Now here’s a story to tell the folks back home in Kansas (or London* or Ireland** or Moscow***, as the case may be):

Twelve tourists on a counterfeit-merchandise buying spree were holed up for more than two hours in the basement of a Chinatown building during a police raid — forbidden to flee by the peddlers.

“The workers said, ‘The cops are outside. You can’t leave,’” said a law-enforcement source.

Midtown North detectives raided 218 Centre St. at about 2 p.m., finding thousands of knockoff designer bags, wallets, shirts and umbrellas — and a handful of customers.

As cops catalogued the stash, a Fifth Precinct cop alerted them of a call about people being held against their will in the basement.

There, cops found tourists from Spain, Georgia and Florida, three peddlers and phony Rolex and Cartier watches.

*

**

***

Now here’s a story to tell the folks back home in Ohio (or London* or Ireland** or Moscow***, as the case may be):

The dining room at De Marco’s Pizzeria and Restaurant on Houston Street was empty Sunday evening, save for one couple sharing a pizza and a table by the window.

They were tourists, they said, and unknowingly were among the first customers to visit the restaurant less than two weeks after a worker there was shot 15 times in the back, and two auxiliary police officers were gunned down while chasing his shooter through the streets of Greenwich Village.

But seriously — why back down from the notoriety? Everyone knows that people love to gawk:

Being the scene of violent crime has sometimes boosted business at city restaurants, according to crime historians and restaurateurs, while in other cases establishments have seen their reputations irrevocably damaged.

“In a strange sense, the notoriety can actually help,” a New York restaurateur, Drew Nieporent, said. “People will likely come to De Marco’s as voyeurs. . . . It might even gain a national reputation.”

Restaurants sometimes undergo cosmetic changes following a traumatic incident, a professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Robert McCrie, said. “Fast food places where shootings have taken place often shut for a day, or undergo a name change,” Mr. McCrie said. He described these venues as “forbidden kinds of places” whose notoriety attracts customers.

“There’s a certain cachet associated with going to a restaurant where something bad has happened,” a sociologist at Indiana University, Thomas Gieryn, said. “We have a morbid fascination with places where impossible things happen.”

Some restaurants capitalize on the drama that transpired within their walls, Mr. Gieryn said. Sparks Steak House became a Midtown landmark after a mob boss, Paul Castellano, was murdered there in 1985.

*

**

***

Now that Moscow is the most expensive city on the planet, I suppose it makes sense to lure more people to the bargain that is the Big Apple:

New York City has become the first American city to have a tourism office in Moscow.

NYC & Company, which runs New York’s tourism industry, commissioned the Aviareps Group to do advertising and public relations work in Moscow. The office will be staffed by three people currently living in Russia.

Another city tourism office opened Tuesday in Stockholm, to serve Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It is all part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to increase the city’s visitor numbers to 50 million by 2015. It is estimated that about 44 million tourists visited New York last year, 46,000 from Russia.

The city’s director of public relations for travel and tourism, Christopher Heywood, said Russians “have a propensity for the luxury goods market — they love the furs and diamonds, and they love the luxury hotels.”

Copenhagen is 8 on the list and Oslo is 10 . . .

Those of you who think NYU students are still upset about being waitlisted at Harvard are just dead wrong:

In the 5,000-plud-word March 4 [New York Times Magazine "Campus Exposure"] feature, Harvard’s H Bomb magazine was one of a selection of sexualized, student-generated “literary” publications spotlighted as “a fact of campus life.” If you haven’t heard, H Bomb is a self-proclaimed “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues” founded by Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy (who, by their powers on the Scrabble board combined, are Captain Planet!), and is for all intents and purposes pornography meets The New Yorker in a way Tom Wolfe could only dream of. The pair are out to rebel against those Puritanical attitudes in Cambridge in exchange for the dawning of the age of Aquarius, or something like that, and they are doing it with the $2,000 rubber-stamped approval of Harvard’s undergraduate student government.

Yet the point concerning the relatively unsexy nature of the reputation of Harvard students still stands. Sexy Harvard? It’s not just politically untenable. It’s not apropos at all.

. . .

Well, the pictures (sorry, “artwork”) aren’t anything a Tischie photographer couldn’t do in the midst of a serious drug trip. Or sober. Depending on the guy. You know what I mean.

OK, so neither groundbreaking nor tasteful. Amusing, at least? How about the writing?

The fine fountain pens of the H Bomb contributors have produced pieces that ponder the big issues in life (”How could anyone continue to use such [free] shitty condoms [from the on-campus counseling service] on a regular basis?”), teaching valuable life lessons that The Learning Channel can’t shake a stick at (”They say sex is a kind of power, and that if you know how to use it, it can make you stronger.”) and waxing poetic (”I carved a snail. I ate like a sinner”).

Let me ask you this — what’s “eating like a sinner”? Devouring a half-gallon of Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream in 20 minutes, or haphazardly munching unborn children while watching The O’Reilly Factor? Either way, it’s not very sexy.

So let’s get it straight: H Bomb ain’t nothin’ but a big bag o’ tame lame expectorated by a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who come to Manhattan on the weekends to get their Manolo Blahniks.

Good thing she didn’t ask for a happy ending:

A Connecticut woman who sought relaxation at a Chinatown massage parlor last September is now seeking relief elsewhere — in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Diane Bromley of West Haven, Conn., said in court papers filed last week that an unidentified masseuse at So Relax on Hester Street was “negligent, reckless, and careless.”

Her lawyer, Christopher Joslin, said the masseuse “very violently pushed” her arm, straining ligaments and shoulder muscles.

A parlor manager, Ming Cheng, said he had not seen the lawsuit. “Nobody complained,” he said through a translator. “If the lady hurt her shoulder, she should have complained.”

One day after a Post exclusive uncovers evidence of the automatic tip, the Post gets all sanctimoniously third person about it and reveals further infractions:

Here’s a tip for Big Apple eateries — stop fleecing clueless tourists and New Yorkers who know better with illegal gratuities on their checks.

A day after The Post reported that SoHo restaurant Aquagrill tacked the tip on a French-born New Yorker’s check because “foreigners don’t tip,” more steaming customers recounted similar tales of horror.

Jill Davis, 43, is as American as a double Whopper, but that didn’t stop one Hell’s Kitchen pub from “gratting” her — the industry term for slapping a gratuity onto the bill.

Davis stopped at Smith’s Bar for a quick burger this past summer, and was stuck with a 15 percent gratuity on her $10 bill.

“I said, what the hell is this?” she recalled. “[The waiter] said, ‘Well, we have to make up for all of the Europeans that don’t tip.’”

. . .

[Department of Consumer Affairs] rules state that restaurants can only add a 15 percent tip to parties of eight if it’s clearly explained on the menu.

In fact, most restaurants — where it’s routine for parties of six or more to be charged 18 percent gratuity — seemed unaware of the rule.

“I’m going to change [our policy] to what Consumer Affairs says,” said Mitchell Rosen, the manager of City Crab.

Currently, the eatery charges 20 percent gratuity to parties of five or more — but he said those days are over after he read The Post’s article Tuesday.

One Times Square restaurant manager admitted that she’s stuck the tip on some hapless tourists’ table for two.

“I would only do it if I knew for certain that they weren’t from here,” said the proprietress.

“You never know if you’re going to make money,” said Ana Reisner, a bartender at Tracy J’s in Gramercy Park, but doesn’t add gratuities onto parties even if they’re easy marks.

Waitress Beate Keiser, 24, said she’s adept at spotting non-natives. “I’m just trying to pay my rent,” the Union Square Heartland Brewery server said.

“If I see someone who can barely speak English and has maps all over the table, I’ll add the tip.”

Also: for your edification, courtesy the waiter.

Imagine if they tried this at Denny’s:

A French-born Manhattan resident claims a trendy SoHo restaurant tacked a gratuity on his bill without telling him — then said it was to “protect” the waiters because foreigners don’t tip.

Ludovic Audesson, who was dining with three European visitors, almost choked on his Sancerre when he got the check at posh Aquagrill.

“It’s the first time this has ever happened to me,” said Audesson, 32. “I think it’s very disrespectful. It is insulting to me.”

It’s more than insulting — it’s also illegal.

The city Department of Consumer Affairs prohibits restaurants from adding tips onto whatever tables they feel like.

Its rules state that a restaurant can impose a 15 percent gratuity on parties of eight or more as long as it conspicuously prints the policy on the menu.

Audesson’s party of four had dinner at the Spring Street eatery last month.

Everyone ordered their meals in accented English, then sat back and gabbed in their native tongue.

They enjoyed a leisurely, two-hour meal, complete with a bottle of white wine, some raw-bar shellfish, four fish entrees and three side orders.

The bill was $247.32 — including an 18 percent tip.

Audesson, a hair colorist at Pierre Michel, said when they asked the manager why the gratuitous gratuity was tacked on, he was told, “We do that because you’re foreign, and foreigners don’t tip.”

The New Yorker reports that Sofia Coppola wasn’t lying about Japanese people being weird:

“Japanese people don’t like to go online and plan their own trips,” Carol Elk said one recent morning at the offices of the Japanese Travel Bureau, on Seventh Avenue. Having worked for two years as a visit coördinator for J.T.B., Elk is familiar with the preferences, and potential disappointments, of the Nikkei-in-New York.

. . .

She went on to detail some imperatives: hotel rooms must have bathtubs and, even for married couples, separate beds; the highest-ranking executive in a business group stays on a higher floor than his subordinates; most museums are “kind of ‘eh,’” but MOMA is popular because it was designed by a Japanese architect; Yankees tickets should be in left field, for optimal viewing of Matsui. Slightly less understandable was a request that Elk says she gets frequently: to have dinner at home with a regular American family. “I tell people, ‘We’ll pay you, we’ll have it catered, we’ll send someone to clean up.’ But nobody will do it in New York.”

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.

The best concierges can come through on any request, no matter how outrageous:

A six-month undercover operation, during which cops posed as out-of-town guests, resulted in the arrests of a night manager at the Park Lane Hotel, a delivery-staff member and the man who allegedly supplied them with more than half a dozen guns and half a pound of narcotics.

The sting was launched after police received a tip from hotel employees that several brazen colleagues were turning the deluxe property into a drug and firearms bazaar.

. . .

Howard Rubenstein, the spokesman for Leona Helmsley and the Helmsley hotel chain, said management “acted promptly to turn in these people. They are appalled at the thought that their employees would stoop to this terrible level.”

Acting on the tip, detectives from Manhattan South Narcotics in April went to the hotel — where rooms range from $310 to $480 a night — and started chatting up night manager Diogenes Peña, 31, who worked at the hotel for 10 years, sources said.

The “tourist” cops returned two months later. This time they arranged to buy five bags of cocaine from Peña, who sent room-service worker Luis Quinones — another 10-year hotel veteran — to room 804 with the drugs, according to a court complaint.

Over the next two months, detectives bought more cocaine in Park Lane rooms and a second-floor bathroom, and even heard Peña telephoning his supplier and ordering him to “bring the doughnuts now.”

On Aug. 7, an undercover officer upped the ante and asked for guns, a request Peña allegedly fulfilled. During that transaction, Peña said his partner was waiting downstairs, which allowed cops to get a glimpse of Cesar Victorino, 34, his alleged cocaine distributor.

After two more buys, one of which yielded four guns and more drugs, police swooped in on Peña and Quinones and arrested them at work. Victorino was later arrested outside his Inwood home, police sources said.

You can certainly see why officials expect such an unprecedented population boom in years to come when the economy here is so conducive to growth:

The cost of doing business in New York is a whopping $35.3 billion more than the national average, an alarming new study shows.

New York businesses are paying significantly more than their out-of-state counterparts in state and local taxes, as well as for health care, energy and workers’ compensation, said the report, released yesterday by the state Business Council’s Public Policy Institute.

. . .

Taxes pose the greatest burden for New York’s businesses. Previous studies have shown New Yorkers pay the highest combined state and property taxes in the nation.

New York businesses pay $8.1 billion more in property taxes, $14.4 billion more in income taxes and $2.8 billion more in corporate business taxes.

New York businesses also pay nearly $7 billion more in energy costs, $1.7 billion more in health care and $1.3 billion in additional workers’ comp, compared with the national average.

*At least I thought I heard that.

The city’s tourism board, seemingly just now realizing what the pound is worth, seeks to solidify its position as England’s Tijuana:

This week, NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism arm, placed ads in five of the busiest underground train stations in London promoting the savings to be had in New York with the dollar near a 14-year low against the British pound.

“Pound for pound, New York City is the place to be,” the ads read. “Well, make that pound for dollar.”

Indeed, London was the only city ranked more expensive than New York in a recent report published by UBS, a Swiss financial services company. The strength of the pound has contributed to London’s rise: Yesterday, it was worth about $1.96, up from about $1.60 four years ago.

The subway ads direct viewers to a Web site, nycopenbook.com, that compares the cost of a variety of purchases in each city, from a bagel with cream cheese (£2 there vs. £1 here) to a pair of designer jeans (£72 vs. £50) to a laptop computer (£679 vs. £515).

“The British are pretty savvy travelers and are pretty keenly aware of the exchange rate,” said Fred Dixon, the vice president for tourism development at NYC & Company. “The British and the Irish will come to New York for a long weekend to shop like we would go to Boston.”

Chris Sell, a Briton who owns the Chip Shop restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said he would soon have firsthand evidence of the city’s cut-rate image among his countrymen. He said that his father, Brian, was due to arrive today from his home in Rugby and that tucked in his luggage would be an article from a British newspaper listing the top 10 bargains to scoop up.

“I know a bunch of people who do come over here for two or three days with an empty suitcase and go to Century 21 and just load up on cheap clothes.” Mr. Sell said. “The dollar’s been in the toilet for so long now, it’s worth almost two-to-one.”

Krylon tourism*:

Most of the major graffiti attacks on trains are being carried out by twentysomething Europeans who want to leave their marks where the graffiti culture was born, experts said.

They come from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway to spray-paint their murals and elaborate tags — called “pieces” — on trains, fully aware that the Transit Authority will scrub them clean within hours.

The Euro-taggers don’t care that New Yorkers won’t see their work on the rails: their main goal is to take photographs and videos of their handiwork to bolster their reputations on the other side of the Atlantic.

“The majority of the heavy graffiti is being done by foreigners,” said recently retired NYPD Transit Bureau Lt. Steven Mona, who until September 2005 was the commanding officer of the Citywide Vandals Task Force.

“We’ve always had foreigners, but in the last five years we’ve seen an increase.”

When Mona and his team reviewed last year’s graffiti hits, they estimated that 70% were carried out by Europeans.

That includes the graffiti group “MOAS,” or Monsters of Art Scandinavia, which painted its initials on trains stored on “layup” tracks on Utica Ave. in Brooklyn.

Another tag spotted on a train hit on Utica Ave., “Biser,” is identified on the Internet as being from Germany.

*A business opportunity emerges . . . Marc Ecko should invest in some special graffiti camps upstate!

12/12 Update: Current transit bureau chief gets smacked down by the tourism board, forced to downplay report.

Now that the top tenth of the top one percent is pulling away from the rest of the top one percent, gazillionaires might find that they have trouble spending all that money. This will help:

Getting to watch the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in person can be tough: too many people, too many VIPs, too little space.

But for this year’s ceremony on Nov. 29 there’s a better way — the Rock Center Holiday Package for two.

It includes a vintage Rolls-Royce limo, a helicopter, a fancy lunch, a duplex penthouse suite in the Buckingham Hotel and some truffled snacks. And the whole deal will only set you back $75,000.

The package will be available to one couple daily from Nov. 29 through Jan. 8, when the tree comes down, said Neil Alumkal, vice president of 5W Public Relations.

Each couple will be driven in a vintage Rolls limo from their area home to the Buckingham Hotel, where they will check into the Martinelli Penthouse, decorated with their very own replica of the 88-foot Christmas tree.

Next comes a private lunch at the Rock Center Cafe with a menu of their own making, overlooking the famous rink, on which, after lunch, they will be able to skate alone, just the two of them.

Then it’s on to the chopper, with a stop at the Sea Grill, where Chef Ed Brown will personally deliver an array of white truffle snacks for the couple to nibble on as they circle Manhattan and view the tree from the sky.

. . .

“The couples will take away endless memories of the most glamorous experience of their lives,” [Buckingham Hotel managing partner Stephen] Shapiro said yesterday. “What could be more glamorous than a penthouse in the middle of Manhattan?”

Does the Village Voice find resonance in the Trump SoHo story? Does Nat Hentoff shit in the woods? (That’s not rhetorical):

With customary bravado, Donald Trump unveiled his new plan for Soho on national TV. He was sitting onstage before a live audience, filming the final episode of his hit reality show The Apprentice on June 5. Cameras zoomed in on the real estate magnate, his trademark squint set beneath his trademark hairstyle, as he announced the big prize for the show’s winner: managing construction of a mega–condominium-hotel on Spring Street.

“Located in the center of Manhattan’s chic artist enclave, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Soho is the site of my latest development,” he trumpeted, as scenes from the trendy neighborhood flashed by. “This 50-story building is the first condominium-hotel in the city, with world-class accommodations and panoramic views.”

. . .

But in real life, things don’t seem quite so smooth. Over the past two months, a ground war has begun against Trump and his developer partners, with preservationists, residents, and business advocates saying the proposal amounts to an apartment tower that merely masquerades as a hotel. They’re convinced it violates the area’s zoning code, which allows industrial and commercial outlets, not residences. Trump may rule on television, but in Gotham he’s fighting a grassroots campaign of letter writing and phone calls to city officials. And he may be losing. On July 13, the resisters won backing from a Community Board 2 subcommittee, which rejected the plan unanimously.

“He is using this as a Trojan horse to build residences,” charges Sean Sweeney, of the Soho Alliance, referring to the Donald, of course. “He’s going around the zoning here. It’s typical Trump arrogance.”

. . .

Opponents readily admit they have a visceral reaction to the proposed height, not to mention the traffic it might bring. Some, like the Soho Alliance’s Sweeney, admit a visceral reaction to the Donald himself. “The guy repulses me,” the activist confides. With his flamboyance, his glitziness, Trump is totally out of keeping with what Sweeney calls the “downtown aesthetic.” “Trump must think he’s going to transform this neighborhood,” he says, walking past the Spring Street lot. Sweeney expects the tycoon would make the area so glitzy, so tacky, it’ll be like Atlantic City. He invokes the spirit of Jane Jacobs, who proved that enough small people, sufficiently mad, can stymie a big developer.

“It would be hilarious if this project doesn’t get done,” he says devilishly. “It would be like egg on his face.”

See also: You Can’t Stop The Donald, You Can Only Hope To Contain Him.

You fucking moron, tourism is this city’s, uh, lifeblood:

Police officers took into custody today a man suspected of stabbing four people in three separate attacks, including a tourist from Houston who was critically injured in what was described as an unprovoked encounter on a C train Tuesday afternoon.

. . .

The man was taken into custody shortly after two women were stabbed outside the W hotel at 47th and Broadway early this morning. The women, described by the police as 22- and 25-year-old visitors from Canada, were reported to be in stable condition at St. Vincent’s Hospital downtown.

The police said the two women left the W about 4 this morning and were approached by a man described as black, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and dressed all in black, the same as the description of the subway assailant. They say there was only a little conversation before he stabbed both women in the back, knocking them to the sidewalk.

A doorman from the hotel had followed the women out the door and the police said he witnessed the attack. He and some taxi drivers watched the attacker cross the street and enter a McDonald’s restaurant. The doorman used his cellphone to call the police, who arrived and took the man into custody.

The police said the suspect also fits the description of the person who attacked a man an hour earlier as he waited for a southbound F train at 50th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, as well as the attack Tuesday on Christopher McCarthy, a 21-year-old tourist who was stabbed while riding a C train on the Upper West Side.

What are you, some disgruntled tourguide? Some vengeful bellhop? Some disturbed pedicab operator? They should lock you up forever, you sick tourist-stabbing fuck!

Katrina evacuees use squatters-rights laws to stay in their hotel rooms “rent free”:

This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives, their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He’s currently sprawled out watching Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel in the city.

The others left in February and March, when, after spending more than $500 million, FEMA stopped paying for hotel rooms housing some 40,000 evacuees across the country. That left many scrambling for places to live. But thanks to the city’s squatters-rights law, evacuees here were safe. Their rooms weren’t paid for, but since they’d been in them for more than 30 days, the hotels couldn’t just kick them out. Only a judge’s order could evict them.

And Johnson, 49, isn’t that motivated to leave. For one thing, AMC’s in the middle of its “Thrill Me” marathon. Next up, Gothika. “Halle Berry,” he says with lazy lust. These days he’s usually up all night — it’s hard to sleep on an empty stomach. When he has to, he’ll go outside and beg for change, but he doesn’t really like that too much. Most days he just showers and gets back in bed, showers and gets back in bed. Once a week he and another evacuee, a diabetic named Larry, walk to a church off the Van Wyck and get canned goods. When Johnson’s caseworker, Sharon, comes around, she gives him some bus passes and maybe a few bucks, but she’s getting frustrated. “They sit around on their butts watching TV. There’s only but so much I can do if they’re not willing to help themselves.”

The Holiday Inn is working on a settlement that will pay Johnson to leave. On behalf of New York, you’re welcome!

The clouds held off long enough for a spectacular Manhattanhenge:

Manhattan Memorial Day weekend revelers enjoyed a special finale to the glorious day yesterday as the sun washed crosstown streets with golden light before sinking below the horizon.

The cosmic effect occurs when the sun aligns precisely with the east-west grid of the streets, in what’s known as the rare “Manhattan-henge” phenomenon.

“We’re so bogged down in crass reality, we want to transcend this mundane existence,” mused Joseph Drexel, 54, a Chelsea artist, as he took in the view. “We have to love Mother Nature.”

“It was like a huge rubber ball making across the horizon of the street and then sinking immediately,” said Mark Harris, 55, who joined about 100 others at the Tudor City overpass at 42nd St. and First Ave.

The sun will swing back into the Manhattan Solstice on July 11 . . .

See also: Manhattanhenge.

Unsatisfied sailors? Some among us say, “Not on my watch”:

With thousands of sailors and Marines pulling into port for Fleet Week, it’s the best time of the year for gals — and guys — looking to salute wide-eyed mariners in from out of town.

From innocent tours of the Big Apple straight out of “On the Town” to steamy hookups right out of “Sex and the City,” our uniformed visitors are in for a wild ride.

“You just walk down the street and they’re everywhere,” said Anne W., 24, of Jersey City. “They’re looking to have a good time and so are you.”

. . .

For several years, Jeni Hyland and her friends have enjoyed meeting uniformed men and women during Fleet Week, praising them for their patriotic duty and showing them what she called “the real New York.”

“They make me proud to be a taxpaying American,” said Hyland, 27, of Hoboken. “I only wish that we had more time to spend with them in our great city because I love seeing their faces when they see it for the first time.”

Last year, while living in Manhattan, Anne W. met a group of sailors from the South on her walk home. They ended up hanging out together for several days, with the sailors following Anne to Central Park and the Empire State Building.

A brief romance with a sailor grew out of the visit, Anne said, but fizzled because “he was so far away.” But the warm memories from last year persuaded her to get wrapped up in Fleet Week again this year.

A parody of itself:

Three New York men — including the lighting contractor for the famed San Gennaro Feast and a reputed mob figure with ties to actor Steven Seagal — were arrested yesterday on extortion-conspiracy charges.

Newark U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said the case stemmed from an attempt by John Cappelli, whose company puts up the lights at the annual San Gennaro festival in Little Italy, to scare off a rival on another contract.

According to an indictment unsealed yesterday, Cappelli, 70, met with Michael Visconti, 37, at an Edgewater, N.J., restaurant June 2, 2004, and told him the competitor “was attempting to take business away from Cappelli through lower bids.”

Cappelli allegedly offered $4,000 to get the competitor out of the way.

Reputed mobster Angelo “The Horn” Prisco, 66, also took part in the chat, authorities said.

Prisco has been free on parole since 2002, after his politically connected attorney contacted officials in the administration of then-Gov. Jim McGreevey.

Prisco’s name also surfaced when Seagal revealed that he had contacted a top organized-crime “peacemaker” in 2003 to get protection from the Gambino crime family. The indictment said that Visconti visited Cappelli’s competitor, identified only as “EM,” at his Brooklyn shop and made it clear he had to pull out of the specified contract.

By the way, look for Seagal’s new blues album, coming soon!

If you have people in from out of town, feel free to send them down to the federal courthouse:

Miami real-estate agent Claude Attia wanted to do something meaningful during his few days in New York.

So he wandered into the Manhattan federal courthouse — and smack into John “Junior” Gotti’s sensational trial on its most explosive day of testimony.

“I told them downstairs I wanted to see something interesting. They sent me up here,” the 45-year-old Frenchman said.

His jaw dropped when he saw platinum-blond Victoria Gotti, who showed up for court wearing a waist-length sable fur coat, skintight blue jeans and her signature oversized Louis Vuitton bag. She hunched silently in the second row with her fire-engine-red-haired sister, Angel, and family matriarch Victoria Sr.

“These people want to be like Al Capone!” he said, shocked.

Attia wasn’t the only wayward tourist who made his way into the gallery — and he certainly wasn’t the only one stunned by the display.

“It’s like watching ‘The Godfather’ all over again,” said star-struck Ian McNeilly, 54, a lawyer visiting from Sydney, Australia. “In Australia, we have more white-collar crime than hit men.”

And the show is not just for tourists:

Manny Diaz, a court-case buff, traveled all the way from The Bronx to catch a glimpse of the action.

“I’ve always admired John Sr.,” said the 47-year-old recovering drug addict, who attends trials to keep himself clean. “I’ve always liked the Gottis, too. But I don’t like Victoria’s show. I think it’s propaganda.”