. . . but until then, please just give these people a stupid beer/wine license already:

Long Island City activists are opposing a popular restaurant’s application for a beer and wine license, fearing alcohol will only add to the troubles they say the eatery has brought to the neighborhood.

Residents said Blend LIC has been a bad neighbor, and accused its management of repeatedly lying to the community about its intentions.

Blend’s management “don’t want a restaurant that co-exists peacefully with the neighborhood,” said resident Tim Lee, a 48-year-old photographer.

“There’s a big difference between a restaurant that serves liquor and a place that’s positioning itself as a bar stop.”

Blend, which bills itself as a Latin fusion restaurant, had its initial application for a liquor license rejected by the State Liquor Authority in November 2006.

Now the restaurant’s owner, Cullen Partners, is preparing to ask Queens Community Board 2 for a beer and wine license.

“The opening of their rear garden would surround our building with noise,” said Tim Doocey, 38, another concerned neighbor.

. . .

“There’s a saturation of bars and restaurants” in Long Island City, said Community Board 2 Chairman Joe Conley. “People are saying enough is enough.”

In a 2006 letter to Cullen Partners, Conley wrote: “Please be advised we have already spoken in a loud and unambiguous voice on this issue and are unlikely to reconsider the decision” in regard to a new license.

Charles Linn, attorney for Cullen Partners, declined to comment and added that no one at Blend would be available for further comment.

The original disapproval states the “application information was misrepresented by the applicant” and that the applicant “submitted an application with misleading information.”

Doocey, a communications consultant, added, “We’re not anti-business. We’re not even anti-bar. But the next thing you know, Vernon Blvd. will become a mess like the lower East Side.”

. . . or whoever it is who is tasked to rid the city of the bugs:

The city Health Department is reporting progress in the war on the pests.

A department study found nearly 30% of all city households report having cockroaches, but the agency noted the problem is concentrated in low-income neighborhoods. In the past, infestation affected households at all income levels.

“I have not seen a roach in 10 years,” declared Joe Pepicelli, 68, of Brooklyn, who suggested the reduction is not because people are cleaner. It’s just that “they don’t keep soda bottles and garbage in the hallway.”

Exterminators told the Daily News they believe the roach problem is under control, thanks to new technology.

“There are a lot of options,” said Andy Linares, president of Bug Off in upper Manhattan. “Liquids, gels, aerosols, baits, granulators, growth regulators — all keep a lid on roaches.”

But never fear, for bedbug scaremonger Andy Linares — the Greg Packer of exterminators — will be sure gets his nasty hands on this bit of good news:

But don’t relax just yet. Bedbugs are on the rise.

And your loved ones look at you like you’re Richard Dreyfus sculpting mashed potatoes:

Residents of one of the city’s noisiest neighborhoods are honking mad at hacks who lean on their horns — so they’re cooking up creative ways to quiet the nightly cabby cacophony.

The Lower East Side’s Community Board 3, which has registered 6,133 noise complaints since July, the second most in the city, voted last week to ask the Taxi and Limousine Commission to consider installing a light atop taxis that would glow when a cabby beeps the horn.

This would make it easier for cops to ticket the driver for breaking the city’s noise code, which prohibits excessive horn honking.

“Right now, the police actually have to see a cabdriver honk the horn to issue a ticket, and that’s obviously hard,” said Board 3 district manager Susan Stetzer. “This would allow the police to see exactly who honked and make it easy to enforce the rules.”

The board will include the suggested tattletale light in a letter to the TLC, which is soliciting public feedback as it designs the taxi of the future.

But that’s not the only anti-honking measure the community is clamoring for.

Residents want to see cabs equipped with horns that blare as loudly inside the taxi as outside, creating a natural deterrent.

Next on the list: a meter that knocks $1 off the fare every time the horn honks.

“If the driver lost a buck every time he blew the horn, that would stop him real quick,” said Lower East Side resident Avram Fefer, who called the din on Ludlow Street “absolutely horrible.”

“What Times Square is to the eyes, Ludlow Street is to the ears,” he said.

. . .

And if the community’s suggestions fall on deaf ears? “A very vigorous egg-throwing campaign” might be the answer, according to Fefer.

Why not two levels of horns? A quieter one for when someone is right in front of you and a louder one for real danger? Or at least when you’re six cars back and you want to know what the hold up is . . . (seriously, the culture of honking here is absurd!)

If you gave me nice new trains like the ones on the L line — instead of these 40-plus-year-old dinosaurs — maybe I’d be less likely to chuck my chicken bones any which way:

Wet, sticky spots on the train floor, chicken bones, nut shells, spilled coffee, hot dogs and “lots and lots of rolling bottles” often greet subway passengers who travel on the E and the Q trains — rated the dirtiest lines in the New York City subway system in the latest survey by a rider advocacy group.

Riders on the L line, however, are getting the cleanest ride, according to the group, the Straphangers Campaign, which released its findings on Tuesday.

Brooklyn gets greyer (”The war between childless bar-goers and the so-called stroller Mafia has ended at one restaurant: the eatery is offering on-site babysitters to watch children in a separate room while their parents — and everyone else — dine and drink in peace”), while Queens gets funnier:

The Astoria Comedy Club is set to open Friday at Mezzo Mezzo restaurant on Ditmars Blvd. — the only venue in the borough for regular comic relief.

The 75-seat club, located in a performance space on the second floor of the eatery, will be open four days a week for now and feature comedians from across the country.

“About 10 years ago, all the comics moved to Astoria because it’s cheap,” said Matt Taylor, the club’s host. “There’s more talent here per square foot than anywhere, period.”

Simplify your life, call 311:

The city is launching an advertising campaign discouraging New Yorkers from giving money, food, and clothing to homeless people and asking well-wishers to call 311 for help instead.

“Giving money to a panhandler may seem like you’re being compassionate,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday at City Hall. “But you’re really not helping that person long-term, and just keeping that person going in a life that is probably going to continue to spiral out of control.”

PlaNYC isn’t all about congestion pricing and the as-yet-unexplained 1 million new residents. There is also the part about the mussels:

The mayor wants to plant 20 cubic meters of ribbed mussel beds into Hendrix Creek next to the 26th Ward Wastewater Treatment Plant to naturally clean and filter nearby Jamaica Bay. “In the 19th Century, the natural way the harbor got cleaned was because it was full of mussels and clams,” said Rohit Aggarwala, the director of long-term planning and sustainability, the department the mayor created to oversee PlaNYC2030. “If it works there, we’ll try it in lots of different places.” Others are skeptical though. “I don’t how you’d ever find enough ribbed mussels to make much of a difference.,” said Ray Grizzle, a professor of Marine Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Still, the city is set to give it a try next spring.

The anecdotal evidence well established, DEP officials will perform a formal olfactory survey of Hunts Point:

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection has tapped an engineering consulting firm to conduct an odor survey of Hunts Point over four days starting tomorrow, with the public asked to be the bloodhounds — phoning in when they pick up the scent.

The purpose of the survey is to identify the odors prevalent in the Hunts Point area and establish their sources.

The new pungency patrol is part of a seven-page agreement City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-South Bronx) wrangled from the DEP as the price for dropping her opposition to an expansion and upgrade of the Hunts Point Wastewater Treatment Facility to be built in her district.

The $235 million project was approved by the City Council Monday by a 48-to-0 vote.

The Council approval of several land-use actions will allow the DEP to begin work, expected to take eight years, on four egg-shaped, 130-foot-high “digester” tanks, where bacteria will break down sludge into a bio-solid for use as compost and fertilizer.

Tomorrow, inspectors from the Malcolm Pirnie Inc. consulting firm will be in Hunts Point from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., ready to track down odors called in by residents to a special hotline.

They’ll be back in the evenings from 5p.m. to 10 p.m. on the following Monday and Thursday, then again on Tuesday, Sept. 25.

. . .

The DEP has even offered a list of descriptors useful for characterizing odors under three broad categories:

“Almond-like” odors might be sweet, smoky, earthy, metallic, acidic, oily or like mothballs.

“Sulfidic” odors could be yeasty, fruity, putrid, fecal, buttery or honeylike.

“Alcohol-like” smells may be rubbery, sooty, coffee-like, chemical or like fried chicken.

You know you want to contribute to his defense fund:

A Queens bus driver smashed a passenger over the head with a phone when he refused to give up his handicap seat to an elderly woman, police said yesterday.

The bus driver, Larry Woods, 44, and the allegedly inconsiderate rider, Christian Custis, 22, were both arrested and charged with assault after a brawl erupted over the seat on the Q43 bus in Jamaica.

Police said the fight began when Woods asked Custis to give up his seat to the frail woman with a cane who boarded at Hillside Avenue and 164th Street at 11:16 a.m. Friday.

Things turned ugly when Custis, who is not disabled, refused to relinquish his spot, cops said.

Woods then clobbered Custis in the head with the bus’ onboard phone as stunned passengers looked on, police said.

The pair was taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries, before being hauled into the 103rd Precinct station house.

Custis and Woods were both arraigned in Queens Criminal Court yesterday on assault and harassment charges and released. Woods was also charged with one count of criminal possession of a weapon: the phone.

311 passed the 50 million-call milestone earlier today:

“We have now handled more calls than Apple has sold iPods. As of today, they’ve only sold 49 million,” DoITT Commissioner Paul J. Cosgrave said.

Since its inception in March of 2003, 311 has fielded and average of 40,000 calls a day and has reduced the amount of calls to 911 for non-emergencies by one million.

“That means that our 911 dispatchers are free to send responders to a fire in a matter of seconds, and who knows how valuable those seconds actually are,” Bloomberg said.

According to Cosgrave, the number one complaint that 311 dispatchers deal with is noise.

That is followed by calls from people who are without heat or hot water in the winter, questions about how to pay for parking tickets are the third most common complaint, Freon removal and scheduling a pickup for air conditioners and refrigerators follows and questions about bus and subway information rounds out the top five.

And as befits a top-tier presidential candidate, Mayor Bloomberg was on hand to celebrate 311’s success:

“I have no plans of bringing 311 to a federal level,” he said to the amusement of the assembled press, “But there’s absolutely no reason why the federal government, with a budget of trillions of dollars, should not make available access to services that the average person can get to.”

Not to discredit an astounding achievement for the mayor, but if there were 50 million calls to 311 and 8 million people live in New York, that means that in a little over four years, each of us has called 311 six-and-one-quarter times*. Is that possible? Or are there 311 addicts out there who just can’t get enough information on how to pay parking tickets?

*I’ll admit, we used it once to locate a strip club in Putnam County; they couldn’t help us with that one.

For every pest you see there are hundreds more lurking out of your sight:

Health inspectors have shuttered a famous Manhattan pizzeria, a move some described as a crackdown by the Health Department after a KFC/Taco Bell franchise passed an inspection even though it was infested with rats.

John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village was dark yesterday; health inspectors shut down the restaurant on Friday, a sign in the window said.

“It seems that due to the extensive media coverage of a certain fast food restaurant and the scandal surrounding the N.Y.C. department of health, they now are trying to save face and set examples,” the sign read. It went on to describe mandatory improvements the restaurant would make before reopening, such as installing sinks closer to the pizza-making area, placing proper lids on garbage cans in the restrooms, and sealing cracks in the basement floor.

The sign attracted a crowd yesterday outside the beloved restaurant, which was established in 1929. Famous for its thin-crust pizza, coal oven, long lines, and cash-only policy, the pizzeria has a cult following that includes celebrities whose photos grace the windows, such as Regis Philbin, Johnny Depp, and Harry Connick Jr.

“It’s preposterous. It’s our family tradition. We come every Sunday,” a man who said his first taste of New York City pizza was at John’s, Rob Wilson, said. “It never hurts to clean up your shop, but did they have to close it down?”

. . .

Several doors down from John’s, an Italian restaurant, Risotteria, was also shut down on Friday. In its window, a sign told patrons the restaurant had “fallen victim to the health department’s zeal to cover their tracks for past sins.”

Welcome to New York, where even our unrelentingly bubbly and indefatigably upbeat real estate professionals get burned out and consider about leaving:

So it was that wonderful week between Christmas and New Years I spent with family and old friends at home: morning walks with my dog along the Delaware River; going to parties with my younger brothers on small cobblestone streets in Philadelphia; breakfast with my mom, and puzzles with my dad. I can’t help but ask myself: Can I come back now? Can I set up a life here and make it my new old home? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a yard, a house, an upstairs or just some goddamned space in which to think and move?

No one moves to New York to fall in love or to build a home.

A Department of Sanitation representative tries to explain the five cigarette butt rule to a tough crowd:

When it comes to giving tickets, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) does not have quotas.

That was the word from the agency’s citywide community affairs officer, Ignazio Terranova, who was in the hot seat as he responded to claims that the agency is more than eager to give out summonses, during the December meeting of the Friends United Block Association (FUBA).

Speaking to the group gathered at Temple Shaare Emeth, 6012 Farragut Road, Terranova acknowledged that DOS enforcement officers could make mistakes, but insisted that the agency is not writing tickets simply to make up a certain number and fill the city’s coffers.

“We do not have a quota, whether people choose to believe it or not,” Terranova asserted. Nonetheless, he added, “But we did not hire 56 new enforcement agents to go out and sit in a car and drink coffee all day. Their job is to find summonses, whether five or 50 in a day.”

There are perameters that must be exceeded, said Terranova, for a ticket to be written. “You’re not going to get a summons for one item,” Terranova contended. “If there’s a cap on one water bottle, you’re not going to get a summons. What constitutes a summons is five things wrong with the garbage or five things on the floor. On the sidewalk, it could be one plastic cup and four cigarette butts. That constitutes five items.”

Keeping your sidewalk and 18 inches into the gutter clean, Terranova added, is a matter of making sure it is free of debris two hours a day — from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. That is actually an improvement, he told his listeners; before a relatively recent law was passed, residents could be ticketed at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week.

*At least he didn’t call it “productivity goals”!

The Mayor, noting that the city’s population will grow by one million people by 2030, says New York will face dire infrastructure problems unless something drastic is done about it:

New York’s population will grow by nearly 1 million people by 2030 — pushing the city to the breaking point unless there are huge investments in energy, housing and transportation, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.

New homes, jobs and better transit will be needed to deal with an influx equivalent to the populations of Boston and Miami combined, and it will cost billions, the mayor said at a Queens planning symposium.

“This growth could bring incredible benefits: Billions of dollars in new economic activity will be generated by new jobs, residents and visitors,” Bloomberg told an audience at the Queens Museum of Art.

Immigration is a big factor behind the projected growth, but experts also said the city’s success in reducing crime and improving services already is reversing decades of suburban flight.

The city must support the boom by building new infrastructure, including tunnels, energy plants and schools, Bloomberg said. Even more challenging, it must do so while reducing environmental damage, he said.

Planning experts at the forum offered suggestions, including taxing vehicles that drive into Manhattan’s most heavily trafficked neighborhoods, called congestion pricing, and charging residents by the pound for the trash they throw out.

Among the 10 goals the mayor laid out for the city to meet over the next 23 years were creating homes for 1 million new residents, huge upgrades in mass transit, adding parks, finishing the water tunnel, improving the efficiency of power plants and cleaning the city’s air, land and waterways.

Census figures (via Encyclopedia of New York City):

• 1930: 6,930,446
• 1940: 7,454,995
• 1950: 7,891,957
• 1960: 7,781,984
• 1970: 7,894,862
• 1980: 7,071,639
• 1990: 7,322,564
• 2000: 8,008,278*

Ooh, a demographic crisis is upon us because New York finally caught up with 1970 population levels. Scary.

That million new people are going to come from where exactly?

But of course as we know from recent world events, the best way to encourage action is to create a crisis.

*Sorry, the 2004 estimate was a shocking 8,085,742.

A virtual quack at the Times Square recruiting station has done little to tamp down the site’s persistent pigeon population:

Last month the contractor who maintains the little metal-and-glass building between 43rd and 44th Streets installed a noise-producing contraption that was supposed to shoo the pigeons away.

The device came with four speakers, fewer than some home-theater setups have, but enough to blast bird noises every 10 minutes or so. The noises — the calls of predators, even the sounds of pigeons being attacked — are supposed to scare the pigeons, or at least make them pay attention.

Everybody does pay attention to the noise, it seems — everybody but the pigeons. Pedestrians shake their heads at the idea of woodsy sound effects in the urban jungle. The pigeons, having abandoned the southern end of the recruiting station roof, where the speakers are, stay put on the northern end.

. . .

The Air Force recruiter assigned to the Times Square recruiting station, Tech. Sgt. Danny Ulch, said the bird sounds made him laugh — and think of London. Mayor Ken Livingstone has put a premium on evicting pigeons from Trafalgar Square, spending $423,000 since 2003 on two hawks and a handler.

“England pays big money, but they get predatory birds,” said Sergeant Ulch, who arrived in Times Square last month after three years as a recruiter in the Chicago area. “We took the nonharmful route, and it’s not working very well. It seems like there are a hundred million pigeons here.”

I know the military has a sort of, you know, image problem when it comes to using force against life or limb, but perhaps they ought to think about trying what New York City Transit has done in Queens . . . just saying!

You say “erotic” and he says “exotic”:

The sign said “exotic dancers.” The only visual was a silhouette of what appeared to be a scantily clad young woman, beckoning passersby into the new Club Shadows.

No wonder, then, that Bay Ridge residents thought they were about to get a strip club. No wonder, then, that panic ensued, that the community board office was flooded with calls from people who didn’t want to see a “gentleman’s club” open in their backyard, and that the community board raced to check the zoning on the site, as well as all other relevant data.

But, it was never his intention to open a strip joint, said the club manager, Joseph Domovsky, who told this newspaper that, after learning about the community response, he had tried to eradicate the problematic phrase from the sign announcing the impending opening of the club on November 30.

“Exotic is not the same as erotic,” he asserted, in a phone interview with this newspaper, contending that what would be opening at 9013 Fourth Avenue would be no more and no less than, “An upscale bar for adults 21 and over. We will be bringing in DJs and performance artists. We are going to run a high-fashion, upscale club.”

*Or its meats.

Everyone agrees that there is more than enough advertising in the city, some of which is actually illegal:

Patience and Fortitude, the lions that guard the New York Public Library, have beheld many things in their 95 years: numberless readers coming and going, great generals and brave troops passing by, legions of marchers celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and Pulaski Day, organized labor and gay liberation.

Now they behold two giant Scotch bottles.

In the sea of advertising that seems to have washed over construction scaffolding around New York City, the new six-story Chivas Regal billboard on 475 Fifth Avenue stands out because it dominates the landscape around the library’s colorful lawns, ample terraces and majestic staircase.

It is also illegal, the city says.

The Department of Buildings inspected the scaffolding this week and found six violations, three involving the sign, which faces Fifth Avenue and 41st Street.

(Wow, after yesterday’s howler, even more totally wacky, out-of-left-field David Dunlap prose!)

This, however, seems like a little bit of an overreaction:

The Institute of Classical Architecture is an educational organization dedicated to fostering the classical tradition, as epitomized by the library. Its office is two blocks from the library. And its president, Paul Gunther, said his blood boiled when he saw the Chivas sign.

“In open defiance of a law still without the teeth of enforcement,” he said in an e-mail message, “these glaring, scaffold-held billboards not only degrade this public — even sacred — space, but openly mock it, as if to announce, ‘Thanks for the broad, unbroken and ideal sight lines.’”

The best part: the violations only carry a $2,500 fine . . .

This bus driver should be praised as a guardian of public health, not singled out in the Post for his over-zealousness:

If you cough, you gotta get off!

That’s the philosophy of one city bus driver, according to a Wall Street banker who claims he was ejected for coughing.

Michael Goga says the germophobic driver of an X10 express bus to Staten Island yesterday became incensed right after Goga “just cleared my throat.”

“Sir, you coughed on my bus and you have to get off,” Goga says the driver told him. “I can’t have you get sick on this bus.”

When Goga refused, he says, the driver took the bus out of service and ordered all the passengers off in lower Manhattan. Goga then called cops to file a complaint.

The MTA contends the driver only attempted to forestall the rapid transit of germs by asking Goga to cover his mouth.

There are many amazing details buried in this story:

City Island, the last bastion of alternate-side-free parking in the Bronx, has been spared for now.

But the trade-off is another two years of road construction along its main thoroughfare.

At a public hearing last week, Community Board 10 voted to table a motion to add parking regulations along City Island Ave., which runs along the entire island.

The motion will probably not be brought before the board again until after a sewer project and the replacement of the bridge leading to the island are completed, according to those familiar with the issue.

“It probably won’t be happening for quite some time,” said District Manager Kenneth Kearns. “I would guess it’d be a minimum of two years.”

The Garden Club of City Island requested that alternate-side parking be enforced for 30 minutes twice a week to give street sweepers a chance to clean the road, which becomes traffic-congested, especially on weekends and during the summer, when hordes of visitors come to the island for its numerous seafood restaurants.

Until recently, the club paid two workers to sweep the mile-long street on foot, even though city regulations hold property owners responsible for cleaning 18 inches into the street in front of their properties.

One of those workers graduated college and no longer had time to clean. The other, a senior citizen, could not handle the whole road alone.

Is the most amazing detail A) there’s a little corner of the city where alternate-side parking doesn’t exist (a veritable Big Rock Candy Mountain for car owners); B) a two-man crew consisting of an elderly person and a college student has been cleaning the entire road; or C) alternate-side parking actually exists for the purpose of sweeping the streets?

Obviously the answer is C . . .

Location Scout: City Island.

Dyker Heights residents are banding together to protest ridiculous sanitation tickets:

After getting blitzed with $25 tickets for allegedly putting recyclables in their trash last week, some homeowners on 71 St. between 10th Ave. and Fort Hamilton Parkway are refusing to pay.

One resident was cited for tossing 30 “unsoiled” paper plates out with her trash.

Lina Giammarino also found a city Sanitation Department violation posted on her door the morning of Oct. 3.

But Giammarino said she places only grease-soaked paper plates in her trash — and at most, three or four.

“I want to know, are we supposed to wash them and dry them and put them in the recycle?” demanded the outraged grandmother.

. . .

Resident Tony Mastellone said he was ticketed for recyclable materials passersby tossed into his trash cans.

“Should we be policemen over our garbage?” asked an indignant Mastellone, 52, a retired sanitation officer.

Anthony Pandolfo, 72, was hit for not recycling a plastic food container and hanger. One problem: The city considers neither item recyclable.

While confusion over what to recycle reigned, Giammarino had no qualms about what to do. She waited for a Sanitation truck to arrive the morning she was ticketed and asked the crew to inspect her black garbage bag — which she said the ticketing agent had not bothered to open.

“Even the sanitation man said they were covered in grease,” Giammarino said.

You don’t think they have a quota, too?

The buzz in Queens is about the new electrified subway trusses that are keeping pigeons away:

Pigeons have long plagued a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, making a home among the trusses and girders under the rumble and roar of the No. 7 train and leaving their mark on the sidewalk, stairs and lampposts.

After a decade of requests, New York City Transit is providing some relief in the form of low-voltage wires that give the birds a little shock.

New York City Transit, a division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, began installation of the pigeon deterrent at the 52nd Street stop of the No. 7 train in August as part of a pilot program to rid the area of the birds, and the work continues, a New York City Transit spokesman said.

. . .

The preventive measure is comprised of a flexible wire and plastic molding carrying a low voltage that gives a mild and non-lethal shock to the birds, according to the manufacturer’s Web site. The system, called Shock Track, is manufactured by Bird-B-Gone Inc. of Mission Viejo, Calif.

City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) also lobbied on behalf of the deterrent system, writing his first letter about the pigeons to the president of New York City Transit only weeks after taking office in 2002.

The Woodside location is the first site where New York City Transit has installed this system, which is considered a pilot program, Transit spokesman James Anyansi said.

. . .

Jose Sanchez, a newspapers salesman who has been working just outside the station for the past eight months, said the bird droppings still coating parts of the sidewalk had been a problem for commuters.

“It would fall on many people. It was a problem, but not so much for me,” he said.

He said the system appeared to be working: “There are fewer pigeons in the past five weeks.”

State Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan (D-Ridgewood) and Margaret Markey (D-Maspeth) lobbied the agency for a cleanup.

“I am pleased that the MTA has started to address this serious health and sanitation issue. It is a relief to know that this unsightly and unsanitary situation will soon be fixed,” Nolan said.

Longtime Sunnyside residents are struggling to cope with train noise related to maintenance work at the nearby Amtrak-Long Island Rail Road train yards. Hopefully the work will end before the luxury lofts — going up literally right next to the train yards in neighboring Long Island City — are completed. The Queens Chronicle tells the story:

Trains passing by their building with the horns blaring are leaving some Sunnyside residents sleepless, stressed out and feeling like they live on the wrong side of the tracks.

Horn noise from the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak trains that pass by Sunnyside Towers has increased recently, say occupants of the 39th Avenue co op building, which the trains pass by 24 hours a day.

. . .

Ayne Horyn, a 20 year resident of the building, finally started complaining last week to the railroad about the noise. By the weekend, nighttime horn blowing had mostly subsided, at least temporarily. Horyn also consulted with a noise expert to find out how the horns could be affecting her health.

Les Blomberg is the executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearing House based in Montpelier, Vt. He said that even intermittent noise can have a negative effect on residents, and one that isn’t always recognized by the industry. “In the recent train horn study that the (Federal Railroad Administration) did, they wouldn’t even say that train horns wake people up, but they absolutely do,” he added.

Assuming that a Sunnyside Towers resident is 100 feet away from the train horn when it blows, Blomberg estimates the sound they hear is likely around 110 decibels — as loud as a rock concert and about 30 times louder than a normal conversation.

Even if residents are able to sleep through the sound, Blomberg added, their bodies still respond with a little burst of adrenaline, interrupting their sleep cycle. “Whether they acclimate or not, there are going to be some lingering effects to it,” he said.

Then again, maybe the Sunnyside Rail Yards will be covered one day . . .

From cutesy literary allusion to full-scale war in just one day:

An explosion of bedbugs, the apple seed-size insects that hide in mattresses and furniture during the day and feast on unsuspecting sleepers at night, have terrorized visitors, outraged residents and are now stirring political action.

“It was horrible. I never wanted to go to sleep,” said Caitlin Heller, 27, a Queens College student whose Jackson Heights apartment was overrun by the bloodthirsty bugs. “They were painful, itchy, and all I thought about.”

“Even now, after they’ve been exterminated, I think I feel phantom bugs,” said Heller, who has started a blog about the topic. “Even a piece of lint scares me.”

. . .

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) supported a measure this week to ban the sale of used mattresses — perhaps the No.1 carrier of bedbugs. But at a hearing Monday, a city official testified against the bill, saying the ban might do little to control infestations and would adversely impact poor people.

Brewer said that even if the bill fails, the sale of secondhand mattresses should be regulated.

“We need to educate residents and city officials about this growing problem,” said Brewer. “Right now, the city’s doing nothing, and we need to declare war.”

Go ahead, freak yourself out: Beasts Feast On Blood While Authorities Dither; NYPD Bedbug; Don’t Let The . . .; It’s Endemic, Pandemic, This Epidemic; Bedbugs Don’t Wait For Midterms Now, Do They?; Don’t Let The Gasoline-Soaked Bedbugs Burst Into Flames In The Middle Of The Night, Setting Your Living Quarters On Fire.

Hizzoner hosts Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl in an effort to get illegal guns off the streets (”The new mayor of Pittsburgh came to City Hall yesterday to sign on to Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition of mayors against illegal guns. . . . ‘While the scale might be a little bit different, we do certainly face the same challenges and illegal guns are definitely one of those,’ Ravenstahl said.”).

What’s not clear, however, is whether the two mayors discussed Lower Manhattan’s latest liquor-related imbroglio:

Buster’s Garage might have been the bar of choice for local Steelers fans, but Tribeca residents have a different opinion of the recently defunct watering hole — and may stop it from ever returning to their neighborhood.

“This is the wrong, wrong business for this neighborhood,” said an angry Tribeca resident at a recent Community Board 1 committee meeting to consider a liquor license for Buster’s Garage, which hopes to move around the corner from its previous home at 180 W. Broadway to 24 Leonard St. Scores of residents turned out to oppose the application, squeezing into the small meeting room and pouring out into the hallway.

When the sports bar opened in 2003, it quickly became a favorite of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. In a neighborhood known more for celebrity eateries like Nobu and Montrachet, Buster’s Garage was beloved for its cheap beer and burgers. In 2005, the Village Voice rated it the “best place to fix your NASCAR jones” and in 2004, the New York Daily News listed it as one of the best sports bars in the city.

“We do so much business with the Tribeca blue collar community,” Buster’s general manager Eric Ness told Downtown Express after the meeting. “The reason we opened was because there’s nowhere around here where you can get a cheap beer and a burger — not everyone can afford Nobu every night.”

. . .

But after two failed attempts to move to a new location — including a plan to move to Carmine St. that was blocked by residents there — the owners opted to stay in North Tribeca. Construction recently began in the ground floor of a four-story parking garage on Leonard St., directly behind the old Buster’s site. The Provenzano family owns Buster’s and the garage the bar plans to move to, Louis Provenzano, Inc. The family also owns the 180 W. Broadway property, which it leased to developer Gregg Rechler of R Squared to build the 13-story condo.

. . .

The meeting was at times strident and heated as residents shouted at Provenzano representatives.

“I want you to make money — that’s the American way — but I don’t want it to be a sports bar,” Kristopher Brown, president of the Juilliard Building condo board at 18 Leonard St., told Buster’s representatives. Brown, the father of two small children, moved to the neighborhood in 2000 and worries the noise and crowds will keep his children awake.

Which is when shit got crazy:

Tensions reached a fevered pitched the following morning when Brown’s wife went to the Provenzano garage to retrieve her car and was told she was no longer welcome there. Word quickly spread through the Juilliard building that all residents would lose their coveted parking spaces as retribution.

. . .

“That would be crazy! We try to get customers, not lose customers.” Robert Pharaoh, manager of the garage told Downtown Express last week. Several monthly parkers had rushed down to the garage that morning fearing they too had lost their spots. Pharaoh eventually told the doorman at Julliard that no other residents had been evicted. “It was a personal dispute between the owner and one person,” he said.

If Manhattan is the playground of the rich, the Battery is the spot over in the back where the older, cooler kids set off M-80s late into the evening:

On a mid-July night in Battery Park City, the architect David Rockwell threw a loft party for 400 friends in celebration of his 50th birthday.

There was food put out from about 20 of the city’s top chefs (many from restaurants that Rockwell had designed). Clowns and players from Cirque du Soliel performed and circulated through the crowd. And at exactly 9:30 p.m. a spectacular fireworks show was launched into the Lower Manhattan sky in honor of the birthday boy.

The party recieved a glowing account in Business Week magazine. Local reviews were less kind. Alarmed by the sound of unannounced exploding fireworks on a Wednesday night, Battery Park City residents began firing off e-mails.

The emails were addressed to Jim Lauer, the chief inspector of the explosive’s [sic] unit for the New York City Fire Department, which handles the permits for all fireworks shows in the city. For the past year, his office has mass e-mailed Downtown residents a listing of the times and locations of the shows. The monthly list and mailing began at the urging of Community Board 1.

“This is B.S,” one e-mailer, a Gateway Plaza resident, wrote. “I am really pissed. There is NO mention of ANY fireworks event in this neighborhood in this sheet.”

Another wrote: “Sounds like Beirut. What idiots are behind these fireworks?”

The unfortunate Beirut reference aside, there’s not much the inspector can do about it:

Later called before CB1’s Quality of Life Committee, Lauer brought the letters with him and read them aloud.

“I don’t need this,” he said.

Anyone with enough money or political pull, he told the committee, can get a permit for a private fireworks show with little more than a day or two notice.

“These people have money to burn” Lauer told the Trib. “What am I going to do, say no?”

According to the list, there have been 18 permits approved for shows in New York Harbor so far this year, three of them launched from a barge just 1,000 off shore near Battery Park.

“Is there any way that we could get less fireworks?” asked Pat Moore, the committee’s chairwoman.

“You could move,” said Lauer.

The Villager’s Lincoln Anderson is on the verge of popularizing a new phrase — “antibar activists”* — in the course of profiling a woman who is raising children next to an East Village bar:

Last month, a few neighbors held a protest rally outside that bar, Boxcar, between 10th and 11th Sts. Their ranks were swelled by antibar activists who don’t live in the neighborhood, including individuals who had coalesced to push for the closing of The Falls, the Soho bar where Imette St. Guillen was last seen in February before her murder, allegedly by a bouncer.

Wearing a nightgown and robe, Liz Glass, who lives around the corner on E. 11th St. and whose first-floor apartment’s backyard abuts Boxcar’s backyard garden, organized the rally. With her were her three young children, ages 2 through 7, whom she says are kept awake by the bar’s noise, the older two of whom toted protest signs.

“We can’t sleep anyway. It’s a pajama protest,” Glass said, with a forlorn expression.

More than a year ago, Boxcar agreed to a curfew for its backyard of 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends.

However, shortly after the bar agreed to the backyard curfew, Community Board 3 passed a resolution calling for the State Liquor Authority to close the bar’s backyard entirely. Glass, the bar’s primary critic, is asking the S.L.A. to follow through on the resolution.

Although Glass is the neighbor most affected by the noise, others say they are too.

“I moved to here to be by the beautiful park, and then I got this,” said Eden Fromberg, an OB/GYN doctor who lives on 10th St. whose rear windows face into the block’s interior. “Somehow, with the A/C on and a tape of a babbling brook playing, I can still hear them,” she said of her unsuccessful efforts to block out the bar’s noise at night.

A woman from Huntington House, a shelter for female parolees and their families on the other side of Avenue B, saw the protest and came over to briefly lend support and add her name to their petition.

“Let me sign it!” Haydee Figueroa said, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she grabbed the clipboard. She said she was angry “because of the bullshit in the morning — 2 a.m., 3 a.m. they come out to talk and to fight. This one is worse,” she said, gesturing at Lakeside Lounge a few doors down from Boxcar. “A lot of women can’t sleep,” she said.

Although it’s unclear how much noise is too much noise, one’s threshold seems to lower when you involve a two-year-old:

Boxcar also built a sound-barrier wall between its backyard and Glass’s backyard — Glass called in a complaint to the Department of Buildings as the bar was building it because they didn’t have a permit. Spingola says they didn’t know they needed a permit.

Standing in Glass’s backyard around 10:30 p.m. the night of the protest, a steady mumble of voices could be heard from Gnocco, a restaurant on 10th St. with a backyard dining area. Less audible was the sound from Boxcar’s backyard. Inside Glass’s apartment, with the windows closed, it was hard to hear anything from either place.

“We have no violations — no noise violations, since she started her thing,” said Spingola. “The Department of Environmental Protection was here last Thursday night and we did not get a violation. And D.E.P. doesn’t mess around.”

*The first recorded (or at least Googlable) reference seems to be Anderson’s After ‘Falls murder,’ a flood of concerns about bar safety from March 2006.

Staten Island Fourth of July revelers unhappily find that the city was serious about that “zero tolerance” thing after all when SWAT teams stormed backyards to confiscate fireworks and cart offenders off to the pokey:

Walking out of Stapleton Criminal Court yesterday afternoon, 29-year-old Anthony Padovano of New Dorp was quick to point to the cuts and scrapes he said he sustained when eight police officers stormed into his backyard, threw him to the ground, and cuffed and arrested him for illegal possession of fireworks.

“It’s ridiculous. They have all these criminals in my neighborhood, and they bring in a SWAT team for me when I am trying to light sparklers,” Padovano said of his arrest on the Fourth of July.

His comments pretty much summed up the feelings of the nearly two dozen Staten Islanders who packed the holding cell at the borough’s Criminal Court waiting arraignment on the same charges.

Angry, indignant and bone-weary after spending a night in cramped jail cells with “real criminals,” they expressed no regret for what they deem their right to celebrate America’s independence with a few fireworks of their own.

“They took away my whole Fourth of July,” Padovano added.

. . .

. . . 19-year-old Daniel Savino . . . was charged not only with handling illegal fireworks but also resisting arrest after a scuffle with police outside his Annadale home.

After his mother, Josephine Savino, paid his $500 bail at Criminal Court, Savino showed marks on his arm, legs and back, which he said resulted from officers shoving him against a cement wall, forcing him to the ground, then kicking him.

“They were brutal,” Savino said.

He was one of at least a half dozen residents who complained the cops were too heavy-handed in their enforcement efforts. Savino said he’ll lodge a complaint with the city, but he’ll still have to return to Criminal Court next month, facing fines of up to $750 and possible jail time.

As will Dongan Hills residents Mirvet Cioku, 43, and his 17-year-old son, Atdhe. After arraignment before Judge Alan Meyer yesterday afternoon, they walked out of the courtroom clearly irritated.

“I don’t understand. They make fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July, but they don’t expect me to use them?” asked Mirvet, who emigrated from Albania 20 years ago.

“Forget it. I just want to pay the fine and get out of here so I don’t have to see their faces anymore.”

Since Sept. 11, residents in fireworks-rich areas cower every time an unexpected pyrotechnic display takes place:

While pyrotechnics are often associated with Independence Day, the city, following the 2003 death of the unofficial fireworks commissioner, George Plimpton, has been approving dozens of requests for fireworks displays throughout the year. Sponsors range from the retailer Target to Princess Cruises to the president of the Bronx.

The displays — each approved by the New York Fire Department’s Explosive Unit — often cause nighttime noise that has set some residents to complaining.

Detective Frank Bogucki, community affairs officer for the 17th precinct, which serves Manhattan’s Turtle Bay and Sutton Place among other communities, said that he gets a handful of complaints from residents who get startled after each fireworks show that “comes over our heads” from the East River. He added that the residents don’t like it because they think it’s something more serious.

“In these days, what we’re dealing with every day,” said Detective Bogucki, referring to the heightened worries of New Yorkers post-September 11, 2001, “it’s kind of concerning.”

A volunteer at the Turtle Bay Association, Olga Hoffman, said that the terrorist attacks of September 11 changed her attitude toward surprise fireworks displays. “Before it didn’t bother me,” she said. “After 9/11, it did.”

. . .

A producer for Fireworks for Grucci, which does about 20 shows in New York City each year, M. Philip Butler, said that there has not been much of a slowdown of business since September 11, 2001. He said that even though there was a decline in shows in 2003 (although not in 2002 because corporate sponsors had already included those shows in their budget from the year before), they’ve since experienced a “great comeback.” “We have fireworks shows now in New York Harbor without any hesitation,” he said.

Mr. Butler classified his company as “neighborhood friendly,” and said they don’t use noise-making salutes — “the workhorse of the grand finale” of any fireworks show — except on the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.

But what does any of this have to do with George Plimpton? It’s still unclear:

Plimpton was appointed fireworks commissioner by Mayor Lindsey. “I am supposed to resign each time there is a change of administration, but I don’t,” Plimpton said in an interview in the defunct Canadian literary journal Pagitica. The fireworks commissioner post has been vacant since Plimpton’s death in 2003.

Plimpton’s successor as editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, said that for all he knows the title of fireworks commissioner belongs to Plimpton “for all eternity.” Last year, a New York Sun editorial recommended Mr. Gourevitch for the position. “I’m not sure that I’m qualified,” Mr. Gourevitch said recently. ‘I like explosions plenty. But I’ve never been involved in shaping, forming, or making them.”

The Sun reports that city doormen may go on strike if their contract demands are not met:

The union for about 28,000 doormen, elevator operators, porters, and other residential building employees is in down-to-the-wire contract negotiations and has already authorized its board to call an April 21 strike if a fair deal is not reached.

“Everything goes up, the inflation rate goes up, rent goes up, but our salaries diminish,” a doorman at a co-op building on the Upper East Side, Boris Buliga, said yesterday.

A strike of those who watch over some of the most elegant and expensive homes in the country would be the first since 1991, when the employees walked off the job for 12 days. Doormen also went on strike in 1979 and 1976.

A strike would affect 3,500 buildings across the city, including 2,500 in Manhattan, where in many cases management has just started to blanket tenants with contingency plans that call for resident volunteers to take out the trash and fill in for rotating shifts at the front door.

Both the union and management sides said they were in contract talks yesterday and would continue through the deadline.

One Gramercy Park building sent out letters to all residents notifying them that no move-ins or outs will be permitted in the event of a strike; that garbage chutes will be closed so residents will have to haul their own garbage to the curb; that a security guard will be hired, and residents will be given special identification passes to get in.

The sticking points in negotiations between the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which represents the building employees, and the Realty Advisory Board are wages, pensions, and health care.

The board, which represents building management, is asking for a salary freeze for one year and that employees start kicking in 15% of health care costs or about $1,400 a year for each employee. They say that rising health care costs are putting pressure on building managers.

. . .

A professor of law who specializes in employment issues at New York Law School, Arthur Leonard, said a strike would likely mean no package deliveries and no home renovations because other union workers will be unwilling to cross the picket lines.

In the 1991 strike UPS workers did not cross the line. A spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents UPS workers, Bret Caldwell, said yesterday, “if there’s a picket line we won’t cross it.”

First the liquor distributor truck drivers and warehouse workers (whatever happened to that?), then the transit strike, then the NYU grad students, then the Co-op City security staff, then the private waste haulers — this could be the year of the strike . . .

A Manhattan State Supreme Court judge ruled that the city’s cabaret laws — which prohibit dancing in an unlicensed establishment — are constitutional:

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman threw out a lawsuit challenging the city’s law from the 1920s that requires bars and restaurants to have cabaret licenses if their patrons want to boogie.

“Social dancing is fun,” Stallman wrote in a 23-page decision. “It is also a worthwhile and socially positive activity whose importance should not be underestimated simply because it is enjoyable.”

Nevertheless, Stallman upheld the city’s right to regulate dancing in bars and restaurants, tossing out a lawsuit filed by a group called the Gotham West Coast Swing Club.

The group argued that dancing is expressive and should be considered protected free speech under the New York State Constitution.

The judge did suggest that the city reexamine the old law. “Surely, the Big Apple is big enough to find a way to let people dance.”A city spokeswoman hailed the ruling as a “confirmation of the city’s efforts to protect residential communities from disruptions attributed to some cabarets.”