There’s a reason you wait until the last minute to publicly address traffic and parking concerns:

IKEA officials yesterday revealed plans for how they plan to pacify Red Hook, Brooklyn once thousands of shoppers start heading there daily on June 18 when the Swedish home-furniture giant opens its first New York City store on the Beard Street waterfront.

Highlighting the transportation improvements arranged specifically for the new IKEA is free water-taxi service to and from lower Manhattan.

The service, to be provided by New York Water Taxi, will run every 40 minutes during store hours, said store manager Mike Baker. Water taxis will dock along a 6.5-acre public esplanade that IKEA had to build behind the store to help garner elected officials’ support for the controversial $100 million project.

Other transit improvements will include beefed-up bus service and free shuttle service connecting to the three closest subway stops, which are still over a mile away.

. . .

Red Hook itself is fenced off from the rest of the borough by the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and even the nearest highway entrance on the BQE is over a mile away from the 346,000-square-foot store.

IKEA is offering 1,400 parking spots, although the project’s environmental impact statement estimates about 14,000 cars arriving on Saturdays. [Red Hook Civic Alliance co-chair John] McGettrick says he believes it will actually be 20,000.

But IKEA spokesman Joseph Roth said he expects most New Yorkers to leave their cars home and use the new transit options.

For example, IKEA is offering free shuttle service every ten minutes from three subway stations: Borough Hall/Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, Smith/9th Street in Carroll Gardens, and 4th Avenue/9th Street in Gowanus.

And the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is extending the B61 and B77 bus routes to stop directly in front of the store.

More NYC & Company overreach:

Tree-lined Henry Street was briefly turned into one long billboard, but Brooklyn Heights residents erupted after seeing commercial banners on the mostly residential street, so the city removed them.

On Monday, banners reading “Brooklyn loves to shop” were hung on lampposts from Clark to Montague streets — and locals slammed the commercialization of the strip.

“I absolutely detest them,” said Veronica Rylander, 48. “They’re so out of place here above all these houses. I feel like it cheapens the look of the neighborhood.”

For Liana Schwartz, 36, it wasn’t the aesthetics, but the practicality of the banners that provoked her disdain.

“I just don’t even get why they’re hanging here,” said Schwartz. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to put them Downtown or on streets where there are actually places to shop?”

After The Brooklyn Paper started asking local officials about the appropriateness of posting ads in a residential corridor, the banners were taken down and relocated to commercial Court Street on Wednesday morning.
Brooklyn Bridge Realty

The banners — which are sponsored by Greek natural skincare company Korres, which just opened on Montague Street, and NYC& Co., the city’s tourist board — also annoyed people who think tourism officials don’t get Brooklyn — or maybe get it too well.

“They put those signs on Henry because they know there are lots of cars speeding through here,” said one man.

Law firms forced to slum it in Brooklyn:

The Atlantic Yards project may be falling apart on Bruce Ratner, but the developer released some big news for his Metrotech office complex Downtown: the Manhattan law firm of Weil, Gotshal is moving to Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner Vice President Mary Anne Gilmartin made the announcement at the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable on Tuesday that the 500-lawyer white shoe firm would soon relocate to Metrotech.

“It’s a paragon shift from back-office to more-discerning tenants,” she said.

Update . . .

Highlighting the importance of keeping up appearances (as in, the economy actually grew 0.6 percent last quarter so we’re doing very well, thank you very much), the law firm denies the horrible accusation:

The Atlantic Yards project may be falling apart on Bruce Ratner, but the developer released some big news for his Metrotech office complex Downtown: the Manhattan law firm of Weil, Gotshal is moving part of its office to Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner Vice President Mary Anne Gilmartin made the announcement at the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable on Tuesday, but said that the 500-lawyer white shoe firm would soon relocate to Metrotech. That turned out to be untrue, as a press release from the company said only some back-office staffers would relocate to 15 Metrotech, which is on the office complex’s commons, between Myrtle Avenue and Tech Place.

[Gersh, you're killing me, buddy -- here I am ready to sit down with a tall glass of scotch and then . . .]

At least they didn’t eat it:

A box turtle that has for years crawled through backyards in Williamsburg was discovered last week painted a sickly orange, with neighbors blaming construction workers next door with ample time and spray paint on their hands.

Photos of the poor turtle, known as Myrtle, in her new Technicolor shell were first posted on the blog The Gowanus Lounge, and caused a cascade of vitriol on the site.

“Whoever did this should rot in hell,” wrote one commenter. “We live in a world of sociopaths,” commented another.

Myrtle the Turtle was discovered painted orange in a backyard next to a development that has long been an irritant to longtime residents. They have complained of demolition work, cracks appearing in the walls of their homes, and ripped out phone and cable lines.

The developer of the residential project at 5 Roebling Street, Shlomo Karpen, could not be reached for comment.

The owner of the building next to the development has for years been keeping turtles in her backyard. Meredith Chesney, who lives there, says the practice is something of a neighborhood folk custom.

She said she believed that the turtle escaped through a hole in the fence left by the construction work and wondered onto the site.

Many in the neighborhood said they thought that the appearance of a traffic cone-colored terrapin symbolized all that had gone wrong with their area.

I don’t get it:

Disturbing, gang-like graffiti is cropping up all over a Brooklyn elementary school, marring a playground, classrooms and two teachers’ cars, authorities said.

The troubling words “Jump White People” and abbreviation “JWP” have appeared at Public School 224 in East New York about a dozen times in the past three weeks, and some teachers are concerned that it’s not being taken seriously.

“It just quietly gets erased,” one teacher said. “Nothing gets done.”

The words were also scrawled in marker on a Snapple machine, desks and several walls, prompting four students ranging in age from 8 to 11 to be disciplined, cops said.

But the graffiti has continued to surface since the in-school suspensions. As recently as Wednesday, a staff member found JWP in a closet, a source said.

And teachers worry that the markings are not just a prank, but instead show that the kids are mimicking gang culture at a young age.

If by “pizzazz and energy” you mean inflexible food co-op rules and double-wide strollers, then yes, it will surely be a hit:

Producers are giving Park Slope the star treatment with a pilot by the same executives who brought “Sex and the City,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and “Melrose Place” to TV.

According to industry sources, Darren Star, who created those smash shows, has teamed with Sony and NBC for a proposed series about a group of affluent characters who live in the upscale Brooklyn neighborhood.

Sue Kramer, who wrote and directed the 2006 romantic comedy “Gray Matters” starring Heather Graham, Bridget Moynahan and Molly Shannon, is writing the script.

“It’s an hour-long dramady,” Kramer, who lives in Park Slope, told Page Six.

“It takes place in Park Slope and Park Slope is one of the characters in it. Park Slope has so much juice, just like Manhattan. It’s got a lot of pizzazz and energy.”

Crazed ex? Pissed off creditor? No one knows:

Residents of a block in Boerum Hill have known for months that rogue urinators were defiling their street, but they never had the proof to convince local police of a scatological conspiracy on Dean Street — until now.

A two-liter container of human urine, complete with syringes bobbing in the waste, was found Sunday morning between Bond and Nevins streets — and the repulsive find was finally enough to prove to cops that residents were being tormented by micturating hellions and not merely dogs with overactive bladders.

“It’s absolutely gross,” said Joseph Samulski, who had the misfortune of finding the container on his front steps. “I don’t even know how you could accumulate that much urine.”

But on the brighter side, “It was the first time we were able to establish what we’ve been saying on our block — that someone has been pouring urine on cars.”

. . .

The pissing match broke out on the day of the block party last September, when several people emerged from their homes near the Nevins Street end of the block to encounter an overpowering stench of liquid waste on the street and in one man’s pickup truck.

Since then, that pickup truck has been showered at least two other times.

“Thankfully, whenever it happened, my truck needed a good washing anyway,” said good sport Kevin McGowan.

Now that Red Hook has passed its prime, it’s ready to be Wyominged*:

A reborn Cheyenne Diner could be serving up bison burgers, French fries and chocolate egg creams on Brooklyn’s Red Hook waterfront by the summer.

Preservationist Michael Perlman said Monday a contract has been signed to move the Cheyenne, one of the city’s last rail-car-style diners, to the Borough of Kings.

The Cheyenne, a landmark at 33th St. and Ninth Ave. in Manhattan for more than 50 years, closed April 6 to make way for a nine-story residential and commercial development.

Perlman, who formed a committee to save the diner, said Mike O’Connell of O’C Construction, the son of noted Red Hook developer Greg O’Connell, is the buyer.

*As in.

A cohesive family unit is important, just not at gunpoint:

A Brooklyn man enraged that his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t let him see their infant daughter kidnapped the child at gunpoint Tuesday, police said.

Shawn Fariera, 20, and a friend busted into Melissa Fyffe’s Weeksville apartment about 5:40 p.m., saying they had some clothes for 3-month-old Shamiece, cops and witnesses said.

“He bum-rushed the door,” said Fyffe, 21, who has a protective order against Fariera. “He grabbed her off my mother’s bed. While he had her in his arms, he pulled a small black gun out of his back pocket and put it to my face.”

Fariera’s friend grabbed some baby blankets from the bed, and the duo escaped through a back door in the building, Fyffe said.

The plight of the self-consciously trendy is they’re always a step or two behind:

The promise of learning the cold, hard realities of today’s housing market is what brought more than a dozen skinny-jean-wearing, tattoo-sporting members of Williamsburg’s art and music scene to Hugs bar last month to attend [real estate agent Eve] Levine’s first “Hipster Mortgage Night.”

It’s the latest version of a marketing campaign Levin first began as mere barroom lectures.

“There is so much information people just don’t know,” said Levine, a musician and artist herself who created the event not only as a tool for marketing her own business, but also a means of supplying financial and home buying know-how to a group of people she bluntly describes as “the opposite of Wall Street.”

Members of that group, frankly, agree with that assessment.

“Figuring out how to buy a home in New York City is like climbing Mount Everest,” said Margaret Raimondi, who attended the event with her fiancé, Brad Augustine.

“Hopefully, ‘Hipster Mortgage Night’ will make it more like climbing Mount Rainier,” she added, referring to the much-shorter mountain in Washington State.

The immutables of city life — jerks will never move in to the center of the subway car, jackasses will continue to prove to the neighborhood that even if they don’t have the nicest automobile they surely have the loudest car stereo and your moronic, retarded tenants will never ever learn how to separate their recycling:

Richard Martin, the 71-year-old superintendent at 278 91st St., recently ended his showdown against tenants who were careless about throwing out their garbage, and has agreed to drag the nine moldering trashcans from the lobby of the building back to their rightful spot outside.

“I don’t care anymore,” said Martin, who burst onto the public consciousness last year, after The Brooklyn Paper wrote a story about the hostile hand-written signs he posted on the building lambasting his tenants as “lazy” and “dangerous” for not properly putting out their trash.

“Tenants don’t care, landlord don’t care, Ritchie Martin don’t care.”

His sudden lack of concern is a stark contrast to back in November, when Martin’s notes — all featuring his black, green and red all caps scrawl — angrily told tenants what he expected: “Take covers off to put your garbage in and put covers back on. You tenants better stop being stupid and retarded.”

When tenants failed to respond to his colorful signs, Martin hauled the garbage up to the roof, forcing some tenants to hike as many as five floors to get rid of their trash.

“It’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline,” said one local resident of Martin’s antics.

And sure enough, the tenants continued to mix waste and recyclables.

Martin then brought out the big guns: He pulled the eight trashcans inside, forcing residents to live with piled up garbage in the lobby of their building.

Earlier: What A Country.

Mrs. Markowitz swag-gers her way around town:

Who knew the first lady of Brooklyn was also its biggest booster?

Jamie Markowitz, the wife of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, scooped up eight pricey fiberglass place mats - works of art by pop artist Takashi Murakami - set aside for guests at a glitzy Brooklyn Museum gala.

The limited-edition Technicolor mats, which have sold for $1,000 on eBay after a similar event, were included in a grab bag of pricey freebies for guests celebrating the opening of the artist’s three-month exhibition last Thursday.

“It’s a little true,” Markowitz laughed Sunday when asked about an item on RadarOnline.com that painted her as a tad greedy.

Radar reported that when several guests who didn’t get a mat asked for one of her eight, she replied, “You guys really should have acted faster. This is Brooklyn!”

To another, she said, “You snooze, you lose, buddy. Forget it.”

The thing about neighborhood amenities is that you really, really only need one thing — a laundromat:

Hundreds of residents of a public housing project in Vinegar Hill have been forced to walk nearly a mile to do their laundry ever since the on-site Laundromat closed last year.

Farragut Houses, the city-run, 10-tower complex of 3,440 residents, has zero laundry facilities within a nearly 20-block radius.

“It is almost a year since we’ve had a Laundromat,” said Ines, 64, who declined to give her last name.

So at about 7 am last Friday, there was Ines, setting out from the intersection of Navy Street and Flushing Avenue with a cart piled high with laundry, making the first steps of a 25-minute walk to a Laundromat on Myrtle Avenue.

“It’s terrible,” said Ines, who added that the trip was especially difficult thanks to her respiratory problems.

. . .

The weekly march to one of the two Myrtle Avenue Laundromats — one at North Portland Avenue, the other at Carlton Avenue — would not be necessary if the city found another operator for the basement laundry space at 191 Sand St., which was closed last year because it “was not up to code,” said Howard Marder, spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority.

He added that there “is no immediate plan” to put a new laundry facility into the Farragut Houses.

. . .

Some residents, like tenants association President Deborah Stewart, have their own washing machines. But many others, she said, make the “long and very inconvenient” walk to Myrtle.

Or, like her neighbor Deborah Ansley, they rely on relatives to drive them out of the neighborhood.

“I have a daughter who lives out in East New York, and she comes and drives me,” said Ansley, who has two herniated discs so she cannot make the trek to the Laundromat.

Unlike other gentrified neighborhoods, DUMBO, which borders the Farragut Houses, has no Laundromats — though there are plenty of coffee shops and restaurants and no less than two modern design shops.

In part, that’s because all of the new luxury developments have a washer and dryer in each unit.

Circumstances aren’t much better at neighboring housing projects, according to Ed Brown, the president of the Ingersoll Tenants Association in Fort Greene.

Ingersoll hasn’t had a Laundromat in more than 11 years. Meanwhile, the Laundromat directly across the street from the project has been demolished to make way for John Castimatidis’s luxury residential development — one that the Gristedes owner has put off indefinitely, thanks to the credit crisis.

Better to decamp to Jackson, Prospect or even Morris Heights than whoring every detail of your life for clicks, according to the person who started it all (by portraying someone who started it all):

Budding Carrie Bradshaws better think about moving to Queens, says “Sex and the City” icon Sarah Jessica Parker.

Manhattan is bracing for another influx of Blahnik-wearing career girls after the film is released May 30. But New York is “a really hard city, and it’s very expensive and it’s not what it used to be,” Parker told me at the Cinema Society and Linda Wells’ screening of her new film, “Smart People.”

“That’s why the outer boroughs are so desirable,” she said. “The outer boroughs are pretty sexy. It’s just a matter of time before they have their own shows.”

Atlantic Yards opponents are aiming high with their latest, and possibly last strategy:

The proposed Atlantic Yards development near downtown Brooklyn could prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider when government may use eminent domain to seize private property.

About a dozen holdout residents within the project’s planned boundaries are petitioning the high court to forbid their eviction. If the residents win, the development, which entails 16 towers of residential and office space and a basketball arena, would be halted. One resident, Daniel Goldstein, said his two-bedroom apartment is near center court of the proposed arena.

If four justices agree to hear the appeal, it would be the court’s first to test the power of government to seize property through eminent domain since a landmark decision in 2005 in the case of Kelo v. the City of New London. In that decision, which produced a groundswell of public opposition across the country, the court ruled 5–4 that the government can seize property and transfer it to a private developer to foster economic development.

“If they had the stomach for it, they could accept this case to overrule Kelo,” the lead attorney for the residents, Matthew Brinkerhoff, said of the justices.

Mr. Brinkerhoff’s petition to the Supreme Court focuses on a more modest aim than convincing the court to scrap its opinion in Kelo just three years after issuing it. The residents are asking the court to give them a chance to prove their allegation that the primary motivation behind the Atlantic Yards project isn’t a desire to benefit the public. Instead, the plaintiffs claim the project is mainly a conspiracy to benefit the interests of the project’s developer, Bruce Ratner, and his company, Forest City Ratner.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

. . . the word “bicoastal”:

Eve Levine, a 34-year-old real estate broker, recalls fondly the five years when she was, as she calls it, “low-cost bicoastal.” Her primary residence was in Brooklyn — first Williamsburg, then Bushwick and now Greenpoint — but she also had an apartment in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, Calif., that she visited for long stretches.

The apartment, actually a warehouse, was really big and inexpensive, she said. Friends paid the rent, but Ms. Levine said she could come back whenever she wanted, because they were friends.

In the fall of 2005, she severed ties to her West Coast warehouse.

“If you are trying to build something, whether a career or a bank account, you need to make a choice,” she said.

These days, she is a host of a gathering in Williamsburg called Home Buying for Hipsters, at which she explains the idea of Tenancy in Common, a form of ownership that enables people to combine their resources to buy a house jointly instead of just renting together. It is popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, she said, and she hopes to bring it to Brooklyn, where there is a similar pool of young people who have a history of sharing apartments through their 20’s.

. . .

Much the way Hollywood people have shuttled between Los Angeles and Manhattan for decades, or academics commute on the Acela between Morningside Heights and Cambridge, Mass., there is a young, earnest population that is beating a path between artsy, gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and their counterparts in the Bay Area, especially East Oakland and the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, or SoMa.

Other communities across the country also fit this bill, but what Brooklyn and the East Bay share is proximity to more cosmopolitan centers — Manhattan and San Francisco — where the “creative class,” many of whom are freelancers, can earn a living.

“You can make money in both cities,” Ms. Levine said. “Can you make money in Portland, Ore.? It’s a cool city, it’s got lots of hipsters, but can you make money?”

. . .

If there is an aesthetic credo to Brooklyn and the Bay Area, it is Do It Yourself, which connotes more than using an Allen wrench from Ikea. D.I.Y. can mean everything from wearing locally designed T-shirts to attending concerts staged in someone’s warehouse apartment, to riding a bike to work.

Several businesses that have opened in both Brooklyn and the Bay Area exemplify the aesthetic. One of them, Rare Device, a home furnishings and fashion store in Park Slope, sells felted throw pillows and “wildcrafted soap.”

Many of the spaces in the downtown Brooklyn “park”-ing lot supposedly occupied by judges for supposed security reasons are actually being used by their secretaries:

It’s not just judges who are parking in the controversial judicial parking lot in a downtown Brooklyn park, the Daily News has learned.

Secretaries, court staffers and judicial hearing officers also are parked inside Columbus Park, a recent Daily News survey found.

Law clerks who chauffeur their judgebosses to work also have nabbed the coveted spots, the News found.

“It certainly shoots a hole in the argument that they need this parking lot for judges’ security,” said Transportation Alternatives spokesman Wiley Norvell of the Civil Court judges’ stance they need to park near the old courthouse next to Borough Hall where they preside over volatile cases. “It’s a job perk.”

The News’ findings came as judges threatened to sue the city over its plans to oust some of the cars from the lot and turn it back into a pedestrian plaza. Work is slated to begin as early as next month.

. . .

In 1999, judges allegedly promised to move their cars to a garage at the new courthouse at 330 Jay St. when it opened in 2005.

But they have more recently argued it is unsafe and inconvenient for judges who preside over divorce and foreclosure cases to park in the new Criminal Court garage and make the six-minute, two-block trek to Civil Court.

“They can’t walk two blocks to a garage, but they all walk to Queen for lunch,” quipped one insider, referring to a well-known Court St. Italian restaurant.

Among The News’ findings from its March 7 review are:

Nearly 40% of the 44 cars — 17 — did not belong to judges.

Three cars belonged to judges’ secretaries.

Another five cars were law clerks’; while two more were driven by high-level courthouse administrators.

Four cars were listed to retired judges now working as judicial hearing officers or court attorney referees.

Two cars belonged to court officers assigned to watch over the lot. One car’s owner could not be identified.

Location Scout: Columbus Park.

. . . to burnish your legacy somehow, somewhere:

With time running out on Mayor Bloomberg’s dream of rebuilding Coney Island, the city is now looking to bring a controversial developer back into the plan to build America’s largest amusement park, sources told The Post.

Only six months ago, when the term-limited mayor announced his grand 47-acre rezoning plan for Coney Island, city officials said developer Joe Sitt and other boardwalk property owners weren’t qualified to build the new 15-acre park the mayor envisions there.

But with the economy dwindling and deals to buy the 15 acres — including 11 Sitt controls — far from being reached, city officials said they are suddenly open to them playing a yet-to-be defined role in the park, even through the goal remains finding a world-class operator to run it.

A malfunctioning science project forces its owner to go into full Magritte mode to calm fellow subway riders:

A school science project that went awry and caused smoke to billow from a student’s backpack sent panicked B train riders scurrying for the exits Thursday in Brooklyn.

“This is not a bomb! This is not terror!” yelled Gregory Kats, 29, a computer engineering student at the New York City College of Technology.

Kats, 29, was heading home from school when wires on a device he had built short-circuited in his backpack, he told the Daily News afterward.

When white smoke began spiraling out of his backpack as the train neared the Seventh Ave. station in Park Slope, riders quickly became alarmed, he said.

“They were panicking, and I realized their fear,” an apologetic Kats said at his Sheepshead Bay home.

They “started to jump out of the train” as soon as it stopped at the platform and the doors opened, Kats said.

He said he tried to disassemble the contraption on the platform even as he reassured riders, “Don’t worry. This is my science project.”

Not only are New Yorkers getting fat because of the smoking ban but some parts of the city are also noticing a disturbing trend of rising numbers of underage patrons in bars:

A new South Slope bar has waded into the ongoing battle over whether kids should join their parents at taverns by siding with the stroller set.

Minus the strollers, however.

The owners of the one-month-old Toby’s Public House, a pizzeria/bar on the corner of 21st Street and Sixth Avenue, have posted the seemingly contradictory sign on the door reading, “NO STROLLERS, FAMILY FRIENDLY.”

But there’s no contradiction — kids are welcome. General Manager Tim Judge will even give you a bike lock to secure your stroller outside.

“We have a very small space, so we can’t let strollers inside,” said Judge. “But we’ve got locks for six or seven strollers. If the weather gets really bad, we’ll even bring them down into the basement.”

The fact that such a sign is even necessary shows the struggle that bar owners face when they choose to open in family neighborhoods: bars that welcome kids run the risk of alienating harder-drinking patrons, while bars that ban babies outright stand to lose their parents as customers.

There is no better argument for congestion pricing, and the massive increase in transit revenue that will surely result, than a law-abiding man made crazy from irregular B13 service:

A Sing Sing prison guard has been busted for allegedly using his state-issued revolver to carjack three strangers in Brooklyn, The Post has learned.

Brian Duran, 46, was arrested Sunday at 12:20 a.m. after one victim flagged down a patrol car.

Duran allegedly smashed in the rear window of a Ford Taurus parked at 100 Bushwick Ave. in Williamsburg.

Sources said the three friends were waiting for a fourth when Duran, who had been standing at a bus stop, suddenly came over.

“What’s your f- - -ing problem?” driver Anthony Peña, 23, quoted him as yelling.

“Nobody has a problem. Just go about your business,” he was told.

To which Duran allegedly countered, “I’m going to show you a problem!” — as he pulled his state-issued Smith & Wesson and struck the window so hard that he dropped the gun inside the car.

Said Peña: “I got out and hid on the side and said, ‘What are you, crazy?’ ”

. . .

Duran, suspended without pay, was arraigned Sunday on charges of grand and petty larceny, menacing, criminal mischief, criminal possession of stolen property, and unauthorized use of a vehicle.

His estranged wife, who declined to give her name, was at a loss to explain his actions.

“There has to be more of this story. He’s never done anything like this,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. This has to be an [early] April Fool’s joke.”

This seems like a losing proposition, but they should know, I guess:

A group of Brooklyn judges is preparing to sue the city to preserve its parking privileges in a park next to Borough Hall, claiming that the removal of 20 or so spaces will endanger the judges’ safety because the nearest garage is two blocks away.

Oh yeah, Brooklyn judges . . . I seem to remember reading something about them.

Restauranteurs, although it may seem strange that you can charge someone $8 for a beer and no one will flinch but try to get $5 for a soda and people get all in a snit, trust me, it’s not worth it:

They don’t call it “The Five Spot” for nothing — because this otherwise reasonably priced Myrtle Avenue soul-food restaurant is now charging $5 for a soda.

Yes, $5 for a large Sprite, Coke or root beer — the same price as about a gallon and a half of gas; two and a half shares of Bear Stearns or a Barnes and Noble classic copy of “Macbeth.”

That’s also 50 cents more than a Coke will cost you at The River Café, one of the most-expensive restaurants in Brooklyn.

Surprised?

So was Kate Myers, who dined with her husband and 5-year-old son at the Five Spot on Sunday, March 9.

The family walked into the restaurant, at Washington Avenue, at about 3:30 pm, and ordered two notably reasonably priced entrees: the Clinton Hill Crispy Chicken Fingers ($6.90), and the Five Spot Fish N Chips ($7.95).

And they ordered three drinks: one vodka tonic ($8), one Brooklyn Lager ($8), and a Sprite for little Joe ($5).

Lest you think the high price for soft drinks stems from a bottomless mug, think again. There are no refills — which Myers discovered when she ordered her son a second soda.

“The bill came and we saw there were $10 worth of Sprites,” said Myers, still in disbelief. “If it had been $3, I would have thought it was too much. I travel a lot for my job, and for room service, I don’t pay ever $5.”

NIMBYers somehow invaded the bodies of the four preservationists devoted to the cause of the Gowanus Canal:

Activists admitted that there was some irony in trying to retain the current polluted state of the canal by seeking protection for the industrial buildings that hastened its demise during the 19th and 20th centuries. But they said it’s possible to separate the buildings themselves from the messy business that went on inside.

“They are perfect specimens of what industrial buildings looked like at the start of the Industrial Revolution,” said Betty Stoltz, a member of Friends and Residents of the Greater Gowanus. “Think of it this way: I don’t love everything the Church does, but I don’t want to see churches destroyed.”

Location Scout: Gowanus Canal.

Well, it’s a good thing they rushed to tear down all those people’s homes:

The slowing economy, weighed down by a widening credit crisis, is likely to delay the signature office tower and three residential buildings at the heart of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the developer said.

“It may hold up the office building,” the developer, Bruce C. Ratner, said in a recent interview. “And the bond market may slow the pace of the residential buildings.”

Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, did not specify the kinds of delays possible, but suggested that construction could be put off for years. His comments are his first public indication that the darkening economy has slowed the ambitious project, spanning 22 acres at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950 million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of the year. The arena was to be surrounded by the office tower, known as Miss Brooklyn, and three residential buildings in the first phase of the project.

But Mr. Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for the Miss Brooklyn building, and now plans to phase in the residential buildings slowly.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

. . . so don’t goof with the skullcap, cheese:

Uria Ohana, 25, a member of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, told The Post he entered a subway station alone at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Park Slope at 6:20 p.m. Tuesday.

Ohana said he went through a turnstile and spotted a group of young Arabic men sitting on a bench.

“I wasn’t afraid of anything. I didn’t think anything would happen,” he said.

But something did.

Ohana said he felt a hand grab his brown yarmulke off his head.

He then spun around and came face to face with one of the men, Ali Hussein, 18, police said.

“There were no words exchanged. I decided to chase him to get my yarmulke back,” Ohana said.

Hussein’s friends joined in the foot pursuit, screaming “Allah-hu Akbar,” which means “God is great.”

They ran outside and Hussein darted into the street, where he was hit by a blue Volvo and toppled to the ground, cops said.

“He couldn’t move. He broke his leg. He was crying,” said Ohana.

Oh, so that’s what those people do all day at those coffee shops in Park Slope:

You’re creative? You’re self-employed? Brooklyn’s for you.

In the last six years, Brooklyn has outpaced the rest of the city in attracting creative entrepreneurs, according to statistics from the Center for the Urban Future.

“It really is quality of life. It’s not as expensive and it’s not as busy as Manhattan. Brooklyn is hip. It has reached that level,” said Scott Adkins, a playwright who opened two writer’s spaces in Park Slope. “You’re guaranteed to have a good coffee shop.”

. . .

About 375,000 workers in the city were self-employed as of 2006 — a 23% increase from 2000, the center found.

In Brooklyn, the number of freelance writers, artists, architects, producers and interior, industrial and graphic designers increased more than 33% in the same period, compared with 6.5% in Manhattan.

That means nearly 22,000 creative freelancers live in Brooklyn - mainly in Park Slope, Williamsburg and downtown, according to the Brooklyn Economic Development Corp.

. . .

“I moved to Brooklyn in 1990 to work for Spike (Lee),” said cinematographer/photographer Frederick V. Nielson II. “At first, I was reluctant to leave Manhattan. I was like, damn, they give you a 718 area code.”

He first settled in Fort Greene, but moved to Prospect Heights after the birth of his son.

“I like the pluralism of living here. I know the guy at the candy shop. People here really patronize the local artists,” he said. “Once they’ve seen me in the neighborhood, or the diner, they’ll come up and buy my work.”

Adkins said the borough has come a long way from only a decade ago.

“It has everything Manhattan has — good theater, good restaurants. People actually use the G train now. It used to be a terrible train,” he said. “The one thing I don’t like is the Mexican bakeries are closing down.”

Well, I guess it’s better than a bus station, right? But Washington has a lot of stuff named for him. Just off the top of my head, there’s Washington Square Park, Washington, D.C., Washington State. But some cherry tree-cutting wooden-toothed sycophants want even more:

In a bid to rewrite a wrongly re-written history, a group of Park Slopers wants to change the name of J.J. Byrne Park so that it re-honors its original namesake — the one and only George Washington.

The park, which is bounded by Fourth and Fifth avenues and Third and Fourth streets, is currently named for an obscure Depression-era borough president.

The Beep vs. the Father of our Country? That’s about as fair a fight as Ron Paul vs. John McCain.

And J.J. Byrne is the loser in that metaphor, said Kim Maier, executive director of the Old Stone House, the recreated 17th-century Dutch farmhouse in the park.

“J.J. Byrne usurped the park,” Maier said, explaining that the current site had been Washington Park, the first professional baseball field in the country, since the 1800s. The site earned the name because it was near a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of Maryland soldiers under the command of General William Alexander (don’t worry, he has a junior high school named after him nearby), Washington and the rest of the rag-tag American army was able to flee across Gowanus Creek and to safety in Manhattan.

“We’re merely changing the name of the park back to what it originally had,” said Maier.

Perhaps, but let us take a moment to praise J.J. Byrne before he’s buried forever.

Byrne was appointed to the borough presidency in 1926, after the death of legendary Beep Joseph Guilder. Byrne completed the term and was re-elected in 1929, but himself died in office the following year.

He’s credited with initiating or completing construction of the Municipal Building on Joralemon Street and the Central Court Building (now Brooklyn Criminal Court) on Schermerhorn Street.

His proclivity for grand construction was foreshadowed by his previous work as Brooklyn’s Commissioner of Public Works.

In that context, Maier’s support for the return of George Washington is particularly ironic, given that Byrne was the borough president who rebuilt the Old Stone House in 1930.

Now that I think about it, who is Nathanael Greene and why should we care?

But really, “Members Spring Fest” sounds more like spam email than anything else:

A decision by the Prospect Park Alliance to rename its annual “Family Day” event is drawing criticism from those who say the new name, “Members Spring Fest,” represents a frivolous bow to political correctness.

“Family Day,” an annual event organized by the Prospect Park Alliance for its members, features carousel rides, pedal boats, and tours of the park’s Audubon Center.

A senior vice president of the Prospect Park Alliance, Robyn Bellamy, who approved the name change, said dropping the “family” from the event’s title was intended as an attempt to boost attendance by conveying to single people, seniors, and other members that they were welcome. A recent postcard mailed to neighbors announcing “Members Spring Fest” reads in parentheses, “formerly known as Family Day.” “We look at our membership base, which is the public, and it includes young people who just moved in, families who have been here for awhile or are new, seniors — it really runs the gamut of ages and interests,” Ms. Bellamy said in an interview. “We’re still offering the same event in the spring but letting people know that it’s really for all members.”

Brooklyn gets greyer (”The war between childless bar-goers and the so-called stroller Mafia has ended at one restaurant: the eatery is offering on-site babysitters to watch children in a separate room while their parents — and everyone else — dine and drink in peace”), while Queens gets funnier:

The Astoria Comedy Club is set to open Friday at Mezzo Mezzo restaurant on Ditmars Blvd. — the only venue in the borough for regular comic relief.

The 75-seat club, located in a performance space on the second floor of the eatery, will be open four days a week for now and feature comedians from across the country.

“About 10 years ago, all the comics moved to Astoria because it’s cheap,” said Matt Taylor, the club’s host. “There’s more talent here per square foot than anywhere, period.”