Mister Softee operators breathed a sigh of relief when plans for the Jingle Enforcement Mechanism were abandoned in favor of something more useful:

The city’s newest team of inspectors won’t write tickets or issue fines. They won’t harass landlords over leaky pipes or ensure that builders follow safety codes. The target of this team will be the city itself.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the Street Conditions Observation Unit, Scout for short, at a news conference in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The sole mission of the 15-member team is to patrol the streets in small three-wheeled vehicles looking for maddening little problems like potholes, clogged catch basins, damaged bus shelters and unsightly graffiti. The inspectors will also be on the lookout for more substantial problems, like homeless people in need of aid, the mayor said.

The program is the latest evolution of 311, the city’s popular customer service line, which gives residents access to all city services and allows them to record complaints by dialing one phone number.

Each inspector will be armed with a BlackBerry with global-positioning software to allow him to record observations and locations automatically in the 311 system, which will then notify the appropriate city agency.

“We’ve taken the first step, where it’s easy for you to report problems,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “But you shouldn’t have to do that. We love to have you do it, but it’s government’s responsibility to find the problems and fix them, not to sit there and say, ‘Duh, we didn’t know.’

“That’s not what good government is all about.”

Every once in a while it’s good to remember why you probably shouldn’t be picking up hookers:

A hefty hooker threw a hussy fit yesterday when she was collared for trying to pick up an undercover cop on a Staten Island street corner, threatening to bite him and give him AIDS because he was white, sources said.

Then when officers took her to the 120th Precinct station house, she continued her rampage, allegedly jumping on a wooden bench and crushing it.

Omenebele Young, 32 — who is 5-foot-4 and 250 pounds — had been strutting her ample stuff at the corner of Harbor Road and Richmond Terrace in the Mariners Harbor section just before 4 a.m., authorities said.

Young approached an undercover cop and allegedly flashed her breasts. When the cop tried to cuff her, Young, who is black, allegedly scratched and pinched him, then screamed, “I’ll bite y’all and give you AIDS! I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life just to kill a white cop!”

Now that it’s happened not once but twice, the MTA should create a public service campaign to educate riders about how best to survive a fall from the subway platform:

A Brooklyn man narrowly escaped death yesterday when he fell onto the subway tracks in midtown Manhattan but managed to scurry to safety as the train roared into the station.

Scraped and bloody, his arms covered with dirt, Paul Torres, 46, was carried out of the 34th St. station about 10:40 a.m. by police officers and firefighters who pulled him from under the stopped train.

Later, wearing a neck brace and awaiting further treatment in the Bellevue Hospital emergency room, a dazed Torres said it was “unbelievable” that he was even alive.

Torres said he couldn’t recall how he fell off the southbound platform of the station and into the path of a No. 2 train, but he confirmed in one word how happy he was to be alive. “Yes,” he said, his head still bleeding from the incident.

As in a thrilling subway rescue two months ago, Torres positioned his body between the tracks, allowing space for the train to pass overhead.

Alternative slogan: “If You’ve Got A Small Enough Ass, Get Between Those Tracks.”

Everybody loves exposing pervs on the subway, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly urges caution, noting that some pervs may not take kindly to the act:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly recently issued a statement warning straphangers to use extreme caution when trying to catch subway flashers on cell phone cameras. Kelly acknowledged that such photos have assisted investigators in bringing the flashers to justice-but warned those snapping the sickos to consider they may be putting themselves in danger by doing so.

Kelly reminded the sharpshooters to think about how the flasher might react when he realizes he’s been caught in the act.

Kelly’s remarks on the particularly satisfying form of vigilante justice come after a particularly pervy perv was caught in the act on the 7 train*:

The same individual who exposed himself to a 15-year-old in March is alleged to have flashed a second woman on the same No. 7 line on May 5. Both times the pervert’s victims snapped cell phone pictures of him.

Cops released both images to the press, asking for the public’s help in catching the serial flasher.

Police said the latest victim, a 22-year-old Queens woman, was riding the No. 7 with a friend and her mother when she spotted the pervert-exposed and peering at her over his sunglasses.

When the woman snapped photos of him, the man tried to cover his face with an Archie comic book, police said. After she was certain she had a clear photo, the woman tried to embarrass the man by shouting to other straphangers that he was exposing himself, police said. The man quickly exited the train.

*Isn’t May 5 like six months ago? Who cares when you have Archie!

This never should be done, no matter how inconsiderate your fellow passengers are being by not moving all the way into the car:

A man trying to board a crowded C train between cars was crushed to death last night when the train started moving and he became wedged against the platform, police said.

“It was an accident,” said a sobbing witness, Kristina Kremer, at the 14th St. station in Manhattan. “It wasn’t intentional. He was trying to get on the train. He was like, ‘Oh, my God!’”

The packed subway pulled in about 8 p.m., and the victim tried to climb over a gate between the first and second cars, police at the scene said.

When the uptown train started to pull out, the man became stuck between the platform and the train and was dragged about 50 feet, leaving a gruesome trail of blood along the train’s second car.

And for God’s sake, if you happen to do this, please remember not to smoke in bed:

Firefighters have responded to reports of gas odor in several Queens apartments this year — only to find that the residents had soaked their mattresses with gasoline to kill bedbugs, The Post has learned.

One woman had even wiped gasoline on her arms to keep the bugs from biting her. Another had also wiped her children’s beds with gas.

“Gasoline is very explosive — even static electricity from a rug can ignite it,” said Battalion Chief Robert Turner, who responded to two of the incidents. “Luckily, all of the apartments were well-ventilated.”

The incidents happened in Corona, Queens, at separate apartments as recently as this month.

Ew:

A man relieving himself beside the subway tracks in a tunnel at City Hall station had a turn of bad luck yesterday. As he swung around to return up the stairs in a section of the tunnel just south of the station, his hand was caught under a fast-moving no. 5 train, police and fire officials said.

This is just to say: I am an impatient, overly aggressive and just plain bad bicyclist, and the best thing about the transit strike ending is that I am off the road.

So in a sort of holiday spirit, I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to several pedestrians whom I scolded or cursed at. (NB: This in no way releases you from what at the time were obvious, inexcusable transgressions — it’s just to admit that my response was perhaps excessive.) Please note the following:

• To the middle-aged woman in the black overcoat at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 21, 2005 at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way!” — I’m sorry, I really should have just slowed down and allowed you to cross against the light; and being stressed out that morning still does not excuse me from sneering “Hey, Lady” at you.
• To the middle-aged gentleman at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue on the evening of December 21, 2005 — “Get the fuck out of the way!” was perhaps an overly aggressive way to express what I really felt, which was something more along the lines of, “Please take care not to walk directly in front of a long line of bicyclists trying to cross the street, particularly when you are walking against the light.”
• To the group of three pedestrians at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 22, 2005 at whom I yelled, “Get out of the way!” — while actually speeding up — I apologize; even though (again) you were crossing the street against the light, in speeding up to almost hit you I was perhaps acting too aggressively.
• Finally, to the near-elderly woman in the black fur coat at 59th Street and Third Avenue on the evening of December 22, 2005 who was crossing against the light — the one at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way” and who snapped something indecipherable at me — I am sorry for making the extra effort to turn around while I was almost through the intersection and yelling “fuck you”; yelling “fuck you” is probably never justified, especially when I wasn’t exactly sure what you said, and especially because yelling obscenities at the elderly is rude, unseemly behavior.

That said, I am emphatically unapologetic about flipping off the idiot in the blue minivan who drove right in front of me at 45th Avenue and 23rd Street in Queens. In fact, I would have yelled, too, were it not for the fact that he could not hear me. To you, Sir — Watch out for bicyclists, you stupid moron.

To all you all who throw your shit on the subway tracks, Hey, Moron, Give A Fuckin’ Hoot, Why Don’t You? (boom — instant T-shirt idea!):

The Transit Authority has identified the dirtiest subway stations in the city, where enough trash to fill more than 6,500 large bags of garbage has been collected off the trackbeds so far this year.

TA cleaners carrying 55-gallon bags pick litter by hand from the trackbeds at busy stations once or twice a week - yet within days, debris once again litters the rails, officials say.

“There’s no way you can stay on top of it,” said William Johnson, a veteran cleaner assigned to the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station, which has the dubious distinction of consistently being the city’s most trash-filled station.

And it’s getting worse: From January through September, transit workers hauled 37,000 bags of rubbish from station tracks systemwide - a nearly 32% increase over the same period last year, the TA said.

. . .

The garbage is more than an eyesore. It’s also fuel for fires sparked by trains. Those blazes force firefighters to descend into a potentially dangerous environment. Underground fires can require the evacuation of riders and regularly result in delayed service. And trash attracts the sturdy breed of rats that make the underground warren their home and dart out of the darkness between trains to feed on the refuse.

And leave it to the transit workers union and them Straphanger whiners to blame the MTA on this one when we all know that the problem is with your stanky asses — you who throw wrappers, cans, cups and bags onto the tracks:

Critics charge that the TA has unwisely trimmed the workforce assigned to cleaning platforms over the last several years, and has been slow to deploy more workers to remove debris from tracks. Still, critics and straphangers concede that there are too many litterbugs - rude riders who toss empty coffee cups, newspapers, fast-food wrappers and other refuse aside without regard for their fellow travelers.

Law-abiding subway riders called upon those who are less civil to do the right thing. “We all use it, so we should take care of it,” Roberto Rios, 18, of the Bronx, said at the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station. “If we didn’t throw garbage to the floor, it wouldn’t be a problem. People should be more considerate.”

In a week featuring coordinated bombings of Western hotels in Jordan and the apparent disruption of a terrorist plot allegedly in its final stages in Australia (and a potential threat in China . . . or not?), New York Magazine indulges our latent thirst for disaster-preparedness porn:

Despite [NYPD assistant chief in charge of preparedness Phil] Pulaski’s confidence, few people believe a full-scale evacuation of New York would be anything other than an interminable, nightmarish logjam. “You look at New York City and you know you’ll never be able to evacuate all of it,” [State] Assemblyman [Richard] Brodsky admits.

When I ask Pulaski about this, he takes an uncharacteristic pause. Then he answers with a question.

“What would happen that would require the entire city to be evacuated? I can’t think of anything.”

Unlike New Orleans and its levees, New York has no single point of failure, and it is difficult to imagine a situation in which the entire city would have to be evacuated. Except for one. A nuclear explosion.

. . .

A dirty bomb is one thing, but an actual nuclear event, as it’s often innocuously referred to (it makes it sound like something you don’t want to miss, like the “movie or concert event of the season”), is the mother of all disaster scenarios. And it is the Rubik’s Cube of preparedness planning. How do you prepare for something so overwhelming?

. . .

In the end, some of the most important things to manage are expectations. “There is this notion,” Brodsky says, “that we can take care of everybody. Well, the truth is we can’t take care of everybody.”

But Wait! There’s More! Act Now And You Not Only Get A Disaster-Preparedness Porn Feature But Two Other Worrying Sidebars As Well! See What New Yorkers Are Doing To Prepare For Avian Flu! (”One woman says she got a prescription at the insistence of her boyfriend, who already had his. ‘This is just precautionary,’ he explains, asking that they not be identified because he works for a TV network and doesn’t want to be subjected to ridicule by his peers.”) And also — A short guide to nine big things to worry about — and what you can do about them:

If terrorists hit the Kuehne Chemical Co. chlorine-manufacturing plant in Kearny, New Jersey—directly under the Pulaski Skyway and considered one of the country’s most vulnerable targets—the city’s top priority would be figuring out how fast it would take the greenish-yellow gaseous cloud to get here.

Indian Point Meltdown? Check:

Hope that winds are headed north [Albany is for suckers!], as the 35 miles between the nuclear-power plant and midtown is a short commute southward for a radioactive plume, which could kill thousands in a few days, cause radiation sickness and eventual cancer for tens of thousands more, and taint the city’s water supply.

Nuclear Explosion You’re Looking For? We’ve Got That, Too:

Pray for help from the Feds because city hospitals, police precincts, and firehouses could be destroyed. If the prospect of a fema-managed catastrophe isn’t scary enough, a nuclear bomb would kill millions, and the lucky ones would get vaporized instantly. Others would be burned, blinded, or poisoned by radiation sickness in subsequent weeks and months. Bodies would litter the streets, and the water supply would be contaminated. The city would be too radioactive for outside emergency workers to enter, so those left alive would have to improvise.

But Wait! Wait! Act Now And You Get Not Only A Disaster-Preparedness Porn Feature — Plus The Two Worrying Sidebars! — But Also This Handy Guide Showing All Geologic Fault Lines In The Five Boroughs! All Yours. But Only If You Act Now!

And Don’t Forget This Blast From The Past: Bill Keller’s “Nuclear Nightmares” (New York Times Magazine, May 26, 2002)

The Post helpfully reminds us that if you find yourself transporting upwards of 600 pounds of marijuana, do yourself a favor and obey traffic laws:

Two Brooklyn cops seized a whopping 600 pounds of pot from a van they pulled over after its driver ran a stop sign, police said yesterday.

The officers spotted the Dodge Caravan blowing past the sign in the Flatlands section at 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

The driver, Marcus King, 30, tried to ditch the vehicle and run, but was busted a few blocks away by the two cops.

When they checked the van, the officers found the huge marijuana hoard and $25,000 in cash.

Truck drivers and warehouse workers at two major liquor distributors are on strike, threatening city supplies of Wild Turkey and other favorite brands:

A strike by two major liquor and wine distributors could have New Yorkers thirsting for their favorite top-shelf hooch.

Truck drivers and warehouse workers at Peerless Liquor and Wine Distributors, in Brooklyn, and at Astoria, Queens-based Charmers Industries, walked off the job yesterday, leaving at least 17,000 of some 26,000 licensed restaurants and bars high and dry.

“I found out they were on strike when there was no delivery this morning,” said Des O’Brien, owner of Langan’s Pub in Manhattan, explaining that the two companies together deliver 70 percent of his wine and spirits stock.

Peerless, which can ship up to 60,000 cases of booze overnight, according to its Web site, is also the largest local wine distributor of California, French and Italian wines.

And if you like to bend an elbow with a glass of Ketel One vodka, Chivas Regal, Jameson Irish Whiskey or Wild Turkey, be worried — those name brands are exclusive to Peerless.

. . .

Some 400 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union local 1D went on strike for higher wages when their contract expired after midnight Oct. 31, a union spokeswoman said.

In case you somehow missed it, Daylight Savings Time ended at 2 a.m. Sunday, but the white-gloved workers at the Torneau store were on the case long before then:

Time is the enemy of the New Yorker. There is never enough of it. So there was something euphoric about the scene yesterday inside Tourneau TimeMachine in Manhattan, where white-gloved workers were busy setting the store’s 8,000 wristwatches back an hour. For once, people got a second chance.

Officially, the end of daylight saving time struck at 2 a.m. this morning. But, as Richard E. Gellman, a Tourneau vice president, explained, the world’s largest watch store needs a head start. It will take workers three days to turn all the little knobs on the sides of all the watches to the previous hour, a significant effort undertaken each October, in accordance with the Uniform Time Act of 1966, as a courtesy to the customer.

“It’s a very big deal,” Mr. Gellman said. “We’re all about time.”

. . .

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Gellman greeted a man dressed as a floppy-eared Dalmatian. He was not shopping for a new Rolex. He was Hot Dog, the Fire Department’s fire safety mascot, visiting the store to remind people to change the batteries of their smoke detectors when they reset their clocks. Three firefighters stood with him in the bucket of a fire truck’s mechanical ladder and pretended to change the hands of the giant clock outside the store.

The clock, controlled by a computer, was not budging for anyone before its automatic resetting at 2 a.m. The tinier ones in the display cases are not as self-sufficient.

Robert Marcomeni, 42, who works at the store, said he had reset about 250 watches since Friday. He took a pragmatic approach to the task, and to the whole notion of daylight saving time. “You don’t question it,” he said. “You just do it.”

As a friendly reminder, if someone holds a gun to your head and says “I’m going to fucking kill you,” it’s probably not a good idea to grab the gun out of his hand and chase after him. Even if this method works:

A young man assisted police in capturing a teenage thug after the man and his female companion were beaten and robbed at gunpoint in Brooklyn, authorities said yesterday.

The trouble began about 9 p.m. Sunday, when Justin Snider, 22, and Zsizsi Verushka, 20, were approached by Keith Dunn and two accomplices at St. James Place near Gates Avenue in Fort Greene, cops said.

Dunn, 17, allegedly pointed a gun at Snider’s head and said, “We are going to f- - -ing kill you . . .”

Snider then reached out and snatched the weapon from Dunn’s hand, sources said.

That triggered an assault in which Dunn and his accomplices pummeled Snider, cops said.

The thugs then pushed Verushka to the ground, snatched $20 from her purse and fled, sources said.

As Snider gave chase, Dunn allegedly picked up a rock and hurled it at him, but missed.

Snider was able to catch Dunn and hold him until police arrived.

Dunn was charged with assault and robbery.

Also, just to be clear, while it may have worked this time, doing so is not “assisting” the police. Instead, it is rather stupid — no matter what the Post tells you.

New York Magazine shows how to score chick after chick after chick, and which dogs are best for it:

I’d always heard dogs are chick magnets, but I’d never gathered any direct evidence while occasionally dog-sitting Benji, a midsize mutt who doesn’t exert one gauss of magnetizing action. Then, shortly after a broken engagement left me suddenly single, a friend asked me to look after the sort of animal I have always considered useless: a quivering, rat-faced toy poodle.

Well, Hugo cannot herd sheep or scare off intruders or catch a Frisbee. But, Lord, he pulls human females.

. . .

The Hugo-Benji disparity left me with several questions: Could Hugo be topped? Would an even bigger poodle exert an even more forceful draw? Which dog is the most effective chick magnet of all?

If you’re scoring at home (insert ESPN reference here), the poodle is less successful (”‘If you see a guy with a poodle, you think he’s married,” said Allison, 23. “Plus, the dog is poofy.”), as is the case with golden retrievers and dachshunds (”purebred dogs offered good looks but little charm”). On the other end of the spectrum, Great Danes (”A few steps later I met Casey, a skinny, brown-eyed anthro major whom I wish I did not find so devastatingly attractive because she is 21 and I am barely still in my thirties”) and amputees serve the writer well:

Please do not consider sawing off a dog’s leg — but if you did, you’d improve your luck. Rudy, a mix of German shepherd, Airedale terrier, chow chow, and Rottweiler, has pretty much every scary dog in his pedigree. But sans a leg, he’s a female sympathy sponge.

Bonus Points: SportsCenter phrases . . . Inside Baseball — did Keith Olbermann rip off WFAN’s Dave Somers? Some say “yes” . . .

People, if you have an unwanted sheep please do not just dump it in the cemetery. Not only is it cruel but it also makes for bad puns in the Daily News, like “Ewe won’t believe this: Sheep was on the lamb.”

As authorities worry about suiciders in the subways, meteorologists are becoming increasingly concerned about the prospect of devastating hurricanes as well:

It turns out that the region’s emergency managers aren’t only worrying about terrorism these days. The big topic of discussion at the Melville, Long Island, Hilton was hurricanes. And the strong consensus is that the metropolitan region is due for a big one. Overdue, in fact.

The 1938 Long Island Express, a borderline category-4 hurricane that plowed into West Hampton, causing widespread death and devastation across New York, New Jersey and New England, was the last major hurricane to hit the region. Statistically speaking, “a storm of that magnitude may repeat every 70 to 80 years or so,” [Director of Watch Command at New York City's Office of Emergency Management Mike] Lee says. “So, do the math. Whether it happens this year, next year, or in five years, it’s going to happen.” And with this year’s hurricane season forecasted to be even busier and more dangerous than last year’s record-setter, “It’s just a matter of time,” Lee says.

As to which areas will be hardest hit, it’s basically everywhere:

To get a sense of the damage that storm surge can do to New York City, call 311 and ask them to send you a full-color copy of the New York City Hurricane Evacuation Map. It is a truly mind-boggling document. If a storm like the Long Island Express makes a direct hit on the city, everything below Broome Street will be inundated, some parts under as much as 20 and 30 feet of water. Chelsea and Greenwich Village are completely flooded, with the Hudson spilling over all the way to 7th Avenue. Likewise, the East River and East Village become one, with ocean water surging all the way to 1st Avenue. If you haven’t evacuated before the storm, forget it. During the storm, Manhattan’s east- and west-side highways vanish. Tunnels and bridges become unusable.

The outer boroughs also get hit hard. Opposed to that new Ikea being built on the waterfront in Red Hook? Don’t worry. There’s a decent chance it won’t be there after a moderate-size hurricane. Residents of Williamsburg-Greenpoint should seek out a male and female of each species and get in their arks. In a kind of one-two-punch effect, a major hurricane will push ocean water down from the Long Island Sound into the Upper East Side, South Bronx and northern Queens, flooding those areas severely. Vast stretches of southern Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island will be devastated. The map shows Atlantic Ocean storm surge reaching as far inland as Flatbush, just south of Prospect Park, with 31.3 feet of water atop Howard Beach.

Makes some nitwit in a bomb vest seem rather innocuous, no?

The MTA announced a new batch of rules yesterday, including a ban on moving between cars. Notably absent: a ban on photography (woo hoo!). The Times explains what’s new:

Subway riders afflicted by broken air-conditioning, foul odors, children selling candy bars for occasionally dubious causes and even the random groper have long sought relief by quickly switching cars.

No more.

Moving between cars - as well as resting one’s feet on the seats, sipping from an open container (even a cup of coffee) and straddling a bicycle while riding the subway - will be prohibited under a new set of passenger rules adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s transit committee yesterday, the first such rule changes since 1994.

While riding between cars is already forbidden, managers at the authority said they wanted to make clear that even quickly darting from one car to another while the train is in motion is dangerous.

There is only one way, they said, to move safely to another car - exiting the train at the next station and then quickly re-entering it, even if passengers making a such a dash could face other perils, like tripping, smashing a finger or losing a purse between rapidly shutting doors.

Ha. Exactly.

The MTA’s full board now must vote on the changes. Apparently there is some dissension about the proposed moving-between-cars rule:

Mark Page, the city’s budget director, who represents Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on the board, observed: “It is, from time to time, convenient to absent oneself from a car or from a particular group of people.”

Let’s put it this way — it is from time to time convenient to absent oneself from a car or from a particular group of people when, say, a big J.O. party is underway on the 3 train:

Riders like Beatrice McCants, 30, said they had faced many such occasions. Ms. McCants, who works as a newspaper distributor in Midtown, said she was riding a Brooklyn-bound No. 3 train Wednesday when a man began masturbating in plain sight. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to get off this train,’” she recalled. “Now I’m going to get a fine for that, for running from a flasher? I won’t pay it!”

Now that’s a quote! (Nice job, Sewell!)

This quote, however, doesn’t help:

“Let’s say you get on the train in the front, but you’re in a hurry, and you need to exit in the back,” offered Manny Guzman, a 15-year-old high school student from East New York, who was observed yesterday moving between two cars on an uptown No. 2 train. “It is unsafe, but I do it all the time.” Banning this practice, he added, “makes no sense.”

No, no, no! Don’t say it’s unsafe! That doesn’t make sense! (Bad job, Sewell!)

The final vote is set to take place tomorrow.

New York Magazine’s guide to trash-picked furniture:

Even an Eames lounge should be left alone if you detect the slightest note of urine.

Yuck!

Frommer’s finally writes something useful — “Where to Stop Where to Go,” a guide to the city’s bathrooms sponsored by a pharmaceutical company marketing medication for overactive bladders. The Daily News notes the achievement:

Those with an urgent need for a rest room now have a guide for where to go when they need to go - thanks to seasoned travel writer Arthur Frommer, who has felt your pain.

“I experienced firsthand what traveling with an overactive bladder is like - needing to ask strangers about locating a rest room or trying to persuade a salesperson to give me access to those facilities,” Frommer writes in the 75-page travel-tip book “Where to Stop & Where to Go.”

Natives and tourists alike will appreciate the section devoted to New York’s sometimes hard-to-find public powder rooms.

Bonus Points: Where to Stop Where to Go; See also the original bathroom guide, Bathroom Diaries (Big Pharma should have gone there first!); Bathroom Diaries New York Page.

The New York Times answers the question whether it’s possible to become shipwrecked inside city limits: Yes.

As if electrified sidewalks weren’t already bad enough, skirt-wearing pedestrians now must worry about peeping toms working from under the subway grates:

At first, it looked as if it might be a bomb. The truth, it turned out, was not as dangerous but was alarming nevertheless: someone had put a video camera below a street grate on the Upper East Side, apparently placed to look up the skirts of women walking past, the police said.

A passer-by spotted the camera on Tuesday on a shelf above a subway catwalk, about three feet below street level, rigged to a battery pack and pointed straight up on the south side of 88th Street just west of Lexington Avenue. After the passer-by called the police, the bomb squad arrived, and a technician dropped onto the catwalk, among cigarette butts, bottle caps and gum wrappers, to examine a camera connected to a digital video recorder, the police said.

The discovery repulsed women who live or work near the corner.

. . .

“I guess I have to be a little more careful now walking on the street.”

The (diminished but still present) threat of mugging, iPod heists, electrified sidewalks — how much more careful can one possibly be?

If you noticed yourself sneezing more in the past couple of days, it’s not your fault; tree pollen is atrociously high right now. The Daily News offers tips to save yourself:

• Wash your hair every night and, before entering your bedroom, change your clothes to remove pollen that collects during the day.
• At home or when driving, keep the windows closed and set the air conditioner to recirculate air to keep out pollen.
• Avoid eating apples, pears and hazelnuts (even hazelnut-flavored coffee) if you suffer from tree pollen allergies.
• If you are allergic to grass pollen (peak season is in June), avoid celery, cereal grains, melons and tomatoes.
• If you are allergic to weed pollen (peak season is in late August to September), avoid bananas, zucchini, cucumbers, echinacea and sunflower seeds.
• If you have a yard, keep grass cut short and flower beds weed free. Avoid planting junipers, Bermuda grass, ryegrass and chrysanthemums. Go for less allergy-inducing plants such as azaleas, begonias, bulbs (tulips, irises, poppies and daffodils), and palms, pines, firs and dogwoods.

Before the end of the day, I will be replacing all of the city’s trees with palms. We will be the Miami of the North.

Of course, this will be moot when the dreaded Asian Longhorned Beetle eats all the city’s trees and once and for all takes care of our allergy problems: “Beetle may kill half of city trees.”

Familiarize yourself with your allergy-alleviating comrades: USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine Asian Longhorned Beetle Backgrounder.

For the 10,000th time, if you drop something on the subway tracks, do not go down there yourself. And being “mentally handicapped” is not an excuse: “Killed getting purse off tracks”.

For the 20,000th time, don’t smoke in bed (who still smokes in bed?): “Woman dies in Qns. fire her cig may have started”.

And finally, if you’re the MTA, think long and hard about what this tells the public about your credibility on other issues including, most importantly, supposed pending billion-dollar-plus deficits: “Straphangers cheer C train’s return”.

Bonus Point: New York Daily News Headlines Kill (Gawker).

Now that the holiday season has passed, please note that there is a right way and a wrong way to discard one’s Christmas tree. Incorrect options include but are not limited to, for example, throwing it out on the beach in the hopes that it will be dragged out to sea:

Perhaps this person was unaware of Mulchfest 2005? Perhaps.

See also: The Discarded Christmas Tree, a Bridge and Tunnel Club photo essay; “The Ghosts of Christmas Past” (Guardian Unlimited, January 10, 2005).

Since it’s that the time of season, the Daily News has a helpful piece on pickpockets in today’s paper. Nothing groundbreaking, but it discusses the exotic-sounding School of Seven Bells, one of those Boo Radley-esque concepts that may or may not be an urban myth but is worth recounting (once again):

The worst of them are so slick that some cops believe they were trained at a legendary crime college in South America - the School of the Seven Bells.

The school, said to be in Colombia, has never been visited by a U.S. law enforcement official, and many believe it does not exist.

But as the legend goes, the final test at the school involves a teacher posing as a mark, his body booby-trapped with seven small bells, each strategically placed. To graduate, students must slip valuables from several pockets without ringing any of the bells.

Remember “School of the Seven Bells” for later use (lyrical, that!).

They also have a great glossary of “pickpocketing lingo”:

• The Pick - Snatching a valuable item from a person.
• The Dip - The thief who actually executes the pick.
• The Mark - The victim.
• Ripper - A fearless thief who brazenly rips or cuts items out of a pocket and runs.
• The Dish - A handoff. The thief who swiped the wallet gives it to another thief lurking nearby to prevent being caught.
• The Stall - A thief blocks the path of a walking target to allow a pickpocket to swoop in.
• Looping - Repeatedly passing a target or a store in order to steal something.

And don’t forget the colorfully named scams:

• The Squirt Job: A thief squirts a condiment like ketchup or mayonnaise on a victim’s jacket. The thief then points it out, or his partner points it out. While the victim wipes off the stain, the thief picks the pocket or bag.
• The Money Drop: A thief drops cash or other items in front of the victim walking down the street. Another thief comes from behind and picks the distracted victim’s pocket or swipes his or her bag.
• The Flat Tire: A thief looks for a driver sitting inside a car, punctures the car’s tire and then points it out. When the driver gets out of the car to inspect the tire, another thief steals valuables from the vehicle.
• The Bump: A thief bumps into a victim on the street, in a store or in the subway, giving his accomplice time to sneak up from behind and pick the jostled victim’s pocket.

To quote Hill Street Blues‘ Phil Esterhaus, “Let’s be careful out there!”

The Post performs a sort of public service today by making us feel less guilty for not giving panhandlers money. Specifically, introducing (or reintroducing, just in case we forgot) the concept of the Bogus Beggar:

Paula Headley dressed for her job in Midtown — wearing a filthy blanket and a pathetic look on her tear-streaked face.

Then she headed home at the end of a busy day — clad in a casual-chic jogging outfit and a warm hat.

Meet the Fifth Avenue faker — a fixture for four years on the famous thoroughfare, where she begs change from high-fashion shoppers.

Last Saturday, camped out in front of the Louis Vuitton store, it took her only 20 minutes to collect $18 in bills, several dollars more in coins and one cup of cocoa from a middle-aged man who also gave her a gentle warning, “Careful, it’s hot.”

When work was over for the day, Headley hobbled slowly across Fifth Avenue, doubled over as if in pain.

She walked into a telephone kiosk — and, like Superman, emerged transformed.

Wearing her jogging clothing, she stood straight up, took a sip of the cocoa and strode off.

The Post exclusive delves into the ins and outs of the lucrative panhandling business and the art of begging, including, if I’m not mistaken, what appears to be method acting:

Headley, 36, claims the blanket, the tears, the bent-over shuffle are no Christmas con.

The blanket?

“That’s what I use to wrap myself to go to sleep anyway,” she explained.

And the slow, shuffling walk?

That, she said, was because she didn’t “want to step on [her blanket] or trip.”

But what about those tears?

“If you hold your eyes open long enough, they come down your face,” she said. “Or you sit back, you reminisce on the past and it makes you sad.”

But she admits the blanket does help her cash flow.

“It takes a long time to get $10″ when she’s wearing her store-bought clothes, she said.

“When I go out with my blanket, the money comes fast.”

Although a case can be made that anyone who goes to such lengths deserves every penny he or she gets, in Ms. Headley’s case this may amount to six figures:

Harry Yancey, a security guard at Van Cleef & Arpels, said that before Headley upgraded to a blanket, she’d lie on the street wrapped only in black garbage bags.

“I think she’s a con artist,” he said. “I pity con artists. To go through that routine is hard. She deserves whatever she earns.”

Another area worker was less sympathetic.

“She gets paid more than I do,” he said. He estimated that “on a good day, [she makes] $200 at least.”

Headley insists she deserves all the sympathy she gets.

She said she wound up on the streets when she lost both her parents at age 24.

“I basically just gave up,” she said. “I stopped going to church.”

She used to sleep in the station at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, but when she hit the jackpot with her penniless pageant she gave up sleeping on a bench for nicer digs — an apartment on 123rd Street where she stays with a friend.

Not counting handfuls of coins or the price of a cocoa, the $18 she earned last Saturday would average to a comfortable tax-free $103,680 a year — if she could lie on her corner 40 hours a week. City panhandling laws make that impractical, but Midtown observers say she moves from corner to corner to escape notice.

“Sometimes worried people call EMS for her,” Yancey said. “When they come, she gets up and says, ‘I’m all right.’”

Like I said, the Post’s idea of public service . . . Merry Christmas!

I thought I’d add to Scott’s subway rant. I also hate:

• People who refuse to keep to the right on the stairs. Is it that hard to remember, really? Is it?
• People who block the walking lane on the escalator. Working at Times Square, I think I curse a gaggle of Midwesterners under my breath daily.
• Men who take up two seats by spreading their legs. Somebody didn’t manage to learn anything to charm school, alas.
• Men who think I don’t notice them groping me. (Surprise, asshole, I’m about the step on your foot…HARD!)

As noted below, the MTA is revising its rules of conduct. The zombie-esque photography ban is perhaps the most controversial, but there are other proposed rule changes — not putting one’s feet on the seats, for example.

A Quirky Op-Ed in the Times today (in the quirky corner of the op-ed page, i.e., the lefthand page down at the bottom) tackles the issue of legislating subway etiquette:

The transportation authorities should ask rush-hour passengers what other rules they should impose.

Almost certain to top the list would be a “three swipes and you’re out” edict, sending would-be riders to the back of the line at crowded turnstiles when they cannot make their MetroCards work. Pole leaners, who deprive others from holding on when the train is hurtling and snaking along at breakneck speed, would be forced off the train, or forced to ride in the middle of the car without anything or anyone to grip for balance. Loud talkers would be seated next to anyone who is snoring.

All of the people on the train would have to cover their mouths when they coughed and noses when they sneezed or be herded into a car with other germ-delivering riders. Dogs would be allowed to ride subway trains, but not peddlers of candy bars or jewelry. And anyone who gave up a seat to someone in need would get a free ride (this could be declined by those few believing that kindness is its own reward).

I’m adamantly opposed to allowing dogs on the subway (yuck!), but as I read the piece this morning on the subway, I could think of several other fine additions:

• Blocking the Doors Like a Big Dick is Prohibited. Example: The stop at Lexington opens on this side, so I will stand my ground at all costs so as to be the first to exit the train, those trying to get on around me be damned.
• Step Aside and Let the Passengers off First! This particular annoyance is best expressed through the conductor’s admonition during rush hour: “Step Aside! Step Aside!” On certain passive-aggressive days (or aggressive-aggressive days), I find myself waiting until oncoming passengers get out of my way before exiting, creating a time-wasting faceoff during rush hour.
• Step All the Way into the Car Please! See above. I wonder if those who do not Move All the Way Into the Car, Please! do it out of spite for those who have a shorter commute. The stripper-like pole leaner described in the Times piece tends to exacerbate this condition.
• Vigilante Justice Perpetrated Against Bootleg DVD Vendors. Having been convinced that the proceeds of bootleg DVDs fund international terrorism, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve developed a bad habit of simply stepping on them when they’re in the way.

There are always other subway annoyances . . . this list is sure to grow.

As we begin the inexorable descent into the dark, glum chill of winter, remember that there’s always Florida.