Garage managers in the swanky 10021 ZIP code say the recession has driven away customers, and it’s little wonder with monthly fees hitting $800 or more. An extra $100 is often tacked on for exotic cars.

Rolls-Royce owner Jonathan Martin said he’s fed up with paying about $500 a month for the privilege of parking and recently started searching for free spaces with the masses.

“The garage rates keep going up around here,” he said.

If you can’t get to the mountains or the shore on this last big weekend of the summer, a Central Park getaway can provide city habitués with nearly everything they might want for a weekend away at a fraction of the cost.

“We don’t discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it,” a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

After the hotel opened late last year, the bellhop said, naked and semidressed staff members were encouraged to pose in front of the windows. The point, he said, was to create a buzz with the unexpected peep show.

“One of the managers even got naked in a room, and filmed it — they were considering a live feed for the Web site,” the staffer said. “She’s an exhibitionist, too.”

Because of course nothing delights a parkgoer more than catching a middle-aged European tourist jacking off in the window . . . so edgy!

Location Scout: High Line.

Robert R. Hammond, 39, an artist and entrepreneur who had no experience in the world of public parks, has been paid about $1.2 million over the years of the High Line’s development — the vast majority of it since 2005. And his salary of $250,000 a year as president and executive director of the nonprofit he helped found, Friends of High Line, makes him one of the most generously compensated leaders of the 10 major park conservancies in the city.

. . .

Mr. Hammond’s salary, found in the organization’s tax filings, falls short of that of Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy and administrator of the park. He earns a salary of $364,000 a year. But Mr. Hammond’s salary is considerably greater than his counterpart at the 526-acre Prospect Park in Brooklyn and about $45,000 better than the city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, who oversees approximately 1,700 parks, playgrounds and other recreation facilities.

. . .

The High Line said that Mr. Hammond’s compensation stems from the challenges of operating a park perched roughly 30 feet in the air with a fire code capacity, managing major fund-raising campaigns and working with the city to oversee the design and construction of the High Line, among other duties.

Wow, 30 whole feet in the air . . . maybe if you divide that by 15 feet, which seems to be how wide the thing is, and multiply that by 20 blocks long, you get some sort of formula that comes out to $250,000 a year . . . good thing they decided not to tax everyone within a mile of the place. But then again, you can’t get a peep show as easily in any other park in the city.

Gaspar Libedinsky, one of the High Line park designers, was all for the voyeurism: “It is like an urban catwalk. It is a place to see and be seen.”

Location Scout: High Line.

Grandparent Gwen Barrett said the neighborhood has always been edgy.

“That kind of stuff here is anticipated,” she said.

Still, “I definitely wouldn’t want to bring my grandkids here,” she added.

See Also: “Two Parks” . . .

Location Scout: High Line.

The dirty and creepy character demanded money from people and, when he didn’t get it, swore and jostled them.

“No picture. No picture. You have to tip Elmo. You have to tip Elmo or Elmo gets angry,” the imposter shouted as he stuck a filthy red paw over a Texas tourist’s camera lens.

“What the hell, Elmo? Keep your hands to yourself,” shouted Victoria Vought, 47, pulling away.

Wide-eyed at the loud to-do, Vought’s son, Dylan, 4, asked, “What’s wrong with Elmo, Mommy?”

“That’s not the real Elmo. That’s a bad Elmo,” she quickly explained.

A young, chirpy brunette showed us a model one-bedroom apartment that had a pressurized wall built in the living room so it could comfortably work as a two-bedroom. The unit had recently undergone luxury upgrades such as granite countertops, new appliances, posh lighting fixtures, a renovated bathroom and brand-new air conditioners. Even with the wall, the living room and both bedrooms were considerably larger and nicer than any apartment we had seen through Craigslist. We would have both a trendy East Village address and be surrounded by trees, green lawns, street hockey and basketball courts. It was the perfect surrounding to sit and study or play Wiffle Ball. Stuy Town felt like the college campus that NYU could never deliver.

Facing crowds that are much larger than expected and with the recession putting a crimp in fund-raising, the High Line’s founders are proposing a business improvement district that would tax nearby property owners.

“We want to make sure we can keep maintaining the High Line to this level that has worked so well,” said Friends of the High Line co-founder Robert Hammond. “We’ve been talking about it for a while, but now it’s becoming more of a necessity.”

Hammond said that weekend crowds have averaged 20,000 visitors a day, while weekdays typically draw between 6,000 and 10,000 visitors — about four times as many as predicted before the park’s opening on June 9.

With the added crowds have come higher maintenance costs, Hammond said.

. . .

A business improvement district would raise about $1 million a year, leaving Friends of the High Line to come up with the balance from donations and fund-raisers.

The annual fee for the owner of a 1,000-square-foot apartment would range from $30 to $90, depending on where they live.

“When we were planning the park, we didn’t know we’d be in the middle of a recession when it opened,” Hammond said, adding that the group has raised enough money to be able to keep up with the costs for the next year.

Do you ever wonder why the city took such an interest in a 15-foot-wide $170 million project? I do, too.

Location Scout: High Line.

When a homemade bomb constructed from fireworks explosives, a plastic bottle and electrical tape was set off outside a Starbucks coffee shop on the Upper East Side early on May 25, the police initially thought the explosion might be linked to three others with similar profiles.

But on Wednesday, after the arrest of a Chelsea teenager in the Starbucks attack, the police said there was no connection between that attack and the three others. Instead, the Starbucks bomber had his own agenda, the police said: to emulate the assaults on corporate America planned by a character in the movie “Fight Club.”

The teenager, Kyle Shaw, 17, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with first-degree arson and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the authorities said.

“His statements indicated he was launching his own ‘Project Mayhem,’ ” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference on Wednesday, referring to a plan hatched by the protagonist of “Fight Club,” played by Brad Pitt, to sabotage corporations by destroying property. Mr. Shaw had told a friend to “watch the news on Memorial Day,” May 25, Mr. Kelly said.

. . .

Mr. Shaw’s affinity for “Fight Club” was well known.

“He saw the movie and he read the book,” Mr. Lewis said. “He wanted to watch the movie in our English class in the 11th grade. We were discussing existentialism in class, and he suggested we watch the movie as an example. We ended up watching ‘I Heart Huckabees.’ “