The plants have ears, man, and new Staten Island Ferry rules intend to protect plant life against loud sounds:

A complete overhaul of the ferry system’s official code of conduct — which will go into effect in late January — includes updates reflecting tightened security and operational changes, as well as new prohibitions against feeding animals, exposing oneself, or fishing from a ferry or ferry dock.

. . .

The new rules define “unreasonable noise,” as any “excessive or unusually loud sound that disturbs the peace, comfort or repose of a reasonable person of normal sensitivities, injures or endangers the health or safety of a reasonable person of normal sensitivities, or which causes injury to plant or animal life, or damage to property or business.”

Among the examples included of prohibited noise levels are music coming from a person’s iPod earbuds that is “plainly audible” to another individual standing 5 feet or more away. Also forbidden are sounds that register more than 7 decibels overnight, or 10 decibels during the day that can be heard above ambient sound at a distance of 15 or more feet.

. . .

As for the quirkier rules, as far as anyone at DOT can remember, no one has actually been caught fishing from a ferryboat, but the rule was added to forestall anyone from trying. In addition to fears that an unsuspecting passenger could accidentally end up snared at the end of an angler’s hook, fishing line and boat propellers don’t mix.

Location Scout: Staten Island Ferry.

Shorter Steve Cuozzo — tastes great, less filling:

A different mayor might have done things differently. But if Bloomberg could have done it better, there are a million ways he could have done it worse.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If you parsed this any more it would mean nothing, but I think Robert Gibbs means something along the lines of “Bill Thompson is a real man for all men”*:

On Friday afternoon, when much of the political world was transfixed by President Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked a seemingly throwaway question about the New York City mayor’s race, the last inquiry of a busy news briefing.

“Can you say who, exactly, the president supports in the mayoral race up in the city?” asked a reporter from The Daily News.

Mr. Gibbs at first seemed to mock the question. “New York-centric over there,” he said. “There’s more than one city.”

After a few moments of playful banter, he offered this: “The president is the leader of the Democratic Party, and as that would support the Democratic nominee.”

Who would that be? Mr. Gibbs did not say. But he did manage to invoke another name — Mr. Bloomberg’s.

“The president,” Mr. Gibbs said, “obviously has had a chance to, throughout campaigning and in his time both as a candidate and as a president, to meet, know and work with Mayor Bloomberg, and obviously has a tremendous amount of respect for what he’s done as well.”

When asked later to confirm that the president had, in fact, endorsed Mr. Thompson, a White House spokesman said that he had.

As word of the quasi endorsement reached Mr. Thompson, his campaign scrambled to issue a statement.

It read, “Yes we can in New York City: President Barack Obama supports Bill Thompson for mayor.”

Mr. Thompson rushed to his campaign office in Midtown Manhattan to hold a press conference. He stood at a lectern in a cramped room, beaming. “Let me just say how proud and honored I am to have been endorsed by the president of the United States today,” he said. “Obviously, he thinks I’m going to be the next mayor of the city of New York.”

*As in.

Does anyone understand what this statement means? I don’t:

“The mayor’s fundamental view is that the government shouldn’t be telling people who they can and cannot marry, but that change has to come from Albany, not through making misrepresentations to a government agency,” said a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.

In other words, “The mayor’s fundamental view is that the government shouldn’t be telling people who they can and cannot marry, but not by making misrepresentations to a government agency.” Meaning, “the government shouldn’t be making misrepresentations to a government agency,” right?

But when in doubt, suddenly crack down on pedicabs, because they’re just annoying.

Maybe you wondered why Bloomberg started a huge television campaign eight months before the election, a campaign featuring the mayor, “his trademark jacket and tie swapped for a casual button-down shirt, talking to ordinary New Yorkers about their financial woes.” Ads that focus on the mayor’s “plan to create or save 400,000 jobs, provide loans to small business and invest in infrastructure. ‘We do have a plan to get through this,’ Mr. Bloomberg says. ‘The city can’t do everything, but we can do a lot to make it easier for the people that live in this city.” Maybe you thought, wow, that’s early to be advertising, especially when likely opponents are basically silent. Hmm. Hmm:

Based on the amount of television time the mayor has purchased, the average New Yorker is likely to see the ads about 12 times.

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the campaign, said that New Yorkers “will certainly see the ad.” But, he added, “It will not saturate the airwaves.”

Asked about the timing, Mr. Wolfson said: “If it were up to me, we would have run ads a month earlier than today. This issue of jobs and the economy is one that we want to engage the public with in a conversation.”

So why burnish your middle class cred back in April? Is it because the Executive Budget is due in less than a week or so? Remember Chekhov’s Gun . . .

Tolling all 13 East River and Harlem River bridges sounds like a great way to make a lot of money, but the loopholes sound problematic:

Gov. Paterson is again on board with a plan that would toll 13 now-free East and Harlem River bridges at the cost of a subway ride for all drivers — but the latest twist would exempt those crossing the spans for business or medical purposes, officials said today.

The new plan meant to bail out the MTA from a budget deficit also calls for a 5 to 10 percent tax increase on all non-city residents who use long-term garage parking spaces in Manhattan and a 50-cent “dropoff” surcharge on every taxi ride, according to former MTA chief Richard Ravitch, the plan’s author.

1) So does using the bridges for “business” mean that delivery trucks will be exempt? If so, will they pass along their savings from less traffic congestion to customers?

2) Wow, you’re going to put a toll on that dopey little University Heights Bridge, too? For $2, I’d want something iconic, like the Brooklyn Bridge or even the Queensboro!

3) Won’t tolling the Washington Bridge increase congestion like crazy on already-really-congested I-95?

4) I’m sure there’s more, but why not just make things easy and call for a vote on legalizing gay marriage instead?

And then it just brings up silly thoughts like, “OK, then who is ‘literally’ Robin?” But setting aside the irony of a front-page story about a “purposefully inconspicuous” aide, it is good to see squeegee men get beat up on again. That always makes you feel good:

Driving through the South Bronx last summer, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler spotted a man illegally washing car windshields at a stoplight.

Enraged, he called the police desk at City Hall from his cellphone (it’s on speed dial), ordered that the man be arrested on the spot and requested a copy of his rap sheet, which, as it happened, was voluminous. It listed 50 prior arrests.

Thus began a classic Skyler crusade: Over the next few months, he had two more squeegee men arrested by speed dial. He instructed aides to study their lengthy journeys through the legal system. And he helped draft a law cracking down on repeat offenders, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled in his State of the City address this year.

“Ed is literally Batman,” said Kevin Sheekey, a fellow deputy mayor. “But most of Gotham doesn’t know how much he does as Bruce Wayne because he’s so purposefully inconspicuous.”

I’m surprised — there’s an ice storm this morning; seems like a great opportunity to go on strike again:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s labor agreement with its largest union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union of America, is set to expire on Jan. 15. In December 2005, the union went on strike for 60 hours — its first strike since 1980 — and both sides now seem determined to avoid a devastating repeat.

The authority and the union announced on Tuesday that they had not been able to complete a new contract at the negotiating table and had agreed instead to go to binding arbitration — a clear signal that they wished to avoid an all-out labor battle. The union represents more than 30,000 subway and bus workers at New York City Transit, the authority’s largest division.

The decision to go to arbitration could give both sides much-needed cover. If the contract contains givebacks desired by the authority, the local president, Roger Toussaint, could blame the arbitration process. And it could protect the authority from criticism that it allowed wage increases while it is facing its worst financial crisis in two decades.

Isn’t anyone here up for a little action?

. . . this should rank high:

In the great Reese’s tradition of putting together two seemingly mismatched things, a new chess and gaming emporium on Flatbush Avenue has turned Thursdays into Ladies’ Night, where everyone from Bobby Fischer brainiacs to Bobbie Fischer rook-ies can get free chess games all night long.

More like “Macbeth!”:

“The last 15 years have been boom years for theater — I always expected the pendulum to swing, and I simply see this as a correction,” said Nancy Coyne, chairwoman of the theater advertising agency Serino Coyne. “The good news is that so many straight plays are now coming in the spring, and I think New Yorkers will come out for them once the tourists go away. We’re horrible snobs. We hate tourists from Cleveland.”

Just keep telling yourself that.

Personally, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into “the story of a world traveling photojournalist and a New York gallery owner who discover each other and also that there might be an art to repairing broken lives” (“Impressionism”). And nothing takes my mind off of a worldwide economic crisis like a new Moises Kaufman play about “a musicologist who travels to the Beethoven archives in Germany to unravel the mystery surrounding the composer’s enigmatic ‘Diabelli Variations,’ only to discover she has a fatal illness” (“33 Variations”). Oh and hey, what better way is there for New York theatergoers to forget eight years of Bush than an uplifting Ibsen revival? “Hedda sets out on a shocking path of destruction that affects the lives of everyone around her” — I remember that one! — but it does have the hot lady from Weeds. Aw, alright — send me a postcard with some midweek discount and I’ll think about it . . .

Before the City Council agrees to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to transform Willets Point by building housing, retail, hotels and a convention center at the site, can someone explain why anyone would want to build housing, retail, hotels and a convention center on an apparently highly polluted site in the flightpath of planes landing at LaGuardia? Because I’m really, really curious about that one:

City hall officials struck an eleventh-hour deal Wednesday to transform gritty Willets Point into what they called the city’s next great neighborhood.

The City Council is expected to ratify the agreement by today’s deadline by granting a host of zoning and other measures required under the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

The $3 billion redevelopment plan will turn the heavily polluted 62-acre tract near Shea Stadium in Queens into a modern complex of residential, retail, entertainment and commercial uses, including a hotel and the city’s first convention center built outside Manhattan.

Mayor Bloomberg hailed the agreement with Council officials “as one of the big, important wins for New York City’s economy” at a time when it needs it the most.

He said it will create 18,000 construction jobs and 5,000 permanent jobs and will generate $25 billion in economic benefits in the next 30 years, including $1.3 billion in direct tax revenues.

The redevelopment, which will take a decade, is to include 5,500 units of housing, and the new deal calls for boosting the affordable housing component to 1,920 units, or 35% of the total. That’s up from 1,100 units, or 20%, in the original version. Some 800 of the affordable units will be targeted to families earning less than $37,000.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.

Except for the inconvenient facts that prostitution is often about sex slavery and it is very rarely a victimless crime, Eliot Spitzer might still be governor and Sean Bell might still be alive — since, after all, the reason undercover cops were there was for a prostitution sting — and we wouldn’t have to endure a big, lousy, tragic conclusion to the case:

A Queens judge on Friday acquitted three detectives charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, who died on his wedding day in a hail of 50 police bullets. He said that prosecutors had failed to prove their case and that wounded friends of the slain man had given testimony that he did not believe.

. . .

The detectives, all but obscured behind a human wall of courthouse officers, finally seemed to exhale deeply, even crumple, with relief. Detective Oliver — who reloaded his gun to fire a total of 31 shots and helped catapult the shooting from tragic mistake to a symbol, for many, of police abuse of force and poor training — closed his eyes and cried.

Except for a few scuffles outside the Queens Criminal Court building and shouted displays of disbelief and outrage, the day passed peacefully amid calls for calm delivered by the mayor, the police commissioner and other officials.

One more example this year makes it a trend, and we can pitch it to the editors of the Magazine . . .

Bloomberg is smart, too smart, and he knows it:

Can the Bloomberg administration convince thousands of low-achieving students that succeeding in school is actually, well, cool?

It wants to try. The city is planning an intensive campaign that would use cellphones to help motivate students, most of them minorities and from poor families, in two dozen schools. The pilot program will include mentoring and incentives for high performance, like free concerts and sporting events and free minutes and ring tones for their phones. Every student in each of the schools will be given a cellphone.

The effort, officials said, will use text messages — drawn up by an advertising agency and sent over the phones — that promote achievement.

That said, anyone who refers to this as “rebranding school” deserves all the low achievement they get:

The plan, designed by Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard University economist who is overseeing the school system’s program of paying students who do well on tests, was approved by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last week. Details about how much will be spent and where the money will come from are still to be worked out, Education Department officials said.

Mr. Klein said he expected several companies to donate discounted phone service and tickets to events. A former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will help supervise the project.

Mr. Klein said the effort was spurred in part by the results from focus groups performed by market research firms for the Education Department. That research found that black and Latino students from some of the city’s most hard-pressed neighborhoods had a difficult time understanding that doing well in school can provide tangible long-term benefits.

Dr. Fryer approached five advertising agencies in September and asked them to come up with plans to “rebrand” academic achievement. Although it is not clear which of the plans education officials will choose, Dr. Fryer is enthusiastic about one that tries to make poor teenagers aware that academic success can lead to jobs that pay enough to support a middle- or upper-middle-class way of life.

Broadway producers look for that lucrative tween market, which obviously has more cash than it knows what to do with:

For Broadway producers, 10-year-old Jamie Carroll looks like an ideal theatergoer: she downloads scores off of iTunes, is a fervent proselytizer when she likes something and has lots of friends, two of whom she brought along to a recent Saturday matinee of “Legally Blonde.” “A lot of my friends say it’s the best musical they’ve ever seen,” she said.

Maybe. But Jamie’s father and her 14-year-old brother would not join them, considering the show too girly. Even her mother, Tacey Carroll, was only present as a chaperon: “This is a little more for them,” she said, echoing several other mothers at the theater, one of whom even dropped off her young charges and went shopping.

And that’s the rub for Broadway producers, for whom teenage and tween girls have become the demographic of the moment, wooed by marketing campaigns and featured as central characters in a flurry of shows in development, including “13,” about a teenager from New York who is transplanted to Indiana; “Princesses,” which is basically “High School Musical” meets “Gossip Girl”; and a musical adaptation of the movie “Clueless.”

Increasingly, though, some worry that the sugar-and-spice enthusiasm may be misplaced, because while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one. For that, you still need grown-ups — lots of paying grown-ups — to want to come to a show.

*Just kidding, Mr. Mamet! We can’t wait for that Duran Duran thing to end to see your next play staged!

This should be profitable, right? Or not:

All 277 underground stations in the subway system are to be wired for cellphone use, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced yesterday.

But riders may have to talk fast, because the subway tunnels will not be wired, out of consideration for riders who do not want to be stuck in a subway car full of chattering cellphone users.

The company that won the right to wire the stations, Transit Wireless, will pay New York City Transit a minimum of $46.8 million over 10 years, the agency said. The company will also pay the full cost of building the wireless network in the underground stations, estimated at $150 million to $200 million.

Under the agreement, cellphone providers would pay the company a fee to carry their signals on the network.

. . .

Transit Wireless is a joint venture involving Nab Construction, Q-Wireless, Dianet Communications and Transit Technologies. Nab Construction and Transit Technologies have done other large-scale construction projects in the subway system, and Dianet has been involved in designing and installing cellphone antenna systems in buildings and airports. Q-Wireless makes software for wireless systems.

Transit officials said they chose Transit Wireless in part because it offered to pay more to the authority than the others. One bidder, American Tower, offered a total 10-year payment of $6.2 million. A consortium of the major cellphone providers, including Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, offered a total payment over 10 years of just $40, according to a summary of the deal that will be provided to the authority’s board members. (A transit official said the figure was not a typo.)

Transit Wireless initially made an offer of $34.4 million, but it increased the offer during negotiations.

*Hey — four dollars a year could feed one of Sally Struthers’ peeps though, yes?

You can’t tell the Patsy’s without a scorecard:

Patsy’s Italian Restaurant on West 56th Street — Frank Sinatra’s favorite — asked a federal judge yesterday to stop a restaurant from opening in Syosset, Long Island. The reason for the request, according to a legal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, is the “Patsy’s” sign above the new storefront.

If the dispute sounds familiar, it is because Patsy’s on 56th Street, which opened in 1944, guards its name as jealously as it would any family recipe. Earlier this year, it went to court to force a Staten Island restaurant doing business under the name Patsy’s to shut its doors.

Another Patsy’s, a pizzeria on 118th Street, which opened more than a decade before the 56th Street restaurant, feels the same way about its name. The pizzeria filed suit against a Patsy’s in Brooklyn, obliging the Brooklyn Patsy’s to change its name. The restaurant now does business as Grimaldi’s Pizzeria.

The 56th Street Patsy’s is known for its pasta; the 118th Street Patsy’s for its pizza. But the culinary interests of the two have overlapped at times, leading to a lawsuit over which establishment had the right to market marinara sauce under the name.

In light of the past cases, the suit over the Syosset restaurant hardly seems a surprise, though it does suggest that the 56th Street restaurant will guard its name against alleged impostors even beyond the five boroughs.

MTA officials instruct riders never to pull the emergency brake, leading some to wonder what exactly it’s there for:

In the event of an emergency, do not pull the emergency brake.

That’s the main advice offered by the MTA in the agency’s new evacuation instructions, being distributed at subway station booths and on commuter rail cars.

The message to wait for directions is now available in Chinese, Russian, Haitian Creole, Korean, Arabic and Urdu, as well as English and Spanish.

“Once the emergency-brake cord is pulled, the brakes have to be reset before the train can move again, which reduces the options for dealing with an emergency,” the instructions explain.

Expect mellifluously alliterative outrage from Al Sharpton after this “slip of the tongue”:

City Councilman David Yassky, locked in a racially charged congressional race, was all smiles yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg introduced him as “Congressman Yassky.”

Speaking at the first groundbreaking to come from last year’s Williamsburg-Greenpoint re-zoning, the mayor praised Yassky — but press secretary Stu Loeser insisted there was no endorsement, just “a slip of the tongue.”

In admitting he erred by focusing on the pension issue, is MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow being sincerely reflective or deviously manipulative? You be the judge:

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that he had erred in making pension changes a central demand in contract negotiations with the city’s transit workers, a miscalculation that helped lead to a 60-hour subway and bus strike the week before Christmas.

The chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, did not take responsibility for provoking the strike, the city’s first since 1980, but he acknowledged misjudging the union’s hostility to his demands that future workers accept a higher retirement age or contribute more to their pensions than current workers do.

“I put out a proposal that I thought would be most palatable to the union, and it turns out I was wrong,” he said in an interview. Before the strike, Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, had repeatedly said he would not accept a pension plan that did not treat future workers the same as current ones.

Mr. Kalikow, who was appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki in 2001, defended the settlement reached last week as fair. He said the union’s main concession — having workers for the first time pay part of their health-insurance premiums — was more valuable than the pension demands that were ultimately abandoned.

“It didn’t matter to me where I got the savings,” he said.

Is this Kalikow’s idea of “respect”? Is it meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the union? Is it more expensive for every union member to contribute towards their health insurance premiums than it would have been to have new employees contribute more towards their pensions? Could Kalikow be crazy in the way R. Kelly is crazy — like a fox? So many questions . . .