Weighing 267 pounds and measuring 29.2 inches in diameter, the biggest matzo ball in the world was unveiled Thursday and served up to hungry lower East Siders.

The giant kosher creation was schlepped across the city with a police escort after spending 19.5 hours on a slow boil in a custom-made 100-gallon New Jersey kettle.

A New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston.

And with findings like this, it won’t be long before we have to seriously contend with the crushing burden of one million new residents, which underpins the mayor’s ambitious 2030 plan for the city. Or not:

Researchers said the combination of skyrocketing costs, stagnant wages and a deteriorating quality of life forced hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to flee the city for cheaper areas during the boom years from 2002 to 2006.

The report found that more New Yorkers left each year during the boom than left during the dark days of the early 1990s.

The Hotel Carter was named the dirtiest hotel in America Tuesday by TripAdvisor.com, marking the third time in four years that the W. 43rd St. dump has topped the list.

. . .

The hotel, used as a homeless shelter in the 1980s, gained infamy two years ago when a cleaning lady found a woman’s corpse stuffed under a bed.

A 17th-floor room rented by the Daily News was thankfully corpse-free. And while it was small and sparsely appointed, it wasn’t dirty. The bathroom was nearly spotless and the bed linens unstained.

The room’s most serious flaw was a lone picture frame, covered in a substance one can only hope was mildew. In the hallway outside, a garbage bag filled with used tissues, lay open on the dark-green carpet.

The hotel’s wretched reputation wasn’t news to one worker.

“Just Google ‘Carter and bed bugs.’ You’ll read all about it,” she said. “Roaches, bugs — you’ll find everything inside here.”

Hotel manager Erwin Lumanglas brushed aside its reputation.

“We are not bothered at all,” Lumanglas said. “Even when they tell us we’re the dirtiest hotel in the world, people are still interested in coming because of the price and the location.”

Location Scout: Hotel Carter.

“It’s like Yankee Stadium,” Antony, a security guard, said over his shoulder, leading the way through the thumping entrance of what used to be the original East Side location of Scores strip club.

Scores lost its battle with the state over its liquor license last year. Since then, the Las Vegas-based empire, Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club, has moved in, and last night was their official opening in New York.

Sapphire made sure to bring yards of neon sapphire blue back-lighting, a fluorescent, engraved pompadour-shaped ice-sculpture, plushier (much plush-ier, according to the dancers) leather chairs, new carpeting, a concierge service, and a new chef — Jayson Margulies from Robert’s Steak House at the Penthouse Executive Club.

Antony, like other security guards on Thursday night, wore a dark suit with an aquarium blue skinny-tie.

“Yankee Stadium,” he continued dreamily. “That’s what it’s like with this particular venue. This is the granddaddy of gentleman’s clubs, For years when I was growing up they were called strip bars or something else, some less politically correct kind of word, you know what I mean. But you walk in here and you are called ’sir’ or ‘ma’am,’ and you get the white-glove treatment from the minute you walk in the door. That’s how this franchise does the thing.”

Sapphire’s main room looks largely identical to the old Scores, largely because there were no actual construction renovations done. The layout, too, is similar: bar to the left, mirrored wall and couches on the right, the stage front and center.

New data show the New York metropolitan area is the largest contributor to America’s gross domestic product, but its position at the top of the national ranking may be due more to the inclusion of neighboring economic powerhouses such as Greenwich and Stamford, Conn., than its own economic strength.

New York City actually is responsible for less than half of all economic activity in its own metropolitan area, the data show. According to the city comptroller’s office, its economic activity constitutes 43% of the region’s total economy.

. . .

The New York City metropolitan area, which includes parts of Connecticut up to Bridgeport, as well as Long Island and northern New Jersey, accounts for 6.6% of the country’s population while contributing 9.1%, or $1.129 trillion, of the country’s GDP.

The Los Angeles metropolitan area came in second place, contributing 6.3% of U.S. GDP or $788.9 billion. Although the New York region has 7% more people than the Los Angeles area, New York contributed 43% more to the country’s GDP.

Atlanta sounded pretty good to Scott Merritt while he was squeezed into his parents’ home on Long Island with his wife and two children.

He took a new job in the Georgia capital and moved his family to a $275,000 house in the suburbs with four bedrooms, a two-car garage, and a yard with a swimming pool. It came at a cost to his New York sensibilities.

“I haven’t found a single slice of pizza I have been remotely satisfied with,” Mr. Merritt, 34, said. “I am not going to the corner pharmacy and being welcomed by name any longer. It was a culture shock.”

The Merritts are among throngs of New Yorkers relocating to Georgia for affordable housing, a lower cost of living, a thriving job market, and warmer winters. Displaced Northerners must adjust to Southern accents, a slower lifestyle, restaurants that close early, a ban on Sunday liquor sales, and a reverence for “Gone With the Wind.”

They’re hunkering down by sticking together. New Yorkers in Atlanta have their own group on MySpace.com, and crowd athletic venues when the Mets, Islanders, or Jets visit. One exile has a Web log called Voted Off the Island.

“We have this pocket of all relocated New Yorkers who hang out together,” Mr. Merritt said. “All damn Yankees.”

About 40,000 New Yorkers resettled in Atlanta between 2000 and 2005, double the number from any other state, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. An additional 14,000 came from New Jersey. Atlanta gained 1 million people in the past seven years, the most of any American metropolitan area. It added 177,549 jobs from 2003 to 2006.

“There is a huge migration from high-cost areas to lower-cost areas, and Atlanta is a big beneficiary,” a senior economist with Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., Mark Vitner, said.

If you haven’t installed your air conditioner yet, Friday might be the day to do it.

That’s because New York this weekend will be sweltering through a brutal heat wave, the first of 2008.

Daytime highs will soar above 90 degrees from Saturday to Monday, according to Accuweather.com. And the high humidity will make those afternoons feel as though it’s hotter than 100.

Friday will be seasonable, but a warm front later in the day will leave hot and sticky air behind it.

“The heat will dominate much of the area. Saturday, Sunday and Monday highs in the 90s are likely from midtown to central New Jersey,” said meteorologist Alan Reppert of Accuweather.com.

Reppert said it will stay warm and humid until Wednesday or Thursday.

. . .

And if you’re not a fan of the hot weather, you may be in for a long summer.

“Temperatures are expected to be above normal for the rest of the summer, running about two degrees above normal,” Reppert said.

The new neighboring 10065 — formerly part of 10021 — is now the Upper East Side’s most expensive address.

Since the split, in July 2007, the average real-estate sales price in the 10065 has hit $2.9 million — topping 10021’s $2.2 million average, according to Streeteasy.com, a real estate-tracking Web site.

The hot ZIP’s stock continues to soar, too — with the current market price for homes selling at an average $4.1 million, nearly $1.5 million higher than residences in 10021.

Moviemaker Spike Lee, The Donald’s ex, Ivana Trump, corporate raider Henry Kravis, Revlon’s Ronald Perelman and NBC “Today” show host Matt Lauer all reside in the flush 10065 neighborhood, which spans 61st to 68th streets from Fifth Avenue to the East River.

Coveted real estate in the 10065 includes The Pierre hotel, whose penthouse is on the market for $70 million, and the renovated Lexington Avenue Barbizon Hotel, with apartments for sale for $12 million.

Since July, 10021 hasn’t been able to keep pace, despite being home to 740 Park Ave., once home to John D. Rockefeller and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and where the city’s richest man, billionaire businessman David Koch, hangs his hat.

Up the street, Brooke Astor’s famed 778 Park Ave. duplex just hit the market for $46 million this past month. And real-estate tycoon Aby Rosen is asking $75 million for his town house at 22 E. 71st St.

“People work their whole lives to get into the 10021 ZIP code” — which now covers 68th to 76th streets from Fifth Avenue to the East River, said Brown Harris Stevens Realtor Nancy Candib. “They were upset when it was taken away from them.”

In July, the US Postal Service carved up the historic 10021 ZIP code, which once stretched from 61st to 80th from Fifth Avenue to the East River, into three sections, creating the new 10065 ZIP code and its smaller cousin, the 10075, the area from 76th to 80th.

But now, those who ended up in the new 10065 are lording it over the 10021.

“[The 10065's] most beautiful and notorious buildings compete with anything in the 10021,” said Candib.

The boozed-up Yankee fan from hell who ran over and killed a Red Sox supporter last week had a crush on Derek Jeter and a living room dominated by Pinstripe regalia.

A neighbor of Ivonne Hernandez, 43, who was charged with murder for allegedly running down Matthew Beaudoin in her Dodge Intrepid in Nashua, said the Bronx-bred fan loved the handsome shortstop.

“She thought he was hot and had beautiful eyes,” said the 28-year-old mom, who declined to be identified.

She was less excited by Alex Rodriguez, who she felt was a “wuss,” the Nashua neighbor recounted.

. . .

Hernandez, taunted by Red Sox fans outside a bar, bounced the 29-year-old off her windshield at up to 60 mph, witnesses said.

. . .

Officials said Friday’s events turned deadly not long after Hernandez slapped a female bartender outside a bar. The bartender’s friends chased Hernandez to her car and, seeing the Yankee logo on her rear windshield, began chanting, “Yankees suck!”

Hernandez hurriedly drove away, then stopped.

“She turned her car around and gunned the engine toward Matthew,” a witness told The Post yesterday. “She hit him and he was on the windshield. He flew 40 feet in the air.”

The witness said he cradled Matthew’s body in his arms, as he gasped for air. Beaudoin was taken off life support the next day.

Officials said Hernandez claimed she only wanted to scare the hecklers and expected them to get out the way.

Hernandez is being held without bail on charges of murder and aggravated DWI.

New York sports teams scored miserably with their fans when it came to performance and likability, with the awful Knicks dead last in a nationwide fan-satisfaction poll, according to ESPN The Magazine.

Even the Big Apple’s pride and joy — the Super Bowl-champion Giants — placed 48th out of the 122 pro teams that comprised the Web-site survey of NBA, NFL and NHL and MLB rooters.

. . .

The survey graded fan satisfaction based on the affordability of tickets and the stadium experience, their team’s win-loss performance, and the accessibility of players.

Unfortunately, you have to go all the way to No. 40 to find the first of our nine local teams — the New Jersey Devils.

. . .

The Yankees bombed out in 65th place, well below last year’s 48th.

Part of the reason is that new manager Joe Girardi “is no Joe Torre,” according to fellow analyst Eddie Matz.

“Throw in price hikes for beer [up a dollar to $7], soda [up $1.50 to $5] and parking [up $2 to $14], and the imminent destruction of Yankee Stadium . . . and the Yanks drop by 17 spots overall, giving them their lowest ranking in [ESPN] standings history,” he blogged.

But the Yanks did beat the Mets, who scraped the bottom at No. 93, behind even the hated Boston Red Sox, which claimed 89th place.