Almost a year after dividing the posh 10021 zip code into three atomized bastions of wealth, people finally seem to be getting used to just how wealthy “10065″ sounds (after all, “65″ is more than three times as great as “21″):

The new neighboring 10065 — formerly part of 10021 — is now the Upper East Side’s most expensive address.

Since the split, in July 2007, the average real-estate sales price in the 10065 has hit $2.9 million — topping 10021’s $2.2 million average, according to Streeteasy.com, a real estate-tracking Web site.

The hot ZIP’s stock continues to soar, too — with the current market price for homes selling at an average $4.1 million, nearly $1.5 million higher than residences in 10021.

Moviemaker Spike Lee, The Donald’s ex, Ivana Trump, corporate raider Henry Kravis, Revlon’s Ronald Perelman and NBC “Today” show host Matt Lauer all reside in the flush 10065 neighborhood, which spans 61st to 68th streets from Fifth Avenue to the East River.

Coveted real estate in the 10065 includes The Pierre hotel, whose penthouse is on the market for $70 million, and the renovated Lexington Avenue Barbizon Hotel, with apartments for sale for $12 million.

Since July, 10021 hasn’t been able to keep pace, despite being home to 740 Park Ave., once home to John D. Rockefeller and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and where the city’s richest man, billionaire businessman David Koch, hangs his hat.

Up the street, Brooke Astor’s famed 778 Park Ave. duplex just hit the market for $46 million this past month. And real-estate tycoon Aby Rosen is asking $75 million for his town house at 22 E. 71st St.

“People work their whole lives to get into the 10021 ZIP code” — which now covers 68th to 76th streets from Fifth Avenue to the East River, said Brown Harris Stevens Realtor Nancy Candib. “They were upset when it was taken away from them.”

In July, the US Postal Service carved up the historic 10021 ZIP code, which once stretched from 61st to 80th from Fifth Avenue to the East River, into three sections, creating the new 10065 ZIP code and its smaller cousin, the 10075, the area from 76th to 80th.

But now, those who ended up in the new 10065 are lording it over the 10021.

“[The 10065's] most beautiful and notorious buildings compete with anything in the 10021,” said Candib.

. . . and wherein the PTA picks up the slack:

The auctioneer came on with a bold pitch, trying to get the bidders to open their wallets as wide as possible.

“I want you to prove to the world that we’re not in a slowdown economy,” he pleaded with his audience, the parents of Public School 41 in Greenwich Village.

The first item was a large canvas painted with bright flowers, made by the kindergarten class. The opening bid was set at $500.

“Come on parents, prove that you love your children,” he said, his laughter not stopping a few winces in the audience.

Sold, for $1,100.

New York schools have withstood budget cuts of $180 million this year, and are facing more, giving a renewed urgency to the school auction season, in full swing across the city. Although many parent associations hold fund-raising events, auctions are largely a phenomenon of schools in affluent areas, where parents have the connections to garner desirable donations — like a meal at AquaGrill, a Botox “house call” or a behind-the-scenes tour of a television show — and the money to bid on them.

At P.S. 41’s auction, held at the Puck Building in SoHo, Michele Farinet, the parent coordinator for the school, stepped up at the request of the auctioneer. She exhorted parents to put up their paddles for a special “fund a cause,” which she said could be anything from books to tables and chairs.

“There are budget cuts this year, but we are going to make sure that we give the kids what they need before the mayor and the chancellor take it away from them,” she said, trying to fire up the bidders.

Her voice rose with her pleas: “When the mayor comes knocking at 11 o’clock on a Friday night and says, ‘Guess what, principals, you are going to lose 10 percent,’ at least our principal will know that our parents have done this!”

Modeled after events at private schools, public school auctions have become increasingly elaborate in recent years, in settings that have moved from school cafeterias and local pizza shops to deluxe locations like the Puck Building and Guastavino’s on the Upper East Side. The events raise crucial dollars for computers and foreign language classes, art supplies and teaching assistants, dance instruction, counting blocks for math, white boards — anything that parents might consider essential but that the standard allocation from the city’s Department of Education does not cover.

In case you missed the heady days of Wall Street tycoons and an overheated real estate market:

A century later, when Dr. Mitchell Blutt, a modern-day tycoon made rich on Wall Street, wanted a mansion of his own, he found Mr. Carnegie’s neighborhood, now known as Carnegie Hill, not surprisingly plumb out of space.

To solve the problem, Dr. Blutt bought the two town houses directly east of his current home on East 90th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues, in order to combine the three Romanesque Revival, four-story town houses into one 17,000-square-foot dwelling. His plans have prompted protest from neighbors, who see an intrusion of a suburban-style “McMansion,” and from preservationists, who fear that they would destroy the character of the landmark-protected buildings.

“It’s an audacious proposal,” said Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council, which works to preserve New York’s historic neighborhoods and buildings. “It’s the kind of thing that seems to be extraordinarily conspicuous consumption.”

Even by the extravagant standards set by the real estate forays of this century’s gilded elite, Dr. Blutt’s plan is unusual. Because the combination of brownstones is relatively rare, especially for conversion into a single-family home, it raises a host of questions not easily answered.

Dr. Blutt had proposed a three-story rear-yard addition that would extend some 15 ½ feet beyond the buildings’ original rear walls. He also wanted to add more than 20 feet to the height of the buildings by adding a fifth floor, as well as a concrete bulkhead for a new elevator shaft.

When Dr. Blutt’s architect presented the plans to the Landmarks Preservation Commission last Tuesday, the commission took no formal vote, but some members noted their concern about the proposed fifth floor and the character of the rear-yard addition. The commission told the architect to submit redrawn plans.

Lo van der Valk, president of Carnegie Hill Neighbors, said that since the historical preservation movement took hold in the late 1960s, the expansion of dwelling space usually took place by building up and out. For instance, during the 1990s, homeowners scurried to buy neighboring apartments, knocking down walls to scrape out a few hundred extra feet.

But neither Mr. van der Valk nor Mr. Bankoff could recall a single case of a person turning three attached brownstones into one single-family home.

Dr. Blutt paid $12.6 million for both of the neighboring town houses, according to public records, and real estate experts estimate the value of all three together at around $20 million, before any renovations.

NYU raises its tuition beyond the cost of inflation, giving new meaning to the concept of “Ivy League or equivalent”:

Already one of the most expensive schools in the country, NYU plans to boost tuition another 5.9 percent starting with the next academic year.

That translates into a $2,081 increase over this year’s tuition of $35,283, according to the financial aid department.

Students are outraged.

“It’s definitely putting a damper in my parents’ pocket,” said Emmanuella Durandisse, a 19-year-old freshman from Nyack. “I’m definitely mad. Maybe the teachers are overpaid.”

The school’s president, John Sexton, blamed the hike on the size of the college’s endowment.

“Many colleges and universities against which we compete to attract faculty and students have endowment resources per student many times larger,” he wrote in an e-mail to the faculty.

The school is not insensitive to the financial strain. It plans a 12 percent financial aid boost for the neediest students.

But that’s still not as much help as other private colleges, such as Harvard, are giving out. The Ivy League school plans to actually cut tuition for low-income students.

“We are not in a position to match these institutions, as much as we might wish that all endowments are created equal,” Sexton wrote.

The cost of NYU certainly puts it in league with Ivy-level tuition. Columbia University charges students $35,516, while Harvard charges $31,456.

Both Ivy schools also plan to hike tuition next year, Columbia by 3 to 5 percent and Harvard by 3.5 percent.

Today’s essay topic, gentrification in 50 words or less:

The rezoning would remake 125th Street, one of the city’s liveliest streets — and home to many small businesses like clothing stores, pawn shops and hair salons — into a regional business hub with office towers and more than 2,000 new market-rate condominiums.

If the federal government won’t tax hedge fund managers higher than the 15% capital gains rate they currently get, then the city will:

Under the plan circulating around City Hall and Albany, general partners of a private equity or hedge fund would have to pay local business income taxes on their share of profits generated by investments.

The proposal follows a failed push by Assembly Democrats to raise the personal income taxes of people earning more than $1 million a year.

. . .

The new version, developed by the Fiscal Policy Institute and other organized-labor activists, is a city tax, not a state tax, and would therefore have to be first approved by the City Council as a “home-rule” message and then voted on by the state Legislature. It is also smaller in scope. The plan’s crafters say it would raise about $200 million a year, compared to the $1.2 billion a year haul that was expected from the income tax hike.

. . .

Advocates of the tax hike said it would make it easier for city lawmakers to balance the city budget, which is due July 1, without having to rely on additional cuts to services or agencies.

“If the city sends a home-rule message and it expresses its desire to close this loophole and to tax private equity and hedge fund firms the same way they tax a freelancer or small firm, I don’t know why the Senate would be opposed to it,” a Democratic assemblyman of Queens, Rory Lancman, said. The primary force behind both proposals is the labor-financed Working Families Party, a third party that has been a source of political and financial support for lawmakers who are taking up the measure, including City Council members Robert Jackson of Manhattan and Hiram Monserrate of Queens,

“I would think that this has a decent chance,” the executive director of the Working Families Party, Daniel Cantor, said. “We’re talking about a few dozen people who are basically stealing a couple of hundred million dollars from the city.”

City lawmakers and labor organizers are unveiling the plan with a rally today on the steps of City Hall. In 2005 at least 34 of the 51 members of the New York City Council had run on the Working Families Party line.

Carried interest earned by hedge fund and private equity managers had been the target of Congress last year. Efforts to increase federal taxes on that income failed, despite backing from both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. Senator Schumer had pressed for any tax increase to apply not only to hedge funds and private equity funds but also to oil-and-gas partnerships and real estate partnerships with similar corporate structures.

. . . they live hand to mouth:

Less than 48 hours after news broke that Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. would be bought for a fire-sale price, the wives of two of the firm’s senior investment bankers called their high-end interior designer to cancel their contracts.

It’s yet another sign that some bankers are slashing spending on luxury items as they fear for their jobs and the value of their firms’ shares.

“We only had about $50,000 worth of final touches [to go], and the wife called me last week and said stop,” said interior designer Darren Henault, whose work has been featured in Vanity Fair and Elle Decor.

“She said they’re not poor, and are never going to be poor,” Henault said, “but their capacity for discretionary income for things like window valances just went out the window.”

Yes, Wall Street accounts for like 85 percent of the city’s tax base, but then again it would be nice to . . .:

The collapse of a major financial institution is usually an occasion for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over potential job losses, lower consumer spending and missed mortgage payments.

In New York City, it’s also seen as an opportunity.

For many of the city’s middle class, especially those in the creative class, who have felt sidelined as the city seemed to become a high-priced playground for Wall Street bankers, the implosion of the brokerage house Bear Stearns raises a tantalizing possibility: participation in an economy they have been largely shut out of.

Few romanticize the nearly bankrupt New York of the 1970s or the recession of the late 1980s. But if the city suffers an economic downturn, as many now predict, there are fantasies of New York returning to a pre-Gilded Age, before the average Manhattan apartment cost $1.4 million, SAT tutors charged $500 an hour and dinner entrees crossed the $40 threshold.

Andre Anderson, 34, an account executive at TheDeal.com, a financial news Web site, would like to buy a Manhattan apartment with his girlfriend, but he said their combined incomes still make it nearly impossible to afford one.

Like many, he is rooting for what could be called a Bear Stearns discount, as newly unemployed financiers cut back on the buying binges that inflate the cost of life in the city.

“If there is greater good for everyone, is it worth a few people losing their jobs?” Mr. Anderson asked. “I think so. I hate to see people lose their jobs, but prices in the city have become ridiculous.”

. . .

New York City has always been defined by the yawning gap between its haves and have-nots. But the last 15 years have witnessed the rise of a class of financiers whose salaries and bonuses have reached staggering heights. Over the last five years, the median compensation for a managing director working in investment banking rose from $650,000 to $1.37 million, according to Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm.

That is a pittance compared with hedge-fund managers. The highest-paid managers earned at least $240 million a year in 2006, according to the Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, nearly double the amount of 2005 (and up from a minimum of $30 million in 2002).

Their pay — and eagerness to spend it — has encouraged the growth of a luxury market in everything from groceries to restaurants to spas to specialty boutiques. Witness the Marc Jacobs-ization of the West Village, the surging average price of a two-bedroom apartment in Harlem to $1.1 million, and the rise of $15 tubs of ice cream in, of all places, the Lower East Side, at Il Laboratorio del Gelato.

It’s getting as expensive as sex to go to Yankees games:

Those $250 box seats at Yankee Stadium will seem inexpensive in 2009.

The Yankees will charge $500 to $2,500 for seats near home plate in the first five to eight rows of their new ballpark — yet say they already have commitments for all 122.

The team’s Web site touts the premium areas as offering “an exclusive experience for those with discerning taste who seek the very best that life has to offer.”

Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, sent a letter to season-ticket holders on March 14 that outlined premium seating in the $1.3 billion ballpark-to-be and asked whether they wanted to upgrade.

Trost said yesterday that more than 3,000 fans — “a remarkable response” — had already said yes.

The doggy car seat:

The latest over-the-top accessory for your pooch is a doggie seat belt — which can set you back anywhere from $20 for nylon to $200 for luxurious leather.

For smaller “toy” dogs and coddled cats there’s a padded “car seat” outfitted with a harness and kept in place by the car’s seat belt.

Big dogs get a seat-belt harness that crisscrosses their chest and clicks directly into the car’s seat belt.

“Since my kids are all grown, he’s my baby,” Renata Willner said of her 5-year-old coton de Tulear-breed dog named ‘Mousse, short for Pamplemousse, French for grapefruit.

“And I wouldn’t dream of not putting my baby in a car seat,” she said as she carefully placed her dog - decked out in a Burberry collar and leash — into a $150 car seat and harness outside her Battery Park City apartment.

Willner says ‘Mousse, whom she lovingly describes as “neurotic,” loves his carrier harness because “he can see out the car window, and if he’s tired, he can sleep.”

Sour economy indicator — New York lags behind Moscow in filthy rich:

New York City has been eclipsed as the billionaire capital of the world, according to Forbes magazine, which yesterday released its annual ranking of the richest people on earth.

Seventy-four billionaires, with an average net worth of $5.9 billion, now call Moscow home, compared with 71, at an average of $3.3 billion, in New York City, the Forbes list shows.

The richest man in New York City is the industrialist David Koch, worth some $17 billion, according to the new Forbes ranking. He’s followed by the leveraged buyout entrepreneur Carl Icahn with $14 billion and Chanel’s Gerard Wertheimer with $12.9 billion.

Next on the list of richest New Yorkers is the city’s two-term mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who retains a sizable stake in the eponymous financial news firm he founded more than two decades ago. He is worth $11.5 billion, according to the list.

. . .

Moscow’s replacement of New York City as home to the most billionaires has far-reaching economic distinctions. An example: The price of two nights in the Carlton Suite of Moscow’s Ritz Carlton hotel now costs $10,000. Two nights in the Executive Suite at the Four Seasons in New York is a mere $4,300.

Spitzer’s successor goes after civil rights violations in nightclub lines (with added Barack Obama irony that only the Post would think to dredge up*):

A Manhattan hotspot that hosted a primary-night party for Barack Obama supporters has been sued by the state Attorney General for discriminating against black patrons.

The AG’s office accused the Tonic East nightclub, at Third Avenue and East 29th Street, of barring blacks based on an unwritten dress code against popular hip-hop clothing, but allowing similarly dressed white patrons to enter.

Tonic East settled the lawsuit with a simultaneous agreement that forces the bar to fork over $35,000, implement training and change its dress code to eliminate references to specific brands.

The state launched an undercover probe at Tonic East after black patrons complained that bouncers stopped them at the door, citing policies excluding clothing by Sean John and Rocawear, Nike Air Force One sneakers, Timberland boots and baggy jeans.

The Kips Bay bar was the scene of a major party for Obama supporters on Feb. 5, with overflow crowds packing the multi-level club that is built to hold 450 people and spilling revelers out into other area bars.

*Because Obama is black . . . get it?

Stoop culture, alive and well and un- and underemployed:

Last summer, two young girls appeared on Charles Street between Bleecker and West 4th Streets. They perched themselves on the front steps of the brownstone at No. 90, and they’ve stayed there, nearly every day, chatting and smoking and playing with their dogs from late morning to early evening, even in the bitter cold. Block residents are used to celebrities — Sarah Jessica and Matthew live there, after all — but they’ve been flummoxed by these new ladies of leisure, who’ve inspired a flurry of intra-block e-mails with titles like “The Girls” that report sightings as late as 4:30 a.m. Few Charles Streeters seem to know who they are or why they’re there.

You can learn a lot by asking. Haley, the brunette, is 23 and from Alabama; blonde Rebecca is 22 and from Pennsylvania. (They declined to provide their last names.) They grew up spending vacations together with their best-friend grandmas before moving to New York last year, basically for kicks. Haley, who dropped out of premed in Alabama, just started English-lit classes at Hunter. “I don’t like to write, but I like grammar,” she says. Rebecca basically does nothing, nor does she know what she wants to do. They share an apartment a few blocks west; their parents paid months of rent in advance. But even in the dead of winter, they prefer the stoop to their living room — although they chafe at their status as block icons. “We’re not into the fame thing,” Haley says. “But this is what we do.”

How come tuition is almost $40,000 a year if NYU Law is clearing Harvard levels of loot? Good question:

The NYU School of Law received more than $43 million in donations in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, finishing second only to Harvard Law School and raking in almost double the amount Columbia Law School collected.

The law school has raised $285,657,449 through Jan. 31, 2008 since 2002. With additional verbal commitments and gifts, the total comes to about $330 million.

The school expects to increase that amount to $400 million by December 2009.

I was beginning to feel a little proud of the Giants until I saw this:

When it comes to celebrating their home team’s first shot at the NFL championship in seven years, many New Yorkers are lacking neither money nor creativity.

Among the decorations for one Sunday Giants celebration is a 4-foot tall ice sculpture crafted to look just like the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl Trophy.

“Sports audiences are very physical and get very excited,” said Shintaro Okamoto, the founder of Okamoto Studio in Long Island City, who is making the ice sculpture. “We want to make sure our Super Bowl sculptures are very strong and durable.”

Okamoto said he is also fielding inquires from New York “hedge fund people and bankers” looking to spend upwards of $750 on ice sculptures in the shape of a Giants helmet for their private loft parties.

The good news is you get your own apartment on Central Park West. The bad news is you’re wrapped around Sting’s finger:

Manhattan’s most expensive new condo building, 15 Central Park West, is one of only three in the city offering separate apartments tenants can purchase for their maids, butlers and other domestic workers.

Among those who already signed up for the new building are Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein, former Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill, rock star Sting, NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon, sportscaster Bob Costas and Oscar-winner Denzel Washington.

It’s not clear whether any of them also bought staff apartments.

“The help need their privacy, too,” developer Arthur Zeckendorf said. “They can still watch their own TV, have their own life.”

And the owners benefit, he said, noting, “If you have someone working for you full time, you still want your privacy.”

One broker said noisy billionaires who buy in won’t risk losing staffers who value their sleep.

“If Sting wants to practice his guitar riffs in the middle of the night, he’s not offending anyone other than his family, and maybe a neighbor or two,” the broker said.

The staff apartments are on floors six through eight.

The higher floors with the lofty views are reserved for the billionaires and boldface names who employ the butlers and maids living below them.

The 24 staff apartments, studios and one-bedroom units that have already been sold range from $875,000 to $2.24 million.

New signs that the economy may be on track to correct itself in 2008:

The Dog Run, the city’s only water therapy for old and infirm canines will be closing next week to stave off a 50 percent rent hike, even though a dozen or so devoted human companions of the dogs staged an impromptu rally over the weekend.

“You can call us crazy dog owners but all the dogs have benefited so much from this place,” said Mona Mansour, a freelance copyeditor, who organized the protest and has been taking her dog to the pool for more three years for physical therapy. “We hoped it would be like the Grinch and the landlord would have a change of heart and see what he’s taking away.”

The Dog Run has been at its Chelsea location for four years providing an innovative form of “hydrotherapy” and massage for dogs and holding “open swims” for neighborhood dogs in its 12-by-15 foot pool.

. . . is that it’s all about the tax break:

Super-rich New York city slickers are harvesting big checks from government programs originally set up to save poor family farmers during the Great Depression.

Among the dozens of billionaire sod-busters on both Forbes magazine’s rich list and the federal farm welfare rolls is banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr., who reaped $29,615 from the corn-subsidy program in 2005.

Rockefeller, worth an estimated $2.6 billion, got the government money for farms in Westchester and Columbia counties, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group lobbying organization.

Through a spokesman, Rockefeller, 92, said he’s unlikely to take any more of the money — and that he believes the system needs reform.

Location Scout: Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.

While vast swaths of public parkland go ignored, quasi-public park conservancies raise funds with overwhelming force:

Finding a unique gift for your honey can be a walk in the park — if you’ve got enough green.

The Central Park Conservancy is launching private, customized tours of the park, to be conducted by Sara Cedar Miller, its official historian and photographer, for a flat $500-per-hour fee for up to seven people.

Miller, the author of “Central Park, An American Masterpiece,” will drive the minivan that will take your party on a design-your-own walk and/or ride.

The conservancy offers free guided walking tours, but this one, it says, will be tailored to your interests, be they in landscape design, history, architecture — or little-known secrets.

Some fear a shortage of kindergarten openings at the city’s elite schools:

Concerns that too many families are applying for a scarce number of kindergarten spots come every year — and then usually pass by February as most children find places. This time around, the anxiety may be warranted, school leaders said.

With decisions looming for next year’s kindergarten classes, placements that often determine the location of a child’s academic career, several schools are reporting historic rises in applications, as many as double the number they received last year. Overwhelmed, some schools have already shut their admissions processes, turning away families who handed in applications weeks before the ordinary deadline, December 1. The Dwight School on the Upper West Side announced its changed deadline, to October 19, on its Web site with one week’s notice; Calhoun, which accepts only a set number of applications each year, reached the maximum days after applications became available, forcing admissions to close two weeks earlier than last year.

The result, observers said, is a stock of distraught parents who now face a dwindling list of schools where their 4-year-olds might be considered.

. . .

Emily Glickman, the president of a private firm that helps families apply to kindergartens, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, called the early shutouts, reported to her by parents in frantic phone messages, unprecedented. “I’ve been doing this since 1999. I’ve never gotten messages like this year,” Ms. Glickman said.

. . .

An increase in the number of applications handed in earlier in the year does not necessarily mean increased competition. Panic can breed panic, creating an illusion of heightened competition as nervous families send in more applications per child and rush to send them in earlier, Cynthia Bing of the Parents League, a resource group for parents at independent schools, said.

Indeed, nursery school directors have been recommending that families apply to more schools, closer to 10 versus five or six several years ago, and families are following suit.

. . .

That does not mean a crisis, Ms. Bing said. “We’re not hearing an uproar in the streets yet,” she said. “And the good news is — frankly, as it has been in the past — everyone has a place.”

. . .

Consultants and school leaders said another way to calm parents is to change the admissions process. Admissions directors are reconsidering an old idea of making the kindergarten process more like admission to medical school, with students and schools simply listing their top choices for more efficient sorting, Ms. Lynch at the Buckley School said.

Ms. Glickman said her preference is a lottery that would sort children automatically — eliminating measures such as play observations, applications, and parent interviews, which she called a “farce.” “If you remember that the whole point of this is that they’re ranking and sorting 4-year-olds openly — and secretly judging parents’ wealth connections and likeliness to give — it really becomes apparent what a disgusting process this is,” she said.

Reminded that an end to the traditional application process could hurt her professionally, Ms. Glickman maintained the position. “I also have a conscious,” she said.

Definitely something all New Yorkers can take pride in — a bunch of upscale chainstores drove up rents and turned Fifth Avenue into one giant overvalued loss leader for retailers:

Rodeo Drive? Puh-leeze!

The country’s far-and-away leader in elite retail remains Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, by a $7 million mile.

Real-estate firm Colliers International ranked the most expensive shopping streets in the United States by price paid per square foot, and Fifth Avenue took top honors, with an average rent of $1,350.

Rodeo Drive, by comparison, ranked third with a relatively bargain-basement price of $480 per square foot.

“Retailers, and in particular luxury retailers, continue to desire prime street-front locations,” said Ross Moore, senior vice president at Colliers.

And more than anywhere else in the country, “prime” means Fifth Avenue.

“Fifth Avenue is iconic. It’s synonymous with fashion and shopping,” said Tiffany Townsend, communications director at the city’s marketing organization, NYC & Company.

. . .

The influx of such global brands as Apple, Hugo Boss and others has dramatically driven up prices along Fifth, rising from an average of just $1,000 a year ago.

Gucci last year agreed to a record retail price of $1,500 per square foot for the right to bring back their flagship store to The Trump Building.

“Fifth Avenue is by far the greatest retail street not just in the nation but, in my opinion, the world,” said Stephen Siegel, chairman of Global Brokerage at CB Richard Ellis, who brokered the Gucci deal.

. . .

Fifth Avenue, however, just misses being the priciest stretch on Earth, with London’s Old Bond Street taking the top spot at $1,400.

Is can’t be a coincidence that Bloomberg’s Upper East Side residence on 79th Street is within New York’s proposed congestion pricing zone while his 3,600-square-foot, uh, pied-à-terre in the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge is situated in that city’s actual congestion charging zone (.pdf), can it? Nah:

The residence Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keeps here is not in the grandest house on the block. Spread over three floors of an attached red brick Victorian, the apartment overlooks a quiet locked garden in one of the city’s most exclusive precincts, where Ferraris and Bentleys roll past the boutiques of Hermès and Chloé.

But the apartment is a place of welcoming elegance, with artfully planted window boxes, heavy tasseled drapery and the warm glow of a chandelier highlighting gilt details on the ceiling. And Mr. Bloomberg, who has hardly been here since taking office in 2002, says he plans to spend more of his time enjoying it when he is no longer mayor.

Indeed, earlier this year, property records show, the mayor spent more than $7 million (3.5 million pounds) to extend his hold on the Cadogan Square property through 2113. Apartments in London are generally not sold, but are leased for decades.

Mr. Bloomberg’s visit to London over the weekend was for official business; he was meeting with Mayor Ken Livingstone and learning more about security and traffic measures in London that might work in New York.

But it was also a homecoming of sorts for the mayor, a lover of parties and art. He was honored at a buffet reception given by 100 friends at the prestigious Serpentine Gallery, on whose board he once sat. And it allowed him a rare night in the 3,600-square-foot flat, which once served as his platform for conquering the London social scene.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday at a City Hall news conference here with Mayor Livingstone. “I said to Ken on the way over, ‘You know, after I finish this job I’m sure I will spend a lot more time in London because it’s exciting and they have great museums and nice people.’”

And nice digs. The mayor’s office declined to confirm details. But the apartment, with a spiraling, filigreed central staircase, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing room, office and study, according to plans at Britain’s land registry, was decorated by Jamie Drake, who is known for exuberance and has festooned rooms for Madonna as well as for Mr. Bloomberg in his Upper East Side town house.

Those who have visited say the flat is filled with American art, including works by Andy Warhol and Henry Moore in addition to Jasper Johns. Mr. Bloomberg’s love of finery is also reflected in the mahogany doors and marble columns.

Like real estate on Mr. Bloomberg’s Manhattan block, East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, property on Cadogan Square is not cheap. Records from the real estate agency Strutt & Parker Lane Fox indicate that in 1997, the apartment cost about $5 million (2.8 million pounds) for a lease of about 26 years.

. . .

Talking to reporters on Sunday in Blackpool, where he had addressed delegates at the Conservative Party convention, he said of his New York home: “I get a haircut two doors away from these buildings, I live a block and a half away, my favorite Greek diner’s across the street. I’ll never have to leave the neighborhood.”

And you’ll have to pay the greenback equivalent of 8 quid to get in . . .

Put the load right on me:

The burden of housing costs continues to stretch the pocketbooks of New Yorkers, as large percentages of residents see more of their income go to their mortgages and rents, according to an analysis of new census data.

Across the city, homeowners in Brooklyn and renters in the Bronx are carrying the heaviest burdens, with many spending half or more of their monthly paychecks on housing.

In Brooklyn, 31 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing costs, the highest percentage in any large county in the state. In the Bronx, 32.9 percent of renter households are paying a similar share of their income for their apartments, the highest percentage in the city, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, which was released to the public yesterday.

. . .

In 2006, 26.4 percent of homeowners with a mortgage in the city paid half or more of their income on housing, up from 25.4 percent in 2005, according to the analysis conducted by Queens College demographers for The New York Times. About 49.8 percent of homeowners with a mortgage in the city were paying 30 percent or more of their income on housing, a level commonly viewed as a limit of affordability, compared with 48.8 percent in 2005.

In Brooklyn, 55.3 percent of homeowners in 2006 paid 30 percent or more of their income on housing. Homeowners there had the second-highest median monthly costs in the city, at $2,194. Those in Manhattan had the highest, with $2,758.

. . .

The city’s median gross rent climbed to $945 a month, up from $909 in 2005. Manhattan remains the most expensive borough for renters, with the median rent at $1,081, according to the census data. Renters in the city spending at least half their income on housing remained unchanged from 2005 to 2006, at 27.9 percent.

And no one needs the suburbs now that the suburbs are here:

While the national housing market is experiencing a major slowdown, Manhattan’s wealthiest families are buying up as many apartments as they can and combining them into rambling mega-units. Brokers and developers say that buyers in this segment of the market are finding that they have few large apartments to choose from, and so they are creating the spaces they want from a half dozen one- and two-bedroom apartments. While some buyers are swallowing up whole floors of new condominiums, others are buying neighboring apartments in older co-op buildings as they become available.

Gary Barnett, the chief executive of the Extell Development Corporation, which is building the Ariel West at 245 West 99th Street, where the Ashleys bought, said the building has 70 apartments after seven units were combined into three.

These combination units are not bargains: two-bedroom apartments in the building typically cost $1.5 million to $2 million, and three- and four-bedroom apartments cost $2.5 million to $3 million.

Mr. Barnett plans to include 4,500- to 8,500-square-foot apartments in two projects planned for the Upper West Side for more families like the Ashleys. “A number of people we’re seeing who have three, four and even five children need these spaces,” he said.

This trend is seen most often on the Upper East and Upper West Sides. For example, in the last two months, five families paid $5.5 million to $13 million for apartment combinations at the Brompton at 205 East 85th Street. These resulting apartments range from 4,500 to 8,000 square feet, according to the Related Companies, the Brompton’s developer.

. . .

Stephanie Coontz, the director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research group in Chicago, described this as an “hourglass economy” with more rich people at the top and more poor people at the bottom. At the top, the superrich are finding that there are so many “merely rich” people that they have to find new ways to distinguish themselves. They are able to set themselves apart by having larger families and larger combined apartments to house them.

“You’ve got this incredible wealth at the top, and more people jockeying to put themselves at the top of that,” Ms. Coontz said.

New York is Tijuana for the European middle classes and now Cabo for the Euro-rich:

Meanwhile, the housing market everywhere else in the country is morbid, Wall Street is skittish and even Mayor Bloomberg says pricing here should be coming down. “You might think we were being set up for some major reversal,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman senior vice president George W. van der Ploeg.

But New York is unfallen: This autumn’s new batch of listings will trek onward and upward.

According to two sources, Roger Barnett (CEO of natural products company Shaklee) and his wife Sloan (cellphone billionaire George Lindemann’s daughter) have begun to quietly ask around $62 million for their 125-year-old neo-Georgian town house. The 33-foot-wide mansion at 16 East 69th Street, designed by Peter Marino, was bought less than seven years ago for $11.5 million.

. . .

No townhouse in New York City has ever been officially listed for more than the Barnett place. Likewise, no apartment had sold for $50 million before two spreads in the newly made-over Plaza broke that sacred ceiling this summer.

Our city knows its real estate is monstrous and anarchic, and that the sales price of an average apartment has tripled over the past decade. But that stat is trivial compared to the high-end’s dazzling rise. There are more big-ticket buyers around who are willing to spend their money on “fine art” real estate, even if prices are so much vaster than last decade’s.

“The disparity between the rich and the superrich is becoming ever greater,” Mr. Henckels said, “and until that reverses itself, the prices at the very high end are safe.”

Downtown is getting in on the superrich action too. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson sold his family’s West 10th Street townhouse this March for $33.15 million, though he reportedly paid $7.35 million in 2000. And a full-floor penthouse at 200 11th Avenue, with an en-suite car garage space, will go on the market this September for around $18 million, which listing broker Leonard Steinberg at Douglas Elliman said will be the biggest Chelsea listing ever.

In an e-mail, Mr. Steinberg cited demand from “the NOUVEAU nouveau riche” — homegrown but especially foreign.

“Everyone with euros or pounds,” said Kathy Sloane, the Clinton family broker and another Brown Harris director, “thinks we’re giving real estate away.” She said she’s broken records at every building she’s sold in this year.

Lady, please put down the cosmo:

The Bordeaux was flowing, the foie gras abundant and the well-heeled epicures at Daniel were having a refined old time when suddenly all eyes turned toward a table against one wall and all conversation ceased.

Jean-Luc Le Dû, a sommelier in the restaurant, looked in that direction, too. And he saw her: the woman making like a dancer on a pole at Scores.

She stood facing the rest of the dining room. First she took off a vest or a jacket, as best Mr. Le Dû remembers. Then she went to work on her blouse.

Just as she was getting to her bra, the maître d’hôtel got to her. Thus her drunken, wobbly stint as a stripper ended, and so did her dinner. She and her date, a smiling, sloshed man who had seemingly egged her on, were escorted to the door.

“She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive,” complained Mr. Le Dû, who left Daniel several years ago and now owns a wine shop in Greenwich Village. “If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on.”

At Daniel? Hard to believe. But then Mr. Le Dû’s story provides a reminder that a 1985 Burgundy casts the same dark spell as a 2007 peppermint schnapps. That in a four-star temple as surely as a starless dive, some diners drink too much: way, way too much.

. . .

“If anything, a large bank account enables one to forgo normal levels of decorum, because you don’t have consequences,” said Rocky Cirino, a manager at the restaurant Cru, who previously worked at Daniel. “I’m thinking of several people whose station in life has enabled them to bypass normal civility and caution.”

. . .

Sometimes drunken diners don’t even bother to seek a private sanctuary for their libidos.

“People are often doing things underneath the table,” said a veteran server who has worked in many of Manhattan’s premier restaurants, including Gotham Bar & Grill and Fleur de Sel. The server asked not to be named for fear of angering past or future employers.

“The darker the restaurant, the more romantic the restaurant — there’s going to be some activity,” she said.

Only in New York is it somehow unusual and newsworthy that someone squirrels away his or her modest income in order to buy a modest apartment:

When Janey Lee and Pablo Agüero were struggling freelance Web designers, buying an apartment in Manhattan seemed like a dream, one clouded by credit-card debt, student loans that had to be repaid and the bills for their wedding.

But now, five years later, they are about to move into a $445,000 two-bedroom condo in Hamilton Heights, in Upper Manhattan, with their 5-month-old daughter, Matilda. Their combined salaries of just over $100,000 qualified them for a mortgage, but it took a lot more for them to come up with the down payment.

In a city synonymous with luxury and spending, Ms. Lee, 30, and Mr. Agüero, 35, decided to do without.

They gave up smoking to cut costs, they stopped meeting friends after work for beers, they didn’t buy new clothes, and they stashed away tax refunds and as much of their earnings as possible. Whenever they wanted to buy drinks, gadgets or cookware, they asked each other: “Do I want an iPod or a house? Do I want a latte or a house?”

“It would be absurd for me to buy things when I wanted a place rather than a frying pan,” Ms. Lee said as she fed Matilda a post-nap bottle.

More impressive, perhaps, than their willpower was that they were able to save $90,000.

Still, Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero are part of the shrinking pool of New Yorkers who have been able to buy apartments for less than $450,000, and the even smaller group who have done so without help from their parents or a Wall Street bonus.

“Most people that I’m working with are getting some kind of familial assistance,” said Tracie Hamersley, the Citi Habitats broker who helped Ms. Lee and Mr. Agüero find their apartment. “They were unusual in that they were doing this on their own.”

Congestion pricing will help little in a city where most of the middle class is unable to afford even a parking space, much less an actual home:

In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.

In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.

While real estate in much of the country languishes, property in Manhattan continues to escalate in price, and that includes parking spaces. Some buyers do not even own cars, but grab the spaces as investments, renting them out to cover their costs.

Spaces are in such demand that there are waiting lists of buyers. Eight people are hoping for the chance to buy one of five private parking spaces for $225,000 in the basement of 246 West 17th Street, a 34-unit condo development scheduled for completion next January. The developer, meanwhile, is seeking city approval to add four more spots.

Parking in new developments is selling for twice what it was five years ago, said Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and president of Miller Samuel.

Although spaces in prime sections of Manhattan are the most expensive, even those in open lots and in garages in Brooklyn, Queens, Riverdale and Harlem are close to $50,000, although at least one new Brooklyn development is asking $125,000.

Scarcity figures big in the escalating prices. Mr. Miller estimated that less than 1 percent of all co-op and condominium buildings in the city have private garages. The city also limits how much parking new buildings below 96th Street can offer, requiring that no more than 20 percent of the units have spaces.

“It’s a fairly rare amenity,” Mr. Miller said. “And in the world of pet spas and on-site sommeliers, it’s actually a pretty functional amenity.”

I don’t know — an on-site sommelier seems pretty practical. But don’t even get me started about pet spas . . .

A fantastic service leaves much more time to prepare for the hangers on who weasel their way into the compound:

As Manhattan motorists sit for hours on the Long Island Expressway making slow progress toward their Hamptons weekend getaways, a new $1,600-a-seat round-trip helicopter service is flying to East Hampton, N.Y., from Midtown Manhattan in 35 minutes flat.

While chartered seaplanes and choppers have offered speedy service to the Hamptons for more than a decade, U.S. Helicopter last week unveiled the first scheduled helicopter service to East Hampton Airport, allowing New Yorkers with big budgets to book flights on a whim hours before takeoff. The convenience comes at a price — it’s nearly twice as expensive as some charters.

“Time is money,” the executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, Marina Van, said. “People want to get to New York and back as fast as possible.”

. . .

Other helicopter companies are also offering spruced-up packages to attract more customers. One charter helicopter company, BlueStar, recently debuted a Hamptons HeliCard, where frequent fliers can purchase packages of trips for the summer. The 30-trip package weighs in at $82,000. BlueStar charters accommodate six passengers and cost between $6,000 to $14,000 a round-trip — with Taittinger Champagne served during the short flight.

It’s easy to be outraged by Taco Bell if you never ate there to begin with:

A TV report ratting out a frozen-yogurt shop for hosting a party of mice didn’t keep crowds of Upper East Siders from the trendy treat yesterday.

Footage on WABC News showed two mice running around the popular Pinkberry shop on Second Avenue at East 81st Street at 4 a.m. The station said it was tipped by a passer-by who saw about six of the critters.

“As long as there’s no rats in the ice cream, I’m OK,” said Josh Feldman, who was willing to wait 20 minutes on line for a serving of the dessert Paris Hilton asked for in jail.

His brother, Seth, said, “There are rats all over the city. I’m OK with it.”

Earlier: Wearing Latex Food Service Gloves Just Doesn’t Feel Right.