Die-hard Yankees fans turn down opportunity to purchase $380 ALDS tickets:

Some diehard Yankee fans were on line for 14 hours early Wednesday, waiting and hoping there’d be tickets available for game one of the playoffs when the doors opened.

. . .

Paul was on the line since 7 p.m. Wednesday night to be there for his beloved team, and he’s on a budget.

But when the doors finally opened, there was disappointment bordering on outrage when dozens of fans found out the cheapest tickets sold cost $380.

“I live right here in the neighborhood. I attended 34 games in the stadium this season, and I am not exactly rich,” said Paul. “I can’t go on line and pay an extra $25 surcharge.”

“Absolutely, something should be done for people in the neighborhood who were giving whole new life to the Yankees, but this is capitalism,” said Sam Soghar.

Fred Negron was the only one of the group who chose to buy the $380 ticket, but that’s because he just sold his house and had the cash.

For comparison’s sake, Phillies NLDS tickets are between $35 and $75.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Usually New York Magazine’s Daily Intel “Sex Diaries” feature just makes you feel icky. This entry, however, about a laid-off banker who has no sex, may be the first one to evoke schadenfreude:

I used to be such a romantic, but NYC has left me bitter and jaded at the age of 24.

Hahahahahahahaha!

There are two ways to respond to the news that “increasingly” parents are cutting off Williamsburg trustafarians. One, relief that the parental stimulus money that has disturbed and bubbled the economic ecosystem in the outer boroughs, driving up prices of crappy small rental apartments and other services (similar to the bubbling of the Manhattan real estate ecosystem by wealthy people who turn crappy small rental apartments into pied-a-terres and drive up the prices for people who actually live and work in the city), may be waning, bringing costs back down to reality for those who do not get stimulus checks. The other way to respond is something along the lines of “Hahahahahahahahaha!”:

For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”

But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.

“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses.

. . .

The cutbacks for the more privileged residents are a welcome change for locals who have struggled to support themselves without parental help.

Katie Deedy, 27, an artist, works two bartending jobs to shore up her designer wallpaper business. Gazing out from the bar at the patrons playing darts and sipping bloody marys during a Sunday shift at the Brooklyn Ale House, she described how refreshing it felt not being the only local resident trying to live on less.

“If I’m going to be completely honest, it does make me feel a little bit better,” she said. “It’s bringing a lot of Williamsburg back to reality.”

And while you’re at it, compare and contrast to the effects of eliminating the more media-friendly M8:

Some bus riders would be stranded by bus cuts leaving them up to 2 miles from the nearest mass transit option, according to an MTA study.

Residents in four areas on the city’s border face the longest treks if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s array of doomsday service cuts go into effect: the far West Side of Manhattan; Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn; Woodlawn, the Bronx, and Oakwood Beach, Staten Island, according to an impact study done in connection with the authority’s planned service cuts.

“It’s not right to leave us stranded,” said house cleaner Linda Girron, who works six days a week and lives at 49th St. and 11th Ave. “The bus is my only way of getting to work. We can’t get anywhere without the bus.”

Since last year, transit officials have warned they’d have to make severe service cuts to fill massive budget gaps if the state doesn’t adopt a bailout.

On the chopping block is weekend service on the crosstown M50 route used by Girron. Its demise would leave some workers and residents west of 11th Ave. a mile from mass transit, according to the study.

Residents in Gerritsen Beach, a corner of Brooklyn near Sheepshead Bay, would fare worse during the wee hours of the morning. Some parts of the neighborhood would be nearly 2 miles from another bus route if the B31 is shut down as planned between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m.

That’s bad news for late-shift workers like Alex Popov, 28, who works at a Times Square restaurant. He rides the B31 between 2 and 3 a.m. on his way home. “I need this bus,” Popov said.

On the city’s northern border, Woodlawn residents may lose the Bx34, which runs along Katonah Ave., the heart of the neighborhood, connecting with the last stop on the No. 4 subway line. Some sections of Woodlawn would be left with “no transit service within a walkable distance” during some overnight hours, the study states.

That’s it. Just “scoreboard.” We don’t even want to buy something in this stupid city; we just want you to admit that you were wrong all along:

For years, Halstead Property’s Richard Grossman has run a boot camp, teaching agents how to get buyers approved by co-op boards. In it, he presents four hypothetical applicant profiles. The first is a professional — a teacher, perhaps — with an average income but an outsize down payment. The second is a bonus-dependent candidate like a banker, who makes $80,000 and is putting down the minimum, but has a bonus three times his salary. The third, a non–Wall Streeter, earns somewhere in the low six figures and has a small bonus and a standard down payment, and the fourth, a first-time buyer with a good job, relies on relatives to cobble together a decent down payment.

In the past, says Grossman, agents invariably picked the financier as the most board-worthy, thanks to his bonus. At last month’s seminar, however, the answers were unanimous: “Go with the teacher.” And that is a big change. “If you were bidding against someone from Wall Street who had this kind of bonus history, you couldn’t compete. First of all, they were willing to outbid you, and second of all, the sellers were willing to take them over somebody else,” says Gumley Haft Kleier president Michele Kleier. “Bonus used to be the favorite word in everybody’s vocabulary. Now salary is a much more attractive word.” Admits one Upper West Side board member: “We’re definitely cautious across the board now, especially when someone’s touting their bonus.”

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re sponsoring an event — no one expects banks not to advertise, for example — as it is which event they decided to sponsor:

Despite receiving a whopping $28 billion in federal taxpayer funds, JPMorgan Chase and American Express spent $125,000 to sponsor a weeklong squash tournament at Grand Central Terminal.

The six-day event — known as the “Tournament of Champions” — ended Jan. 29 and drew about 200,000 fans to what was billed as one of the “world’s premier squash championships” at the same time as lawmakers on Capitol Hill were denouncing wasteful Wall Street spending.

Reps at JPMorgan Chase declined to specify how much it spent on the tournament, but a source close to the deal told Fox News Channel it was roughly $100,000.

American Express officials also declined to provide an amount, but the company is believed to have spent $25,000, a source told Fox News Channel.

Critics have said companies should not be sponsoring sporting events if they’re getting federal bailout money.

Don’t worry — the participants and organizers of this year’s International Debutante Ball are clued in to the pain each of us feels:

Champagne flowed. Men in tails waltzed and fox-trotted with debutantes in long white gowns to music by the 12-piece Lester Lanin Orchestra, a fixture at the ball almost since its inception in 1954. And shortly before midnight, the young debutantes, each flanked by a civilian and military escort, ascended the stage for a deep curtsy.

But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the layout of the hall. And there were fewer debutantes, 47 this year rather than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.

The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more,” she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.

. . .

Looking back on past recessions, she said, “We got through ‘87 and ‘93, and life does have a way of going on.

“I don’t mean it in a flippant way, but romance and having fun and looking pretty — I hope that doesn’t go away.”

Except what happened in 1987 or 1993? I thought the earlier recessions happened in 1980-82 and 1990-91 . . .

The best thing about the soda tax (and probably fishing, too) is that it makes people that much more enthusiastic about the prospect of soaking the rich. Bwahahaha:

New York State voters oppose the so-called “obesity tax” on nondiet soft drinks by a resounding margin of 60 percent to 37 percent, but support, by an even more overwhelming margin of 84 percent to 13 percent, raising the state income tax on people who make more than $1 million per year, according to results of a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.

Even those who prefer diet sodas — which would be exempt from the proposed 18 percent sales tax — said they opposed the measure (58 percent to 39 percent), while drinkers of regular sodas opposed the idea by an even stronger margin (64 percent to 31 percent). Majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents surveyed all opposed the proposed tax, though by varying margins.

(In an amusing aside, the Quinnipiac poll noted, “Independent voters are the most weight conscious on the political spectrum as 37 percent prefer diet soft drinks, compared to 27 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats.”)

Meanwhile, support for the so-called “millionaires’ tax” extended even to Republicans, who favored the measure, by a margin of 72 percent to 27 percent. Gov. David A. Paterson has expressed opposition to raising taxes on wealthy voters, but has suggested that there might be no other option if the state budget crisis continues to fester.

Makes you want to root for Cole Hamels:

Despite the recession, our New York teams keep doing what they’ve always done: spending the competition into oblivion. Especially the Yankees. Sabathia had made it clear he didn’t want to come to New York, even after the Bombers had offered him $140 million. So the Yankees gave him 20 million more reasons to change his mind.

How is this even possible? Where’s this money coming from? Never mind that $161 million is, at the very least, unseemly right now. If you want an answer, look back to the days before the Sabathia announcement, when details leaked about the Yankees and Mets asking the city for a combined $450 million more in public bonds, to pay for cost overruns on their immoderate new stadiums. (They’d initially been granted $1.5 billion.) Already, the two teams are not paying rent or property taxes on the new stadiums, and the MTA ($104 for a monthly MetroCard, anyone?) is giving the Yankees their own Metro-North station. The teams are also subtracting construction costs from their share of MLB’s revenue-sharing program, which pays out to less-flush franchises. The Yankees (and Mets) have prepared for a potential recession the old-fashioned way: by reducing their own expenses long before everyone else was doing it. That made paying Sabathia (and Rodriguez) easy. The recession is going to cause normal teams to scale back. The Yankees and Mets are not normal teams. They have big shiny new stadiums and fancy cable channels. So they don’t get normal players.

No the Yale!:

The posh Yale Club in Midtown is fast becoming a cheesy wedding hall, with old-money members complaining of steady invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as The Bronx.

“It’s crappy,” said a woman who insisted The Post identify her only as “Mrs. Harrison DeSilver.”

“I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx,” groused DeSilver, a member for 50 years.

“On the weekends, it just gets ridiculous.”

DeSilver said the majority of the weddings at the club seem to involve people from The Bronx.

Don’t look now — the $405 Club is back:

In the wake of continuing, even worsening, layoffs in the financial industry (10,000 in New York since last August, Bloomberg recently reported, with behemoths like Citigroup cutting 10 percent of its investment bank alone); as double-digit drops in net worth have top executives wringing their hands in The Times, much of Wall Street’s young are simply throwing up theirs and saying, “Whoo-hoo!”

Tommy Kim, 27, formerly of UBS, for example, logged 37 days of snowboarding in 2008 after being fired last January. “When I got laid off, it was like, hallelujah,” he said.

After the snow melted, he came back to New York, where “I went paint-balling,” Mr. Kim said. “I went to Six Flags.” Now: “I stay up late, wake up late, go to the beach a lot. I play a lot of video games when I can’t find people to hang out with. I started reading again for pleasure, which is something I haven’t done since before college.” (Currently on the nightstand: Freakonomics).

He doesn’t have a three-bedroom in Westchester or a country club membership. He’s single and owns a one-bedroom in Queens that he bought “really cheap” in 2004.

Recently, Mr. Kim turned his attention to organizing his vast music collection and playing DJ gigs around town, including a Saturday party at the Brooklyn Museum and a few weddings (he was a well-known DJ during his undergrad days at Dartmouth). He’s also taking break-dancing classes. And he built himself a new computer, just for the hell of it. Looked up the instructions online, bought the parts, et voilà!

And his job search? “I’m kind of looking,” Mr. Kim said. “I decided last week maybe I should be more proactive.” It’s hard to get worked up, though, because “President Bush extended unemployment by another 13 weeks!” That’s $405 a week on top of the “generous” UBS severance.

Buried Lede: Unemployment Benefits Stagnate; Unaccountably Rich Hardest Hit!

Adam “Jersey City” Sternbergh out-Sternberghs himself:

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

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

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

How about a Take Back The Tap campaign for city schools? Maybe they know something we don’t . . . or not:

Parents who sent their toddlers to the well-regarded Mandell preschool on the Upper West Side used to count on getting into the private school of their choice.

But with the recent boom in the city’s under-5 set, the competition for kindergarten places can rival that of Ivy League admission. This spring, for the first time, several of the 43 Mandell preschool graduates found themselves without anywhere to go. So Mandell, which has been around for generations, decided to do its part to ease the kindergarten crunch by opening its own $2 million elementary school, in a 17,000-square-foot storefront on Columbus Avenue at 96th Street.

“I think we’ve reached a crisis level in terms of capacity,” said Gabriella Rowe, Mandell’s head of school. “Although the majority of our families are still going to be able to send their children to their first-choice school, it’s clear that it’s going to become more difficult every year if these numbers continue to increase.”

The new school, financed through bank loans, will start with 50 kindergarten students in two classes. Ms. Rowe plans to expand to 450 students through 8th grade by 2017. Tuition is $28,000 for the 2008-9 school year, rising to $30,000 the next year.

Despite mounting layoffs on Wall Street and the broader economic downturn, private schools in New York City continue to thrive, with administrators and consultants saying this year has been the most competitive yet for admission to kindergarten. Some estimate that several hundred children were rejected from every place they applied.

About 150,000 students are enrolled in private and parochial schools in New York City; about 1.1 million attend the city’s public schools.

But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

Cutbacks at the Times; appearances-oriented couples hardest hit:

Meanwhile, a Sunday institution, the weddings and celebrations pages in the Styles section, is also planning to scale back the number of wedding announcements it has in its pages after two staffers were lost from this year’s round of buyouts/layoffs. “We contemplate a small reduction in the number we run compared with last year at this time,” wrote Catherine Mathis, the paper’s spokeswoman, “but last year represented an expansion of our columns somewhat from the historical norms in our pages.”

The dirty secret of parks is that while they’re great for real estate values (and therefore a boost to city property tax revenue), the people who live next door treat them like the ornamental gardens they are:

[Arlene Harrison] has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how [Gramercy Park] is — and is not — used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.

. . .

She added: “It will change the neighborhood for the better. It will be less use on the park.”

Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger.

Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence.

Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace.

About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday morning three days later, about two dozen people could be spotted in the park over the course of four hours, and never more than six or eight at a time.

“Honestly, we don’t use it that much,” said Gale Rundquist, a real estate broker who has lived on the park for five years. Still, she said, access “adds a lot to a listing; it’s panache.”

“Because we work during the day, and we leave town on the weekends,” she explained of her own nonusage. “But it’s beautiful to look at.”

Actual use of the park is not Ms. Harrison’s measure. “It was always an ornamental park,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even go in to enjoy it. They’re so thrilled just to see it. It’s like a hotel room with a view of the ocean.”

. . .

[Harrison] knows the rhythms of the park intimately. “Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, there are two people here,” she said. “One walks, the other breaks into a jog and stretches occasionally. Two women walk here at 7, and then a third joins them at 7:15. The nannies come in with the small kids around 11, and then again around 4.

“Saturday, it’s empty,” she added. “People are doing their errands.”

There is, to be frank, not much to do in the park. Music is forbidden. So are alcoholic beverages, bicycles and furniture. A gravel path around the perimeter provides the only opportunity for low-impact play, or, for that matter, running or walking. Ms. Harrison said parents constantly offer to donate playground components for the park, but she won’t have it.

“Too much wear and tear,” she said. “But do you know what? The children who grow up here learn to use their imagination.”

For all the hot air about trusting social security no one seems to want to put their money where their mouths are:

About 84 percent of city parents pay their nannies off the books — and 71 percent “greatly respect” their helpers while one-third admit they worry they would do in an emergency.

So that’s how it works:

At this moment, 30 Rock-star and SNL alum Tina Fey is speaking at the Fieldston School’s graduation ceremonies.

. . .

How did Fieldston manage to snag the movie star for the high school commencement assignment? No one’s saying, but it seems worth noting that Upper West Side Fey’s daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond, turns 3 in September, putting her theoretically in line for a spot at one of New York’s prestigious private schools.

New tenement dwellers scraping by in new tenements:

Drinking and eating carry their own complications. Especially if you are, say, Noah Driscoll, a 25-year-old project manager for a Chelsea marketing company whose salary is comparable to what a rookie teacher might make.

“For a little while I only ate grapefruits for my lunch,” said Mr. Driscoll, who pays $400 a month on his college loans, “because they have a lot of nutrients and they got me through the day.”

Mr. Driscoll has since started packing two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch. Dinner might be two baked potatoes. On a recent Monday, it was franks and beans. On a good night, he might spend up to $6.

“To live like a human being on the salary that I make is very difficult in this city,” he said. “You’ve got to forget about brands, you’ve got to forget about, you know, what your mom made you growing up, and take what’s out there.”

Mr. Driscoll’s rent is reasonable: $725 for a room in a converted loft space that he shares with five friends in Gowanus, Brooklyn, near Park Slope. Most of his friends, however, earn far more than he does, and Mr. Driscoll is guilty of that quintessential New York sin: coveting thy neighbor’s salary. One recent night, his roommates went to Peter Luger Steak House. Mr. Driscoll waved them goodbye and stayed home.

. . .

Allison Mooney, 27, whose first job in the city was in publishing, often skipped dinner before going out, and instead took along mixed salted nuts in her purse. When things got really tight, she occasionally sneaked a flask filled with vodka into bars. Other times, she reluctantly resorted to flirting.

“I find in other cities guys are more apt to buy you drinks and expect nothing from it,” Ms. Mooney said.

“Here, if they do buy you a drink, which is rare, you have to suffer through flirtations. It’s true,” she said, adding, “It’s really cheesy.”

. . .

Sarah Avrin, a 23-year-old music publicist, said she was struck recently by the sacrifices that some people make to sustain their New York lifestyle when one of her friends endured the long, painful process of selling her eggs.

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.