Six paragraphs into the Post story about a lawsuit filed against Steiner Sports, the entity responsible for reselling collectibles from Old Yankee Stadium, for allegedly selling seats not as advertised, this detail sticks out in particular:

Back in May, when the sale of seats was announced, Steiner and the Yankees made no secret of the fact that all the original paint would have to be stripped because of lead. A new color, resembling the faded blue, was used to simulate their original appearance.

The Yankees really do want to kill you.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

“Cracks Emerge in Ramps at New Yankee Stadium”:

The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.

The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.

. . .

One person with knowledge of the matter said the cracks and deterioration were unusual.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

And don’t think he doesn’t make every effort to get to all five boroughs:

On Oct. 11, Bloomberg parachuted (not literally) into Morris Park for a brief march in the annual Columbus Day Parade. Thompson didn’t make it. Before the mayor jumped back into his black SUV, he was heckled by about a dozen protesters (and one dog) upset with the city’s opening (without community notification) of several new homeless shelters in the borough, according to reporter David Greene.

John Bonizio, of the Westchester Square Merchants Association, called Bloomberg a “traitor,” adding, “His coming up to this middle class neighborhood to march in a parade for votes is disrespecting us, with what he’s getting ready to do to this neighborhood.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

The mayor’s half-billion-dollar Million Trees initiative may be revenue-neutral after all:

A newly installed ‘no parking’ sign in front of the Tosca Marquis catering hall, located at 4034 E. Tremont Avenue, is difficult to see because a tree obscures it.

Many unwitting motorists are getting tickets because of the obscured sign in front of the hall designated as a no parking zone from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. There is no clear indication as to where this parking regulation ends on the street. The sign has only one arrow pointing north to the curb in front of the dining hall. The entire area is now designated for loading and unloading in what had formerly been two metered spots.

“The sign is obstructed by the tree, so I didn’t even notice it,” said a motorist named Milton, who was parking in front of the catering hall on Friday, October 9.

Die-hard Yankees fans turn down opportunity to purchase $380 ALDS tickets:

Some diehard Yankee fans were on line for 14 hours early Wednesday, waiting and hoping there’d be tickets available for game one of the playoffs when the doors opened.

. . .

Paul was on the line since 7 p.m. Wednesday night to be there for his beloved team, and he’s on a budget.

But when the doors finally opened, there was disappointment bordering on outrage when dozens of fans found out the cheapest tickets sold cost $380.

“I live right here in the neighborhood. I attended 34 games in the stadium this season, and I am not exactly rich,” said Paul. “I can’t go on line and pay an extra $25 surcharge.”

“Absolutely, something should be done for people in the neighborhood who were giving whole new life to the Yankees, but this is capitalism,” said Sam Soghar.

Fred Negron was the only one of the group who chose to buy the $380 ticket, but that’s because he just sold his house and had the cash.

For comparison’s sake, Phillies NLDS tickets are between $35 and $75.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees broke attendance records last year. This year, not so much:

With decreased capacity and a small percentage of extremely high ticket prices, the Yankees totaled just seven sellouts in the first year of their new stadium and experienced a 13% drop in attendance in 2009.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

After threatening to close the cookie factory where an extended strike took place, Stella d’Oro announces it is moving operations to Ohio:

The owners of Stella D’oro, the longtime Bronx Italian cookie and breadstick baker, said Wednesday they have sold the company — and its operations will be moving to Ohio by the end of the month.

Some 150 union and other plant workers will be out on the street.

Wow, a placard that lets you park anywhere, so cool:

A car sporting an official NYPD placard issued to cops blatantly blocked a fire hydrant yesterday in The Bronx — as a blaze broke out in the apartment building directly in front of it.

Instead of being able to hook up their hoses to the hydrant, frustrated firefighters had to rely on handheld fire extinguishers to put out the kitchen blaze that broke out on the top floor of a six-story building at 206 East 198th Street in Fordham.

. . .

The vehicle displayed parking credentials for Queens’ narcotics bureau.

A Post photographer trying to take a picture of the placard was forced to move away by cops.

“Couple becomes first to get married at new Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.”

Another possibility is that they’re just being more “efficient” by hanging out and waiting for every tiny infraction:

Merchants and drivers in Riverdale and Kingsbridge say an ongoing city ticket blitz is bad for business — but the NYPD denies that there’s a ticket blitz at all.

By the NYPD’s count, the numbers of parking tickets given out this year are down by a sizeable margin across the city and a considerable one in the Bronx, with 874,541 tickets issued so far, compared with 905,428 during the same period in 2008 — 122,055 of those in the Bronx compared with 136,926 during the same period last year.

How is it possible to reconcile what many people say they see on the streets with the police’s accounting? How do the numbers from the last two years match up with those over a longer period of time? A representative of the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner, Public Information says the police no longer have data from 2007, so they say there’s no way of knowing.

In the Bronx Supreme Court lobby. Not one, but two piles, no witnesses:

Authorities were disgusted to find two piles of human waste on the carpet in the lobby of Bronx Supreme Court around noon.

. . .

The incident immediately became part of the rich courthouse lore, taking its place among colorful tales of a woman who set dozens of toilet paper rolls on fire, a woman who stood at the entrance for days holding a spear and shield, and the visitor who tried to smuggle in a parrot.

Four years after eliminating 9 train “skip-stop” service, there are still reminders, making people wistful for the way things once were:

Four years after the line was banished from existence, veteran straphangers and subway novices alike have been puzzled by the re-appearance of the No. 9 sign at the entrance to the 242nd Street Station. Two stops away, at West 231st Street, a small yellow sign hanging above the track — emblazoned with the numbers 1 and 9 — also lends credence to the possibility that two trains still make the 14.7 mile trek from South Ferry to Van Cortlandt Park.

. . .

“Did they bring back the nine?” Frank Petrocelli, 56, wondered aloud as he emerged from the station Sunday. “I always liked the 9. Got me here quicker.”

Alas, New York City Transit squashed any dreams of a resurrection.

“I hope they don’t think the nine is coming back,” Deirdre Parker, spokeswoman for the agency, said of local riders. The downed vinyl covering will be reported to station workers, and the No. 9 emblem covered once again, she said. The same goes for the smaller sign at the 231st Street Station.

When told that the re-emergence of the No. 9 sign was simply a fluke, Mr. Petrocelli grew contemplative.

“Everything gets covered over at one time or another around here,” the construction worker said. “It makes it easy to forget the past.”

Bats, in the Bronx:

They began emerging from the darkest corners of Van Cortlandt Park a few weeks ago: dark, V-shaped, furry blurs, barely visible against the night sky. With a few effortless flaps of their wings, the creatures buzzed over Broadway at speeds faster than any local bird.

“What the heck was that?” David Moreno, 29, asked his girlfriend when he first saw the animals gliding high above the Parade Ground. Tracking their movements, he eventually realized what he was seeing. “Hon, I think those are bats. Could there be bats in the Bronx?”

The answer, city wildlife experts say, is yes. And now is the perfect time to glimpse the rarely seen, much mythologized creatures. Little brown bats — the most common type in the city — have been making daily flights above Broadway and the Van Cortlandt Mansion throughout July, freshly rested after a season of hibernation.

I don’t know which is more annoying — that an enterprising parking space hoarder discovered a way to prevent people from parking in a legal space or that parking enforcement cops are really this uninformed:

Motorists have been parking their cars for years in three spots between the Catherine Scott Promenade and Seashore Restaurant. Now, many have been slapped with tickets even though the Department of Transportation deemed a “No Standing” sign at the location bogus.

. . .

After seeing pictures of the “No Standing” sign which was attached to the utility pole with sheetrock screws, a DOT spokesman said that the sign would come down.

“This sign is illegally posted and it will be removed,” said DOT spokesman Montgomery Dean on July 17.

Those who have been utilizing the spots, many patrons of the Seashore Restaurant at 591 City Island Avenue, were shocked to receive $115 parking summonses.

“A bunch of retired and active police officers and I have been meeting in the Seashore Restaurant for years and using those spots, which can hold roughly three cars,” said City Island resident and retired NYPD lieutenant Bob DiMartini. “We were parking there because they were legal parking spaces.”

DiMartini said all of that changed when three people he knew received summonses for parking in the spaces.

“It is a real Department of Transportation sign,” DiMartini said, “but it does not belong on the pole.”

. . .

“It is the first restaurant when you come onto the island,” DeMartini stated. “They have their parking attendants put out cones to direct traffic, where the three spots are located.”

One way to cope with a labor ruling:

Last week, a federal judge ordered Stella D’oro to reinstate 134 workers after a protracted 10-month strike. This week, the company invited the workers back. It also announced that it would close the factory in October.

They’re interchangeable at this point.

The details don’t even matter anymore. All that counts is the City’s antiquated method of discretionary spending.

But when you have to cram in trees everywhere, there may be some resistance:

Some Mott Haven residents are fuming over city plans to plant trees on their block.

The problem, they say, is that the tree roots eventually crack their sidewalks, leaving them stuck with the repair bill.

“If they want a green Bronx, just look in our backyards,” said Marion Rivas of 434 E. 144th St. “We already have trees there. We don’t need them out in front.”

The trees are part of Mayor Bloomberg’s MillionTrees campaign to plant 1 million trees in the city by 2030.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is planning to plant 12 street trees along E. 144th St. between Brook and Willis Aves.

But residents there point to city trees planted across the street that already have ripped up their neighbors’ sidewalks.

“This used to be flat,” said Shawn Ramos, of 443 E. 144th St., pointing to his broken sidewalk. “I’ve seen people trip over this. If someone gets hurt, then we’re the ones in trouble.”

Residents on the south side of the street said it’s only a matter of time before the same thing happens to their sidewalks.

Homeowners also fear that because their sidewalk is 2-feet narrower, fully-grown trees will damage their homes, clog sewer drains and entangle power lines.

Most of all, they worry about footing the bill to fix inevitable upheavals in the sidewalks.

“I spent $1,200 fixing my sidewalk already, because it was old,” said Polivio Hernandez of 428 E. 144th St. “Now they want to put these trees here? What happens if, in a couple of years, the sidewalk is all destroyed again? I don’t want to spend more money.”

Parks officials did not respond directly to neighbors’ concerns about out-of-pocket expenses, instead saying that careful thought goes into each tree planting.

The market was not supporting face value and now it still isn’t, even for the vaunted Mets-Yankees subway series:

A year ago, it would have sounded absurd: blocks of tickets to the first Subway Series at new Yankee Stadium, available at face value on the Yankees’ Web site, a mere five days in advance.

But there they were as of Monday afternoon, and plenty of them.

Feel like taking nine very, very good friends to Friday night’s game against the Mets? The tickets were yours — 10 in Section 24B, Row 7 for a mere $900 apiece, plus a $23.45 “convenience charge.”

Ten in 24B also turned up at $900 per for Sunday. How about 10 in Section 28 at $525 apiece for Saturday?

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

You know, the one you keep getting phone calls about? It’s even got a 450-foot-long pedestrian bridge:

“For decades, residents of the South Bronx have sought rail service to increase their transportation options and limit the number of people who drive to Yankee’s games,” said Bloomberg. “Today, it has finally arrived. The new Yankee-E. 153rd Street MTA Metro-North Railroad station is the first railroad station open anywhere in the Bronx in decades.”

The new addition to the Hudson Line, a $ 91 million dollar project, began service to the public on Saturday, May 23, and will remain in operation 365 days a year.

A 450-foot-long, 25-foot-wide bridge will connect Bronxites and visitors to the new Yankee Stadium and parks currently under construction along the waterfront, being built as part of the City’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan.

Now that the World Trade Center has already been hit, we need to go for the second-best thing:

The four men arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization, the New York City police commissioner said Thursday.

The men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

. . .

[James] Cromitie, whose parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth, had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to do “something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.

Of course it takes years to build something when you’re excavating dirt by the teaspoonful:

While the Yankees scoop teaspoonfuls of dirt from their old stadium to sell for upwards of $80 each, the community that lost its parks to the new stadium are still waiting for a ballfield of their own.

With the demolition of the House that Ruth Built expected to take nearly a year and a half, it will be late 2010 before work can even begin on Heritage Field, the park to replace most of the ballfields swallowed up three years ago to make way for the $1.5 billion new Yankee Stadium.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

The cost of rebuilding the I-34W Bridge in Minneapolis was $234 million. The cost of rebuilding the dinky City Island Bridge in the Bronx has now risen to $120 million:

After several years of delays, planning and community opposition, the cost of replacing the 108-year-old City Island Bridge has risen to $120 million.

Back on Aug. 20, 2003 — when Mayor Bloomberg announced plans for a new high-tech bridge “as unique as the island itself” — the cost was estimated at $32 million.

The new bridge project has yet to get started, with the latest launch date now set for next year.

“What are they building, the Bridge on the River Kwai?” groaned Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), whose district includes the tiny, isolated community surrounded by Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay.

He and other critics of the city’s plans to build a “signature bridge,” with suspension cables evoking the island’s sailing past, said they’d be far happier with a cheaper remake of the current ugly-duckling span.

“We’ve been handed a bridge that we just hate,” said Barbara Dolensek, vice president of the City Island Historial Society and the Civic Association.

“They wanted something that would put their names on the map.”

And if you scare half the city by barricading yourself in a classroom, you get even better name recognition:

Apparently distraught over being removed from a school in the Bronx, a veteran teacher barricaded himself inside a classroom at the school on Friday morning, claiming that he had planted a bomb in the library and threatening to blow it up, the authorities said. About 1,200 students were evacuated, and within three hours, police officials escorted the teacher from the building and said his bomb claim had been false.

. . .

Mr. Garabitos’s bomb threat sent educators and police officers from the Emergency Services Unit scrambling to take precautions and assess the threat. The Police Department dispatched several officers, hostage negotiators and bomb squad technicians to the building, which also houses Junior High School 145 and the Urban Science Academy.

. . .

During negotiators’ talks with Mr. Garabitos while he was barricaded in the classroom, Mr. Browne said, he admitted that he had planted no bomb, but said he had undertaken a hunger strike over the way a disciplinary case against him had been handled. He also said he wanted to see the principal “ousted,” Mr. Browne said.

Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said that Mr. Garabitos called the city union’s central offices on Friday morning and asked to speak with Randi Weingarten, the president of the union. After he was told she was in Washington (she is also the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union based there), he later spoke to another union official who, with the guidance of police hostage negotiators, assured him that he would be safe and urged him to leave the building.

. . .

At a news conference on Friday afternoon, Ms. Weingarten, the union president, said: “No grievance is redressable in this way. We do not condone this behavior at all.”

She said that a list of concerns prepared by Mr. Garabitos was turned over to the Education Department by the union and that she hoped they would be addressed later.

I think they mean “50-foot” structure, not “500-foot” because that would be, like, huge, but point taken:

Once your eyes adjust to the scale of the New York City Panorama, it’s easy to spot Riverdale’s most familiar sights in all their miniature glory. The Whitehall Building, Van Cortlandt Mansion, and the 242nd Street Station rise up from a shrunken Bronx in the form of petite replicas.

But look toward Bell Tower Park in search of Riverdale’s best-known landmark and you’ll find nothing but a small, lonely white patch. The traffic circle is there, as are the trees and homes and highway that surround it. Yet the Bell Tower itself, a 500-foot structure cherished by residents, sightseers and historians alike, doesn’t exist in this alternate version of the city.

Urban planning czar Robert Moses and model-builder Raymond Lester may have taken painstaking care in creating the world’s largest urban panorama for the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens (now housed at the Queens Museum of Art), but when it came to Riverdale’s 79-year-old tower and World War I veteran’s memorial, also known as The Monument, the pair apparently didn’t sweat the details.

There are about 895,000 individual structures replicated in the panorama, 25,000 of which are New York landmarks like skyscrapers, museums and major churches. They are custom built with striking detail.

Countless smaller structures are represented with generic blocks of wood and plastic. But The Monument didn’t even get that. Does the museum plan to place a tiny tower on the barren spot?

“I’m not sure what went into the decision making in 1964, but we’d love to work with the folks in Riverdale to see if we can get it put on there,” said the museum’s director for external relations, David Strauss, adding that even though he’s from Queens, he knows exactly where the real Bell Tower is in Riverdale. “The fact that I know the exact spot speaks to the idea that maybe it should be on there.”

Location Scout: Bell Tower Park, The Panorama of the City of New York.

It’s simple:

With costs ballooning to replace two Bronx parks that were bulldozed for the new Yankee Stadium — the latest estimate is almost $195 million — the city’s Independent Budget Office said on Tuesday that more than $16 million of the higher expense “remains to be explained.”

The latest cost is almost $79 million over the 2005 estimate of $116 million, which itself was considerably more than the $96 million figure based on “conceptual designs” in an environmental impact statement using 2004 dollars.

The Yankees will be using their new $1.3 billion ballpark for opening day in April, but Little Leaguers, tennis players and picnickers are unlikely to have access to all eight replacement parks until the end of 2011, a year later than promised, the budget office said in a report.

Given that special elections are so complicated and prohibitively expensive, especially in this economically fraught time, we could just go a year without a Bronx Borough President. It might prove instructive:

The Bronx borough president’s chair is still warm, and the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club is trying to figure out who’s going to sit in it next.

The Riverdale-Kingsbridge-area political club hosted beep hopefuls Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera at a meeting last week. Both men explained their qualifications for current Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s job and didn’t debate directly, according to people who attended the meeting.

Ever since Mr. Carrión’s slip of the tongue at a speaking engagement at Yale last year, it’s been widely rumored that he will go to Washington, D.C. to head the Office of Urban Policy under President Barack Obama.

. . .

If Mr. Carrión leaves, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have to call a special election — but since no announcement has been made, Ben Franklin leaders have postponed any endorsement until their annual meeting at the end of this month.

I mean, it’s already the case that the Office of the Borough President has no real authority — a fact that even leads some legislators to look into the possibility of creating a sort of shadow borough presidency:

The leadership deal that resulted in the Democratic Party taking a majority in the state Senate for the first time in decades included a little discussed agreement that gave Riverdale and Kingsbridge lawmaker Pedro Espada Jr. leeway to lead a legislative coalition on Bronx economic development.

Mr. Espada describes it as “an active coordinating council that will really work to do the things that the borough president can’t do by statute.”

He says it will include the Bronx delegations to the City Council, Assembly, state Senate, and Congress, and will be funded by the state Senate’s Democratic majority. A spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith deferred questions about the plan’s details to Mr. Espada.

“Its ultimate goal and mantra would be to remove the designation of the poorest county in the state,” Mr. Espada said.

Borough presidents have a degree of oversight over all aspects of city government in their county, but long-term strategic planning for economic development is a special part of the job description. Mr. Espada has long coveted the borough presidency.

Among the policy ideas Mr. Espada has for the post is creating an authority, similar to the city’s Industrial Development Agency, to issue bonds for public works exclusively in the Bronx. The IDA issues bonds for big capital projects like Yankee Stadium — a controversial deal itself — and is overseen by the city Economic Development Corporation.

“Simply put, a borough president should have the bully pulpit, and that will continue to be their main job description,” Mr. Espada said. “They don’t really have any legislative authority.”

Riverdale and Kingsbridge politicians familiar with the deal aren’t sure why it’s been a stealth program. Mr. Smith’s office hasn’t made any official announcements about it and it’s still unclear whether the plan will stick.

It cheapens our sense of righteous indignation to say “Yankee Stadium Burdens Mayor’s Campaign” like it’s just a case of political posturing when the larger story is that much more egregious:

On Tuesday, the comptroller said the city had made a bad deal, a complaint that the mayor’s office dismissed as “political posturing.”

Without a doubt, politics is part of the invisible cost benefit analysis of the Yankees and Mets stadium deals — not only for those who now criticize them, like the comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., who approved them in 2006, but also for those few who champion them, like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Such political values may not turn up on any public balance sheet, but it would be unwise to ignore them simply because they are invisible.

Suppose you are Mr. Bloomberg, your hopes of becoming president or vice president all but vanished. You have to step down as mayor in 2009 because a law that you unequivocally supported says you only get two terms.

How handy, then, to have powerful allies, like the developer, Jerry I. Speyer and the lobbyist, Howard Rubenstein, to convince other influential people that term limits will deprive the city of an essential leader during an era of financial crisis.

Mr. Speyer is building Yankee Stadium. Mr. Rubenstein represents the Yankees. Their stated case for Mr. Bloomberg never rested on the mayor’s support for the stadium, but on his qualities as a manager and their view that he would be the most capable steward of the city during hard economic times.

Mr. Bloomberg not only abandoned his own emphatic support for term limits, but his own opposition to corporate welfare for professional sports. After canceling deals made by his predecessor, Mr. Bloomberg has gone on to subsidize the most expensive baseball stadiums in the country.

. . .

There is far more to building a stadium than simply its construction. To replace the 22 acres of parkland the city turned over to the Yankees, to build sewers and roads that will support the stadium, the city will spend $325 million — money that will be borrowed by the taxpayers, leaving that much less for other public projects.

With interest, that $325 million could come to $700 million, an aide to Mr. Thompson said. The city must also pay to tear down the old stadium, a cost now put at $27 million. It is contributing $39 million toward a new Metro North station. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is paying another $52 million.)

Both Mr. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Mr. Giuliani, even gave the Yankees and the Mets a $5 million annual rebate on rent the teams were paying to the city for their old stadiums — money that could have restored at least some music programs to public schools, but instead was turned back to the baseball teams for the explicit purpose of planning ballparks that the public is paying for.

. . .

The city is proud of the deal, officials say, because it will create “1,000 permanent new jobs.” If you scratch into the official filings, it turns out that there are actually only 22 new full-time jobs expected. The rest are seasonal positions — valuable, certainly, but only if they really exist.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

. . . because everyone on that street knows they only take them on Thursdays:

Police were searching for a killer Monday night after making a shocking find in the Bronx.

A building superintendent found a body stuffed in a plastic bag. He had been stabbed to death. It appears he was put out with the garbage.

No, we were kidding earlier! We didn’t think anyone would actually do it:

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and husband Pete Wentz welcomed a son Thursday night, according to a posting on his Web site.

Bronx Mowgli Wentz weighed 7 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 1/2 inches long.

“Ashlee, Pete and baby Bronx are all healthy and happy, and thank everyone for their well wishes!” a spokesman said, according to People magazine.

. . .

The Web site says Mowgli is a character who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling’s short story “In the Rukh” and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in “The Jungle Book.”