More NYC & Company overreach:

Tree-lined Henry Street was briefly turned into one long billboard, but Brooklyn Heights residents erupted after seeing commercial banners on the mostly residential street, so the city removed them.

On Monday, banners reading “Brooklyn loves to shop” were hung on lampposts from Clark to Montague streets — and locals slammed the commercialization of the strip.

“I absolutely detest them,” said Veronica Rylander, 48. “They’re so out of place here above all these houses. I feel like it cheapens the look of the neighborhood.”

For Liana Schwartz, 36, it wasn’t the aesthetics, but the practicality of the banners that provoked her disdain.

“I just don’t even get why they’re hanging here,” said Schwartz. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to put them Downtown or on streets where there are actually places to shop?”

After The Brooklyn Paper started asking local officials about the appropriateness of posting ads in a residential corridor, the banners were taken down and relocated to commercial Court Street on Wednesday morning.
Brooklyn Bridge Realty

The banners — which are sponsored by Greek natural skincare company Korres, which just opened on Montague Street, and NYC& Co., the city’s tourist board — also annoyed people who think tourism officials don’t get Brooklyn — or maybe get it too well.

“They put those signs on Henry because they know there are lots of cars speeding through here,” said one man.

If you found yourself without power for, I don’t know, like nine days during the summer, know that you will be compensated at a rate significantly below that of jury duty:

Customers in western Queens can expect to receive about $100 each from Consolidated Edison as compensation for having to sweat through nine days without power in July 2006, according to officials who have been briefed on the settlement.

The approval of the settlement, which the utility proposed several weeks ago and which will total $17 million, was to be announced at a news conference on Thursday.

Customers will receive a credit on their monthly bill, which will also include a brief apology from the company.

Sure he’s a traitor, blah blah, but there’s also something really, really funny about it:

The man who tried to curse the Yankees by burying a Red Sox jersey in the Bombers’ new stadium lives just a short drive from the House that Ruth Built.

The culprit is a mason — born and raised in the Country Club section of southeast Bronx.

“As I stuck it in, I said, ‘The Yankees are done for the next 30 years.’ I only put a 30-year curse because I’m 46 and in 30 years I’ll be dead, and I won’t care if the Yankees win then,” said “Gino,” who spoke from a construction job in Manhattan.

Already, the man’s co-workers defaced his station wagon with Yankee slogans written in shoe polish.

Long a Yankee hater, the turncoat hatched his plan last August after refusing to set foot on the job out of spite.

One summer day, he placed a carefully folded jersey bearing the name and uniform number of David Ortiz, the slugging Red Sox designated hitter known as Big Papi, into the concrete mix being laid along the third base line.

“The reason why is George Steinbrenner told [Yankees GM Brian] Cashman to get Ortiz and Cashman told him, we don’t need him, We have [Jason] Giambi and Nick Johnson,” Gino boasted, referring to a chance the Yanks had to sign Ortiz in 2003.

“Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for All-State Insurance company to make more money,” he ranted. “Every ball thrown, I hope I have the last laugh. Red Sox Nation is alive and well.”

Two witnesses spotted the mason planting the shirt, which he wore to work that day, in the floor of the visitor’s locker room in front of the third-base line — not on the field.

But Gino was coy as to the exact location.

The Steinbrenners “don’t have enough money to [make me] tell you where it actually is,” he said.

The traitor said he’d been rooting for the Red Sox since the days of Jim Rice in the 1970s.

When he buried the jersey, this Benedict Arnold was making $88 an hour to do construction at the treasured site. And he documented the entire sabotage on his cellphone camera.

If you conveniently forget what your mama taught you about taking something for nothing, it’s easy enough to ride a bus for free:

For commuters outraged over never-ending fare hikes and double digit tolls on the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, a little known Metropolitan Transportation Authority rule — and the compassion of many bus drivers — lets you hop on any city bus and ride for free.

All it costs is your dignity.

The process is simple: Hop on a bus and try one of the following:

1. Tell the driver you forgot your wallet.

2. Tell the driver you have no change.

3. Just ignore the driver and sit down.

We tried the first two and saw the third happen often enough. It worked like a charm nearly every time.

If you’re worried that the other passengers will shoot a disapproving glance your way, don’t.

On almost every occasion, fellow commuters were too busy with their papers, iPods or just staring out the window to care.

And then there’s the old school uniform tactic:

A New Dorp teen and her mother have recently sued New York City Transit and bus driver Richard Benjamin for more than $22.1 million. They allege the burly Benjamin hit the girl with a metal garbage can on the street last year after they argued over her failure to produce a MetroCard moments earlier when she boarded an S78 bus.

The lawsuit, filed by Lisa Marie Thompson and her mother, Annette Nash, in state Supreme Court, St. George, seeks $20 million in punitive damages and more than $2.15 million in compensatory damages from Benjamin and Transit.

Miss Thompson alleges “serious, multiple and permanent” injuries to her hand and emotional and psychological harm.

A Transit spokesman declined comment on the suit; however, the agency previously contended the teen was the aggressor.

Miss Thompson, then 14, got on the bus on Hylan Boulevard at Ebbitts Street around 8:10 a.m. on June 5, according to an interview she gave the Advance later that day for an article on the incident. The freshman at St. John Villa Academy in Arrochar was headed to school.

Miss Thompson said she was wearing her school uniform — a white short-sleeve shirt with Villa’s initials and a tan skirt — and advised the driver she’d forgotten her MetroCard. She told the Advance that other operators had previously let her ride the bus “at least five or six” times without a MetroCard, and she walked toward some friends seated in the back.

Miss Thompson said school officials had told students that city bus drivers could not refuse them a ride on school days provided they wear their uniforms.

Manhattan’s Beacon School gets the full Michael Moore treatment from the Treasury Department:

The Beacon School’s field trips to Cuba have generated the interest of the Treasury Department, which is investigating a community group that may have organized the trips.

An official at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Dale Thompson, wrote to Pastors for Peace/Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization last year to request records and notify it that his office was “currently conducting a civil investigation of this matter.”

The group supports travel to Cuba, and participants in the Beacon School field trips say the group organized their travel to the communist country. The trips, at least some of which violated federal law, do not appear to have received authorization from top officials at the city’s Department of Education. They did, however, receive the written endorsement of at least two politicians, Lieutenant Governor David Patterson and Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Both later said they were unaware the trip was being undertaken in violation of the federal travel ban.

The city’s Department of Investigation is also looking into the field trips.

More importantly, do parents understand that the school recently performed “Urinetown”?

The West Village is so tame that arborcide qualifies as a major story:

With its cozy bakeries and candlelit restaurants, tree-lined Bedford St. is a picture-perfect piece of the West Village. But upon second glance, there is something missing. In front of 12 Bedford St. sits an empty tree pit. Home to a male gingko for nearly 20 years, all that remains is a dirt-covered stump and a yellow, laminated sign that reads:

R.I.P. Gingko Biloba 1985-2007

Shade Giver, Oxygen Provider, Friend to Humans and Even Dogs, A Good Tree

Died November 15, 2007

Victim of NYC Parks Department Arborcide

. . .

On Nov. 15, Stu Waldman and Livvie Mann were on their way out to an event at the Javits Center when Waldman noticed through their front window two people pruning their beloved tree. He and his wife had paid for it to be planted when they first moved to Bedford St. Having received no call ahead of time from the Parks Department, Waldman and Mann rushed out to find out who the pruners were and what exactly they were up to. Waldman said there was no indication on their uniforms that the man and woman worked for the Parks Department. But the pair of pruners said they were hired by the city to cut down the tree because it was cracked and posed a danger to local residents.

After a few minutes of arguing, the couple — hoping they had convinced the pruners to consult with their supervisor before going through with the job — left for their evening event. When they returned later that night, the tree was gone.

As they retold the story recently, they sat perched on their side-by-side sofa chairs, finishing each other’s sentences. When they came to the moment when they found the tree gone, they gazed wistfully out at the empty space where it once stood.

“We were upset, felt violated and lied to,” Mann said. “Everything about that tree represented years of work. It’s not easy to keep up a tree around here.”

. . .

The pair plan to take the issue to Community Board 2 or the City Council if they don’t get a response from 311 soon. Bob Gormley, C.B. 2 district manager, said the board is working on a number of initiatives to plant trees in empty tree pits in the neighborhood, but he was surprised to hear about this particular case.

All for the public good:

Moshe Zenwirth has been waiting since June for a bus that hasn’t come — and likely never will.

The Borough Park yeshiva administrator was slapped with a $115 ticket after he parked at a “bus stop” on 51st St. - even though the closest bus route is one block north.

Since the June 13 fine was issued, Zenwirth, 34, has appealed the decision, but has been stymied by two city administrative law judges, most recently in October.

“It upset me more the unfairness, the negligence, the stupidity than the money itself,” said Zenwirth.

“How did it go through two separate judges and nobody even bothered to look to see that there wasn’t even a bus that went by.”

Sure, the project is a lot less “sexy” but it at least provides some useful purpose:

There are many longstanding, seemingly intractable shortcomings in the city’s family court system that might delay a parent in getting a child back from foster care: unprepared lawyers, overcrowded dockets and long waiting lists for drug treatment and mental health services.

But Bronx Family Court has added a new obstacle: broken elevators.

For about a year, the elevators at the courthouse have been a disaster, people who work there say. Breakdowns have long been routine. This year, repair work has only added to the problem.

Lines to use a working elevator can stretch around the corner. People sometimes wait for hours to get to hearings, which are held on the seventh and eighth floors. Frequently, hearings have to be postponed because clients and witnesses cannot get to them.

“It’s absolutely an outrage,” says Ava Gutfriend, a lawyer who often represents parents in child welfare cases. “But in the Bronx it happens all the time.”

In some cases, warrants have even been issued for people who are downstairs waiting for an elevator; judges know only that they are not in the courtroom, said Bill Nicholas, the assistant attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s office at the court.

. . .

In a city full of aging towers, many people view elevator breakdowns as a common annoyance of life. But the scale of the waiting at Bronx Family Court, which often extends to an hour or more, is beyond what most New Yorkers face. And the potential loss is not simply that of time wasted, but of the quality of justice that is dispensed. Consider the case of a client of Ms. Gutfriend’s who was scheduled for a hearing in mid-November to determine whether she could get her daughter back from foster care, where the child had been for 10 months.

The hearing was set for 10 a.m., Ms. Gutfriend recalled, but it was a day when only two of the four elevators in the building were working. The lines to get on the elevator and up to the hearing rooms stretched back two city blocks. Her client phoned upstairs to let her know she was stuck in the line, but was not able to get upstairs in time.

The judge agreed to call the hearing again an hour later, but the client was still in line. So the judge, who had something like 70 other cases to try that day, rescheduled the no-shows for the next available date. For this mother, the next chance to plead her case and get her child back was in January.

*I don’t care if it’s a reductionist apples-oranges argument — this is horrifying.

Staten Islanders question the federal percent-for-art program — because when a project costs billions of dollars, it adds up:

Even as the MTA is raising tolls and tempers on Staten Island, it plans to spend as much as $4 million on art installations for the Second Avenue Subway.

Some Islanders may not know art, but all know what they want: Funds to be spent on sorely needed mass transit improvements here.

. . .

The federal government requires that one-half to 5 percent of a project’s budget be dedicated to art, said MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin.

“Art is one critical element of our stations program that has a considerable impact . . . for a small fraction of a project’s budget,” Soffin said. “We are at the lower end of the recommended guidelines, well below 1 percent.”

So it isn’t possible to eliminate the art requirement without risking the loss of the entire $1.3 billion federal contribution.

Mary DiChiara of Pleasant Plains was in no mood for explanations, “We can’t get off this Island and they put aside $4 million for artwork for Manhattan? Take the $4 million and fix this bridge.

“They think we’re living on Fantasy Island, and nobody ever wants or needs to get off.”

“Just once, I’d like to see everybody on Staten Island who works in Manhattan just stay home,” she concluded. “Then they’ll see.”

So not only do they explode and not only are they electrified but reports come out that they are in fact made with sweatshop labor:

Eight thousand miles from Manhattan, barefoot, shirtless, whip-thin men rippled with muscle were forging prosaic pieces of the urban jigsaw puzzle: manhole covers.

Seemingly impervious to the heat from the metal, the workers at one of West Bengal’s many foundries relied on strength and bare hands rather than machinery. Safety precautions were barely in evidence; just a few pairs of eye goggles were seen in use on a recent visit. The foundry, Shakti Industries in Haora, produces manhole covers for Con Edison and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, as well as for departments in New Orleans and Syracuse.

The scene was as spectacular as it was anachronistic: flames, sweat and liquid iron mixing in the smoke like something from the Middle Ages. That’s what attracted the interest of a photographer who often works for The New York Times — images that practically radiate heat and illustrate where New York’s manhole covers are born.

When officials at Con Edison — which buys a quarter of its manhole covers, roughly 2,750 a year, from India — were shown the pictures by the photographer, they said they were surprised.

“We were disturbed by the photos,” said Michael S. Clendenin, director of media relations with Con Edison. “We take worker safety very seriously,” he said.

. . .

“We can’t maintain the luxury of Europe and the United States, with all the boots and all that,” said Sunil Modi, director of Shakti Industries. He said, however, that the foundry never had accidents. He was concerned about the attention, afraid that contracts would be pulled and jobs lost.

New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection gets most of its sewer manhole covers from India. When asked in an e-mail message about the department’s source of covers, Mark Daly, director of communications for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, said that state law requires the city to buy the lowest-priced products available that fit its specifications.

. . .

The men making New York City’s manhole covers seemed proud of their work and pleased to be photographed doing it. The production manager at the Shakti Industries factory, A. Ahmed, was enthusiastic about the photographer’s visit, and gave a full tour of the facilities, stopping to measure the temperature of the molten metal — some 1,400 degrees Centigrade, or more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Get rid of one problem and take on another that will surely boost those sagging numbers:

New Yorkers going Christmas shopping online at Amazon.com will find an 8.375% surprise at the virtual cash register, courtesy of Governor Spitzer, who is moving aggressively to collect Internet sales taxes that have gone widely unenforced.

Under a new policy, major electronic retailers, such as Amazon.com, will be required to collect sales tax on all purchases from New York. The policy, based on a novel legal theory, could hasten the end of the Internet’s era as a duty-free marketplace if other states follow New York’s lead. With the policy, New York immediately took the lead among states that are seeking to tax online commerce.

“I’d say this puts us at the front,” one state tax official, who requested anonymity, told The New York Sun.

Having pledged not to raise taxes, Mr. Spitzer is increasingly scrounging for ways to close a projected $4.3 billion deficit next year. State officials estimate that this latest initiative, which goes into effect in December, will bring in about $100 million more each year, split between state and local government tax revenue. Statewide, the sales tax averages about 8%, although in New York City it is 8.375%.

. . .

When it comes to charging sales tax, e-retailers have been held to the same old standard that the U.S. Supreme Court set for mail-order vendors: The seller only needs to collect the tax on purchases in states where the vendor has a physical presence, such as a storefront or salesman. New York is saying that it has found a way around that obstacle to tax collection. Many e-retailers may have unwittingly lost their exemption because of the way they direct traffic to their Web sites, according to a tax memo recently released by the state’s tax department.

At issue is the “affiliate program” used by many e-retailers. Web site operators can provide a link to an e-retailer in return for a commission on any sale resulting from customers using the link. While the affiliate program may consist of little more than a non-descript advertisement on the computer screen, the tax consequences may be huge: New York state says it is the equivalent of having an instate salesperson.

“It’s just treating the affiliate the same way we would treat any other type of sales representative,” Mr. Spitzer’s budget director, Paul Francis, said in an interview.

The WTC insurance fund was meant to evade costly trials and out-of-control lawyers’ fees:

Lawyers and executives for the $1 billion World Trade Center insurance fund — who’ve already spent more than $100 million in overhead and legal fees — are also wining and dining with money meant for sick 9/11 responders, records show.

Invoices obtained by The Post show that high-paid lawyers and employees of the WTC Captive Insurance Co., a nonprofit governed by Mayor Bloomberg appointees, have tapped the federal fund for cocktails and gourmet dinners.

After a court hearing in Manhattan last year, when the city argued unsuccessfully to dismiss all claims by 9/11 responders, a top lawyer for the fund filed an expense report totaling $1,390 for “drinks and dinner.”

The June 23, 2006, tab submitted by Margaret Warner of the Washington, D.C., firm McDermott, Will & Emery included $138 for “cocktails” for six at Sir Harry’s, a plush bar inside the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. The dimly lit lounge, decorated with antique oil paintings, serves $8 Budweisers and highballs for $12 and up.

Warner billed another $342 to spend the night at the luxe Park Avenue hotel.

*But in doing so, mock them ruthlessly . . .

Oh, and by the way, about all that new parkland:

The Bloomberg administration has always claimed more parkland will be created by the new Yankee Stadium project, which swallowed the 102-year-old Macombs Dam Park.

In recent months, the city has upped the numbers, saying 27.6 acres of replacement parkland will be built here, a clear gain of several acres for the community.

Yet 45 percent of these new parks — or 12.5 acres — already exist, either as mapped parkland or, in one case, as a schoolyard. Two of the replacement fields will be more than a mile away.

The replacement plan’s reliance on existing park parcels was acknowledged by Parks Dept. spokesman Warner Johnston, but “just because property is mapped as parkland, or Parks property, does not mean that it is fully developed into a dedicated park,” he said.

“They’re passing off park land the public’s been using for at least 70 years,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates.

. . .

Johnston explained the city’s plan will “transform” similar park property surrounding Yankee Stadium. “The replacement parks will reconstruct the parkland with new amenities and landscaping,” he said. A new artificial turf field at the West Bronx Recreation Center, for example, will go down on what was an “empty lot.”

That lot is 1.2 miles uphill from the former Macombs Dam Park. A mile southeast of the old park, another acre of artificial turf is being installed on the asphalt playground of P.S. 29, built 45 years ago.

“They’re putting in artificial turf — that’s not replacing anything,” Croft said.

Earlier: That Was Fast.

As Lady Macbeth might say, “Unsex me here”:

A production of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” will replace a hip-hop festival next summer in a DUMBO venue controlled by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy — and organizers of the rap show believe that race played a role.

The Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival — which brought thousands of people and big-name rappers to the park-and-condo waterfront development site in 2006 and 2007 — had already scheduled its 2008 production for the weekend of June 22.

But organizers were shocked last month to discover that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy had given those days to St. Ann’s Warehouse to stage a Polish rendition of that Scottish play.

Festival organizers believe the move was racially motivated.

“Hip hop brings a lot more brown people to this neighborhood, and people who live here are not comfortable with it,” said Wes Jackson, whose Room Service Production founded the festival in 2005.

“[People have told me that residents say], ‘The festival should be in Commodore Barry Park between the projects and the BQE, not next to my $2.5-million condo.’”

Whether racially motivated or not, the rejection of the hip-hop festival sounds very much like the scenario long imagined by critics of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where condo and commercial development will finance greenspace along a 1.3-mile stretch from DUMBO to the foot of Atlantic Avenue. Opponents believe that public events will not be public at all, but subject to the whims of the wealthy condo-dwellers whose maintenance fees will pay for the park’s upkeep.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when someone gets “reassigned” during an investigation, now you know:

Just before 9 a.m., they file into large, sometimes windowless rooms.

In some cases, they punch time cards; in others, they scribble their names on a sign-in sheet.

They take their places in plastic chairs either grouped around tables or scattered haphazardly.

Some immediately pull out crossword puzzles or books. Some knit. Others hold golf-putting contests. One takes out his guitar and strums.

One day last week, another, wearing a leotard and tights, spread out on the floor and stretched before practicing ballet against a wall in a corner.

Nearby, gazing out a window, a man slowly fell asleep, his head in his hands.

It’s all in a day’s work on the city payroll.

For seven hours a day, five days a week, hundreds of Department of Education employees — who’ve been accused of wrongdoing ranging from buying a plant for a school against the principal’s wishes to inappropriately touching a student — do absolutely no work.

In an investigation inside the nine reassignment centers called “rubber rooms” where these employees are sent, The Post has learned that the number of salaried teachers sitting idly waiting for their cases to be heard has exploded to 757 this year — more than twice the number just two years ago — at a cost of about $40 million a year, based on the median teacher salary.

. . .

. . . [A]nother [rubber room attendant], an Army reservist who spent almost 3 1/2 years in a rubber room before he retired, begged to be able to go to Iraq instead of staying in DOE Siberia.

. . . to the MTA at least in a case of man versus machine:

The MTA can’t nickel-and-dime straphangers — but it has no problem taking their quarters.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged yesterday that one BIG reason it wants a 25-cent bus and subway hike is because its vending machines can dispense only dollar coins and quarters.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin defended the increase as fair and said upping it by a nickel or dime wouldn’t be enough.

“The limitations of technology would make a $2.10 fare extremely costly to implement and would provide a much poorer quality of service,” Soffin said.

. . .

Riders weren’t buying it.

“It’s an outrage,” said Anthony Thompson, a Queens engineer. “Our money is being spent because of a hardware defect?”

Recruiter Jisele Lazo, 22, of Queens, said: “It stinks. Why don’t they just leave it at $2? Why are they making it easier for the machines? There are far more commuters than machines.”

. . .

Soffin said smaller change would mean longer lines and riders being saddled with pockets full of silver.

He said the size of the fare hike was not unreasonable because the $2 base fair had remained steady since 2003.

A 25-cent jump would amount to a “cost-of-living” increase for the system, Soffin said.

A rider buying a single-ride ticket priced at $2.10 with a $5 bill would be carting away 11 quarters and three nickels, or 58 nickels, he pointed out.

The machines also would likely run out of change more quickly, have to be filled more often and likely need more frequent maintenance, he said.

Out-of-service machines would result in longer lines at token booths, he said, estimating the added costs to be millions of dollars.

You won’t find this in the Public Employee Press:

More than 400 city employees have been arrested this year, including a cop charged with murder, a garbage man who allegedly hired a hit man, and two female teachers accused of seducing their underage students.

The roster of rogues also includes a Department of Transportation worker who allegedly ripped off $142,000 by claiming he and his family all underwent brain surgery and a cop charged with being part of an Albanian gang that dealt coke and burglarized Long Island homes.

Now this is how you make your customers feel at home:

Bloumie Papalazalou initially believed that her car was stolen from the parking lot at Whitestone Shopping Center when, several months ago, she returned from Key Foods to find it missing.

“I go to buy some oil and then I come out and I said, ‘Where’s my car?’” she said.

As it turned out, Papalazalou’s car wasn’t stolen — it was towed for being illegally parked in one of the lot’s reserved spaces for employees.

Papalazalou said she was unaware that the section she parked in along the lot’s fence is for employees only. Following her mistake, she paid a fee of $162 to get her car back.

Now Papalazalou said she fears coming to the lot because of the tow trucks looming around the corner waiting to tow illegally parked cars, many of whose owners don’t know that they’re occupying reserved spots.

“I’m scared because I never know,” Papalazalou said.

Like they say, we all show our support in our own way:

Making double or triple their normal pay wasn’t enough for some greedy scabbies, who used the final day of the strike as an opportunity to rip off desperate New Yorkers and unsuspecting tourists.

Marketing executive Barbara Young said she was charged $20 for a trip from Lexington Avenue and 34th Street to Penn Station, double the $10 fare she should have paid under the emergency flat rates imposed by Mayor Bloomberg for the duration of the two-day hackout.

“I took the cab anyway because I had a lot to carry,” she said.

One cabby charged a tourist $100 for a ride from Kennedy Airport to Midtown, more than three times the $30 he should have charged, according to a doorman at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

Marco Segall said that despite hailing several cabs, he could not find one willing to charge him the $15 fare he should have paid under the temporary zoning plan.

One driver even asked him how much he wanted to pay.

“How much am I supposed to pay?” he said. “They’re racking it up, and they know it.”

. . .

Alliance leader Bhairavi Desai said that by taking a stand, she will gain new members and more clout against the city.

Bus drivers, UPS deliverymen, cyclists and pedestrians all said the streets were so much easier to navigate with fewer taxis on the road that they wished the strike would continue.

Some transportation experts said the strike provided New Yorkers a taste of what traffic might be like under congestion pricing.

The perv who got caught because of his website gets off on a technicality:

Five times last year, porn actor and registered sex offender Kenneth Hoyt allegedly exposed himself and started masturbating on Manhattan subways — once in front of two 16-year-old girls.

But the whole bundle of misdemeanor charges — including seven counts of public lewdness, one count of indecent exposure and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child — were dismissed by a criminal court judge last week.

The reason? Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office missed the legal deadline for bringing the Hell’s Kitchen perv to trial in a timely manner — by only four days.

ADA Amir Vonsover, who was the lead prosecutor on the case, conceded it was now too late to bring Hoyt to justice.

Hoyt left court smiling Thursday after his legal windfall. He declined to comment except to say he enjoyed the prospect of the District Attorney’s Office being embarrassed by their snafu.

“That’d be good,” he grinned.

When the story of who killed the Red Hook Ballfields is written it will turn out that we are all guilty:

Honduras Maya, a restaurant owned by one of the vendors that serves Latin American food on weekends at the Red Hook Ball Fields, was closed down by the Health Department this week after an inspection stemming from the city’s crackdown on the vendors.

The shutdown could merely be a taste of what’s to come if the 13 food vendors at the ball fields fail to meet strict health code requirements by this weekend. And the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation may not extend the vendors’ temporary permit — which officially expires after Labor Day — until the soccer season ends in late October, as earlier promised.

. . .

Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, said health inspectors are expected to start issuing fines — or shutting down vendors — this weekend for not meeting requirements like providing hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and preparing food in commercial kitchens rather than at home.

Suany Carcamo, the owner of Honduras Maya, has been operating a Honduran food stand specializing in baleadas at the ball fields for more than a decade. Fuentes said her restaurant was investigated by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a follow-up to a letter she submitted to prove that she was preparing her food for the stand in a city-certified commercial kitchen — her own restaurant.

The Park Slope restaurant received 122 violation points, compared to the citywide average of 14 points, according to the inspection report. Among the 20 violations listed were: missing Choking First Aid, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Wash Hands signs; evidence of flying insects and mice; toilet facility not maintained and provided with toilet paper; and wiping cloths dirty or not stored in proper sanitizing equipment.

The owners were not available for comment by press time. An employee, when reached by phone, confirmed that the restaurant had been shut down.

But Carcamo could be viewed as one of the lucky vendors. She is one of only two that also owns a restaurant, while many of the others are struggling to find a commercial or community kitchen certified by the Health Department where they can prepare their food.

“The report from my vendors is that it is basically very, very difficult to do,” said Fuentes. After word traveled that Honduras Maya was shut down, “a lot of people were denying vendors the use [of their facilities] out of fear that the Department of Health would enforce harshly.

“Anyone who doesn’t have that letter wouldn’t be allowed to sell,” he said.

(The vendors do nothing to conceal it, we visit there because we want to eat it, we blame the Health Department for being there, but we are all there . . .)

I guess it’s back to those old reliable subway churros for us . . .

That telescope you set up in the bay window is one thing (New York City astronomer . . . sure!) but now even idle gazing may get you in trouble, too*:

At one time or another, many New Yorkers unwittingly find themselves staring into the window of an adjacent building and spotting a neighbor in a state of undress. It’s almost unavoidable among the city’s close quarters and some might go so far as to call it a beloved pastime. But it may become illegal under new legislation before the City Council.

Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens is proposing to outlaw voyeurism by extending a state law that forbids non-consensual peeping with cameras to peeping with the naked eye.

In addition to targeting repeat offenders who crane their necks to peer under the dresses of women scampering up and down subway stairs, the legislation would also crack down on anyone caught staring into the window of a private bedroom or bathroom.

. . .

While the bill was designed to deal with repeat offenders who do their peeping in public, Mr. Vallone acknowledged that, “invariably, other situations are going to get caught up in this.”

Vallone of course is pretty proficient when it comes to devising constitutionally problematic legislation . . .

*And the first on the list will be these people . . .

As city officials stumble upon even more impressive ways to waste money (a $114,762 electricity bill for a building not even open, for example*), one of the better Leona Helmsley anecdotes is resurrected:

In 235 counts in state and federal indictments, the Helmsleys were accused of using money from their hotel and real estate empires to buy a $1 million marble dance floor above a swimming pool, a $210,000 mahogany card table and $500,000 worth of jade objets d’art. Mrs. Helmsley was also charged with defrauding Helmsley stockholders by receiving $83,333 a month in secret consulting fees.

Mr. Helmsley, then 80 and suffering deficiencies in reasoning and memory, was found mentally unfit to stand trial. As Mrs. Helmsley was tried, a series of prosecution witnesses described a spiteful, extravagant, foul-mouthed woman who terrified her underlings. In the most celebrated line of testimony, a former Helmsley housekeeper testified that Mrs. Helmsley had once told her, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

*They must not have gotten to the David Owens’ piece in last week’s New Yorker that refutes the argument for security lighting; maybe it’s still sitting next to the leaky toilet?

As a Sunday Styles piece, it’s a convenient way to mollify fickle offspring. In the hands of the New York Sun, it’s one of the most disturbing trends to hit our thoroughly debased culture:

For New Yorkers without the time, space, or willingness to commit to owning a dog, a new share program launching in Manhattan next month offers pets for rent.

Singles who don’t own pets but want excuses to chat up dog lovers at city parks, for example, can break the ice with Jackpot, a midnight-black Labrador retriever billed as a “happy dog who loves everyone,” who can be a best friend for a month, a week, or an hour.
While researchers tout the positive impact of spending time with pets, the rent-a-dog program, FlexPetz, is seen as a “shocking” development by veterinarians, dog trainers, and longtime pet owners. Veterinarians say renting out dogs could inflict permanent damage to their psyches, as multiple owners could muddle their understanding of loyalty.

“The whole point of having a dog is having a relationship,” a veterinarian and health director of the doggie day care center Biscuits & Bath, Deborah Sarfaty, said. “It’s not like wearing a piece of jewelry. Dogs get attached quickly and then it’s lifted away from them, which is cruel.”

. . .

FlexPetz members pay a monthly fee of $50, a “daily doggy time charge” of up to $40, and a yearly membership fee of $250. The dogs, most of which Ms. Cervantes and her team adopt from local shelters, are put through extensive training before they are sent into homes. Members also go through a rigorous screening process, Ms. Cervantes said. The dogs, most of which sleep at day care centers when they’re not working, can be delivered to a member’s home or office for $18 a trip.

Before you stiff the delivery guy again, here are some facts and items to consider:

Well, it turns out that we’re less generous at work than we are at home. Reportedly, while the average tip in the evening is from $3-$4, the average amount for a lunch delivery runs around $1-$2. Yep, that’s right, even on larger meals — or group orders that swell to $40 or more — we still only give two stinking bucks. Yeah, a few dig through pockets and wallets for change and give odd amounts, like $1.35 or $1.62, the delivery guys admitted. But it never reached the larger amounts of dinner.

At night, we tend to round off to a dollar amount. Here’s something to think about the next time you charge a meal: Although it’s illegal, a number of restaurants engage in the practice of deducting the credit card processing fee from a delivery guy’s tip (generally 2 to 3 percent of the sale). So, try to make those tips in cash.

Many of the guys told me that they’re paid just $20 for a six- to seven-hour shift (below the legally mandated minimum wage requirement), and average about $45 a night in tips. (Think about that the next time you fork over your change to those college kids at Starbucks who rack it up for just doing their cashier job — as well as getting paid above the minimum wage.) When I asked if they receive better tips during bad weather, Luis, who works in an Italian restaurant in the Village frowned and said, “Some people do tip more for bad weather, but not everyone. I don’t think they understand it’s hard to deliver food in the cold and when it rains. And even worse on bicycle. Nobody likes to go out in the rain or cold. Especially for many hours and carrying bags.”

. . .

They all agree that men are generally more generous than women, and that people who live in elevator buildings tend to tip more than those who live in walk-ups. One fellow said that he walked 10 blocks in the snow, then up three flights of stairs, and will often only get a dollar. Interestingly, they all claimed that they frequently get better tips from those who live within just a few blocks of the restaurant, over those who are further away.

Perhaps we should consider some kind of fair trade designation for the restaurant industry because it’s not only the hole-in-the-wall restaurants who mistreat delivery guys:

Ji D. You, a delivery man for the popular noodle eatery Republic, works 12-hour days, six days a week, and earns roughly $2.40 an hour without receiving overtime.

Though he’s been working this way for more than two years, You, along with seven other deliverymen, decided to take legal action — just as workers at Saigon Grill, Ollie’s Noodle Shop and Grill and Our Place have done recently.

They filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Republic, alleging wage violations.

. . .

[Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund legal director Kenneth Kimmerling] also alleged Republic kept false records of workers’ hours, underreporting them so it looked like the men were being paid minimum wage. They should earn $4.85 an hour, plus overtime before tips. “It’s not uncommon for anyone who violates minimum wage violation to keep records that are untrue,” Kimmerling added.

You complained of other substandard working conditions, such as having one restroom for roughly 70 employees, and, You said, if workers are caught in the patrons’ restroom, they’re fired.

“We often have no time to eat,” he said through a translator. “The place where we eat or wait for deliveries is in the basement storage room where the air circulation and ventilation is not good. The manager makes us hurry: Go, go, fast, fast.”

Republic declined to comment.

Time was, Columbia University owned massive amounts of Manhattan real estate, including multiple parcels in Lower Manhattan and the land on which that humble little development known as “Rockefeller Center” now sits. Today, the university club is forced to share facilities with — oh, the indignity! — Princeton:

The Columbia University Club of New York, consisting of roughly 2,000 members and open to all current students, faculty, and alumni, shares a building with the Princeton Club at 15 West 43rd St., while Harvard, Cornell, and Yale own buildings of their own nearby.

“We do not have our own clubhouse and the sense of identity that comes with a clubhouse,” said Young Alumni board member Michael Foss.

Walking past the Princeton-orange, rugged entryway, one walks into the Tiger-covered walls of a bar and grill decorated with Princeton paraphernalia, including napkins, cups, and accordingly attired waiters, leading to questions about what claim Columbia has to the building.

Tracy Chung, CC ‘08 and a student council presidential candidate of the REBEL CC party, said: “This is our city, and it’s ridiculous to share a clubhouse with Princeton. We need to establish Columbia’s identity outside of the immediate campus, and this needs to be a main concern.”

“We are anxious to increase the membership,” said Foss. “We believe that our strongest growth will come from recent graduates, but the club pursues and has new members join monthly, of all ages and schools.”

But the Princeton presence creates potential difficulties for recruiting new members. “The reason for sharing the address is mainly financial,” said John Celock, a member of the Board of Governors, a committee that runs the club.

Chung said that financial reasons shouldn’t force the club into its present situation. “In light of the capital campaign and a $4 billion budget, why is it that we can’t afford our own clubhouse?” Chung asked. “The intellectual environment that Columbia students spend years fostering during their studies deserves a rightful place outside of campus after graduation.” She later added: “Columbia pride! We need to make our clubhouse a priority.”

No doubt, that mighty intellectual environment deserves its own building:

With such speakers as the executive producer of Brokeback Mountain, the Teachers College admissions director, a former contestant on CBS’ Amazing Race, and University President Lee Bollinger, the club is host to many events open to members.

Emphasis added (snark factor: 7).

Auxiliary police officers — the kind killed by douchebag filmmakers — are left unprotected because the NYPD sent all its old bulletproof vests to Haiti:

They asked for Mace. They didn’t get it.

They hoped to receive the NYPD’s old bulletproof vests after the department switched to new body armor last year. They didn’t — the vests were instead shipped to Haiti’s police officers.

Now, after two auxiliary police officers were gunned down and killed in the line of duty, members of the part-time, volunteer force are hoping the city will rethink its position and provide them with better protection.

“Right now, if you’ve got a friend in the precinct who wants to give you an old vest, that’s how it’s done,” said John Hyland, president of the 4,800-member Auxiliary Police Benevolent Association. “The NYPD doesn’t provide the equipment.”

Hyland said his organization objected when the Police Department shipped thousands of old vests to Haiti last year after it issued officers new body armor.

The MTA decides that the Irish race is a little too fond of the drink:

Anticipating an inebriated crowd commuting into and out of Manhattan to celebrate the holiday along the parade route Saturday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s two commuter railroads, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, are banning alcohol from their property that day and into early Sunday, making the Roman Catholic feast day the sole religious holiday when bar cars are closed for business and stations and trains run dry.

“It definitely looks like stereotyping, and that’s what the MTA should be faulted for,” state Senator Martin Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn who is Irish, said. “Some people do get out of control, but to focus on that day, and on certain segments of the population like that, is totally wrongheaded.”

Mr. Golden said the MTA should lift what he dubbed a discriminatory liquor ban that assumes Irish revelers are more out of control than other groups when celebrating their holidays.

“We want to maintain orderly travel,” a spokeswoman for the Long Island Rail Road, Susan McGowan, said. “It’s a day when we have more ridership than usual, and when there can be disruptions related to alcohol.”

. . .

Metro-North railroad typically runs 16 bar cars out of Grand Central Terminal, and on weekdays sells alcohol on bar cars along the New Haven line. The Long Island Rail Road also sells alcohol at many of its station platforms and aboard its Hamptons-bound trains during the summer season. Both railroads allow passengers to bring their own alcohol aboard. This weekend, however, customers caught with open or closed containers of alcohol will be fined about $50.

Meanwhile, Manhattan bar employees have reacted favorably to the plan:

Even some diehard St. Patrick’s Day revelers said they see some logic to the MTA’s alcohol ban. “I’m not offended by it,” a bartender at Ryan’s Pub in the East Village, Steven Goldrick, said. “The train should be a good opportunity to take a rest from all of the drinking.”

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.

Good thing they’re all a bunch of illiterate black squirrels or more of them would have seen this cartoon in the New Yorker:

The New Yorker magazine is catching flak for publishing a cartoon that angry New Yorkers are calling a Polish joke.

The drawing by veteran cartoonist Bob Weber appeared in the Feb. 19 issue of the magazine and depicts two kids chatting at a bus stop with the caption, “My parents named me Zbigniew because they were drunk.”

Zbigniew is a traditional Polish name.

In the predominantly Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, some residents who had seen the cartoon were shocked.

“I’m assuming the person who drew this hates Polish people,” said Anna Doda, a music store owner who has been in the U.S. for 20 years.

“The people from different nations, they drink, they get drugs; so why did they make the joke about Polish people?”

. . .

The New Yorker sent a form response to readers who complained via e-mail, apologizing and claiming “the tacit assumption . . . is that the child is not of Polish origin.” The e-mail said the intended joke was that Zbigniew is an unusual name.

That was the explanation New Yorker editor David Remnick gave the Daily News.

“The heart of the joke is the difficulty in saying the name; there’s no ethnic slur,” he said, but when asked if the cartoon would have been published if it had featured an Asian or African name, Remnick responded, “I don’t know.”

Remnick should have explained that it was actually a deft jab at national security policy under President Carter. And that probably would have made more sense than obfuscating “tacit assumptions” . . .