Maybe the State Assembly is good for something after all:

Assemblymember Michael DenDekker (D-Jackson Heights) wants city Traffic Enforcement Agents to warn operators of vehicles first before they can be issued parking summonses.

DenDekker has introduced Assembly Bill A9135. This bill requires traffic agents or other law enforcement authority to verbally direct the operator to move immediately or be given a parking violation summons.

“This legislation has become necessary ever since Traffic Agents have become armed with these hand-held scanning devices. These Agents walk up to vehicles while the drivers are waiting for someone to pull out of a parking spot, scan the registration sticker, and issue them violations for double parking,” DenDekker declared. “Other agents have acted more like Starsky and Hutch; they pull in front of the vehicles blocking them in, jump out, scan the sticker and issue a summons, leaving many motorists scared as well as frustrated.["]

Time was, the government of Afghanistan harbored terrorists that cost us thousands and thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars. Now they’re propping up our flagging real estate market. America, fuck yeah:

The Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations has a lovely new apartment. According to two deeds filed Friday, the group spent $4,235,000 on a 2,840-square-foot apartment at Trump World Tower, plus a $5.4 million commercial space at 633 Third Avenue.

H.E. Zahir Tanin, whose title is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations, is listed in the deeds. “We did purchase a residence for the ambassador,” his assistant said. She said the office space is “going to be used both for the Consulate and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations. We are two separate things, but they’re both part of the government of Afghanistan, and it was the government of Afghanistan that’s making these purchases.”

The Observer’s Azi Paybarah had the presence of mind to ask actor and Brooklyn resident Steve Buscemi about the mayor’s decision to circumvent the will of the voters to allow himself (and five borough presidents and 51 city council members) the opportunity to run for a third term. It’s another opening:

“I was not happy that the mayor wanted to run for a third term. So, I do like Thompson a lot. And we’ll see what happens.”

Hey, Bloomberg can have Shilpa Shetty as far as I’m concerned — Ghost World’s Seymour is just that much more authentic.

All this and you can piss with a view? That’s what dreams are made of:

At CityView Racquet Club, high above Long Island City, members can play a few games of tennis or squash, then relax in the sauna or grab a bite prepared by the in-house chef. They can bump into pros like Andy Roddick and have their racquet strung by the same master. And they can use the urinal — not just any urinal, but one that sports stunning eye-level views of that other borough beyond the East River.

You let me drink hooch down on the corner, and I’ll think about voting for you. More, please:

“I never understood why we don’t let you drink in the park.”

The brown-bag phase of the mayor’s campaign . . . Avella, you sure you still want to ban foie gras?

And to think they want to turn Coney Island into a giant mall when there is already such awesome excitement to be discovered there:

A capybara, the world’s largest rodent, is the victim of a daily assault of noise, cramped conditions and inhumane treatment — and spectators can witness it all for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

. . .

On a hot Saturday night in Coney Island last week, one young spectator was hardly impressed. “That’s not a rat. That just looks like a guinea pig,” the girl said, disappearing into a thick crowd.

Normally there isn’t much point in pointing attention to legislative bills that may or may not ever be voted on, much less passed, but here’s an important one that everyone should get behind:

A bill introduced today in the state Legislature would, if passed, profoundly change the way alcohol is sold in New York. Among its provisions:

• Allow stores that currently sell beer (supermarkets, convenience stores, etc.) to also sell wine and liquor.
• Replace the State Liquor Authority’s licensing system with medallions that could be sold to another operator if a business closes.
• Allow liquor stores to sell “complementary” items including snacks, mixers, etc.
• Permit liquor stores to open as early as 8 a.m. and close as late as 3 a.m. (9 p.m on Sundays).

If Thompson and Avella can’t do the job, maybe the Naked Cowboy can:

The Naked Cowboy, in a statement announcing the official launch of his candidacy tomorrow, said his platform would include a stimulus plan for small businesses.

“No one knows how to do more with less than yours truly, and that’s the kind of thinking I plan on sharing with my fellow New Yorkers when you elect me,” he said, promising new ideas on tax breaks, tourism, gay marriage, transit and homeland security.

Sweet ride:

Here’s Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s community van — complete with heavy-metal lettering, breakdance-era graffiti tags and superhero color choices.

Go, Tony, go:

Here’s something else about Councilman Tony Avella you may not have noticed: his mayoral campaign hired a director of communications.

Her name is Katie Wang. She’s a former Star-Ledger reporter who covered Cory Booker, enterprisingly, in Newark.

Her name started popping up on Avella mayoral press releases around the time Richard Simmons compared Avella’s lips to those of Julia Roberts.

And then you remember where you are:

Organizers say the Greenmarket, held every Thursday, will further chip away at the terminal’s dingy, dirty reputation from yesteryear.

“This market is the next chapter in the terminal’s evolution,” said Susan Bass Levin, deputy director of the Port Authority, acknowledging it was once “a place you would hesitate to go.”

While signs posted on brick pillars still warn that “no person shall spit, urinate or defecate” on terminal property, some of the 210,000 people who pass through every day were delighted to see produce from upstate farms in midtown.

. . .

“I personally wouldn’t eat there,” said Ronald Goodie, 63, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “With all the dirt coming in and out of this place, no way, not for me. Why would they pick this place of all places to do that?”

Al Jean-Babziste, 38, also of Brooklyn, agreed, saying, “You touch the door handles and the booths, and it’s all so dirty, and then you sell fruit? I don’t know about that.”

Location Scout: Port Authority.

They won’t disrupt a rape, but they’ll help deliver a baby:

Sykes, a 16-year MTA veteran, was waiting on the platform to begin her W train route when she heard a commotion on an R train that had entered the station and went to investigate.

Surrounded by concerned straphangers, the young mother was splayed on the floor of the car in obvious labor, Sykes said.

Sykes ordered the crowd to back off and told the mother-to-be, “Just try to breathe.”

As MTA colleague Tyrone Cloud, 54, kept the crowd at bay, Sykes called out for a doctor.

When no one stepped forward, the CPR training Sykes had gotten in her previous career as a correction officer and the birthing classes she had taken long ago kicked in.

“You hear about this happening to firefighters and cabbies, but you never think it’s going to happen to you,” Sykes said.

As soon as she pulled the mom’s jeans down, Sykes knew she wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting for paramedics.

“I saw the baby’s head,” said Sykes, of Westbury, L.I.

Sykes pulled off her jacket, caught the infant with it and wrapped her in it. “She looked okay to me,” she said of the newborn. “I had tears in my eyes.”

Someone asked what time it was. When a passerby yelled 1:25p.m., the gathered crowd started applauding.

. . . you can at least make him earn it, and spend every last cent of that $100 million in the process:

Despite generally broad approval for the job Michael R. Bloomberg has done as mayor, a majority of New Yorkers say that he does not deserve another term in office and that they would like to give someone else a chance, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Cornell University and NY1 News.

With anxiety rising over a difficult economy, few surveyed have a lot of confidence in Mr. Bloomberg’s ability to lead the city out of the recession, a troubling sign for a mayor who cited his financial acumen as the rationale for his undoing of the term limits law that otherwise would have forced him from office.

In addition, some 51 percent say that the city is on the wrong track, while 40 percent say it is going in the right direction.

And though Mr. Bloomberg has sought to elevate his image nationally and internationally as a bold-thinking mayor with a record of innovation and results, New Yorkers in the survey struggle when asked to identify any particular achievement of his tenure. More than a third of those polled could not offer any answer when asked what was the best thing Mr. Bloomberg has done since he became mayor almost eight years ago.

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.”

Once, strip clubs had a hard time figuring out how to best give back to the community. Now, they understand where their charity is best served:

As Fleet Week rolls into town Tuesday, one Manhattan strip club will be waiting with a special drink called the Drunken Captain and, the owners say, all proceeds will go back to the troops.

HeadQuarters, located just blocks from the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum on the West Side, is selling the cocktail for $16 during Fleet Week. Military personnel can buy it for $10.

“All of us here at HeadQuarters appreciate all the men and women who put themselves at risk every day to allow us to have the freedom to express ourselves,” general manager Serafina Fiori said.

“We welcome them always so they can see firsthand what they’re fighting for!”

The Drunken Captain is a mixture of coconut, mango and pineapple rums with a little pineapple juice and a splash of cranberry.

Fiori said proceeds from the sales of the drink will go to the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’, Airmen’s & Coast Guard Club in Murray Hill. The club has been housing soldiers and veterans while they visit the Big Apple for the past 90 years.

Go, Chuck, go — sink these motherfuckers:

Senator Charles E. Schumer has never struggled to find a reason to hold a news conference on a Sunday. But the inspiration for the one on Mother’s Day arrived unexpectedly, when the senator’s cellphone rang during a health care meeting on Capitol Hill last week.

“You are still eligible to reactivate warranty coverage,” said the recorded voice on the line. “This is the final call before we close the file. Press 1 to speak to a representative now about your vehicle.”

Most people react with annoyance as soon as they hear the insistent — and all-too-familiar — voices and simply hang up. But, then, most people cannot investigate who is behind the call and take the information to the Federal Trade Commission.

Mr. Schumer said he received the call on Wednesday as he discussed national health care issues with two other senators, Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

He had received three or four similar calls. But the one on Wednesday was the last straw.

“I’ve had enough,” Mr. Schumer said. “These are scam artists.”

The calls are intended to extract credit card numbers by selling fraudulent car warranty renewals, Mr. Schumer said, and are “invading cellphones at a growing rate.”

Many New Yorkers — even those who do not own cars — have long reported receiving the calls on their home telephones. Now, more mobile phones are getting the calls, and they can eat up valuable talk time.

“It’s bogus,” Mr. Schumer said. “Consumers should not have to pay for this or any other robo-dialed harassment.”

[Crowd In Right Field Bleachers Hurls Double AA Batteries and Chants "Ass-hole, Ass-hole"]:

At the new Yankee Stadium, deaf fans can experience “everything” — even the boos.

. . .

When ex-Yankee and current Cleveland Indian pitcher Carl Pavano was announced, the Bronx boobirds were out in force.

As the jeers fell on the chronically injured righty, the centerfield scoreboard read: “Number 44, Carl Pavano [Crowd Boos].”

The captioning is done by a person, not a computer program, said team spokeswoman Alice McGillion.

“Everything that happens goes up there,” she said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

The Times’ David Chen is on a tear (”Declaring that ‘we love the rich people,’ Mr. Bloomberg has opposed capping executive pay, increasing the capital gains tax or raising income taxes on the wealthy”), and Michael Barbaro joins in:

Want to stay safe in New York City? If Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s theory is right, you may want to surround yourself with readers of The Wall Street Journal.

During a television interview about gun control on Monday, Mr. Bloomberg suggested that the titans of American capitalism who subscribe to the newspaper are simply not the homicidal kind.

“I don’t know how to break this to you,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “but people that go out and murder people don’t read The Wall Street Journal.”

The claim drew consternation from criminologists, who quickly ticked off a long list of financiers — and presumptive Wall Street Journal readers — who have, in fact, murdered people.

Take the case of Scott Schneiderman, a failed stockbroker in New York who was convicted in the 1997 murder of a police officer after a botched robbery.

Or Richard Robert Russo, a senior vice president at Smith Barney in California, who killed his wife after discovering she was having an affair.

Or Joseph H. Ludlam Jr., a fired stockbroker in Virginia, who shot his former boss at work.

Don’t forget Clyde Haberman, either: “[L]et’s review Mr. Bloomberg’s habit of resorting to self-serving expediency while calling it pragmatism.”

So, yes, even though the New York Times op-ed board shamefully rolled over for Bloomberg, at least some of the people actually reporting the news, or writing for the paper, haven’t.

Perhaps David Chen was one of those “emboldened” Times staffers who has little patience anymore for the mayor’s bullshit:

Political? Who, me?

So says Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who, during a trip to Virginia on Monday to unveil a new pro-gun-control television commercial, made the following claim that should be fodder for water-cooler debate: “I’ve never made a decision in my life based on politics.”

When asked later what he meant by that line, Mr. Bloomberg did not talk directly about revising the city’s term limits law, which some would surely say was textbook politics. Nor did he talk about his efforts, ultimately unsuccessful, to persuade Albany lawmakers to pass his congestion pricing plan. Or his campaign staff members’ relentless wooing of labor unions to improve relations, or their recent successful efforts to curry favor with the Republican and independent parties to run on their ballot lines in November.

Though I’m always upset when I see anthropomorphized food demanding that they be drenched in condiments and eaten, this is hometown talent we’re talking about:

A talented artist at P.S. 20 The Bowne School in Flushing has made it past roughly 45,000 budding Rembrandts to be one of only 36 finalists in a national design contest for food giant H.J. Heinz Company, featuring cash and other prizes for the winners and their schools.

The company had a saucy idea — the “Heinz Ketchup Creativity Contest” for school kids from first grade to high school seniors to design new artwork for single-serving packets of Heinz Ketchup.

Of the multitude of entries just from New York, Melissa Rueda, a student at the school located at 142-30 Barclay Avenue in Flushing, is one of three fifth-grade finalists.

Her proposed product art shows a smiling bottle of the name-brand ketchup, being held aloft by a crowd of happy french fries.

If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that one should splurge for a cab when his wife is in labor:

Penn Station isn’t known for its early arrivals, but little Caesar Boothe may change all that.

The 7-pound boy came into the world Wednesday right in the middle of the bustling Amtrak concourse as commuters gathered to welcome him with cheers.

“I didn’t care who was there, who was watching me,” mom Marie Boothe, 29, said hours after she delivered her son on the floor of the waiting area at 7:18 a.m.

“I was thinking, ‘Just get the baby out!’”

. . .

The ordeal started about 4 a.m., when Boothe woke up in labor at her home in East Orange, N.J.

Joined by husband Jonathan Boothe, 26, and 1-year-old son Samson, she hopped on a train about 6:30 a.m. to get to North Central Bronx Hospital, where they planned to give birth.

But when they pulled into Penn Station, her pain was too strong, her water broke and the baby was ready to come out.

“Forget the ambulance. Forget everything else. I’ll do it right here,” Boothe said she told her husband.

Even better: Sewell Chan reports that the parents decided to use “Penn” as the baby’s middle name . . .

Location Scout: Penn Station.

One of the more awesome Sully quotes:

“I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn’t crash an airplane.”

Elsewhere, how to ditch a plane into a body of water, just in case you ever find yourself in that position:

He said he knew the plane was in trouble when he heard birds hit the engines and he knew the landing had to be perfect in several ways, he said. “I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level,” he said. “I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a — at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed, but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously.”

He’s biting what we’re thinking . . . free Staten Island Chuck:

Is there redemption after public disgrace? Say you didn’t pay your taxes. Or you were too tight with the lobbyists. Or maybe you bit the mayor.

Redemption? Not for Charles G. Hogg, a k a Chuck, the mayor-biting groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo.

First — on Groundhog Day, no less — Chuck botched the biggest photo opportunity of his not-quite-3-year-old life. He chomped on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s index finger.

That raised a question for follow-up: Would Tuesday’s Chuck be any kinder or gentler?

So the zookeepers trotted him out for another photo op. Only one camera and two reporters showed up this time.

That word “trotted” is a problem. It suggests politeness. It suggests civility. It suggests everything that Chuck was not as he went rampaging across the stage in the zoo’s auditorium, knocking over a prop-size statue of a giraffe.

Then one of the photographers put a photograph of Mr. Bloomberg where Chuck could not miss it. Chuck rubbed his lips on the corner of the picture frame. He was not making nice — it looked as if he had bared his teeth. But the mayor should not take this personally. Chuck did the same to everything he rubbed up against before he jumped off the stage and waddled around the auditorium for a victory lap, Chuck style.

. . .

By Tuesday [. . .] John J. Caltabiano, the executive director of the zoo, had the one-liners ready. One, inevitably, was about biting the hand that feeds you. The city provides as much as half of the zoo’s budget, Mr. Caltabiano said, and the city is cutting its share by 17 percent in the coming fiscal year.

Mr. Caltabiano is well aware that the mayor has survived past Groundhog Days without injury. In his office is a framed photograph of the mayor holding a groundhog in February 2006.

But the groundhog in the picture was Chuck’s father. Eight groundhogs have played the role of Chuck in the last 27 years. Monday was the first time that Mr. Bloomberg had handled the current Chuck, who is apparently feistier than his father was.

It might have been the last time, too. Mr. Caltabiano said that he was working on breeding Chuck VIII and would retire him if there was a Chuck IX by next Groundhog Day.

Wow, that’s really cool. Who knew you could do so much with a web-based mapping application? Technology is neat:

Google’s technological expertise helped turn New York City’s main visitor center from a place to collect brochures into an interactive hub for planning a day — or a week — in the city. But the related Web site — NYCGo — proved so popular that it crashed almost as soon as it was unveiled and continued to operate slowly through Wednesday afternoon.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials showed off the Official NYC Information Center, at 810 Seventh Avenue and West 53rd Street in Midtown, on Wednesday morning. At a cost of $1.8 million in private financing, the center was outfitted with video tabletop touch-screens equipped with Google Maps that allow users to assemble itineraries.

Mr. Bloomberg emphasized that the center was not just for tourists. “By extending these new travel resources to our residents, we are giving New Yorkers the chance to more actively take advantage of the city’s diverse and exciting neighborhoods,” he said.

The city’s tourism-promotion arm, NYC & Company, also officially unveiled a revamped Web site, linked to Travelocity’s reservations system, so that prospective visitors can immediately purchase airline tickets or hotel rooms.

Apparently NYC & Company gets 40% of its financing — and the obvious official stamp of approval — from the city. So it seems not kind of but actually really fishy that the Maps section of the site features the “7 Karaoke Bars Worth Singing About”, for example, with detailed directions how to get to each one. If I were a competing karaoke bar owner, I’d be pissed. Or a hotelier. Or a restauranteur. Or the proprietor of an “environmentally conscious watering hole” that wasn’t picked by the site’s editors. Or anyone who could benefit from the use of taxpayer money to stir up business.

It almost makes up for his shameful sucking up to Scientologists . . . a firm stand to finally take care of our geese problem:

Geese have a new enemy: embattled state Sen. Hiram Monserrate.

The Queens Democrat and Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) called on the Port Authority Monday to completely eradicate the threat of geese at area airports. The birds were blamed for last week’s US Airways crash.

The lawmakers said they would introduce legislation to force the PA to act if it doesn’t do so voluntarily.

I don’t get it — there isn’t some meaningless resolution they need to debate instead? We have not just one but actually a second useful bit of legislation in the last month or so:

City Council member Simcha Felder, D-Brooklyn, wants traffic agents to grant drivers a five-minute grace period after a muni meter’s expired or alternate-side parking rules have taken effect.

“Tickets should be issued to encourage compliance, not to rake in bucks,” Felder said yesterday.

“People shouldn’t feel there’s a vulture waiting to give them a ticket the second they’re in violation. Agents are ticketing people exactly on the dot — that’s unacceptable.”

Felder’s proposal, which he called the “Gotcha bill,” could pass quickly: “I haven’t found one elected official that’s not in support of this,” he said.

From Rochester to Riverhead, ne’er do wells rejoice:

Gov. David A. Paterson will propose that private employers be required to offer health insurance to workers’ dependents who are ages 19 to 29, part of what the administration hopes will be a step toward universal health care coverage in New York.

Mr. Paterson plans to call for the legislation during his State of the State address on Wednesday afternoon.

“This year, we will take another important step as we move toward increasing access to coverage for all New Yorkers,” Mr. Paterson said in a written statement on Tuesday.

Currently, employers are not required to offer health insurance to dependents who are older than 18 or, if they are in college, 22.

The proposal would amount to a wide expansion of coverage to some 800,000 people 19 to 29 years old who are uninsured. And it ties into a continuing initiative by Mr. Paterson, who is asking the State Legislature to approve deep cuts in spending this year, to enhance the kinds of social safety nets that are overwhelmed during an economic downturn.

The one thing you want to avoid saying is “we want the attention,” and that could be either because you aren’t worthy of the attention and it looks lame to say you “want” it or because what you have is really actually pretty great and then once you finally get the attention you probably won’t want hundreds of gawkers clogging your street each December. But that said, we should definitely check this out:

Dyker Heights, where elaborate Christmas decorations have become as much a holiday tradition as a trip to Mona Lisa bakery, has a new rival in the borough.

Tired of playing second fiddle, a growing group of Bensonhurst residents are making a run on tinsel in a bid to be crowned the new kings of Christmas.

“We got the nutcrackers, we got the soldiers on the pedestal, the carousel, the Wonder Wheel and the musical Christmas tree,” said 82nd St. resident Debra Schempp, all in one breath. “I got my elves with the reindeers, my mouse soldiers — they move — and I got my nutcrackers and I got those new lights that came out this year that go with music, and the ceramic pieces with the Santa on the sled.

“I mean, we got everything they got in Dyker Heights but none of the attention,” added Schempp, who said several other neighbors on her block have been decorating for more than a decade. “We want the attention.”

See also: Dyker Heights Christmas Lights.

[Thx, 8.]

And somewhat more elegant than the usual cheese-on-toast type of sighting:

To most people, the purple flower that sprouted between two concrete slabs in a Queens backyard would be just a hardy vestige of summer.

Sam Lal sees something more.

The Jamaica man is convinced the mysterious blossom is an incarnation of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh — and neighbors and friends are flocking to see it.

The nearly 4-foot-tall flower grew in June and began to resemble an elephant’s head and trunk in August. Lal said that the ailments that had plagued him for months disappeared.

“This formation came to heal my illness,” the 60-year-old Hindu man said of his relief from pain due to a bone spur near his spine and bulging discs in his neck.

“They say God comes in many forms. I figure this has taken the form of a plant to come into my yard to bless me,” said Lal, who immigrated from Guyana three decades ago.

Experts at the Queens Botanical Garden identified the plant as a member of the amaranth family, which is native to Africa, India and southern Central America but not the U.S. Horticulturalists at the garden have never seen an amaranth take an elephant-like shape, garden spokesman Tim Heimerle said.

“For it to have that long trunk like this is not a natural thing,” he said.

Lal believes the flower’s position — growing through concrete, facing a garage he converted to a prayer space — is evidence of a connection to Ganesh, revered as the Remover of Obstacles.

Keep posting; we’re reading.