The city should subsidize Fresh Direct deliveries to underserved neighborhoods*:

A continuing decline in the number of neighborhood supermarkets has made it harder for millions of New Yorkers to find fresh and affordable food within walking distance of their homes, according to a recent city study. The dearth of nearby supermarkets is most severe in minority and poor neighborhoods already beset by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

According to the food workers union, only 550 decently sized supermarkets — each occupying at least 10,000 square feet — remain in the city.

In one corner of southeast Queens, four supermarkets have closed in the last two years. Over a similar period in East Harlem, six small supermarkets have closed, and two more are on the brink, local officials said. In some cases, the old storefronts have been converted to drug stores that stand to make money coming and going — first selling processed foods and sodas, then selling medicines for illnesses that could have been prevented by a better diet.

The supermarket closings — not confined to poor neighborhoods — result from rising rents and slim profit margins, among other causes. They have forced residents to take buses or cabs to the closest supermarkets in some areas. Those with cars can drive, but the price of gasoline is making some think twice about that option. In many places, residents said the lack of competition has led to rising prices in the remaining stores.

*Right after we figure out how to supply high-speed internet connections and computers to all.

But what is perverse is that people who can afford not to spend half their income on rent are probably doing so, too:

Arnold Somrah was spending almost half of his income on the Park Slope apartment he shared with a friend. The 24-year-old finally moved back into his parents’ Ozone Park home.

“You can’t go out. Your Friday and Saturday nights are done,” said Somrah, who was paying $750 a month for his basement room. Samrah is now saving to eventually buy in Florida. “It’s too expensive here.”

Nearly 530,000 renters in the city are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing, a 14.9 percent jump from 1999, according to data released yesterday by Rep. Anthony Weiner.

“Financial advisors say, ‘You should spend no more than a third of your income on rent’” said Weiner. “That’s sounding more and more like a pipe dream.”

The Bronx is feeling the burden the most, with 32.85 percent of its renters paying half their income on rent in 2006. Manhattan (22.32 percent) had the lowest.

And unless something drastic is done, the city may start to eat itself:

New York City is growing fatter faster than the rest of America, a Health Department report said. The study, published in Preventing Chronic Disease, said that the city’s rate of obesity grew by 17 percent between 2002 and 2004, versus 6 percent nationwide. Diabetes also grew by 17 percent in the city, but remained unchanged in the rest of the country. “Obesity is now just as common in New York City as in the rest of the U.S.,” said study author Gretchen Van Wye. The department said the city gained 10 million pounds during the two years studied.

Or is it just because everyone quit smoking at the same time? Thanks a lot, Mayor:

While public health officials said the findings underscored the need for disease prevention programs, others drew a correlation between the rising obesity rate and a smoking ban that took effect in the city’s bars and restaurants in 2003. According to city health officials, about 240,000 New Yorkers quit smoking since the agency launched a comprehensive antismoking campaign in 2002.

Weight gain among individuals who quit smoking has been well documented. According to one study that evaluated weight gain after smoking cessation, researchers found the risk of weight gain is highest during the two years after a person quits. The study, published in 1998 in the Journal of Family Practice, found that on average, those who quit gain between 11 and 13 pounds.

“What you see on the micro level of your friends gaining weight after they quit smoking has to also have an effect on the macro level,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Walter Olson, said. “Yes, it probably is true that one of the reasons America is gaining weight is because of tobacco going out.” He said the ban was probably “one factor among many” contributing to the high obesity rates here.

(Takeaway: If someone can blame a smoking ban for something, they will.)

The ironic thing about the Amazing Technology That Is The Internet is that the basis for it is remarkably low-tech:

Daniel Rayas moved to New York in January from El Paso, Texas, to care for his newborn granddaughter, Eva Lucia. But he needed a job to pay his room and board, one flexible enough to allow for daily diaper-changing duty.

The unlikely solution: collecting take-out menus.

Allmenus.com, an online yellow pages for restaurants, sent him on a quest to reel in menus from eateries across the New York metropolitan area. Four months and one worn out pair of boots later, Rayas has snapped up 10,000 take-out menus.

“My motto is ‘No menu left behind,’” said Rayas, 55, who gets paid $2 for each menu.

It all began one March morning when baby Eva was taking a nap. Rayas — an accountant by trade who worked demolition in El Paso before his move east — was crunching numbers part time for a law firm to pay his rent. But it wasn’t enough. He answered a Craigslist ad: “Earn Money by Collecting Menus.” He sent an e-mail and thought it would go unanswered.

“But the same day I got a response that said, ‘Get started.’”

So Rayas set out from his Washington Heights home in his brand new rust-colored High Sierra boots.

He walked down Broadway. Then he walked up and down Amsterdam Avenue, St. Nicholas Avenue, Audubon Avenue and Fort Washington Avenue. “All the numbered streets, too,” Rayas said.

By the end of the day, blisters covered his toes and he limped into a Rite Aid on 125th Street to buy a box of Band-Aids. “I leaned against the wall, took off my socks, popped the blisters and taped up my toes,” Rayas said. “Man, it felt good.”

Months later, he knows to tape up his feet, tighten his shoelaces and check Google Maps before setting out on his evening and weekend menu hunts, which at his current pace would net him about $60,000 a year. His subway and bus maps are covered with yellow and pink highlighter markings, his legs no longer get sore, and he’s lost 20 pounds. Meanwhile, his boss started calling him “the vacuum” for his astounding proficiency in bringing in menus.

. . .

“Chinese people believe in menus,” he said. “Jamaicans don’t. I ask, ‘Do you have a menu?’ They point to the wall.”

Rayas is grateful he’s no longer knocking down walls and hauling bricks. And he’s grateful to the pizza parlors and Chinese restaurants that have given him menus. “Whenever you don’t think there’s a restaurant around the corner, there’s always a pizza parlor and always a Chinese restaurant,” he said.

The Health Department reveals the fattest, skinniest and drinkiest neighborhooods in a new study:

If you live in Sunset Park, it might be time to get off the couch.

A new city report found people who live in the Brooklyn neighborhood are least likely to exercise of all New Yorkers. In fact, 57% admitted they are sedentary, while residents of Greenwich Village and SoHo hit the gym on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Staten Island is still the smoking capital of the city, especially the South Shore and Mid Island sections, where 33% of residents smoke,

The updated Community Health Profiles released by the Department of Health use yearly phone surveys and other data to measure health indicators such as depression, asthma, diabetes and smoking in 42 neighborhoods.

Some conclusions:

East Harlem residents may exercise a bit more than those in Sunset Park, but they should lay off the fried foods — 31% say they are obese.

Binge drinking — defined as having five or more drinks in a night — is highest in Chelsea.

This year features borough-specific haunted houses:

Last Halloween, [Timothy] Haskell, a theatre director, staged a public haunted house on the Lower East Side, and so many people showed up that hundreds never made it inside. “We realized that we had to turn away a lot of local people,” Haskell said. So this year he put up haunted houses in all five boroughs, tailored to prey on the fears peculiar to each one.

For months, Haskell and his crew polled residents of the five boroughs to find out their worst nightmares. . . . People from the Bronx and Queens, they said, tend to fear things that might actually happen, like being mugged (harpaxophobia), while Manhattanites are frightened of fantastical and unlikely occurrences (flying sharks, riding in an elevator that rockets through the roof of a building). “In Manhattan and Brooklyn, we heard ‘fear of the homeless,’” [chief designer Paul] Smithyman said. “Then, in the Bronx, we heard ‘fear of becoming homeless.’” Staten Island residents apparently dread chemical spills and gas leaks.

. . .

The challenge of creating a tableau representing acrophobia, the fear of heights (and the seventh most common fear of Manhattan residents), almost stumped the designers. “One idea was that we’d have people walk up a staircase and onto a Plexiglas floor and see teeny-tiny furniture beneath them,” Haskell said. “But there were liability issues.” Instead, they paired a video of someone falling off a ledge with an evocative sound effect: vroooooom, splat. For illyngophobia (fear of dizziness, No. 11 among Manhattanites), the team installed a giant spinning tunnel; for entomophobia (insects, No. 3), they glued a thousand dead cockroaches onto a wall; and for musophobia (mice, No. 6), they ordered an essence of dead rat from an outfit in Chicago called Sinister Scents.

The New York Press’ Best of Manhattan for 2006 is out (it seems like every year they have to make some sort of half-assed apology for why it’s still called “Best of Manhattan”). This year includes “Best Worst Smelling Subway Station” (in City Life):

If you need a good reason to vomit, transfer from the V or the E train to an uptown 6 train at 53rd Street. The underground passageway between these two tracks either hosts a nightly pissing competition that gives bonus points for projectile sharting, or it captures the scent of a nearby chef who boils soiled toilet water. In any case, when you reach the top of the escalator off the E/V line, begin breathing deeply in preparation. Nevermind the salty taste of group body odor trailing from your fellow commuters; it pales in comparison to the soggy air trapped between the semen-coated walls that awaits you. At the top of the steps, hold your breath and run. Don’t walk. Don’t even walk fast. Run. And don’t be afraid to take out any hobbling meanderers up ahead. The smell is ruthless and so must you be.

Concur.

Most stations have a particular terroir — personally, I find the Lexington Avenue Express tracks at 59th Street a lovely musty odor evocative of an ice skating rink — but the stank-ass mop water miasma of the passage between the downtown and uptown 6 lines (If I’m understanding them, I think that’s what they’re referring to — meaning the passage commuters move through between downtown 6 trains and the E/V — of course, you probably only know this if you’re heading out to or coming from Queens . . . ha!) is one of the worst.

From cutesy literary allusion to full-scale war in just one day:

An explosion of bedbugs, the apple seed-size insects that hide in mattresses and furniture during the day and feast on unsuspecting sleepers at night, have terrorized visitors, outraged residents and are now stirring political action.

“It was horrible. I never wanted to go to sleep,” said Caitlin Heller, 27, a Queens College student whose Jackson Heights apartment was overrun by the bloodthirsty bugs. “They were painful, itchy, and all I thought about.”

“Even now, after they’ve been exterminated, I think I feel phantom bugs,” said Heller, who has started a blog about the topic. “Even a piece of lint scares me.”

. . .

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) supported a measure this week to ban the sale of used mattresses — perhaps the No.1 carrier of bedbugs. But at a hearing Monday, a city official testified against the bill, saying the ban might do little to control infestations and would adversely impact poor people.

Brewer said that even if the bill fails, the sale of secondhand mattresses should be regulated.

“We need to educate residents and city officials about this growing problem,” said Brewer. “Right now, the city’s doing nothing, and we need to declare war.”

Go ahead, freak yourself out: Beasts Feast On Blood While Authorities Dither; NYPD Bedbug; Don’t Let The . . .; It’s Endemic, Pandemic, This Epidemic; Bedbugs Don’t Wait For Midterms Now, Do They?; Don’t Let The Gasoline-Soaked Bedbugs Burst Into Flames In The Middle Of The Night, Setting Your Living Quarters On Fire.

Foreign-born New Yorkers make up 37 percent of the city’s population, according to the latest census data:

Immigrants have continued to surge into metropolitan New York since 2000, according to census figures released today, and that increase, combined with high birth rates, has elevated the foreign-born and their children in New York City itself to fully 60 percent of the population. The rate of change was even more pronounced in the 24 suburban counties around the city, where a record 20 percent of the residents are now born abroad.

The figures, while showing that the city’s gains from immigration were not nearly as marked as they were in the 1990’s, are nonetheless striking in their detail and magnitude.

In the city, the number of people who identified themselves as Mexicans, here legally or not, soared 36 percent in five years, and not merely as a consequence of improved counting. More than half the residents of Queens and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one in three black residents in New York City was born abroad.

The trends are reported in the American Community Survey, a new annual version of the federal Census Bureau’s long-form questionnaire designed to capture the nation’s demographic profile in a more timely moving picture, rather than a once-a-decade snapshot.

Meanwhile, the Times buries the Post’s lede (note the descriptive word the paper uses in the URL for this story):

Among children younger than 15, white residents who are not Hispanic have become a minority in the metropolitan area, an indication that within just a few years the New York region will become the first large metropolitan area outside the South or West where non-Hispanic whites are a minority.

The Post, on the other hand, doesn’t bury the Post’s lede:

The number of whites in New York City has been shrinking the last five years, while the Asian and Hispanic populations have been climbing, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Then again, the Post’s headline is “Whites Decline In City” . . .

Other interesting or notable data:

New York ranks first in the proportion of men and women — 35.2 percent and 30.2 percent, respectively — who have never married. The median age for first marriages by women is highest in Connecticut, at 27.5, and for men in New York, at 29.3. New York State also has the lowest proportion of households composed of married couples, 45 percent. Barely half the children in the city, 53 percent, are being raised by a married couple.

As ever, within the borders of the city there were great differences. In Manhattan, where the number of black and Hispanic residents declined, married couples with children living at home made up about 10 percent of households, but the rate is 27 percent on Staten Island. In the Bronx, more than half the families with children are headed by women.

The census counted more American Indians, about 33,000, than in any other city. Chinese is spoken by more than 350,000 New Yorkers, Italian by 103,000, Yiddish by 77,000.

While the number of Puerto Ricans in the city declined slightly, they remain the largest group among Hispanics, with 787,000. Dominicans, who number 532,000 — the largest number among foreign-born — are catching up with Puerto Ricans. More city residents still identify their ancestry as Italian than any other group, but West Indians are closing.

After studying the issue, the Center for an Urban Future finds that across the city, street fairs are uniformly lame:

A report issued by the Center for an Urban Future this week finds the city’s street fairs generic, dominated by a small cadre of vendors selling identical items like funnel cakes, discount makeup and designer-knockoff purses.

The report says New York’s street fairs could be an excellent showcase for the city’s diverse businesses and artists, and urges the Bloomberg administration to overhaul the system governing the fairs.

At present a high percentage of vendors are not even based in the five boroughs, according to the report. The Center’s analysis shows that in 2005, just 20 vendors held nearly half of all street fair food permits, with seven vendors possessing more than 200 permits each. And of the 20 largest permit holders, nine were based outside of New York City.

Similarly, one quarter of all vendors with permits to sell merchandise other than food at this year’s fairs hail from outside the city. According to the report, one problem is that three large production companies are in charge of more than 200 of the 367 fairs in the five boroughs this year and have no incentive to diversify the mix of vendors. Meanwhile, many local businesses don’t know how to get involved with the fairs, and those that do often face bureaucratic obstacles.

I suppose there are worse things to have happen, but hearing your fucking car stereo bumping shitty pop music at 3 a.m. is the city’s biggest annoyance:

Street noise is so out of control that frustrated and sleep-weary New Yorkers cite it as the Big Apple’s No. 1 problem, a new survey has found.

Horn-hunkers, blaring music, drunken rabble-rousers and other noise replaced potholes as the most vexing problem, according to the poll of 600 civic leaders conducted by Citizens for NYC/Baruch College.

Neighborhood activists ranked litter as the second worst problem, the same as last year.

“There’s too much noise and too much litter,” said Peter Kostmayer, president of Citizens for NYC.

Kostmayer said that if half the drivers who needlessly honk their horns stopped, neighborhoods would be significantly more peaceful.

“What we’re talking about is unnecessary noise,” he said.

He blamed selfish behavior of violators — not the lack of government enforcement of noise abatement and anti-littering laws — as the principal problem.

“I don’t think horn-honking is the mayor’s fault,” Kostmayer said.

Then again, it’s significant that we’re carping about your fucking car stereo bumping shitty pop music at 3 a.m. instead of, say, violent crime:

Kostmayer said the fact that New Yorkers are most worried about irritants like noise and filth is not so bad.

Violent crime, for example, is barely on the radar — ranking a lowly 24th.

And 47 percent of New Yorkers said their neighborhood had improved. Only 25 percent said they had worsened. The other 28 percent said the conditions were about the same.

That’s a significant improvement over last year, when 39 percent cited improvement and 32 said conditions had deteriorated. The rest said things were about the same.

“The city is doing well. The fact that we’re not talking about homicides, rapes and assaults says a lot,” Kostmayer said.

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released its life-and-death statistics study, and the Post summarizes the data.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have a baby: Borough Park, Brooklyn, with 4,523 births in 2004 (24.4 per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are least likely to have a baby: Bayside, Queens, with six per 1,000 residents (700 total).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to be dead: East Harlem (10.9 deaths per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhoods where you are least likely to be dead: Queens Village (4.6 deaths per 1,000 residents), Bayside (4.7 per thousand) and Greenwich Village (5.3 per thousand).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have cancer: Throgs Neck in The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have heart disease: Coney Island.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to get murdered: Brownsville (28.1 murders per 100,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from using drugs: Hunts Point, The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from AIDS: Morrisania, The Bronx.

Meanwhile, the Post profiles a “typical procreative” Borough Park couple:

Faye and Shlomo Cisner are a typical procreative Borough Park couple: They have eight kids, and more could be on the way.

“It is a possibility,” Faye Cisner. “Thank God. God gives. We accept.”

Faye is 33, Shlomo 35.

They have six boys and two girls — including a set of twins.

The youngest, Chaim, is 10 months old. There’s also Joseph, 2; Reuben, 4; Rachel, 5; Meir, 7; Jacob, 8; and twins Nisson and Yocheved, who are 10.

The Cisners, who are Orthodox Jews, said they are carrying on the Jewish tradition of having many children. And that’s what many do in Borough Park.

. . .

Faye starts every morning doing the never-ending load of laundry for 10 people.

The kids eat in two shifts, and she likened the experience to serving people in a restaurant. The six older children board four different buses to get to and from school.

“There’s juggling. It gets a bit overwhelming. But it’s an amazing experience,” Faye said.

See also: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s “My Community’s Health” Pages.

If you’ve ever wondered whether the tours in the red double-decker buses were informative rest assured that they are not:

“People are not looking for a history lesson,” said David Chien, Gray Line’s director of marketing. “They’re looking to be entertained and to have a grand experience traveling 13 feet in the air through the City of New York.”

Among the many fibs the Daily News uncovered:

• Rudy Giuliani is still mayor
• New York is called Gotham because of its abundance of gothic architecture
• Tenements on the Lower East Side still exist along with “beatniks” in Greenwich Village
• Flappers went wild for Frank Sinatra in the Paramount theater during the 1890s

A slow news weekend, the Times visits the Department of Transportation’s sign-making shop in Maspeth, Queens and files this report:

As New York City’s chief traffic engineer, Michael R. Harnett oversees the manufacture and installation of around 70,000 traffic and street signs each year. But don’t ask him about the often-pesky messages that are actually on the signs: “Don’t Honk - $350 Penalty,” “Don’t Block the Box,” and, of course, the ever-present “No Parking Anytime.”

Angry about ticket agents? They work for the Police Department. Want to appeal a parking ticket? Talk to the Finance Department. Please. After all, Mr. Harnett doesn’t write the signs. He just makes them.

There are an estimated 1.3 million traffic and street signs in New York City, one for every six residents, and most are designed and manufactured in the Transportation Department’s central shop, an unassuming brick building in an industrial section of Maspeth, in central Queens.

The shop, which has 37 workers, is the largest municipal sign shop in the United States. A hive of quiet and constant activity, it makes about 70,000 signs a year.

And if you’re interested, you can purchase an honest-to-god, real-life New York City street sign:

Signs typically last about 10 years, but especially harsh weather or bright lights can shorten their life. Besides suffering wear and tear, some signs are knocked over - and even run over - by wayward vehicles. Others are vandalized or defaced. Then there are those that simply disappear.

In the past, signs for Wall Street in Manhattan and Hooker Place in Staten Island have been stolen repeatedly. Other popular targets are John Street in Manhattan and Love Lane in Brooklyn.

The department’s Sign Sales Program was established in 1995, in part, so that souvenir-hunters could acquire signs legally.

Some signs evoke nostalgia, like the replicas of signs for the 1964 World’s Fair, the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field. Others, like Mr. Koch’s comical signs, have been retired from official use. Still others - “No Parking Except Lillian” or “Yield to Mom” - exist only in people’s imaginations.

John Jurgeleit, who manages the sign-sales program, said it had grown to about $300,000 a year. The city does not make a profit on the signs, but the program pays for itself and is not subsidized by the city. A modest size personalized street sign costs about $30.

Bonus: Department of Transportation’s Custom Made Signs Information Page

The Times notices the new walk/don’t walk signs that feature an emaciated, hunched over pedestrian:

Could they have been subliminal harbingers of the city’s slenderizing campaign?

Is it just coincidence that in the summer that New York City went to war against trans fats, a new generation of “Walk/Don’t Walk” icons began appearing around Columbus Circle with a noticeably skinnier walking man and an almost emaciated red hand?

Your typical walking man - a familiar silhouette around town in the five years since the first new light-emitting diode pedestrian signal was installed at 35th Street and Queens Boulevard - is a pretty robust, smooth-shouldered, round-headed fellow who steps off confidently into traffic, as bubbly as a Keith Haring figure.

This new guy, by contrast, seems a bit rickety. There isn’t a curve to his body. His head - is this too cruel to say? - is pentagonal. His arms and legs are mere sticks. Indeed, he looks as though he’s stooped over with a bad back. (Maybe from waiting so long for the light to change.)

About that upraised hand. The one that New Yorkers have grown accustomed to - not that they pay it any mind - is as smooth and solid as a porcelain glove mold. The new hand is so skeletally thin it might be the crypt keeper’s.

But they say you can never be too thin. After all, the skinny man is formed of 45 light-emitting diodes, where the older version tips the scales at 60. The new hand has 64 diodes, the old one 120. So maybe this was an energy conservation step.

Cab drivers and the Taxi and Limousine Commission are rethinking the unsightly bulletproof partition separating the driver from his or her fares:

It emerged in the 1960’s as an invention born of fear: the taxicab partition, meant to spare the lives of drivers at a time of gunfire, armed robberies and murders. Over its lifetime, it would become yellowed and defaced; its contraption for safely passing money to the driver would often break down. And with the partition closed, the classic cabbie conversation - the one about politics and local lore, current events and competing theories about the best way from, say, Midtown to Kennedy - would become all but impossible.

Now, however, the partition is being rethought, in a New York City where crime is down and passenger demand for legroom and other comforts is ever greater. The Taxi and Limousine Commission has issued a proposal seeking new ways to design and install the partitions, which have been required in most yellow cabs since 1994.

. . .

The dividers generate strong reactions from drivers and riders alike. Most drivers who work daytime shifts do not bother to close their partitions, leaving the sliding door open to allow for conversation with passengers and easy exchange of money. Riders, in turn, believe the grimy plastic barriers discourage them from giving directions (not a bad thing, from the driver’s perspective) and make them feel as though they are in the vestibule of a battle-scarred liquor store.

Partition opponents cite safety concerns (”a plastic surgeon’s dream”) and aesthetic considerations (the “gritty, scratchy partition that prevents them from seeing the wonderful city around them”) as reason enough to discard the thermoplastic barrier. But that said, there may be other good reasons for it:

Ryszard Belc, 45, a Polish immigrant who lives in Elmhurst, Queens, said he thought the partitions kept out germs during the flu season.

And Mr. Belc said he had little nostalgia for the lost art of taxicab conversation.

“With cellphones, nobody wants to talk to the driver anymore,” he said. “Even on a five-minute trip, they always think of some long-lost aunt they can call.”

So that’s what they think of us — a bunch of infectious, self-involved marks.

The auto body shops in the Iron Triangle of Willets Point will live to see another day — New York has lost to Paris and the eventual winner, London, in voting to determine the 2012 Olympics host city:

In Singapore today, the city’s Olympic bid delegation - a group of about 300 people - watched the vote tally on a giant projector screen in a wing of the Ritz Carlton hotel. Guests sipped wine and nibbled on dumplings, spicy fish sausages and croissant-wrapped shrimp in what was a generally giddy atmosphere stoked by the perception that the team’s presentation was a show stopper. But when the losing results came in however, the room fell into a prolonged, stunned silence, according to people who were there.

Mmm . . . shrimp!

Reports indicate that the Q&A period during final presentations bordered on “tense,” even political in tone:

The question-and-answer portion had a tense moment when an I.O.C. member from Syria, Samih Moudallal, pointedly asked [Deputy Mayor Daniel] Doctoroff, “Would the athletes and the officials of these countries on the terrorist list, will they be allowed to enter the United States of America?” He went on to reference what he said were problems Syria had obtaining a visa for one of its Paralympic athletes during the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

And where New York’s delegation gently evoked the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks during its presentation, other countries were just as heartfelt:

Paris had begun its presentation with a note of humility, a nod to the criticism that its past two bids were too arrogant and turned off an organization that prefers to be wooed.

. . .

President Chirac, who did not attend the presentation for the last Paris bid, in 2001, made the most emotional appeal. He emphasized his long relationship with many I.O.C. members and talked about the French people’s desire to host the Games. “I shall vouch for this,” he said in French. “You can put your trust in France. You can trust the French. You can trust us.”

On the other hand, Madrid (whose presentation was the “least professional, relying on still photos with type superimposed for most of its visuals, as opposed to higher-quality video used by the other bids”) chose to emphasize the positive:

“Madrid will be a fiesta,” [Madrid Mayor Alberto] Ruiz-Gallardon said. “We have been celebrating the Olympic spirit for 50 years now.”

The 2012 Olympics will take place in London in 2012. Mmm . . . shrimp!

The New York Press‘ 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers list is out. At number 12, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik easily makes the cut. Inclusions go from the obvious (Bill O’Reilly, 29; Mayor Bloomberg, 1; Alex Rodriguez, 50) to the refreshingly counterintiutive (Eliot Spitzer, 35). And which STD-spreading Interpol bassist checks in at number 15? Click the link to find out!

He’s saying what we’re thinking. “Head of the Crass”:

The head of the NYPD’s School Safety Division is under fire from school security officers who charge that he called elementary school parents “bitches” who “need to be body-slammed.”

In grievance letters to their union obtained by The Post, officers claim that Chief Gerald Nelson, an NYPD official, made the shocking remarks to 850 agents at a training session last month during the mid-winter break.

To be sure, it’s not entirely clear what he said — or whether the union is just trying to screw him over — but it seems like whatever it was probably falls somewhere in between the following:

The letters vary somewhat in their description of Nelson’s alleged comments.

Some state that he said unruly parents should be manhandled into submission, while others claim Nelson made the remarks as he commended an agent for showing restraint with out-of-control parents.

“Chief Nelson was asked a question about the lack of security in the . . . schools when the chief made a statement that the parents of the students are bitches and he gives us credit for not knocking these bitches down,” one agent wrote.

Another officer wrote that Nelson said elementary-school agents had the toughest job “because they had to deal with mothers in the elementary schools that are real bitches . . . [who] need to be body-slammed down to the ground, cuffed and arrested.”

Then there’s a third explanation:

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, speaking on behalf of Nelson, said, the two-star chief “recalls congratulating a school safety agent for dealing with an unruly adult, but not in the language described in the letters. We are looking into the matter.”

The City’s Department of Homeless Services is offering $100 to volunteers to serve as quality control decoys for their annual homeless count:

As part of a new quality-control measure from the Department of Homeless Services, some 150 “fake” homeless - graduate students clad in old clothes and blankets - will be sent out to see if the volunteers spot them.

If the volunteers approach the decoys, the fakes, who are making $100 each, will ‘fess up and hand over a sticker to make sure they are not mistakenly counted.

The idea is to test the effectiveness of the count, which has been criticized by some homeless advocates because it partly relies on estimates.

“What happens to this cadre of 150 could be a fairly faithful replica” of the count’s accuracy, said Dr. Kim Hopper, a research scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute, who is leading the decoy effort.

Some 1,500 volunteers have already signed up and will gather at 10:30 p.m. Monday for a quick training session, then hit the streets at midnight for a few hours.

Not clear if they are offering a bonus for multiple visits.

New York City has filed an application to trademark the phrase “The World’s Second Home.” For real:

Lest there be any doubt, the Bloomberg administration wants to make official what generations of immigrants in New York have long known: the city is the world’s second home.

In application No. 78484751 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the city is seeking to trademark the phrase, “The World’s Second Home.” It wants exclusive rights to use it to promote business, tourism and economic development in the city, and hopes to slap it on everything from mouse pads and money clips to baby bibs and beanbag chairs.

If New York is successful, other cities that might fancy themselves the world’s second home could not legally apply that phrase to any of the 200-odd products and services enumerated in New York’s application. Among them are film and theatrical productions, parades, chair pads, sunglasses, temporary tattoos, postcards, beach sandals, and “electric light switch plates.”

“For all of those things, if the city got its trademark registration, nobody could come out with sunglasses and use the phrase, ‘The world’s second home,’” said William M. Borchard, an intellectual-property lawyer at Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman in New York. “To do that, they would have to obtain a license from the city.”

The Times further explains how this would work in practice:

Of course, there are plenty of things not on the city’s list. Boston could conceivably license a line of canned beans under the label, “Bean Town - the world’s second home,” without running afoul of New York’s trademark. (”Bean Town” is actually the registered trademark of an Illinois company that sells dried beans.)

New York could eventually try to enforce an American trademark internationally to prevent, say, Paris from laying claim to the same title. In fact, it is New York’s contest with Paris and three other foreign cities to play host to the 2012 Summer Olympics that is driving its quest for this silver medal of geopolitical names. (Presumably, the gold would go to “the world’s home,” but no one has sought that title, according to a search of trademark records.)

The trademark application is one of several the city has filed since September as part of an ambitious plan to secure the rights to catchphrases, abbreviations and logos that it wants to license to makers of consumer products and clothing. Among them: a line drawing of the city’s official seal, which includes a sailor, an Indian and a beaver; the phrase “Made in NY”; and a Taxi and Limousine Commission badge, intended primarily for use on toy cars.

So if New York is the World’s Second Home, are, say, the Hamptons New York’s Second Home? And would that make the Hamptons the World’s Third Home? And as the Times notes, which city is audacious enough to call itself the World’s Home?

As someone who — in a fit of frustration after part of a sidewalk was closed — actually used the words “you guys are a pain in the ass” to some hapless movie set intern, I wholeheartedly agree with the New York Press here:

In one of his first acts of 2005, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law a five percent tax break for television and movie productions that film in New York City. This is in addition to the 10 percent tax break the governor began offering last summer, all in an effort to lure the film industry back to town.

Over the past several years, the cost of location shooting in NYC has become so prohibitive that most production companies had taken their business elsewhere—often filming in Toronto, which has acted as New York’s body double in countless movies and tv shows. That exodus also took with it millions of dollars in easy revenue.

“New York City is the greatest film set in the world,” the mayor said as he announced the offer, and we have absolutely no argument with that. We love seeing footage of old New York from different eras in films like The Naked City, Sweet Smell of Success and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Likewise, we understand that future generations of filmgoers will have a similar nostalgic interest in seeing what the NYC of the early 21st century actually looked and sounded like.

We also appreciate the filmmakers’ desire to capture that authentic New York vibe, which is something that can’t be reproduced anywhere else. Plus there’s no denying that over time, the film industry would bring more money into the city than those goddamned Olympics ever could.

We understand all those things, and they’re all valid reasons for making location shooting in the city much cheaper and easier.

But you know what? We still find location shoots an enormous pain in the ass, and we wish they’d stay up in Toronto.

While it’s true that the Carnegie Deli has a line out the door stretching halfway down the block and you can’t walk down Seventh Avenue without being asked where Times Square is (”That’s it right there.” “But where’s the square!?”), the rest of the city is deserted:

For those worried about getting around town, please do not be alarmed to find an empty seat on the subway, even at rush hour. Nothing is wrong. It is not a prank.

Then again, don’t even bother trying to find a seat in a horse-drawn cab near Central Park for a romantic winter-wonderland ride. Every out-of-towner has the same idea.

It should come as no big shock, of course, that New York often takes on a different personality during certain holidays. There are more tourists and fewer natives. Businesses change their hours, their décor, even their attitudes to match the conditions.

But this year, it seems, New York has become even more a best-of-times, worst-of-times kind of place, depending on geography and other factors. Or so said dozens of New Yorkers and tourists in conversations this week, who have noticed that some places seem more jam-packed than ever, while others are deserted.

I have to say that although it’s obviously bad for business, we enjoy having a bar or restaurant to ourselves. Even the normally hard-to-get-into places are empty:

Even some famous establishments, ordinarily packed, have had surprising lulls. On Sunday night, for instance, Lisa Magnino and her boyfriend, Jon Coifman, decided to see how long the line was at Grimaldi’s pizzeria in Brooklyn. There wasn’t one.

“We were like, hmm, it must be closed,” said Ms. Magnino, who lives in Carroll Gardens. “But it wasn’t, and when we walked in, we were seated right away. There was a couple sitting at a table for four, and they said, ‘Can you believe this?’”

Just in case you were wondering how New York is responding to that Red Sox upset: