The Parks Department plans to sell naming rights:

Officials have not said which particular locations are ready to be sold yet, but almost any major attraction in the city’s parks and recreation system could be up for grabs.

That group includes the zoos that draw in thousands of visitors annually, the amphitheaters that pack in summer revelers, the gigantic swimming pools or scores of tennis-court clusters.

. . .

Under this program — which would raise an estimated $3 million a year — entire parks wouldn’t be renamed, so Central and Prospect parks would keep their monikers but attractions within them could be renamed for a price.

How about the Mark Ecko Graffiti Hall of Fame?

. . . against billboards that speak:

Last week, at the corner of Prince and Mulberry Streets in NoLIta, a scene was playing out that would have gladdened the heart of any advertising buyer. Pedestrians were turning and gawking at a six-story tenement emblazoned with a giant billboard for “Paranormal State,” a new television series about ghosts on A & E.

But passers-by were not reacting to the billboard. Each of them was hearing an urgent, disembodied female voice whispering suggestive messages. “What’s that?” the voice hissed. “Who’s there? It’s not your imagination.”

The voices, which belong to A & E employees, were emanating from two large black speakers above the billboard, which contained a technology called directional audio. The speakers use ultrasound to produce a highly focused beam of sound, making people within their reach feel as if they are wearing headphones, listening to sounds intended for them and them alone.
. . .

This appears to be the first commercial use of such technology on a billboard.

Peter Swimm, a 27-year-old technical support worker at Pando, an Internet startup with offices nearby, was among those transfixed one morning last week. Clasping his shaggy, bearded head, Mr. Swimm peered up at the billboard through the falling snow. “It’s neat,” he said. “With terrifying implications, like all things that are neat.”

. . .

According to Guy Slattery, A & E’s senior vice president for marketing, no special approval from the city had been required for the sonic billboard. And Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, confirmed that the city does not regulate sounds emitting from billboards. She added, however, that this particular billboard lacked the permit required for all city billboards.

While vast swaths of public parkland go ignored, quasi-public park conservancies raise funds with overwhelming force:

Finding a unique gift for your honey can be a walk in the park — if you’ve got enough green.

The Central Park Conservancy is launching private, customized tours of the park, to be conducted by Sara Cedar Miller, its official historian and photographer, for a flat $500-per-hour fee for up to seven people.

Miller, the author of “Central Park, An American Masterpiece,” will drive the minivan that will take your party on a design-your-own walk and/or ride.

The conservancy offers free guided walking tours, but this one, it says, will be tailored to your interests, be they in landscape design, history, architecture — or little-known secrets.

Apparently they assume that people go there for the ambiance and good service:

Mayor Bloomberg is giving a wedding gift to lovebirds who tie the knot at the city chapel — a multimillion-dollar Marriage Bureau makeover overseen by Hizzoner’s personal interior designer — in a bid to make New York the nation’s coupling capital, The Post has learned.

“It’s going to be fabulous,” said one source of the planned revamp, which will move the City Clerk’s Office — where a major function is issuing marriage licenses and performing weddings — from its current, dingy digs at 1 Centre St. to the first floor of 80 Centre.

It will occupy the offices that once housed the Department of Motor Vehicles, with a fresh look designed by society decorator Jamie Drake.

Drake adorned Mayor Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse with Egyptian marble, and also was tapped by the mayor to give Gracie Mansion a face lift five years ago.

The city will use the new chapel as part of a worldwide marketing effort to lure marriage-minded visitors, sources said. It’s part of a goal to bring 50 million tourists here by 2015 and contribute to the economy.

“Vegas might be one location where people go” to get married, the source said.

“But a lot of Europeans, if they go somewhere romantic and are coming to America, one of the first things they think about is New York City.”

The goal is to replace Las Vegas and make New York “the premier marriage location in America,” the source added.

. . .

The Marriage Bureau, now on the second floor of the Municipal Building, has sterile marble, and the door to the wedding chapel is painted deep red.

Couples sit on plastic chairs lining the walls in the hallway until their names are called; there is graffiti scratched into the walls; and, worst of all, there are no bathrooms nearby.

Sources said Drake, who also decorated the billionaire mayor’s London townhouse, will work at a reduced rate on the project, which has a $13 million budget and should be finished by spring 2008.

The new space will be about 6,000 square feet larger, and will have proper seating areas, attractive marble floors and columns, as well as bathrooms and vanity rooms where brides and grooms can primp.

It will be a storefront, with a streamlined security system. As of now, brides dressed in white must walk through a magnetometer to get hitched.

“I feel like I’m at the DMV,” said one man, who was at the clerk’s office to witness a friend’s wedding.

The bride-to-be agreed, saying, “It’s so institutionalized — not really what you picture your wedding day” to be.

Location Scout: City Clerk’s Office.

The concept of selling naming rights has gone beyond just stadiums and arenas:

A Victoria’s Secret Student Center might seem incongruous in the company of Milbank Hall, Brooks Hall, and the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residence Hall on Barnard College’s four-acre campus. It hasn’t happened — yet. But if Victoria’s Secret offered, well, the possibilities are open.

In a push to raise $20 million for its largest, most costly expansion project to date, the liberal arts college is selling the naming rights for a 70,000-square-foot building currently under construction with an online ad seeking a corporate or private sponsor to foot the bill, administrators said.

“It’s not typical to raise $20 million gifts by posting them online, but I think it would be a brilliant thing to do if a company wanted to demonstrate its commitment to women and higher education,” the vice president for institutional advancement at Barnard, Cameran Mason, said.

A $20 million corporate outlay would be one of the largest donations the college ever received, she said, and would represent about 10% of the school’s endowment. The board of trustees would ultimately have to approve the donation, and would likely reject a contentious donor “such as a convicted felon,” Ms. Mason said.

*And when crafting your lede (or political cartoon — Sean Delonas, we’re looking at you!), feel free to refrain from suggesting more obvious tie-ins because most of the ones that automatically come to mind are actually not very funny . . .

He perhaps overstates the power of the Internet:

Is it time for the big city to start cornering a piece of the Internet?

A growing grassroots movement says yes, and is trying to create a “.nyc” domain name to go alongside the dot coms and dot orgs of the World Wide Web.

“When Ford introduced their first car 100 years ago, no one thoughtto start building roads for it,” said Tom Lowenhaupt, an interactive marketing consultant who heads Connecting.nyc, a group he formed to lead the effort.

“So we ended up having to tear down miles of the Bronx to build freeways to start accommodating them all. It’s the same thing now. We have the opportunity now to plan for the future and start organizing ourselves and our resources in a responsible way.”

Backers say that a dot NYC Web address will allow the city’s small businesses to distinguish themselves in the crowded online marketplace and foster better community cohesion and social activism.

“The Internet is great at global things but it isn’t very good at local things,” Lowenhaupt said. “There are 60 million dot com names out there. When all six billion of us are on the Internet New York is going to be forgotten.”

The recent formalization of the leash law has paved the way for further commercialization of the city’s parks:

If you visited Bryant Park on a recent Tuesday afternoon and muscled your way through the throng of suited spectators standing around the plaza, you could have watched a sleek black dog taking an acrobatic leap into a swimming pool.

The dog was participating in a water sport sponsored by DockDogs, a company that promotes the activity. But the dog’s antics appeared to hold little appeal for Karen Merz, a product development manager who was eating lunch in the plaza with a co-worker.

“If it was in the evening and it was like ‘Let’s watch a funny dog show,’ O.K.,” Ms. Merz said. “But I’m in the middle of work, and I’m all stressed out, and it’s, like, ridiculous.”

According to Maxine Teitler, the chairwoman of the Parks Committee for Community Board 5, such grumblings speak to a larger issue.

“There is a lot of concern about the commercialization of the parks,” said Ms. Teitler, whose board covers an area that includes Bryant Park and the two other parks that form Midtown’s green corridor: Madison Square Park and Union Square Park.

Some parents send their children to Montessori school. Others, the Blue Man Group:

Bright colors, fun music . . . blue heads? While those are all staples at Blue Man Group shows, only the first two will be common elements at the theater group’s preschool next door to its 434 Lafayette St. theater, the Blue Man Creativity Center Early Childhood Program. Gearing up for its first year of operation for 2-through-4-year-olds, the center pulls from the sights and sounds of the Blue Man Group, focusing on “sensory tactile experiences” that help children grow emotionally and creatively.

“We draw inspiration from the educational philosophies that children do some of their most important learning through play,” the center explains on its Web site, theblueschool.net.

With a logo that incorporates a splash of paint, an electrical plug and a DNA double helix and a Web site that includes everything from a white paper on tot conflict resolution to a link to the Blue Man Group’s online create-your-own-art game, the program looks to address the needs of the whole child by way of creative expression. According to the school’s philosophy, such expression is a means of exploring and understanding both one’s own emotions and those of others.

. . .

The Blue School expects to eventually run through the eighth grade.

The Brooklyn brand is sometimes freaky, sometimes brash, sometimes pizza and yet strangely evocative of a home-brewed melange of essential oils:

Brooklyn, that icon of industry, labor and pollution, now has its own scent. Not a smell (we always had that), but a scent, a nice one, one that Coco Chanel herself may approve of — Eau De Brooklyn.

. . .

“It all started in the kitchen . . .” explained Dr. Emilio Oribe, who began mixing essential oils purchased from health food stores with his wife and kids about a year and a half ago.

“It seemed whatever we liked, others didn’t like and whatever others liked, we couldn’t reproduce,” he recalled.

So after much consultation with friends and neighbors the Oribes got an idea of what they wanted and brought it to professionals, “to make sure it had a shelf life and all those chemistry details that are very important.” By last July, Eau de Brooklyn was on the shelves of area boutiques.

. . .

“You tell me, what should we do with it? Should we really go beyond Brooklyn?” he wonders. Right now, the product line, which consists of two different scented soaps and a perfume, is only retailed in boutiques in southern and western Brooklyn and on their Web site. “We never thought there would be interest anywhere else,” he says.

*Just kidding! They totally don’t find that funny.

For payphone operators, the phone part is an afterthought:

They stand on corners from Brighton Beach to the Bronx, all but mocking New Yorkers: Pay phones that may or may not work, which you can’t even check for a dial tone without worrying about germs.

But they remain rooted in the pavement of New York, blocking pedestrian traffic, looking a bit like museum pieces in an age of cellphones, BlackBerrys and Bluetooth headsets.

There is a reason for their survival: Public telephones are one of the stranger cash cows in city finance. Not because of the coins that are fed into them, but rather because of the millions upon millions that companies are willing to pay to put ads on them.

The phone kiosks generate $62 million in advertising revenue annually — and last year the city got $13.7 million of the take, triple what it pulled in from calls.

Over all, the number of pay phones in New York is falling, as it is throughout the country. But in a phenomenon unique to New York, the phones are more valuable than ever, thanks to the intense competition among advertisers for attention in a city of eight million.

Phone companies say the pay phones are still necessary, noting that during 9/11 and the 2003 blackout, people lined up to use them. But it is the phone kiosks’ desirability to advertisers, who love them because they are inexpensive and plentiful, that appears to be driving pressure on the city for permission to install new phones in choice locations.

Apparently the thinly veiled furvert campaign lost its punch and now those mini-storage pimps are experimenting with a more provocative strategy:

A Manhattan Mini Storage billboard on Manhattan’s West Side Highway is again stirring up both opprobrium and approbation.

A large sign at 44th Street and Twelfth Avenue shows a wire hanger with the words “Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose.”

Because of course the YouTube demographic is closely aligned with the big-time New York City developer demographic:

A video posted on Coney Island developer Thor Equities’ Web site and YouTube last week has ruffled some fins out in the seaside neighborhood.

The clip, which opens and closes with the Mermaid Parade logo, features costumed revelers professing their love of Coney Island and the parade. Then, in the last few seconds, a woman wearing a Viking helmet slips in: “The spirit of Thor matches that of Coney Island!”

The woman was Digna Rodriguez, a Thor Equities employee.

The video was designed as goodwill promotional material and showcased the High Steppers, a Brooklyn-based marching band Thor Equities sponsored in the parade. Absent from the video were the many protesters who marched in the parade to “Save Coney Island.” Many fear Thor’s proposals to transform Coney Island into a year-round attraction with upscale hotels will wash away the local character(s).

And see what you get when you renege on plans to save some dumpy old building? They revoke your ability to mediate experiences on the internet:

“Thor has just been sent an email,” Dick Zigun of Coney Island USA, the group that runs the Mermaid Parade, wrote on his Web site, “informing them that they have NO PERMISSION to use the name or logo MERMAID PARADE within their FUTURE OF CONEY ISLAND logo such as they have done at the start and finish of the YOU TUBE piece.”

See also: “thorothunder”’s Thor at Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade YouTube Video.

I think the Rubenstein people might start by encouraging you to avoid mentioning that your biggest asset is a boat:

Intent on promoting Staten Island as a “great place to visit, work and live,” a group of the Island’s movers and shakers met last night to formally announce the creation of a marketing campaign designed to boost borough pride and erase negative stereotypes.

Under the banner of “SI NY Proud of it,” backers said their goal is to trumpet the Island as the place in New York City with the best schools, most parkland, lowest crime rate, an array of cultural offerings and diverse housing stock.

. . .

Not only is the Island still regarded in some quarters as the former home of the world’s largest landfill — poised to become the biggest urban park — but it is routinely underestimated by outside media, he said.

Along those lines, public relations giant Howard Rubenstein has agreed to promote the SI NY campaign.

Rubenstein’s Pat Smith, who will shepherd the effort, said the Island needs to “project a better image [so] people want to invest here, locate here.”

“Everything in life is perception,” agreed Borough President James P. Molinaro.

Molinaro said, for example, that while the Staten Island Ferry — with its 1.5 million visitors annually — is the No. 3 tourist attraction in New York City, behind the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, more needs to be done to lure them to local attractions like Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the Staten Island Zoo.

Ooh, Nordstrom . . . so fancy:

The borough president who helped bring Trader Joe’s to Atlantic Avenue has set his sights on a new upscale target — a Nordstrom department store.

“Now that [Trader Joe's] is done, we can go to the next one,” Borough President Markowitz told The Brooklyn Paper several days after leading a jubilant parade from Borough Hall to the Court Street bank building where the gourmet grocer is setting up its first Kings County store.

“Nordstrom would be awesome in Brooklyn. Now we have Trader Joe’s, Ikea, Whole Foods and all the other great retailers. That would complete it,” Markowitz said, still exuberant from his Joe’s victory lap.

The beep said he spent several years working to get the California-based purveyor of wasabi hummus and chicken dumplings to the corner of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue before last week’s announcement.

“My mother-and father-in-law, Joan and Jules Snow, would go to the Nassau County store and come back with chips and spreads that they couldn’t wait to bring out and show me,” he said. “I found out about Trader Joe’s and I started pitching,” he said.

. . .

Nordstrom does not have a New York City location. Most of the company’s stores — with their live pianists and marbled-floored restroom “lounges” — are in upscale shopping malls in the suburbs.

But Michael Boyd, a Nordstrom spokesman, said the company appreciated the borough president’s invitation.

“It’s very flattering,” he said. “We certainly appreciate the attention and are always happy to discuss new locations.”

Ah, but what locations? Retail experts said that finding a location for the high-end, mall chain could be tough in economically diverse, tightly packed Downtown Brooklyn.

“A Nordstrom would need the correct neighbors and something like a million square feet of retail space,” said Joseph Aquino, executive vice president for retail leasing and sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Aquino said that Fulton Mall, once a mecca for white-gloved department stores and still home to Macy’s, was not quite fancy enough for Nordstrom.

“The retailers there are not the right neighbors,” he said.

(That makes me want to hear the Beep and Charles Barron debate. Darned term limits!)

The best way to answer criticism that Times Square has become too Disney-fied is to own it:

An MTA board member yesterday suggested turning to Mickey Mouse’s deep-pocketed owner — which transformed seedy Times Square into America’s backyard — to save straphangers from the doom and gloom of a 2008 fare hike.

Perhaps Disney would pay big bucks for some sort of control or advertising rights to the Times Square subway station, suggested MTA board member Norman Seabrook.

“I would rather try to sell 42nd St.’s subway system underground to Disney for $60 million a year and have them paint it any way that they want to paint it,” Seabrook said at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting.

“They spend $100 million for one minute to be on the Super Bowl on a Sunday. I think that they would spend X amount of dollars in rent for that terminal.”

If the MTA is going to consider a fare hike, Seabrook said, officials must “look at different areas of raising funds” to at least lessen the burden of an increase on riders.

Seabrook’s pitch got amused smiles from other board members, and Mayor Bloomberg dismissed it as a Mickey Mouse idea.

“Disney has a great presence in Times Square. It’s a great brand name, but let’s get serious,” Bloomberg said.

Of course you do! Of course you do:

Picture this — Mayor Bloomberg, a guy who rarely watches TV, now has the world’s largest high-definition plasma television adorning his famous “bullpen” at City Hall.

The 103-inch monster, which retails for $70,000, was donated by Panasonic and was on display yesterday as the bullpen re-opened after a two-week, $627,000 makeover.

“A lot of people from the NBA would have these in their homes,” said a proud Panasonic executive after posing for pictures with the mayor. He said the company hopes to sell 5,000 around the globe this year.

In addition to the usual news channels, the TV will display 311 call statistics and a video feed from NYC TV’s live traffic cameras.

The MTA is releasing television spots reminding people to say something if they see something:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 5-year-old anti-terror tagline, “If You See Something, Say Something,” is going prime time today.

The MTA is spending $3 million of security funds to air the slogan in more than 4,000 television spots and run 84 ads in 11 regional newspaper over the next four and a half months. The 10-second spots will be broadcast during news programs on local New York City television stations, the agency announced yesterday.

The television advertisements, which will air in English and Spanish, are the fifth generation of the “If You See Something, Say Something” safety campaign.

In the 10-second spot that begins airing today, a hoarse, male voice narrates: “Last year, 1,944 New Yorkers saw something, and said something.” The words are displayed in royal blue over a white background as he reads. “Thank you, for keeping your eyes and ears open,” the voice says.

But did you also know that the phrase is being licensed for use in other skittish cities around the globe? I feel like Giuliani might call that “ghoulish”:

In 2002, the anti-terror advertisements were simple, plain-text messages posted on subway cars, bus kiosks, and train platforms. After the Madrid subway bombings in 2003, the MTA rolled out more eye-catching photographs of suspicious packages on subway cars. The television and newspaper advertisements mark the largest expansion to date of the anti-terror advertising campaign.

The catchy slogan, which among transit-riding New Yorkers rivals “Just Do It” and “Priceless” as a well-known, oft-quoted motto, was created after the attacks of September 11, 2001, by the chairman and CEO of the advertising firm Korey Kay & Partners, Allen Kay. It was adopted as the MTA’s official safety slogan in 2002. “It took time for everyone to buy into it,” Mr. Kay, whose firm also came up with the Port Authority’s slogan, “Look What We’re Doing,” said in an interview. “The MTA had some concerns that it might scare people that a disaster could happen, but research found that it was quite the opposite, that the police and the MTA can’t be everywhere, so it was smart to enlist the aid of everybody.”

The trademarked phrase has been licensed for use in dozens of transit systems across the globe to purvey an anti-terror message. The largest banner displaying the slogan hangs in a train station in Perth, Australia, Mr. Kay said.

Like WNYC’s attempts to cash in on its wonky, somewhat female-overloaded Soterios Johnson-loving unattached demographic, the new Whole Foods on Houston is hosting events for, er, thin-slicing singles:

Over samples of aged Gouda and amid aisles of extra-virgin olive oil, New Yorkers shopping at Whole Foods Bowery are turning the grocery into a thriving pick-up scene. The gelato bar, the upstairs café, the chilled, private cheese room, and long checkout lines are where flirting is most rampant in the 71,000-square-foot store that opened last March, Whole Foods employees said.

. . .

While many pick-up lines fall flat, single shoppers said the floodlit aisles provide a “safer” space to start up conversations with strangers than most bars in the neighborhood. Peeking into each other’s grocery carts, they said, could also be more revealing of a person’s lifestyle choices than an online profile on a social networking or dating Web site.

“I’m really health conscious,” a 28-year-old singer in the band edible red, Collette McLafferty, said. “I want to date health conscious people, and that could be why Whole Foods seems like a good place to meet people.”

After chatting with an attractive man at Whole Foods two nights ago but forgetting his name, Ms. McLafferty, who lives on the Lower East Side, posted a message on Craigslist looking to reconnect with him.

“He had dark, curly brown hair, blue eyes, he was well built, probably about 5-feet-10,” she said. She is waiting for a response to her posting, she said. Ms. McLafferty, who said she has often been approached by shoppers who comment on the tattoo of a dragon around her upper arm, added that flirting was easy at Whole Foods because of low expectations. “When you go out with the intention of meeting someone, you never meet anyone,” she said.

. . .

“I make eyes at people,” a 27-year-old actor who lives near South Street Seaport, Ari Rossen, said. “It’s a hip neighborhood, everyone who shops here is young, and there are plenty of things around to talk about.”

Whole Foods Bowery is actively boosting its reputation as a place for singles to meet, a spokeswoman for the store, Rebecca Ulanoff, said. In August, the store is hosting “Check Out,” a singles night co-sponsored by the Web site Gothamist.com. The store is also hoping to attract a fashion-forward, eco-friendly crowd tomorrow morning when it sells Anya Hindmarch shopping totes printed with the message: “I’m Not a Plastic Bag.”

I guess the singles events at the Pathmark by the Manhattan Bridge were sparsely attended?

Potential sociology dissertation topic ca. 2014: “The Rise Of The Co-Optation Of Interpersonal Relationships By Corporate Entities In The 21st Century.”

Local NPR affiliate WNYC really is a lot more popular than you thought, what with its frighteningly devoted fan base and personality branding even Martha Stewart would admire:

A steady, soulful tenor of a voice — combined with a first name that is as mellifluous as it is unusual — has won public radio host Soterios Johnson a legion of devoted fans, some of whom have gone so far as to write songs in his honor and name pets after him.

The WNYC station staff regularly fields requests for autographed photos of the baby-face 39-year-old newsman. Beat reporters say that, while out on assignment, they are frequently bombarded with questions about Mr. Johnson.

“It’s like he’s a rock star,” a city government reporter at WNYC, Beth Fertig, said, recalling how guests responded to Mr. Johnson at a recent cocktail party for station donors. “We walked in together, and it was all about Soterios. I joked, ‘What am I — chopped liver?’”

Mr. Johnson said he’s flattered, if puzzled, by the fervor of his fan base. He attributes it to the “intimate medium” of radio, and to listeners’ fascination with his distinctive moniker, which means “savior” in Greek. (His Cyprus-born paternal grandfather changed his last name to Johnson upon becoming an American citizen.)

The ultimate fan tribute will come later this month, when a Brooklyn-based heavy metal band called Satirius Johnson releases its first album full of what guitarist Alistair Wallace calls “hard, noisy music.”

Satirius Johnson’s three members, all avid listeners of WNYC, see more than a little irony in the band’s name, Mr. Wallace said. “I imagine Soterios Johnson is quiet, unassuming, and maybe a little bit bookish,” he said. “I don’t know if he would necessarily be into a band that plays eight-minute songs with lots of feedback, but you never know.”

The band places Mr. Johnson — alongside Sam Champion of ABC’s ” Good Morning America” and Gina Kolata of the New York Times — in a tiny cadre of distinctively named New York journalists who have inspired rock band names.

In addition to the jolting sounds of Satirius Johnson, Mr. Johnson, known to friends as SoJo, has also launched a more lyrical brand of music. A popular Brooklyn folk-rock singer and songwriter, Jonathan Coulton, several years ago, penned “Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance.” The song imagines the radio host as a nocturnal party animal, making the rounds at New York City nightclubs. Lyrics include: “Go, Soterios Johnson, go/All the club kids are watching your glowstick glow/With the light of a truth you can’t hide/That the news is the news, but the dance goes on forever.”

. . .

During his five-year tenure as the WNYC morning host, Soterios Johnson has heard of more than one listener who has named a pet after him. In an interview with The New York Sun, he recalled hearing his name called during an East Village house party; turning around, he realized the hostess was beckoning her cat.

Sadly, there are too many examples to cite.

Joe Sitt will have a hard time rebranding Coney Island if someone beats him to it:

The Shmaltz Brewing Company, maker of “He’Brew, the Chosen Beer,” last week released Coney Island Lager, the first of a side-show-inspired series of beers.

The logo, designed by Brooklyn-based tattoo artist Dave Wallin, features a tattooed and pierced version of the iconic Steeplechase smiling-face surrounded by slogans such as “Freak’s Favorite Beer” and “Alive.” The beer will be brewed in Brooklyn and profits will go to Coney Island USA, a nonprofit arts group that runs the sideshow and the annual Mermaid Parade.

Jeremy Cowan, the owner of Shmaltz, was approached by Coney Island USA with the idea shortly after his company put out beer commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Lenny Bruce.

. . .

Shmaltz plans to roll out Coney Island Lager over the next month.

“Coney Island Lager is already the freakiest new beer in the world,” said Dick Zigun, the head of Coney Island USA. “When we expand our Freak Bar, it will be featured as our bar’s house brand.”

The Kelly Choi juggernaut rolls along largely unimpeded:

“I play this character, this kind of spy, that goes to places that the typical New Yorker could never find themselves in,” Ms. Choi said. “The things that I get to tell people are things that even somebody who was born here and who’s lived in New York all their lives wouldn’t necessarily know.”

. . .

In municipal television terms, NYC TV has blown past all previous ratings benchmarks. “Secrets [of New York]” has garnered strong market share numbers in unexpected places such as Salt Lake City and Albuquerque (although in some places it shows in the middle of the night or other off-peak hours).

[Arick] Wierson, a former investment banker who was named general manager of the station after working for Mayor Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign, said the station is getting people from places such as Utah to think more about New York. That New York boosterism is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg wants. In August, the mayor said the PBS deal would get millions of potential New York tourists thinking about the city.

“Secrets” costs about $35,000 an episode to produce — a cost the city says is four to 10 times less than other national programs. While the show does not currently draw down revenue, station officials are in discussions with several potential underwriters to sponsor it.

Mr. Wierson said the show is also ripe for product placement. That means Ms. Choi could soon be darting between locations in a Pontiac Grand Am or using a T-Mobile handheld computer instead of the nondescript device she uses now on the show to find out where her next “secret” destination is.

Ms. Choi, a former model and a Columbia University journalism school graduate who has worked in television and print reporting, is an off-camera ham who likes to joke and flirt with the crew and with onlookers. Between takes at the monument, Ms. Choi, a self-described foodie who also hosts the station’s “Eat Out NY,” fanned her coat to disclose black gym shorts and a Tshirt underneath. She jokes that the coat is like a “sausage casing” when it gets hot.

Her spiky high-heeled boots, cinched black coat, and regularly rotating jewelry are so carefully watched by fans that the producers had a code from “The Matrix” scanned onto one of her chokers.

Some critics have questioned why the city is in the business of producing fast-paced, nontraditional programming that has little to do with government. City Council Member Gale Brewer said she had no problem with “Secrets,” but that if the city is going to invest in the station’s other flashier shows, it should improve its other station’s coverage of public hearings. Station officials say there will always be critics, but that NYC TV is drawing in viewers for the first time in municipal history.

The director of production at the station, William Fitzgerald, said that when an NYC TV show features a New York business, the owner almost always calls to report a spike in sales.

Not really*, but NYU and Columbia students are scalping their graduation tickets for items like bicycle pumps:

Because each student gets a limited number of tickets, graduates with big families are willing to pay for extra ducats.

And enterprising classmates who don’t need their tickets are hoping to make a quick buck on craigslist and other Web sites.

“My dad just broke two ribs and they aren’t going to be able to come to the city,” said Gary Miller, 21, an NYU journalism major who was asking $100 for each ticket to today’s exercises in Washington Square Park.

“I’m not too keen on sitting in the park for four hours myself.”

As of last night, Miller had no takers, but other grads with lower prices were finding buyers.

Alexis Caldwell thought she graduated from NYU four years ago, but she didn’t complete one course. Now that she has, she’s eligible for tickets again. She requested her allotment of two seats in the park and two in a TV viewing area so she could sell them.

“I need a new pump for my bicycle,” she said.

*Now that would have made the wire services!

From CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, whose company continues to do brisk business selling CBGB merchandise:

After 33 years of running the club, he didn’t want to change its mission.

“I’m not out for them not to make money,” Kristal said. “They’ll have the T-shirts.”

New Yorkers’ wallets are bulging but it’s not a sign of a more robust economy:

The city distributed 5 million free condoms in the month after it unveiled a new subway-themed wrapper earlier this year.

That was triple the number of condoms the city gave away in the month before the Valentine’s Day launch of the brightly colored package.

“The NYC Condom is a sensation,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden said yesterday.

According the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 800 establishments, including bars, theaters, and restaurants requested the free condoms between February 14 and March 14.

Look for the Department to partner with the Parks Department to determine how many of these have actually been used.

Meanwhile, the New York Post’s Carl Campanile must be publicly rebuked for composing this lede:

The city’s free subway-themed condoms have rubbed New Yorkers the right way — a staggering 5 million have been handed out since Valentine’s Day, the Health Department said yesterday.

Earlier: Next Up, The Newark Condom.

Location Scout: The Ramble.

But it won’t be a total sell-out until Atria begins advertising there:

The city’s public hospital system is considering putting the names of big-bucks donors on some of its facilities in exchange for cash — which means Bellevue could soon be home to the Bloomberg Trauma Center and Elmhurst the P&G Pampers Pavilion.

“We are exploring that,” said Frank Cirillo, vice president of operations at the Health and Hospital Corp., of the advertising scheme.

HHC — which oversees 11 hospitals, four nursing facilities and 80 clinics — also is looking at selling ad space on outdoor billboards and building and campus signs, as well as through digital media and TV flat panels.

On account of a single tea shop and one lousy chipper Community Board 2 is being pressured into giving the British their own Little:

In an effort to join the city’s pantheon of ethnic neighbourhoods such as Chinatown and Little Brazil, the Campaign for Little Britain — a coalition of Virgin Airways and local businesses such as Tea and Sympathy and A Salt and Battery — announced its plans yesterday to officially rename the area between West 13th Street and Greenwich Avenue “Little Britain” to honour one of America’s closest and politest allies.

“Officially recognising cultural communities throughout the borough has been a constant throughout the decades,” said Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, who with his wife Nicky Perry, owner of Tea and Sympathy, created the campaign more than a year ago. “But despite the number of British residents in New York City, and the large number of travellers between here and the U.K., there is no Little Britain.

. . .

With slogans such as “Sir Michael Bloomberg. Know What We Mean, Bloomie?” and “What’s One More Queen in the Village?” the campaign will rely on a very British sense of humour to make its argument heard.

The initial stages of the plan include an online petition and viral advertising campaign. Then, it’s off to Community Board 2 and, if approved, City Hall.

If everything goes according to plan, millions of Europeans will one day flock to New York 2.0, the birthplace of Carrie Bradshaw:

George A. Fertitta has helped sell a lot of pricey Belgian chocolates and French cognac to New Yorkers. Now he has to sell New York to Belgians, Frenchmen and others who may consider the city too costly, too dangerous or too American to visit.

Mr. Fertitta is spearheading Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign to lure 50 million visitors a year to the city by 2015. That would be about six million more out-of-towners than the city, which is riding a long wave of tourism and economic growth, attracted last year.

. . .

To increase the influx, the city is spending more money than ever to promote itself overseas. Fueled by the mayor’s commitment of an additional $15 million a year, the city’s marketing operation, known as NYC & Company, has begun placing billboards in some European cities declaring that with exchange rates in their favor, New York is a relative bargain.

Those ads are aimed at knocking down one negative perception about New York: that it is prohibitively expensive.

An international ad campaign in the works, a first for the city, will try to dispel two other stereotypes: that New Yorkers are exceptionally rude, and that crime is rife in the city. Mr. Fertitta said he would rather foreigners picture “Sex and the City” than “Law & Order.”

Under Mr. Fertitta, NYC & Company has hired an advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, to create the campaign, which is expected to begin later this year.

. . .

To change people’s negative views of New York’s grime, crime and prices, he said, the city can piggyback on the invaluable boost it gets from pop-culture cynosures like Carrie Bradshaw, the lead character in “Sex and the City,” the internationally popular TV show.

“To some people, New York City is ‘Sex and the City’ and the best shoes in the world,” Mr. Fertitta said. “They want to see where Carrie Bradshaw sat on the stoop.”

The official New York City condom was finally unveiled yesterday:

The new “NYC Condom” is the same as those already distributed by the Health Department. And the price hasn’t changed — they’re still free. But the package has a new look, inspired by the subway, which officials and community leaders hope will increase education and awareness about HIV/AIDS and safe sex.

“Any successful product has a strong brand,” said Kenneth Cole, who hosted the launch at Rockefeller Center yesterday morning, in a statement. “And condoms are no different.”

More than 150,000 condoms were handed out after the launch to commuters.

Also being rolled out — a Mitt Romney-inspired special undergarment:

Along with the condoms, and a bilingual advertising campaign, the city also announced a new line of underwear and T-shirts that sport a condom-sized pocket for handy access during moments of passion, and a label that reads: “This garment and its contents should be worn whenever conceivable.”

And nothing against Sewell Chan, that total workhorse, but it seems that more and more his reporting is exhibiting this obsessively detailed quirkiness (mild Asperger’s?) — see, for example:

On Valentine’s Day last year, the health department announced that it was developing the first New York City-branded condom. That effort culminated in yesterday’s mass distribution of the condoms, timed to Valentine’s Day, which also happened to be Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s 65th birthday.

The new condoms do not bear the official seal of the city, an image of a big apple or an outline of the city’s skyline. The black plastic wrapper simply says “NYC condom” on the front, with each letter in a circle, like the letters used by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to denote subway lines. (The authority gave the city permission to use the letters, which are the intellectual property of the subway system.)

Distributed by Ansell Healthcare Products of Dothan, Ala., the condoms handed out yesterday were made in Malaysia and expire in September 2011.

I hope his noticing when the things expire isn’t, you know, some sort of insight into Chan’s personal life . . .

As plans move forward to revamp Milton Glaser’s “I [heart] NY” campaign, it turns out that all you have to do to rebrand nowadays is fuck with the syntax a little:

Hearts are aflutter at ad agencies now that the state wants to pump up its 30-year-old “I [heart] New York” campaign.

The Daily News asked the experts how they would revamp the tourism promotion and got some sweet ideas.

Downtown agency Droga5 would start by taking Milton Glaser’s now-iconic logo, “I [heart] NY,” and reverse it to “NY [heart] I.”

“True love is a mutual thing,” said Duncan Marshall, Droga5 executive creative director. “So you want to remind people that New York loves you back.”

. . .

For Mark Wnek, New York chairman and chief creative officer of the Lowe agency, a key challenge is to broaden the campaign to attract visitors to all regions of the state, not just New York City.

“I’d keep the logo because it’s such a powerful iconic bit of symbolism, but I’d change it to emphasize there’s a lot of New York to love,” Wnek said.

Recalling a recent drive with his wife to Lake Placid, he added, “I don’t think a lot of people know they can drive for six hours in the state and enjoy beautiful scenery much of the way.”

Wnek reworked Glaser’s slogan to say, “NY There’s More To Than You Think.”

. . .

Glaser’s innovative use of the heart shape has been widely imitated.

“But if I were given the assignment today, I’d start . . . from scratch,” he said. “The burden of history with that thing might be too much if you want to think fresh.”

The Empire State Development Corp. — which called for ad agency proposals on Monday — had received 26 requests for its written specifications as of yesterday.

Arthur Wood plans to raise the money to preserve the code violation/sculptural element atop his Clinton Hill building by working with developers to turn the property into condos:

Broken angel will soar again, even higher than before, provided Brooklyn’s real estate prices stay in the stratosphere.

Artist Arthur Wood has cut a deal to save his eccentric Clinton Hill creation — one that envisions condos under a rebuilt rooftop sculpture.

“It will be taller, more majestic. We may even light it up at night, and it will be nicer,” Wood, 75, said yesterday.

He rejected offers of as much as $1.8 million that would have destroyed the 108-foot building in favor of one that will preserve it, he said.

He may even lose money, depending on how the condos sell, he added.

“It was tempting to take the money and leave, but I couldn’t do that,” Wood said. “The building is a living entity, and I wasn’t about to abandon it.”

Local developer Shahn Andersen agreed Saturday to buy a 50% stake in the structure, financing the rebuilding of Wood’s creation with potential profits from condos.

“I told Arthur that even if he wasn’t going to partner with me, he needed to do whatever it was going to take to save Broken Angel,” Andersen said.

Chris Wood, Arthur’s son, said his family’s first preference had not been condos — which he called “the nasty C-word” — but rather to create a museum. However, no benefactor had stepped forward.

The deal will allow Wood to meet the city’s deadlines to demolish the parts of Broken Angel that pose a fire hazard, Andersen said, estimating that resurrecting Broken Angel will cost a few million dollars.

(Don’t believe their lies!)