that would be spent in local grocery stores, supermarkets, bodegas, greenmarkets and other food retailers.

Many of those eligible don’t know they qualify or consider the application process too difficult. Still others may feel there’s a stigma to receiving food stamps, officials said.

Tom Lehrer can adjust his lyrics accordingly:

The Hasidic and Spanish communities of south Williamsburg are often rivals over the neighborhood’s housing stock, but they cooperate when it comes to keeping out a common enemy: gentrifiers.

Evidence of both the competition and the teamwork were on public display this Monday afternoon on South 8th Street between Bedford and Berry.

In the middle of that residential block, developer Michael Zazza has plans to tear down two of the oldest buildings in Williamsburg and put up a 20-story luxury condo in their place. “This is not going to be Jewish,” complained Ms. Cohen, who lives in an eight-story affordable apartment building down the block. “It’s going to be a new trend: Yuppies. They’re going to take over the neighborhood.”

Cohen was joined by over a dozen other orthodox Jews, the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (4BNA), Queens Councilman Tony Avella, and a few members of the local Spanish community to call on New York City to landmark 118 South 8th Street, an 1840s building which served as a social hall in the 19th century for Democrats, Republicans, Suffragettes, philosophers, healers, and teetotalers alike.

“This building represents the identity of this community,” argued retired firefighter Serafin Flores. “This is an important symbol which might be destroyed.”

When the Star asked Flores about the local rivalry between the two ethnic groups, he said, “We are competing for housing, let’s be honest. But on this, yes, we are united.”

Rabbi E. Katz quickly jumped in to agree to disagree and to just plain agree. “We have a problem,” he explained. “Everybody needs housing, but now we are united.”

Hizzoner hosts Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl in an effort to get illegal guns off the streets (”The new mayor of Pittsburgh came to City Hall yesterday to sign on to Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition of mayors against illegal guns. . . . ‘While the scale might be a little bit different, we do certainly face the same challenges and illegal guns are definitely one of those,’ Ravenstahl said.”).

What’s not clear, however, is whether the two mayors discussed Lower Manhattan’s latest liquor-related imbroglio:

Buster’s Garage might have been the bar of choice for local Steelers fans, but Tribeca residents have a different opinion of the recently defunct watering hole — and may stop it from ever returning to their neighborhood.

“This is the wrong, wrong business for this neighborhood,” said an angry Tribeca resident at a recent Community Board 1 committee meeting to consider a liquor license for Buster’s Garage, which hopes to move around the corner from its previous home at 180 W. Broadway to 24 Leonard St. Scores of residents turned out to oppose the application, squeezing into the small meeting room and pouring out into the hallway.

When the sports bar opened in 2003, it quickly became a favorite of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. In a neighborhood known more for celebrity eateries like Nobu and Montrachet, Buster’s Garage was beloved for its cheap beer and burgers. In 2005, the Village Voice rated it the “best place to fix your NASCAR jones” and in 2004, the New York Daily News listed it as one of the best sports bars in the city.

“We do so much business with the Tribeca blue collar community,” Buster’s general manager Eric Ness told Downtown Express after the meeting. “The reason we opened was because there’s nowhere around here where you can get a cheap beer and a burger — not everyone can afford Nobu every night.”

. . .

But after two failed attempts to move to a new location — including a plan to move to Carmine St. that was blocked by residents there — the owners opted to stay in North Tribeca. Construction recently began in the ground floor of a four-story parking garage on Leonard St., directly behind the old Buster’s site. The Provenzano family owns Buster’s and the garage the bar plans to move to, Louis Provenzano, Inc. The family also owns the 180 W. Broadway property, which it leased to developer Gregg Rechler of R Squared to build the 13-story condo.

. . .

The meeting was at times strident and heated as residents shouted at Provenzano representatives.

“I want you to make money — that’s the American way — but I don’t want it to be a sports bar,” Kristopher Brown, president of the Juilliard Building condo board at 18 Leonard St., told Buster’s representatives. Brown, the father of two small children, moved to the neighborhood in 2000 and worries the noise and crowds will keep his children awake.

Which is when shit got crazy:

Tensions reached a fevered pitched the following morning when Brown’s wife went to the Provenzano garage to retrieve her car and was told she was no longer welcome there. Word quickly spread through the Juilliard building that all residents would lose their coveted parking spaces as retribution.

. . .

“That would be crazy! We try to get customers, not lose customers.” Robert Pharaoh, manager of the garage told Downtown Express last week. Several monthly parkers had rushed down to the garage that morning fearing they too had lost their spots. Pharaoh eventually told the doorman at Julliard that no other residents had been evicted. “It was a personal dispute between the owner and one person,” he said.

The Not For Tourists Guide to Queens book-release party makes Talk of the Town:

The partygoers sprawled across the SculptureCenter’s gravel courtyard, picking at pieces of fruit and cheese. Many of them hailed from Manhattan or, disproportionately, from the newly trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, just across the Pulaski Bridge. Michael Sendrow, a twenty-nine-year-old Sunnyside resident (and brother-in-law of one of the guide’s editors), gave a possible explanation for the party’s inter-borough popularity. “It was posted on Myopenbar,” he said. (Myopenbar.com is “your guide to free booze’ in New York. “Queens is full of good shit,” the site’s notice for the N.F.T. party had said. “The Astoria pool, Indian gold by the pound, men with mustaches, strip joints . . .”) “Terrible,” someone chimed in. “I’m telling you: they’re all hipsters, here for the free beer. Cheats.”

Insofar as other Queens residents could be found, they, too, were wary of outside interest in their borough. Bryan Kimpel, a lifelong Astorian, confided his concern that Queens was on the verge of an invasion by exiles from pricier parts of the city. “I was just telling some of my friends about Water Taxi Beach, and then I was going, ‘Oh, jeez, I better not tell too many people.’ Because we’ll have to wait in line.” Cathy Albright, the one local who expressed unqualified enthusiasm for the guide, had moved, just a year earlier, to Astoria from Texas. “I’ve been waiting for the Queens edition to come out,” she said, clutching her complimentary copy. “The addresses are so screwy here.”

. . .

By eight, the party was winding down. Revellers had begun spilling out onto Jackson Avenue, some in search of the E, G, and 7 trains, others in the general direction of the nearby L.I.C. Bar. A dozen more loitered on the sidewalk in front of the SculptureCenter, apparently uncertain of their next move. Sendrow said, “I imagine that these people, who probably don’t know where they’re going, get a Queens guide and have to look at it in order to get back to wherever they’re from.”

What a wag . . .

Now that’s inventive:

In his long fought battle against the bar next door, Vernon Boulevard resident William Garrett got creative this summer. Fed up with the constant noise wafting into his backyard from Lounge 47 next door, and growing frustrated with the proper channels, he got out his digital recorder and decided to “make a little noise back at them.”

He taped snippets of an evening’s laughter and talking heard in his backyard, and then played it back over the fence.

“Instantaneously, the people in the bar were quiet—they were embarrassed,” he said.

The silence was short lived. Police responded within 48 hours, telling Garrett he could be arrested for “criminal eavesdropping.” It didn’t prove to be a very effective tactic, either.

But it does illustrate the level of frustration residents can reach when trying to fight seemingly hopeless battles against development too close to home.

Tim Doocey lives upstairs from the Garretts and is worried they are losing their battle against “reckless development” in the neighborhood.

“One of the great things about this neighborhood is that at night, it was like — crickets.” The latest battle is against a proposed restaurant/bar located immediately adjacent to the north of Garrett’s property on Vernon Boulevard.

Cops. They just don’t have a sense of humor, do they?

But that’s not all for this up(chuck)-and-coming neighbhorhood:

In addition to the noise, drunken revelers vomiting in the streets and the smoke from the outdoor patios, residents also complain that other types of establishments are needed. Doocey reports having to walk six blocks to the closest laundromat and others complained that a reliable grocery store remains absent as bars and restaurants keep moving in.

(How you can live in a neighborhood without a laundromat is beyond me . . .)

A State Liquor Authority hearing scheduled for Aug. 8, on whether to grant an on premise liquor license to the new restaurant — a Latin fusion place called Blend — was canceled at the last minute, but rescheduled for Sept. 19.

“We feel that granting this liquor license is a tipping point for the future of Vernon Boulevard being full of bars and that’s what worries us most,” said Garrett, who was also frustrated with the last minute cancelation of the hearing after they had rallied community support.

Joe Conley, chairman of Community Board 2, indicated that rescheduling the meeting was in the neighborhood’s best interest, allowing them time to galvanize support and get everyone the facts. “Our concern was we wanted to make sure the community would be heard,” Conley said.

He is sympathetic to the residents of Vernon Boulevard and the larger issue for the growing neighborhood.

“We are concerned about the density of bar restaurants in the area . . . I have been long on record to say we do not want Vernon Boulevard to turn into another Bell Boulevard,” referring to the Bayside strip of bars and restaurants that has seen its share of residential complaints.

Bell Boulevard? Try the East Village! That might stir up some response . . .

Sure to occupy the mental space of Brooklynites for years to come, the first in a series of high-profile, high-intensity meetings about the controversial Atlantic Yards project took place yesterday:

An overflow crowd vehemently laid out the pros and cons of the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn for seven hours last night at a raucous public meeting. Their passions suggested that opinions had only hardened in the three years since development plans were announced.

“This project essentially separates the neighborhoods of Brooklyn rather than uniting them,” said Jonathan Barkey, a photographer, brandishing posters he had generated of proposed skyscrapers towering over existing brownstones and playgrounds. “I would call this development a Great Wall of Brooklyn.”

Bring it on, said Dan Jederlinic, an ironworker. “Bulldozers are coming,” he warned the project’s opponents to whooping applause, “and if you don’t get out of the way they’re going to bulldoze right over you!”

. . .

Umar Jordan, 51, a black resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he had come to “speak for the underprivileged, the brothers who just got out of prison,” and he drew loud cheers when he mocked opponents who had moved to Brooklyn only recently. Mr. Jordan suggested that they “just go back up to Pleasantville.”

“People complaining about the size of a building, the height of this or that?” Mr. Jordan said. “Welcome to the hood; this is Brooklyn!”

. . .

Outside the auditorium, meanwhile, hundreds from the housing group Acorn, which supports the project, chanted, “This is our neighborhood, and we know what is good.”

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a civil rights activist whose church nearly abuts the project site, was talking to reporters about the need for lower-income housing when Mr. Barkey, the photographer, interrupted him.

“Like this?” Mr. Barkey said sarcastically, pointing to his posters of huge, blank building faces towering over a neighborhood. “This is rich folks’ housing. Look at these walls.”

Mr. Daughtry was not impressed. “Don’t you understand that all we’ve been around is walls all our lives?” he said. “You need to take that somewhere else.”

(Say what you want about the Ratners — they really built up a solid flank . . .)

Location scout: Atlantic Yards.

The latest front in the war between old timers and hipster carpetbaggers is the McCarren Park tennis court:

Hipsters, beware: Brooklyn’s old-timers are protecting their turf. Or at least they are at the McCarren Park tennis courts, in Greenpoint, where a gang of 50 retirement-age ralliers — a de facto tennis mafia — calls the shots, swearing at those who try to uproot them from “their” two chosen courts.

“They seem to own the place,” complained one young player from Williamsburg, who said that in the past the men cursed at him when he asked them to move after their scheduled time was up.

Another irate — and intimidated — player corroborated those claims, saying that the men have hurled “more Polish at me than I know what to do with.”

Many of the McCarren racketeers are old friends, and have met at the park for tennis for more than two decades.

“Over the years, courts 6 and 7″ — the two most-secluded courts, on the Berry Street side of the park — “kind of became the Polish courts,” explained Amleto Mazza, a rare Italian member of the group.

. . .

And although they might not be playing nice, technically these Greenpoint goodfellas aren’t breaking any rules. For instance, by rotating players on their own, no one violates the one-hour per player per court time limit.

But try explaining that to the players who end up stalled on the other side of the fence — a crowd that has doubled in the past five years.

A few spats over the years got so bad that police had to intervene and toss the guys out.

The group’s bad reputation has grown, and the threat of conflict seems to have effectively aced would-be interlopers. A handful of McCarren’s younger regulars hesitated when asked to comment on the gang.

“Trying to get them off is a big headache,” one tennis player finally said. “They don’t want anybody else playing on their courts.”

Another player said he sometimes gets to play with the geezers, “but it took me years to get to that point,” the player told The Brooklyn Papers — as long as we promised anonymity.

He refused to answer additional questions. “I’ve pretty much said all I can say,” he explained.