As a matter of fact, I do:

A Bronx City Councilwoman earmarked thousands of taxpayer dollars for a tenants association in her former apartment building — an association residents say doesn’t exist.

Councilwoman Maria Baez, a Democrat representing the Fordham and Kingsbridge sections, allocated $7,500 of her Fiscal Year 2008 discretionary funds to the 2401 Davidson Avenue Tenants Association, a group supposedly located in the six-story building she called home until 2005.

The building is also the registered headquarters for her campaign committee, “Friends of Maria Baez,” and home to her campaign treasurer, Nilda Velazquez, who lives in Baez’s former apartment.

But the building’s superintendent and more than a dozen residents interviewed at the 60-unit building said there is no tenants association.

“There’s no association here,” said Elias Guerra, the super.

The regular postal carrier said she couldn’t remember ever delivering a piece of mail to any tenants organization in the building.

Some residents remembered a now-disbanded organization — which last met four years ago.

“We don’t have one anymore,” said Vicky Reyes, listed as the treasurer of the defunct tenants group on an old flier. She said Baez was a member when she lived there.

Reyes said the association dissolved after the former president left several years ago, and hadn’t been active for about four years. She wasn’t aware of anyone trying to revive it.

Velazquez declined comment through family members.

Staffers at Baez’s Bronx district office told a Post reporter, “You’re not welcome here.”

Baez accused The Post of harassing her staff members, and said she only allowed constituent business to be conducted in her office.

She declined to answer specific questions about the tenants group.

“I will not allow anyone to assassinate my character as a Latina woman,” she said.

She added that the organizations she funds are “good organizations” that “provide important services for the community.”

Before the $7,500 could be paid to the tenants association, the council yanked the funding during the vetting process, council spokeswoman Maria Alvarado told the Post. She would not say when or why the funding was nixed.

Earlier: Budget Cuts Run Deep; Administration Even Asks City Council Members To Curtail Funding Of Phantom Community Groups.

Crazed ex? Pissed off creditor? No one knows:

Residents of a block in Boerum Hill have known for months that rogue urinators were defiling their street, but they never had the proof to convince local police of a scatological conspiracy on Dean Street — until now.

A two-liter container of human urine, complete with syringes bobbing in the waste, was found Sunday morning between Bond and Nevins streets — and the repulsive find was finally enough to prove to cops that residents were being tormented by micturating hellions and not merely dogs with overactive bladders.

“It’s absolutely gross,” said Joseph Samulski, who had the misfortune of finding the container on his front steps. “I don’t even know how you could accumulate that much urine.”

But on the brighter side, “It was the first time we were able to establish what we’ve been saying on our block — that someone has been pouring urine on cars.”

. . .

The pissing match broke out on the day of the block party last September, when several people emerged from their homes near the Nevins Street end of the block to encounter an overpowering stench of liquid waste on the street and in one man’s pickup truck.

Since then, that pickup truck has been showered at least two other times.

“Thankfully, whenever it happened, my truck needed a good washing anyway,” said good sport Kevin McGowan.

Because the press officer hasn’t been around that long anyway and reporters will write whatever you tell them:

It was near freezing outside, but Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe wore swim trunks and sandals yesterday to the opening of the first indoor public pool built in the city in more than 40 years.

At 110,000 square feet, the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Aquatic Center in Queens is the largest recreational center ever built in a city park.

The facility cost $66.3 million and features three Olympic-sized pools, including one diving pool.

And when they say that it’s “the first indoor public pool built in the city in more than 40 years” what they mean is the first indoor pool not counting the one that opened back in 2004.

It’s actually more like a matchbook by the toilet than anything “fancy” like Chanel No. 5:

It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of trying to cover up bad body odor with Chanel No. 5.

For more than a year, residents of one Brooklyn neighborhood have been complaining about a stomach-churning smell wafting from the site of a former sewer pipe project.

The city’s response? Tossing nylon socks filled with pine deodorizer into the catch basins.

That hasn’t stanched the stench. In fact, locals say the scent of raw sewage is even more noticeable now.

“I think that adding the pine made the existing smell even more potent,” said Aaron Green, 27, one of the Bay Ridge residents who is sick of the stink.

The stink has been hovering over a stretch of Fort Hamilton Parkway between Marine Ave. and 99th St.

The odor cropped up in the summer of 2006 after the completion of a $6.9 million project to combine the underground sewer pipes there, residents say.

As complaints mounted, the community board notified the city Department of Environmental Protection, which began dumping piney perfume onto the site.

Lost in the discussion about the mysterious, still-unexplained one million new residents is that the number includes a previously overlooked army of 300,000 new seniors, making New York City the nation’s top retirement destination:

The city’s elderly population is projected to jump 44 percent by 2030, which means there will be roughly 1.35 million senior citizens comprising 20 percent of the city population. That includes roughly one-third of the projected additional 1 million New Yorkers the Bloomberg administration expects here then. That surge motivated the PlaNYC initiative to address issues such as the environment, energy and the city’s aging infrastructure — but not so much its aging population.

The City Council yesterday announced that the New York Academy of Medicine will receive $125,000 to develop a blueprint to prepare the city for its aging population. It’s expected by April.

“Our focus has been on the cost of care and biomedical research,” said academy president Jo Ivey Boufford. “This deals with prevention — how people can be as healthy as they can be, as long as they can. . . . We’re creating a blueprint for investment over a number of years and policy action over a number of years.”

The Advance makes the situation sound that much more dire:

With New York City’s population expected to boom, adding nearly 1 million more residents by 2030, demographers predict that the number of elderly dwellers will increase by 300,000.

. . .

“There’s been much discussion and planning, appropriately so, about what the future of New York City will look like in 2030,” Ms. Quinn said in respect of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental agenda to combat global warming. “But one of the things we’ve not yet looked at is the reality that by 2030, there will be 300,000 additional senior citizens in New York City.”

If only they asked, a consultant would have told them how it looked:

City Council members spending thousands in taxpayer dollars to buy new garbage cans bearing their names should think twice about the stink such a move might make, branding and political image consultants say.

Linda Passante, the managing partner of a New York-based brand development agency, the Halo Group, said that if she were advising council members, she’d tell them to steer clear of promoting themselves on waste receptacles.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that any publicity is good publicity,” she said. “If I’m walking by a garbage pail and I’m smelling garbage and seeing a name associated with it,” it wouldn’t leave “a positive impression.”

The CEO and founder of Political Capitol, Kathryn Mahoney, said the idea that politicians would mount their names on garbage cans has “that desperate, sort of used-car sale feel to it, as if they are doing everything they can” to get their name out there.

“It gives you that automatic, negative feeling,” Ms. Mahoney, who said she advises members of Congress, said. “It feels kind of slick. And that’s the last thing you want as a politician.”

The Department of Sanitation said 21 council members, two former members, and President Scott Stringer of Manhattan have spent about $811,914 in public funds to buy 2,025 garbage cans with their names on them.

Yet they claim there is demand for valet parking at JFK:

The Port Authority introduced valet parking last week as part of the agency’s efforts to make the city’s three airports more hospitable.

Customers can drop off their cars on Lefferts Boulevard just south of the Belt Parkway, and hop on the AirTrain.

The fee is $36 a day, a little steeper than the charge at the terminal parking lots and considerably more than the cost of long-term parking.

“We believe there is a demand for this,” said PA spokesman Marc LaVorgna.

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.

Three sightings makes a trend:

Sunbathers found a shark on Staten Island’s South Beach yesterday — a dead, blue-eyed beastie no more than 2 feet long.

The silver-skinned, dorsal-finned sand shark was no man-eater, but it fascinated beach-goers who found it floating near the northernmost end of the beach.

Victoria Torello of Prince’s Bay and Maria Sciabica of Grasmere called the city Parks Department in order to save the shark from becoming poked at and picked apart by seagulls and curious beachfolk. Parks scooped the animal into a black plastic bag and took it away, most likely to be trashed or composted.

“We just felt bad for it,” said Ms. Sciabica. “It’s God’s creature.”

Sand sharks are fairly prevalent in the New York Bay, according to marine environmentalist Jim Scarcella of the Natural Resources Protective Association, who occasionally sees them pulled up on fishing lines off the Ocean Breeze pier.

“They’re becoming more and more common because of changes in the ecosystem,” he said, noting that the scavengers will slither into shallow waters when food becomes scarce further in.

“The good news,” he added, “is that they pose absolutely no risk to bathers or swimmers.”

Another 2-foot sand shark, a live one, washed up at Coney Island over Labor Day weekend, prompting a lifeguard there to rescue it from the blows of frightened swimmers and coax it back to sea.

A 5-foot thresher shark also scared beachgoers at Rockaway Beach in Queens that weekend: A greater threat, because the thresher is known to be more aggressive, Scarcella said.

Striking taxi drivers claim success so far:

The alliance’s organizer, Bhairavi Desai, said the action was a “resounding success,” adding that a vast majority of drivers stayed away from work.

“Look at the roads,” she told reporters.

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. umbrella group for the city’s unions, joined her at a news conference and said the strike was effective.

“If you can’t tell the difference between yesterday at Penn Station,” he said, “and today, you’re blind or you’re a tourist.”

If the mayor wants to get creative, he can perhaps play off of that theme during the press conference . . .

Drugs, bombs and pirated DVDs. It’s all about priorities:

DVD piracy costs New York City about $50 million in lost sales taxes each year. Drawing on his background as a federal prosecutor, John Malcolm decided to try a low-tech solution to the high-tech crime.

“Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs. Lo and behold, they can.”

At a demonstration here yesterday, two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo were able to pick out boxes full of DVDs. They made no critical judgments — for them, all movies stink. They can’t tell the difference between legitimate or pirated products, DVDs or CDs. But their ability to unearth discs makes the jobs of police and customs officials much easier.

“We’d like to get law enforcement interested in using similar dogs,” explained Malcolm.

From the Amorphophallus titanum to the Elegant Stinkhorn, Brooklyn leads the city in flora that evokes the odor of putrefying meat:

The stench of raw meat has taken over parts of the Hillside Dog Park on Columbia Heights near Middagh Street. But don’t look for roadkill. The villain here is a slimy florescent orange stalk shooting up between the wood chips and covered with flies.

Say hello to your new neighbor: the Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom.

The Hillside Dog Park, which is covered in wood chips, is practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mushroom, which spends its time decomposing the moist, woody pieces.

. . .

The Stinkhorn’s eau de toilet is its aroma of decaying flesh, and the flies can’t get enough. Lured in by the scent, the flies grab some of the Stinkhorn’s sticky slime and spread the mushroom’s spores.

The MTA tries to shake the funk off of what has previously stunk:

It smelled like death warmed over to some straphangers. To others, it was rancid excrement.

That stank crept from an elevator at Herald Square. The summer heat acted as an odor adhesive, keeping the foulness lingering well after people were out of the stink zone.

The dirty elevator solicited complaints throughout the week, and it has won worst-smelling elevator from a disabled riders group two years in a row. Luckily for straphangers, a Transit employee with high-powered disinfectant mopped out most of the smell Thursday, but the war on odorous subway stations is not over.

. . .

Cleanliness is a serious subject for New York City Transit, and as part of a new customer service initiative, about 350 more cleaners will be on the roster by fall to keep stations fresher, trains cleaner and platforms and tracks clearer and safer. They’ll also be able to respond to specific stenches faster.

Still, why the big stink at Herald Square and at stations throughout the system? Stations get funky for several reasons, said Bill Henderson who hears rider complaints as head of the MTA’s Permanent Citizens Advisory Council.

“Sometimes the cause is a broken sewer line,” he said. “It could also be something on the surface.”

And unfortunately, it takes a little more than a few spritzes of air freshener, sometimes a lot more. A sewer stank is sometimes caused by construction accidents, and the stink may slowly dissipate even after a cracked line is patched.

Outmigration and a more-educated population aside, you’re living longer because you walk more. Ooh-kay:

In essence, there is a health gap emerging between our massive metropolis and the rest of the country — some X factor that’s improving our health in subtle, everyday ways. In fact, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that once you take out those uniquely New York ways to die — AIDS, homicide, etc. — we’ve still added at least 200,000 extra years onto the city’s life-expectancy tables since 1980, making crucial advances in the same health areas the rest of the country struggles with. Like many New Yorkers, I’d moved here with some trepidation — always figuring that the stress, pollution, and 60-hour workweeks would knock about five years off my life. I was wrong — precisely wrong. But where, exactly, is our excess life coming from?

I take this question to Thomas Frieden, New York’s commissioner of public health. Frieden is a wonk’s wonk — a handsome, energetic doctor who has gained a nationwide reputation for his aggressive effort to push New York’s average-life-expectancy figure ever higher. The smoking ban of 2003? The trans-fat ban of last year? You can thank Frieden for both. These measures have already begun to lengthen life spans in the city. The smoking ban had an immediate effect: The number of deaths attributable to smoking has decreased from 8,960 in 2001 to 8,096 in 2005, a drop of 10 percent. Lung-cancer rates should begin to see the same effect a few decades from now, since it takes longer for the body to repair smoking-related lung damage.

But even Frieden admits that public policy can’t account for all the gains. When I ask what the X factor is — where the “excess life” is coming from — Frieden goes over to his desk and returns with a clear plastic statuette. It’s from the American Podiatric Medical Association and Prevention magazine: BEST WALKING CITY, 2006.

“We’ve won it a couple of years in a row,” he tells me with a grin. He’s got a bunch of them kicking around.

Just keep telling yourself that . . .

Is it a case of “jaw arthritis” or is it because he’s scared? Yeah, right — jaw arthritis is for old people:

Could the reign of hot-dog eating dominance be near an end for Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi?

The Japanese competitive eating phenom — and six-time winner of the annual Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest on Coney Island — is listed as “day-to-day” due to jaw pain just a week before the July 4 competition, officials said yesterday.

But Kobayashi, who narrowly defeated American Joey Chestnut last year to win the Mustard Belt for the sixth consecutive year, still plans to compete at Coney Island and in the Pizza Hut P’Zone Challenge July 10 in Manhattan.

According to Kobayashi’s blog, jaw arthritis has hampered the perennial eating champion so badly that he can only open his mouth wide enough to fit one finger without pain. Nevertheless, Kobayashi said he intends to defend his title and “be the pride” of his mother, who passed away in March.

Earlier this month, Chestnut, 22, of San Jose, Calif., broke Kobayashi’s world record by eating 59.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes at the Southwest Regional Hot Dog Eating Championship in Arizona. He won a year’s supply of hot dogs, a trip to New York and a $250 gift card. Kobayashi’s previous best was 53.75 hot dogs during the 2006 Coney Island contest.

I don’t think it’s being paranoid to think that there’s something kind of — well, very — suspicious about the idea of Teamsters supporting congestion pricing:

Truckers decided to support the plan after Mayor Bloomberg announced that he will reduce the fees for truckers who drive fuel-efficient rigs. Trucks that meet federal guidelines will have their fee cut from $21 to $7. Teamster’s President for Joint Council 16, Gary LaBarbera, says they came to an agreement with the mayor because he understands they must stay on the roads.

This coming after reports that the State Assembly seems wildly uninterested in supporting the plan (after all, Silver is a weighty metal, and sometimes one that is difficult to mine):

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s handpicked Democratic steering committee concluded yesterday that Mayor Bloomberg’s current congestion-pricing plan is “unpassable.”

At a meeting of the committee, which helps guide policy for Silver, the overwhelming majority said they could not support Bloomberg’s plan in its current form.

“There is a very strong growing consensus among rank-and-file members that the city hasn’t presented us with a passable bill, even if they like the concept — and many members don’t like the concept,” said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), a congestion-pricing foe.

Bloomberg wants to charge motorists to drive into Manhattan below 86th Street during certain hours and use the revenue to improve mass transit.

Committee members praised Bloomberg for wanting to reduce traffic and improve the environment, but said there are too many outstanding questions to act on the bill.

Members said there are ways to deal with traffic without enacting congestion pricing.

“Certainly in [the Assembly], people feel uncomfortable about charging hard-working middle-class families extra dollars to come into the city,” said Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. (D-Bronx), who’s on the committee.

Added Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn), who supports the concept of congestion pricing: “The bill as written is unpassable.”

Assemblywoman Roan Destito (D-Utica) said the bill “is not well thought out.”

It’s hard to believe that the only thing the Teamsters wanted was a reduction in the fee for more fuel-efficient trucks. I had no idea its membership was so committed to the environment! Plus, it’s not like the trucking industry doesn’t oppose congestion pricing or anything. I’m sure Bloomberg promised them absolutely nothing . . .

It doesn’t matter if the differential pricing was really just the difference between a take-out and and eat-in, when you have the mayor publicly rebuking you, things have spun out of control:

“If nobody goes to that restaurant, then they won’t make any money and they’ll go out of business,” Bloomberg said when asked about the Daily News’ exclusive Sunday story on the Canal Seafood Restaurant.

“It’s unconscionable to use race on any of these things, in terms of what kind of service, or how you charge, or whatever,” Bloomberg said.

“Go patronize a different [restaurant.] Let capitalism work.”

. . .

The restaurant has denied the allegations, saying it has one menu for takeout and another for customers who eat in the restaurant.

Broker-columnist Brian Carter seems like a good guy, but this kind of special attention seems like a stretch and, frankly, I’m skeptical:

If ever there was someone who needed a good rental agent, this was the kid, and this is where I got into trouble. Not a one of them had any idea of what to expect, or what they were really looking for, or how the process worked, or how badly they could get screwed. But regardless of your reasons or intentions, the one rule not to be violated in this business is: Never want the deal more than they do. I’m not sure I did, but I was certainly pulling for these guys. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and their simple search for any landlord willing to take them was humbling.

The young artist fell in love with the first apartment I showed him. Small and pretty beat up; it was exactly what he had imagined a New York apartment should look like. But what did he know? He’d never been here before. I called the management company and waded delicately into the conversation. As I suspected, there was no way around the employment letter without a stronger guarantor.

We saw a few more places, but everywhere we went we ran into the same problem. It was late Friday night, and we had gone as far as we could. They headed to McDonalds or someplace for dinner and I went back to the office. I tried calling everyone I knew in the restaurant business to see if I could set him up with a job or at the very least an employment letter. But no one seemed to need an inexperienced waiter, nor was anyone willing to write the stupid employment letter.

I think somewhere in the back of mind I refused to believe that in a city this large and supposedly diverse, there wasn’t a place for this kid. It was time to pull my resources together and to summon all of my real estate power and knowledge. This amounted to going through every landlord I could think of and finally searching Craigslist for no-fee places in Queens. Nothing came up. Even if I had better contacts in the outer boroughs, they weren’t about to consider Brooklyn yet. Never the super agent, I had screwed this one up good.

And this way there won’t be any unseemly reminder of what happened:

The parents and sister of a man convicted of conspiring to bomb the Herald Square subway station were detained yesterday by federal immigration authorities, who have been seeking to deport them to Pakistan.

The arrests came a day after the convicted man, Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, was sentenced in United States District Court in Brooklyn to 30 years in prison.

The family, who came to the United States in 1999, had been seeking asylum since 2003, citing religious persecution in their home country.

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that Mr. Siraj’s father, Siraj Abdul Rehman, 54, was arrested because a final deportation order had been filed against him. But a lawyer for the family said his case was still under appeal.

The agency spokesman, Mark Thorn, said that the man’s mother, Shahina Parveen, 50, and his sister, Sanya Siraj, 19, were arrested and detained on immigration violations.

. . .

The lawyer for the family, Mona Shah, disputed that a final order of removal had been entered against Mr. Rehman. She said he still has an appeal pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

“It’s absolutely disgusting that they’ve picked him up under the guise of a deportation order,” Ms. Shah said yesterday. “Fine, punish the son. But why punish them like this?”

She could not offer an explanation for the timing of the move, but suggested that it might stem from pressure on the authorities because the family’s immigration status was cited in news reports about Mr. Siraj’s case.

Earlier: Just Imagine How Long We Could Have Put Him Away For Had He Actually Come Up With The Idea On His Own.

Blame for what is now being called “the Big Stink” is pinned on New Jersey, that old standby:

Blame the big stink on New Jersey.
The mighty stench that blanketed swaths of the city, forced building and school evacuations, disrupted commuter train service - and even stoked fears of a terrorist attack - appears to have come from the other side of the Hudson River.

While the exact source and cause of the odor is still not clear, Charles Sturcken of the city Department of Environmental Protection said the agency was “pretty sure it came from New Jersey.”

Specifically, the heavily industrialized Hudson County waterfront with its chemical plants and port terminals as well as the Secaucus area, Sturcken said. Seven people in the Garden State were briefly hospitalized as a result of exposure to the stench.

Sewell Chan also smelt it:

Adding to the alarm was the strength and duration of the odor, which may have been aggravated by a weather phenomenon known as a temperature inversion. Inversions, which often occur when a warm front moves over a cooler, denser air mass, cause the temperature closer to the ground to be cooler and the air higher up to be warmer — a reversal of the usual pattern. Inversions can trap pollutants and odors, preventing them from being dispersed upward.

David Wally, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Upton, N.Y., said a warm front approached the city between 7 and 8 a.m., making it “very possible” that an inversion trapped the pollutants and gaseous odor closer to the ground. The inversion eroded later in the morning, he said.

. . .

Michael Williams, an accountant in Jersey City, said he delayed taking a smoking break for more than an hour because the odor was so intense. “I didn’t want to spark an explosion or anything,” he said.

Earlier on The Big Stink: Another Mystery Smell . . .,
Finally, The Gas Has Passed.

Sure, spin it as a way to save the birds:

They spent $1.7 million to re-light the Parachute Jump earlier this summer — but the landmark will soon go dark to save birds.

Last week, the Parachute Jump became the first Brooklyn building to join the “Lights Out New York” program, which encourages tall buildings to douse their lights to protect migratory birds.

“On a foggy night, when the birds don’t have the moon or the stars as a navigational guide, they [can] start circling lighted towers,” said Yigal Gelb, of New York City Audubon.

Once the birds begin circling, they get disoriented, and crash into each other or the tower. And sometimes they get so tired flying around that they drop simply from exhaustion.

. . .

The Parachute Jump is the program’s only Brooklyn member, and one of only six members citywide, a group that includes the Chrysler and Citicorp buildings.

Parachute Jump lightning designer Leni Schwendinger said she was more than happy to re-program the tower’s lighting scheme during the fall and spring migratory seasons.

“I’m happy to be a poster child” for the “Lights Out” program, Schwendinger said.

But careful readers may remember that the lights weren’t all that bright to begin with:

The reviews from those assembled were muted. Phyllis Carbo, 70, who rode on the Parachute Jump as a girl, hesitated when asked for her opinion. “I’m running for Assembly on the Republican line, so I have to be very careful,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Even the evening’s master of ceremonies, Dick Zigun, one of Coney Island’s leading boosters, pronounced the light show “very subtle.”

Others were less restrained.

“Did they light it already? Is this it?” asked Joe Joya, 63.

His wife, Jane, 61, said, “I thought it was going to be a lot brighter. I thought that the lights were going to be more of a Vegas type of thing.”

Neil Young has dispatched a crew of soundmen to steal our soul:

All week, a man with a microphone has walked the subway platforms to collect the clattering of the rivets and the whistling horns, the distortion in the loudspeaker, the hush in the compressor’s song and the dying of the brake like some wounded thing.

Even in that racket, some find value. The recordings are the chief selling point of a new reproduction of a subway train by the Lionel model train company made under a license from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for completion by year’s end.

Other companies have made models before, but this one pays unparalleled attention to sonic detail, recreating the subterranean soundscape in elaborate hi-fi to win the favor of collectors and self-styled train geeks, keepers of a nostalgic anachronism to rank alongside comic books and baseball cards.

Among their number count the musician Neil Young, so devoted that he conceived a control system to reproduce the sounds of the rails, then acquired a minority interest in Lionel more than a decade ago.

“Realism is the byword,” Mr. Young said by telephone. “It’s a heavy thing moving down a track, like a real thing even though it’s a miniature.”

. . .

Recording began below Brooklyn on Monday, in the tunnels of the New York Transit Museum. There [Bruce R.] Koball was joined by a few transit supervisors and Mark Wolodarsky, an off-duty conductor. Mr. Wolodarsky was standing in the cab of Car 9306, a model R33s introduced in 1963 to run the 20-minute route from Times Square to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens.

“I’m more or less ready to rock and roll here,” Mr. Koball declared.

Mr. Wolodarsky activated the train’s generator to charge the batteries, then opened and closed the doors. The men on the platform deemed the action too fast, and Mr. Wolodarsky tried again.

“There was no puff of air,” lamented a supervisor, James Harris. Mr. Wolodarsky tried again. In this manner they recorded the compressors and the generator, the brakes and the brake release. There were two long buzzes and two short, signals between conductor and motorman, then a low whistle, a guttural rumble and a high lonesome sound.

. . .

“It’s a symphony of motion and sound,” Mr. Young said. “New York City. What’s more American than that?”

New York Magazine investigates the outbreak of suspicious fires plaguing valuable development opportunities in Brooklyn:

The fact is we’re in a burning season. Uniformed Firefighters Association stats say the 2006 “fire season” — the winter months when items like electric blankets and space heaters are in operation — saw an increase in “greater” blazes (of two alarms or more) of 50 percent over the record year 2005.

The market blaze was only one of the many, many “suspicious” fires to hit the Brooklyn development zones of late. Within three months, from December 7, 2005, to February 24, 2006, there were eleven such fires along Prospect Heights’ “Pacific Street Corridor,” formerly home to single-story factories and flat-fix establishments but now part of the realty zone sandwiched between the escalating rent sprawl of Williamsburg and Fort Greene and the proposed Atlantic Yards megaproject to the West.

Location, location, location. The proximity of the afflicted Prospect Heights addresses raises eyebrows: 1033 Pacific, 1084 Pacific, 1198 Pacific, 1440 Pacific. Other fires were around the corner, at 530 and 600 St. Marks Avenue. Two more occurred at 461 and 658 Park Place, with another at nearby 683 Dean Street.

In the worst of these, the three-alarm arson fire at 1033 Pacific, a dowdy four-story apartment that had been sold and resold several times prior to the blaze (the deed shifting from 1033 Pacific Partner LLC to the 1033 Pacific Partners LLC), four people died. These included Assita Coulibaly, a 36-year-old immigrant from Burkina Faso, and two of her small children. Also dead was 24-year-old Sherrie Williams, who jumped from the fourth-story window. She landed on the concrete stairwell; another jumping tenant, Kassoum Fofana, fell on top of her, possibly saving his life. Months later, the building remained burned out, Williams’s name handwritten on the still-extant row of buzzers.

This was part of a larger pattern. According to FDNY stats, 2005 was the single busiest year in Fire Department history, with a total of 485,702 calls answered. This beat out the former record of 459,567 calls, set back in 1977.

You remember 1977, right?

Location Scout: Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire; Atlantic Yards.

If we learned anything from that broken-windows repair scheme on Staten Island, it’s that we shouldn’t be too quick to rule out the bike stores:

Someone’s been taking out the bikes in Riverside Park. The weapon: carpet tacks, sprinkled on the path with malicious, tire-bursting intent. Most reports of tack trouble come from the section of the greenway between 137th and 145th Streets, behind Riverbank State Park, but cyclists have reported tacks as far north as the George Washington Bridge at 181st. But it’s not clear that the attacks were limited to uptown — one victim told Ravin he didn’t notice his flat until he returned to Christopher Street from a ride up to Inwood.

. . .

In the meantime, bike shops and cyclists alike are facing a quandary. “I hate it!” says Ozzie Perez, owner of Tread Bike Shop in Inwood. “Financially, it’s been great for us — we fixed more than 100 flats — but now people don’t want to go on the greenway uptown.”

Rain, sleet, snow — no problem. The ripest, stankiest most overpowering example of human-cat stench is another matter:

The motto says neither rain nor sleet nor snow will get in the way of the United States Postal Service delivering mail, but a tenant in the Pomonok Houses development in Flushing may have found the one deterrent: the pungent smell in the hallway near her first-floor apartment, which is adjacent to the mailboxes for the building.

The mail carrier whose route includes the building at 70-20 Parsons Blvd. has refused to deliver letters there unless something is done about the smell, according to U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Forest Hills), who represents the area and is familiar with the issue.

If there is a health hazard the Postal Service cannot deliver to that location, an aide to Weiner explained. Weiner is on the House committee that tracks the postal service.

The Fresh Meadows Post Office is supposed to deliver mail to the building, but because of the current standoff tenants must instead pick up their mail at the post office. The manager of the Fresh Meadows postal branch could not be reached for comment.

Rose and Thomasina Maggio, who live on the first floor next to the mailboxes, keep about 30 cats in the apartment, according to Weiner’s aide, who said his office has received complaints from numerous tenants in the building.

The Maggios say they have two cats and that the smell is coming from the basement, not their apartment.

“This has been going on for two years, now. Housing came by and painted the apartment, cleaned the apartment and basement, and put in a new floor. The hallway smells because the basement floods and people pee in the doorway and the elevator,” said Rose Maggio, a 51-year veteran of the building.

How a four-month moratorium on issuing liquor licenses needing a 500-foot exemption answers the issue of bouncer murders and underage drinking I don’t know — but I think there’s more to this ostensibly civic-minded decision than meets the eye:

The state liquor board yesterday imposed an immediate four-month freeze on approving liquor licenses for areas of New York City that already have three or more license holders within 500 feet of each other.

The unanimous action by the New York State Liquor Authority, which was immediately denounced by a trade group of city nightclubs, follows the deaths this year of two young women. They were killed after drinking heavily at nightspots in SoHo and Chelsea.

Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York Nightlife Association, a trade group of 125 bars and nightclubs, mainly in Manhattan, said the action was unfair. It has “thrown the industry into chaos within the last few hours,” he said.

Mr. Bookman added, “If I have my lifetime savings wrapped up in a place that I’m prepared to open Oct. 1 and now I can’t get a license until January, how am I going to pay $30,000 in monthly rent and not be able to open?”

By contrast, Scott Wexler, executive director of the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association, with 5,000 members statewide, called the state action “judicious and measured.”

Enlightened self interest: doing the right thing for the public — traffic! loitering! murder! — all while keeping competition at bay. Genius!

Bonus angle: is all or some of this connected to this announcement?

And who is this organization with 5,000 members statewide? Aren’t there like 20,000 restaurants in the five boroughs alone?

This will interest only about five people who go to Target on the weekends, but G apologists are openly speculating that the MTA is quietly implementing a “de facto termination” of G service into Queens:

The G train has been called the “stepchild” of the MTA.

It is the only line that doesn’t pass through Manhattan. It runs with just four often-crowded cars per train between Brooklyn and Queens. The trains lack a conductor. Portions stink from sewage that leaks from pipes onto the tracks. It runs its full route only after sunset and on weekends — when it’s not shut for track work.

Sometimes, it even runs in two segments, forcing a transfer.

Still, thousands of people, especially in booming Williamsburg and Greenpoint, depend on it. But the MTA is calling for unspecified subway service cuts in 2007, and G-train riders fear the 13-station Queens Boulevard segment will get axed.

“At this time, we do not know which lines will be affected by cuts,” said MTA New York City Transit spokesman James Anyansi. Specific cuts, if any, will be announced by the end of the year.

Advocates say that the MTA should consider adding train service, given the population boom in the neighborhoods the G serves.

“It really shows a lack of foresight on the part of the MTA,” said Assemb. Joe Lentol (D-Brooklyn). “Greenpoint is becoming a major site of redevelopment on the waterfront.”

Some MTA board members suggested that might be possible, but that’s not reassuring enough for Teresa Toro of rider advocacy group Save The G.

“They’ve already done a de facto termination,” she said.

She was referring to ongoing work to replace Queens tunnel road beds on the G, which runs from Red Hook to Forest Hills. That work has meant no weekend G service between Long Island City and Forest Hills since January. Disruptions will continue until at least Aug. 14, MTA officials say.

On weekdays, the G travels from the Smith-9th streets stop in Red Hook, to Court Square in Long Island City. On weekends and weeknights, it is supposed to continue to the last stop at 71st-Continental in Forest Hills.

There is, however, apparently movement towards extending the G deeper into Brooklyn:

Even though there’s a chance of a partial line closure, there’s actually talk of expanding the G by five stops in Brooklyn, some MTA board members said.

The southernmost G stop is Smith-9th streets in Red Hook. But after the last passenger departs the train, it has to pass five stations, down the F line tunnel to Church Avenue, where there’s enough room to turn the train around. Some MTA board members and rider advocates have suggested that the G simply keep picking up and dropping off passengers since it is going to Church Avenue anyway.

Backstory: G Love (And That Special Sprint); The Little Train That Couldn’t Get Any Respect; Ironic, Because Everyone Knows The G Never Comes.

A case could be made that they offered the bribe in the first place because they had some reasonable expectation that a bribe would have been accepted:

Four Brooklyn restaurateurs have been arrested for offering $100 to $200 bribes to undercover agents who posed as Health Department investigators, officials said yesterday.

Jian Fang Ren of the China King restaurant on Pitkin Avenue, Sum Tung Cheng of the New Garden Restaurant on Church Avenue, Kwong Chan Hong of the New Fu Lai eatery, also on Church Avenue, and Mustafa Choudhari of Broadway Pizza & Fried Chicken face bribery charges.

The felony could land them up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The Greenpoint Terminal Market is totally destroyed, and whatever is left will be demolished. That took care of that problem:

To step into what’s left of the Greenpoint Terminal Market is to step into a war zone.

The few warehouses still standing after a huge fire ravaged the historic Brooklyn waterfront were gutted and the remaining catwalks connecting them looked ready to fall.

Huge piles of crushed brick and corrugated metal lined cobblestoned Noble St. And a thick haze from the small fires still smoldering two days later hung over it all.

“It looks like an atomic bomb hit it,” Department of Environmental Protection worker Fred D’Amore, 45, said as he surveyed the site. “This looks like a war zone. Everything’s totally burned down. Fuhgeddaboudit.”

Down by the East River, a damaged wall with wood beams sticking out was all that was left of the pre-Civil War building where fire marshals believe an arsonist touched off the enormous blaze Tuesday.

FDNY First Division Chief John Bley said investigators have not yet been able to sift through that wreckage because “we’re afraid everything is going to collapse.”

The 21-acre site is owned by Joshua Guttman and his son, Jack, who was on the property yesterday wearing a white construction helmet and dress clothes. He declined to be interviewed. The Guttmans have strongly denied torching the buildings.

The failed real estate deal the newspapers are focusing on this morning involve two developers who have both been linked to sketchy behavior in the past, increasing the possibility that something untoward happened in Greenpoint on Tuesday:

Properties controlled by both Joshua Guttman, who owns the Greenpoint site, and Baruch Singer, who was trying to buy it, have been investigated by the city for suspicious events in the past.

Fire officials have suggested the Brooklyn blaze was intentionally set due to the speed in which it engulfed the warehouse buildings that are slated for demolition.

Mr. Singer, a landlord turned developer, is suing Mr. Guttman to resurrect an 8-month-old contract for $424 million to buy the property and develop it into a luxury condominium complex.

According to court documents, Messrs. Singer and Guttman did not close on the deal by the January deadline because Mr. Singer came up short on financing.

Mr. Guttman then voided the deal, and seized Mr. Singer’s $42 million deposit.

. . .

Mr. Singer, the prospective buyer, has consistently been cited by tenant groups as one of the worst landlords in the city. In 1995, the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, conducted an investigation of a six-story Harlem building controlled by Mr. Singer that collapsed and killed three people. Mr. Morgenthau did not file criminal charges against Mr. Singer because the collapse was not “reasonably foreseeable,” according to a press release his office issued at the time. Mr. Singer’s buildings have reportedly racked up more than 4,000 violations with the city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Phone messages left yesterday at the offices of Baruch Singer and his lawyer, Sean O’Donnell, were not returned.

The city’s fire probe will mark the second time that a building owned by Mr. Guttman will be investigated for arson.

Mr. Guttman, who real estate industry sources say is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, owned a loft building in DUMBO that burned down in 2004, prompting an investigation by the city. Mr. Guttman was never charged, but some suspected that the landlord had started a fire to allow him to convert the building into luxury units.