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.

The Post corrects Friday’s report in the Sun on the most expensive parking space in Manhattan, noting that there is a parking lot that charges nearly $2000 a month for a stretch limousine:

The priciest parking spot in Manhattan costs almost $2,000 a month — more than a rental for a one-bedroom apartment in a trendy downtown neighborhood, a survey found.

The study of space rentals at garages citywide by the commercial Realtor Colliers International revealed 4 E. 76th St. Garage Inc. to be the highest, at $1,940 a month for a stretch-limo parking spot.

And for the first time, the average monthly rental in Midtown will hit $1,000 this year. Colliers research director Ross Moore said the median was $887 last year — when the report found Manhattan monthly parking fees to be the highest in North America.

Funny, I always just assumed that stretch limousines simply idled 24 hours a day in front of their owners’ homes.

No offense, but if you ever, ever again force me to consider the concept of “trust fund DJs” then I will start agitating for the reinstatement of the estate tax:

[D.J.] Berrie, 21, is just one of a burgeoning breed of D.J.’s. Young and rich — Mr. Berrie’s late father made his fortune as the marketer and manufacturer of the Troll doll in the 80’s — they wield their natural-born connections to money, promoters and marketers to secure some of the most coveted D.J. gigs in the city.

It used to be that scions of wealthy families would grow up in Daddy’s image to become pampered workhorses. Or maybe, if his parents were particularly artsy or intellectual, he would be supported while pursuing an M.F.A. or multiple terminal master’s degrees. Connections were always useful for getting into top-notch schools, or climbing corporate ladders.

But today, as we know all too well, the young and trust-funded are often after fame, having secured their fortune as babies. Most of them can get that fame just by going out enough during the week and insulting Lindsay Lohan (what’s up, Brandon Davis!) when there’s a camera around. Yet there are still those wealthy young’uns who manage to develop a work ethic. Today, instead of claiming the corner office, they hunker down behind a set of turntables in a D.J. booth.

It’s not so weird that a condo in Brooklyn now costs $7.2 million — New York real estate long ago ceased to make sense. That said, it does seem strange to pay that much for a view of 55 Water Street:

It’s Brooklyn as you’ve never seen it and probably never will — unless you’ve got $7.25 million to spare for what is about to become the borough’s priciest condo.

The flagship penthouse unit at 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park, along the Brooklyn Heights waterfront, will consist of a 4,638-square-foot triplex with breathtaking, 360-degree views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines from inside a state-planned public park.

But only those with the deepest pockets need apply. The price tag for the luxury pad is nearly double that of the current record sales figure for a Brooklyn condo: $3.8 million shelled out for a penthouse at the Aurora in Williamsburg in January.

“It will even have a private elevator that goes up to a rooftop terrace so you really feel like ‘king of the world,’” boasted Robert Levine, developer of the complex, which launched sales last week.

Levine’s “sky house” will feature seven rooms, four bathrooms and state-of-the-art appliances, as well as access to luxury amenities off-limits to park visitors.

You should have just flown to Thailand and gotten a couple of suits made there; not only would it have been cheaper but you also could have enjoyed the company of, you know, some actual prostitutes:

The butler did it. Or — wait — maybe it was the maid. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the scowling doormen who looked me up and down disapprovingly and made me feel like Oprah trying to shop at Hermès.

Either way, my first visit to the new Tom Ford flagship last week — I had attended a party there a few days earlier — was a confounding affair.

In the 1990s, Mr. Ford’s brand of martini-drenched, pheromone-charged glamour resuscitated the once clinically dead house of Gucci. He left in 2004, after a well-documented rupture with the conglomerate that owns Gucci, and has curiously chosen to re-enter the fashion arena with an upscale men’s wear collection. Mr. Ford has spoken at length about wanting to redefine luxury, from suits to nuts, for today’s peacocks who want a more sumptuous environment than that offered by the old school tailors on Savile Row. If my walk-in is any indication, Mr. Ford has confused exclusionary with exclusive.

Once I had cleared passport control, the experience was no less forbidding. The off-the-rack suits (starting around $3,000), Shogun-looking dressing gowns ($3,900) and formal attire (from $3,200) in the loungelike room to the left were enclosed in museumworthy glass cabinets that screamed, “Don’t touch!” Not a problem when it came to a beaver top hat (price on request) that would make any man look like a Central Park coachman, but if I am going to pay $5,690 for a dinner jacket, I want to try it on and have someone fawn over me while I do so.

. . .

Unimpressed by the selection of mostly cashmere-silk-blend sweaters and overpriced shoes ($1,390 for a pair of Chelsea boots; add another zero for crocodile), I decided to venture upstairs, where a lot of the most interesting accessories — limited-edition sunglasses and slick tie bars — had been on display at the party.

“Sir, this area is for appointments only,” said the security guard at the base of the stairs. I told him that I wanted to arrange a time for a fitting; he told me he did not know to whom to direct me. When I suggested he try the store manager, he replied, “Let me see if he has the time for you.”

You have to laugh. An unintentionally hilarious parody of a pretentious Madison Avenue boutique, the store reeks of arriviste Anglophilic posturing dressed up as aristocratic gentlemanly refinement. For all the preopening ballyhoo about the it’s-all-about-you customization and details like buttons on trouser cuffs so that your butler can brush away the remains of the day — at last! — the reality is more akin to a luxury store in a second-tier market during the mid-’90s.

When I heard that Mr. Ford had appointed an in-store maid, I assumed that it was a marketing ploy and that a modelesque stunner would walk around in high heels and a feather duster, playfully spanking the hedge-fund guys who were prepared to drop a pretty penny on, say, silk pajamas ($1,900, monogram not included). Not to my taste, by any means, but it would have been a cheeky gesture in keeping with the winking sexual provocation for which he was known at Gucci.

The last thing I expected was a display of help-as-spectacle that reminded me of the Brazilian haute department store Daslu, which employs hundreds of maids for the benefit of traveling robber-baron princesses. The security guards and curtained windows brought to mind the closed-door policy of Bijan in the ’80s, a shop that is now confined to the annals of retail history.

Then again, it could have simply been an off day:

My visit the following day was markedly different. The service offered me, especially by the store manager, Edward Carbonell, who possesses a charming bedside manner and the best skin in high-end men’s retail, was exemplary. It was Champagne and smiles all around, but then the entire staff appeared to know I was a Times reporter since I had made the appointment in my name.

*It’s kind of pathetic that a Thursday Style article can do more to stimulate discussion about the rich paying their fair share of taxes than the Times’ op-ed page is able to do.

Imagine that:

After nearly two years in Harlem, gourmet market Citarella became a bit more community-friendly last week by finally accepting EBT cards — what used to be known as food stamps. Though its five sibling stores still hold true to cash or credit only, the underpopulated 125th Street branch is making changes to accommodate the vastness of the neighborhood (and the fact that it’s located across from the General Grant Houses). “If people walk in and can’t afford it, they walk out,” says manager Charles Schillaci. “What good is that for us or for them? Our prices are comparable to those of other stores in the area.” The store sells both Gorgonzola tortellini and Goya black beans.

How unlikely is it that you’ll ever be able to afford real estate in Manhattan? Basically impossible:

Pity upper-middle-class Manhattanites. The average sales price of apartments here has spiked so extremely — tripling in the last decade to a record $1,295,445, according to a recent Prudential Douglas Elliman report — that only the most excessively well-heeled can become local owners.

Dottie Herman is the president and C.E.O. of that massive Elliman brokerage, yet her betrothed niece can’t find a Manhattan apartment. “Her fiancé said to me, ‘Gee, I don’t think it’s fair: We’re both professionals, we both went to college, and we’re not going to be able to find something in Long Island,’” Ms. Herman said, “‘and we’re not going to be able to find something in the city.’”

. . .

It’s uncouth to fret over rich people who can’t afford to buy a leafy Manhattan pad when there are over 30,000 New Yorkers living in shelters, and when the top-10th earners have the highest share of national income since pre-Depression America.

And yet: Back in 1997, when the average annual wage here was about $59,200, the median co-op cost a wonderfully appropriate $196,000. According to the state Department of Labor, that wage stat only rose to $84,200 in 2005, when the median co-op cost $635,000.

Last year, that median price blossomed by another $40,000.

. . .

According to Ms. Herman, $150,000 per year is enough income to become an island homeowner. “It’s not going to be on Central Park South, but I’m sure you can find something in Murray Hill. You can find things — a one-bedroom, 700, 800 square feet.”

Indeed, Upper West Side mortgage-broker Susan Gersh calculated that $130,000 is about the minimum income for a $600,000 apartment buyer with a 30-year mortgage — and 20 percent readily available up front for the down payment.

Therefore, a prospective Manhattan homeowner not only needs to be among the top 10 percent of Americans in income, but also must have gobs of saved money, too.

“If you have about $250 to $300 [thousand] in the bank, and you’re buying something that costs $600,000, you’re just there if you’re making a buck-fifty,” said associate Elliman broker Matt Gulker.

Pied-a-terrible.

When you put it this way, would an unmitigated real estate collapse really be so bad? I’m not kidding:

In the past decade, the price of the average Manhattan apartment has surged by nearly $1 million, a threefold increase to $1.3 million, a new report says.

The report, an analysis of Manhattan apartment sales by Miller Samuel, an appraisal company, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm, illustrates the seemingly endless increase in housing prices over the past 10 years, especially between 2000 and 2005. Despite the financial slowdown after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and a national cooling of the housing market, Manhattan has attained levels that may have been considered unfathomable 10 years ago.

“Three-hundred dollars a foot 10 years ago was the number — that was the Manhattan number,” an author of the report, Jonathan Miller, said. In 2006, the average price per square foot of a condo or a co-op was $1,031 — the first time the price had reached that high, and a 214% increase over 1997.

Both the average and median sales prices have increased by more than 200%, with the average Manhattan apartment selling for $1.3 million last year, compared with $431,000 10 years ago.

Very Big of him:

At the opening-night party for Talk Radio, [Sex and the City star Chris Noth] lamented, “What makes me really sick is how New York now looks like a bad imitation of Sex and the City. Meatpacking is a good example of just how fucked up it is. You can’t have a city that’s interesting where the only people living in it are rich. When I came here as a kid, as a young adult, you could get lost — many different worlds collided. You cannot say that today.”

Staten Islanders are wildly uninterested in $1,000 pizza:

For $1,000, the city’s most prodigal foodies can get a lobster- and caviar-drenched pizza at Nino’s Bellisima on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

That works out to about $25 per bite of the four-slice, 12-inch pie — a price that prompted Staten Islanders interviewed yesterday to respond with “Huh?” then, incredulously, “What did they put on that pizza?” and finally the admission that they would be hard-pressed to swallow such an extravagance.

“I came up with the idea to have something the most spectacular, unique!” said Nino Selimaj, the owner of the joint where pies on the regular menu cost between $14 and $20, as well as five other restaurants in the city. “People didn’t used to think they would ever pay $300 for Asian fusion when they could get Chinese takeout and now they do it all the time.”

In his thick, Albanian accent, Selimaj boasted he had tried hundreds of different recipes before devising the dish, which he said costs about $720 in raw materials.

Served cold and compiled in about 20 minutes, the creation is crowned by creme fraiche, eight ounces of four different kinds of caviar — Petrossian, Beluga, Ossetra and Sevruga — and a two-pound Maine lobster tail sliced so thin that the glean of caviar can be seen through its translucent meat. The pieces are separated by chives and topped with a hint of wasabi and salmon roe.

. . .

Ayanna Phillip of Stapleton waxed poetic on what she would do with $1,000 instead of eating chichi pizza (”I’d pay my bills; I’d go shopping, you could buy, like, 100 outfits”) as she waited to pick up her order at one of the borough’s more economical pie emporiums, My Pizza in Concord — where a large pie goes for $8.

“I wouldn’t buy that pizza even if I was Bill Gates,” she said, scrunching up her face at the thought of a slice topped by caviar.

Meanwhile, Island pizza chefs make a good case for avoiding pretentious pie:

“One thousand is a little crazy; They’d be getting a bargain with our pie,” said Michael Costello, the chef and manager of Pizza on the Plaza, New Dorp, which sells, by all accounts the Island’s most expensive pie.

Pizza on the Plaza’s $100 dish features fontina cheese, arugula pesto, a couple ounces of shaved truffles and lobster meat. Since the item was unveiled last summer, one customer ordered a few of the pizzas for a Halloween Party; otherwise demand has been, to put it kindly, very slow.

The Latter-Day Vanderbilts trying to turn an entire East Village building into their own private five-story, 15-apartment, 60-room building — or, possibly, as a ruse to evict undermarket rent-stabilized tenants — has won an appeals court ruling to go ahead with the dream:

The state Appellate Division has given Alistair and Catherine Economakis the green light to go ahead with eviction proceedings to boot the remaining low-income tenants from their five-story apartment building at 47 E. 3rd St.

“I’m disappointed,” said David Pultz, who has lived in his $625-a-month one-bedroom apartment since 1978. “My fear is I won’t be able to live in the city anymore.”

“We’re very shocked, very stunned,” said Janet Dunson, who has lived in the building for 17 years. “It looks like it’s open season on tenants.”

The Economakises say they have big plans for the five-story, 15-apartment, 60-room building.

In a letter they wrote to their tenants in 2003 explaining their plans to evict them, the couple — she’s the daughter of a Columbia University dean, and he’s the son of a Greek shipping magnate — said their current apartment in Brooklyn was too cramped and they needed more space.

The worst problem plaguing the city’s exclusive preschools is poor street access for chauffeured transportation:

The cars gather in front of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan about 8:30 a.m. In the front seats sit hired drivers (nobody uses the term chauffeur anymore). The cars are mostly big and mostly black luxury-edition sport utility vehicles like the Mercedes GL-Class or the GMC Yukon Denali. They fill the lanes in front of the Y’s entrance on Lexington Avenue, often two or three rows deep.

It looks like the outside of an arbitrage house just before trading hours, or perhaps the Knicks’ private entrance to Madison Square Garden on game day.

Until, that is, the drivers open the back-seat doors and the passengers’ feet emerge.

These are not the feet of profit-takers or N.B.A. players. These feet wear Sonnet Maryjanes and Primigi sneakers with Velcro closure straps.

These feet are only a half-foot long.

The children — ages 3 through 5 — are enrolled at the Y’s famous nursery school. The livery convention on Lexington Avenue occurs most every weekday. Neighbors of the Y and parents with children in the nursery school say they have seen the number of cars and drivers increase considerably over the past couple of years.

In exasperation, the director of the school, Nancy Schulman, drafted a letter to all families insisting that the drivers wait somewhere else while parents or baby sitters take the children in: find a legal parking space, or take their cars for a few spins around the block.

. . .

The Y is hardly the only school in the neighborhood where children get to school by car and driver. Dropoff hour at Nightingale-Bamford, on 92nd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, and at Dalton’s lower school, on 91st between Park and Madison, is often clogged by chauffeured S.U.V.’s.

Dalton’s chief financial officer, Ned Pinger, stands outside every morning to greet students, which often involves opening doors and helping them out of the back seat. “The heads of elementary schools are often outside doing this, and it becomes a little ridiculous,” said Sandra R. Bass, who publishes Private School Insider, a newsletter for New York parents. “You can’t tell who the master is in this situation.”

. . .

A parent whom other parents identified as a chauffeur-using mother, Alison Schneider, whose husband, Jack Schneider, is a hedge fund manager, said, “I got the letter, but I don’t really have any feelings about it one way or the other. It’s kind of boring. It’s about cars and parking.”

Over the past couple of weeks, a staff member from the Y’s nursery school has been seen directing waiting cars away from the school. The chauffeurs idled in double-parked formation one block farther down Lexington, or around the corner on 91st Street. Posters to the New York bulletin board of the Web site Urbanbaby.com, which is popular with mothers of young children, have occasionally made note of the scene. “So this morning I was at the 92nd Street Y and there were 10 black Escalades and Range Rovers double-parked with huge guys in black suits,” one wrote last month.

Upper East Siders scream at the New York Post’s Doug Montero to get a job:

The muscular store worker didn’t mince words when he told me to shoo from outside the Ralph Lauren clothing shop.

“Go stand by the church or I’m going to call the cops,” he threatened as I lowered my panhandling coffee cup.

Bumming on Madison Avenue is a tough business.

It took about an hour before the Ralph Lauren workers at the East 72nd Street store began harassing me.

The first worker, a linebacker-sized maintenance worker, told me to get off the store’s planters because my rear end was disturbing the hedge.

“You should go by the church. You’ll make more money there because people walk by and feel more spiritual,” he said, pointing toward East 71st Street.

“Get a job,” sneered one 60-something lady.

What dumb luck that the news about their $1 million lawsuit against homeless people loitering in front of their business comes out on the coldest day of the winter:

A high-end antique dealer on the Upper East Side is suing four unnamed homeless people for $1 million on the grounds that they’ve driven away customers by loitering on the sidewalk in “old, warn, and unsanitary clothing and cardboard boxes and old blankets which they convert into sleeping accommodations.”

In addition to money, Karl Kemp & Associates Antiques, located near 69th Street at 833 Madison Ave. near Gucci, Chanel, and Prada, is asking a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to force the homeless defendants to stay at least 100 feet away from the store, according to legal papers filed yesterday.

For more than two years, the papers allege, the homeless have spent “significant amounts of time” obstructing Karl Kemp’s storefront window display, “consuming alcoholic beverages from open bottles, performing various bodily functions such as urinating or spitting on the sidewalk, and . . . verbally harassing or intimidating . . . prospective customers.”

Welcome to New York Fuckin’ City*, where even our psychics are crotchety old coots who should have decamped to the interior years ago:

Will New York be prosperous in 2007? Will it be a year of unrest? Metro asked some of the city’s astrologers and psychics for their predictions . . .

. . .

“I think New York City in 2007 is going to be a repeat of the ’70s,” said psychic Jackie Barrett. “Fortunately for us in the working-class, [the real estate market] is going to come to a crashing halt, and I believe there will be more developments where landlords thought they would profit that will crash in on them.”

She predicted many New Yorkers will move away and those who stay will find themselves in a class clash.

“There will be a fight for all those beautiful buildings going up in places like Williamsburg,” Barrett said, “where lower-income people will be fighting for space. If millionaires want to stay, they’ll have to share with the common folk.”

*And I believe that appellation has been trademarked by certain novelty T-shirt makers.

This year’s conspicuous consumption, now with added Mickey Rourke:

OK, so you had a pretty good year, if not a Goldman Sachs $100 million–bonus good year. You can afford to gorge yourself like the overpaid, all-conquering hunter-gatherer you are. A number of pricier-than-thou steakhouses are stocking up on Wagyu “Kobe” beef flown in from Japan, not the knockoff American hybrids raised on ranches in Texas or Colorado. At Nello, on Madison Avenue, fourteen-ounce Wagyu sirloins have been selling for $750 a pop. That’s hardly an exorbitant markup, owner Nello Balan says, considering that after his chefs finally strip away the meat’s blubbery blanket of fat he is paying about $400 per pound. He also offers Wagyu dusted with white truffles. That goes for $1,050 (which would get you about three years’ worth of Lipitor).

“It’s really fucking good,” says Mickey Rourke, the actor and proud carnivore. He ordered one sirloin at Nello, and the buttery, foie gras–like beef was so exquisite he came back the next day, this time with a Romanian model in tow, for more. (”It didn’t even taste like steak,” he says.) Levent Piskiner, who owns the Fifth Avenue jewelry store Gilan, didn’t mind that his bill came to over $800. “It’s a miracle,” he says of the Wagyu, named after a noble strain of cattle from the Kobe region of Japan.

The Daily News does its best to reassure everyone that those obscenely large Wall Street bonuses will trickle down to t o a diverse collection of steak purveyors and golf retailers:

The extraordinarily huge bonuses being paid across Wall Street won’t just benefit top investment bankers and traders — the entire city will enjoy a payday.

A day after Goldman Sachs revealed it would be paying their staff $16.5 billion in bonuses, the Daily News visited businesses across the city to gauge the effect of the spend, spend, spend mentality.

“The only time I saw something like [this] was in the 1980s, when the world was insane,” said BMW of Manhattan President Jeff Falk.

. . .

“You can feel it when things are going well down here,” said Sean O’Sullivan, who sells golf equipment in lower Manhattan at The World of Golf. “Guys are traveling and playing a lot of golf.”

While customers can get a full set of clubs for as little as $300, O’Sullivan, 41, of Manhattan, has customers willing to pay $3,500 for top of the line clubs from Callaway, Ping or TaylorMade.

. . .

Mona Vijolan, 27, of Glendale, Queens, tends bar at Nebraska Beef, a Stone St. steakhouse in the shadow of the Goldman Sachs building. Lately, brokers haven’t blinked at the $63 price when ordering “The Stockbroker,” a hunk of aged prime rib served with a half-pound lobster tail.

“This is the month for bonuses and when the market’s been good, our customers are even more generous than usual,” said Vijolan, who’s married and has a 4-year-old daughter. “This year has been great,” she said, adding that $100 tips are commonplace.

(What, no Scores angle?)

Real estate veteran Brian Carter discusses the new segregation:

I never thought of New York as a segregated city — it didn’t dawn on me until I became a real estate agent. My own experience as a rental agent in Manhattan isn’t a terrible place to begin. In four years of renting apartments all over Manhattan, I have rented exactly one apartment to an African-American. It doesn’t appear to be an industry oversight as the rental business is far too competitive to be discriminatory. In other words, if you have the money and need a place, most agents will be glad to charge you for their services, regardless of race or ethnicity. Of the three rental agents with whom I spoke, this was one issue that they all agreed on. If you can pay the rent and the fee, we’re happy to do business.

My next-door neighbor “Todd” left real estate a few months ago and had a similar experience. When asked how many African Americans he rented to in his time in the business he answered, “none.” He had rented to one Latino. When I asked him for some explanation, he said, “I worked primarily in Manhattan. Most people who can afford an apartment below 96th Street tend to be rich and white. I don’t think the reasons are very complicated. Race and class are often related. I noticed it, and it bothered me.”

One agent, when asked about experiences renting to minorities, said he was personally insulted by the question. More than a few people declined to participate at all, and had no interest in talking about the subject. “Charlie,” retired agent, said he didn’t see the problem either. When asked how many minorities he rented to over the years, he answered, “As many as walked into my office and needed a place.” But that was sort of what I was getting at; almost all of the people, whether renters or buyers, who have walked into my office over the years were white.

Now we understand what real estate agents were all jazzed about. “Gigantic bags” of money in some of the largest Wall Street Christmas bonuses ever:

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs is set to throw gigantic bags of money at its bankers, traders and stockbrokers this year — lavishing them with more than $16.5 billion in bonus loot, the most ever doled out by a Wall Street firm.

Most of the Wall Street trading houses had a great year — but Goldman’s was spectacular, and its blockbuster numbers generated blockbuster bonuses for the fat cats.

Between regular salary and bonuses, the average pay of Goldman employees will be a mind-numbing $622,000 this year - and that includes all the low-end workers.

At the top end of the pay scale, it has been reported that Goldman was likely to pay a “golden 25″ managers, bankers and traders at least a cool $25 million each.

But a source close to the firm told The Post that some of the top performers may actually get four times that.

The $100 million bonus babies are in charge of making big bets with Goldman’s money on the direction of the prices of commodities, including oil and natural gas. And this year, they won big.

. . .

Goldman’s profits this year — after the bonuses — climbed 70 percent to $9.5 billion, up from $5.6 billion last year.

This prompted its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, to leave a voice-mail message for employees cautioning them not to be “irrational or arrogant” to ensure no damage to the firm’s reputation.

Blankfein might be tempted to be a bit “irrational” himself, with Goldman sources telling The Post that he is likely to rake in at least $50 million in bonus cash.

Last year, his predecessor, current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, get a measly $40 million.

The bonus money the firm will dispense is going to prime the city’s economy as lucky recipients buy fast cars, big apartments and luxury goods.

In October, state Comptroller Alan Hevesi said Wall Street’s wealthy workers earned an average of $289,664, or about 5 times as much as other employees in New York City last year.

Irrational and arrogant? Nah . . .

(Alternate post title: “Jesus Fucking Christ That’s A Lot Of Money”.)

From the Assignment Desk: Small sidebar piece on how much more traffic the Goldman Sachs careers page got today.

As the haves and have-mores scratch, claw and bite their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, a parasitic support structure scoops up the crumbs of excess:

There were 500 votive candles, a half-dozen Christmas trees, four scantily-clad elves, two caricature artists, one giant inflatable basketball game and a killer skyline view. But what really impressed guests at the party that Fox Interactive Media, an online group, gave on Wednesday was the vintage arcade-style Ms. Pac-Man machine.

“That,” said Adam Sumner, a 23-year-old media planner, “was awesome.”

The Scotch tasting didn’t hurt, either. “Pairing it with chocolate was really nice,” said Rohanie Singh, 29, who works in advertising.

“I give this party an 8.5,” said her friend Michael Jacobson, 29, an Internet consultant. “It reminds me of the dot-com era. What would make it better is if they had a Santa dancing in a thong on the bar. That would be like a 9.5.”

The holiday party season is in full swing, and even without a naked Santa, there is a lot going on. Business has been booming at new steakhouses like STK in the meatpacking district and Porter House New York in the Time Warner Center, at the resurrected palaces of excess Le Cirque and the Russian Tea Room, and at the Nokia Theater in Times Square, a newer addition to the music and event circuit. All are fully booked this month — and into the next — with events for financial companies, law firms, media conglomerates and tech businesses.

Corporate party planners say that 2006 is shaping up to be a good year:

“We’re having a really ridiculous fabulous season,” said Serena Bass, the Manhattan caterer who has spent more than two decades in the corporate party business. “Two-thousand four was not so great. Last year was better, and this year is really, really great. The numbers are bigger. Last year we were getting a lot of 150. Now were getting 250, 350, 450.”

Ninety percent of the parties at the Russian Tea Room, which reopened last month, will have caviar and vodka service, at a cost of as much as $500 a person, said Ken Biberaj, a spokesman for the restaurant. Even ice sculptures are back: behind the glowing white bar at the Fox party, held at Studio 450, a loft in Chelsea, there was one in the shape of a giant letter I (for “Interactive”).

As lavish as the parties are, they are still not quite up to dot-com era excess. But at a time when the Dow has reached new highs and the haves are evolving into the have mores, these celebrations are more in line with the buoyant economic mood than with the discouraging situation in Iraq. This season, there is a greater willingness to throw more-elaborate parties, complete with themes, video displays and specialty cocktails.

“In the past, we had the idea, ‘We’re in a war,’” said Danielle Venokur, the general manager of L’Olivier, a florist and event production company with offices in Chelsea and on the Upper East Side. “But for some reason, that’s not in the forefront of everyone’s mind right now.” She paused before adding: “That’s a little scary.”

As if to underscore the importance of the Bush tax cuts in all this, a recent phenomenon emerges:

To liven up their events even further, many planners are borrowing ideas from clubland and Hollywood, creating plush lounges and adding $5,000 lighting set-ups and video effects. Some are even offering bottle service and V.I.P. seating, where chief executives and other high-ranking officials either occupy a separate area of the party, or have a more private event with, as Ms. Bass put it, “less loud music, slightly brighter lights and better wine” before their employees are admitted.

“We’ve gotten several requests for club-style additions to the party,” said Joseph Cozza, the vice president of sales for banquet spaces at Cipriani. “Different environments are very popular, either a small lounge area or deluxe bars.”

As the haves and have-mores scratch and claw their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, even mafia members are feeling the pinch, with some even struggling to make ends meet:

Richard Martino, a slender 47-year-old, favors Prada shoes and until recently drove a sleek black Mercedes-Benz. He has owned multimillion-dollar homes in Harrison and Southampton, N.Y. He spent much of the last decade running a telecommunications and Internet business to which his expertise helped bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. By one accounting, he made tens of millions for himself.

John Setaro, 57, did not finish high school, and has worked recently managing a fast-food restaurant in Seaford on Long Island. He generally wears neat but casual clothes, and lives in a modest, vinyl-sided, colonial-style house in Franklin Square. During a difficult period several years ago, according to his lawyer, he was making $2,400 a month.

But the two men nonetheless share an extraordinary bond, according to federal authorities: Both swore an oath to the Gambino crime family in a secret induction ceremony.

The striking disparities underscore a simple truth not always understood outside the ranks of the city’s five crime families: Some mobsters reap millions from rackets, and in some cases from legitimate enterprises, but many struggle to maintain a middle-class existence, and some are routinely broke. The impoverished gangster barely eking out a living is so commonplace that mobsters have a word for these poorer men of honor: brokesters.

. . .

No self-respecting mobster wants to be seen as a brokester — nor would he want his peers to think he struggles to keep up with his middle-class suburban neighbors. But the pressure is great as well to keep up appearances as a successful criminal. Mobsters have even been known to borrow money from loan sharks to throw it around on the street — and to pass it up as tribute to superiors — while at the same time scrimping in the privacy of their home.

“The hours are long, there is no benefits package, there is a high risk of prosecution, and very little job security,” said Gerald L. Shargel, a lawyer who has represented a number of mobsters, rich and poor, including several members of the Gotti clan.

As the haves and have-mores scratch their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, other portions of New York City’s labor pool have reverted to bartering for basic services:

In a groundbreaking program that’s been a runaway success since the Daily News profiled it last year, hundreds of uninsured artists across the city have signed up to barter their talents for health care.

“This was uncharted territory,” said Dr. Edward Fishkin, medical director at Woodhull Hospital and the brain behind ArtistAccess, which has enrolled more than 350 uninsured dancers, actors and painters.

“I honestly didn’t know what would happen. [But] we have exceeded expectations,” Fishkin said.

The artists like the idea of offering their services for health care, he said.

“They didn’t want to look like they’re getting charity,” he said.

The Williamsburg hospital now fields up to 30 calls a week from artists who want to participate, he said.

It also has caught on at other city hospitals. A dozen artists at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital have been bartering since March, and Kings County Hospital officials are looking into starting the program there.

After creating collages with pediatric patients at Woodhull, mixed-media artist Janet Olivia Henry, 59, banked enough credits for a physical.

“It makes a huge, huge difference, being able to get a doctor’s visit, just attending to keeping well,” said Henry of Jamaica, Queens, a part-time preschool art teacher who doesn’t have health insurance.

Watercolor painter Timothy Lunceford, 49, who lives in Greenwich Village, racked up $2,500 in medical bills after twice being hospitalized at Bellevue for heart problems.

“I didn’t feel like walking away,” Lunceford said of his obligations, adding that he couldn’t have paid his bills without the bartering program.

For years now, colleges have found that hiring less-expensive adjunct instructors provides the same great level of education as full-time faculty:

A computer science lab instructor at La Guardia Community College has been charged with taking payments of cash or liquor from students to alter their grades, prosecutors said yesterday. The instructor, Elvin Escano, 46, of Glendale, is charged with taking payments ranging from $200 to $2,500 from 2004 until September, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.

*See, for example.

Of course the healthy wages are encouraging the best and brightest to commit to careers in municipal government:

Roughly 8,000 New York City employees — or 3% of the municipal workforce — earn such an abysmally low salary that they are forced to get food stamps to feed themselves and their families, the Daily News has learned.

And approximately 340 city workers are on welfare, according to the Bloomberg administration. Councilman Bill de Blasio, chairman of the Council’s Welfare Committee, said he finds the revelation troubling.

“The goal of the public sector should always be to pay people enough to feed their family and guarantee that that’s a living wage,” said de Blasio (D-Brooklyn). And if the city workforce mirrors the general population, he said, there could be thousands of others eligible for food stamps.

The city’s top welfare official, Human Resources Administration Commissioner Verna Eggleston, stunned the Council last week when she revealed many of her staffers go to food kitchens in-between pay periods.

Who are these people, what do they do and are they that un-self aware that they’re willing to be quoted in the paper about how great the Bush tax cuts were? Dogs — no, seriously, dogs:

The pampered pooches of Manhattan have an increasingly popular way of dealing with the stress, and expanded girth, of apartment living — their own personal trainers.

The city now has at least two companies that specialize in taking dogs running for up to 45 minutes at a stretch, helping them to burn off fat that can result from too little exercise.

“Sometimes when you come home from the office and you’re exhausted, you just don’t want to bring your dog to the dog run,” said Therese Virserius, 33, who pays Manhattan-based Running Paws $35 a session to propel her 81-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, Maya, up and down the East River.

After a typical 45-minute jog with her doggie drill sergeant, Maya immediately plops down on the couch for a well-earned nap, she said.