SJP apologizes for single-handedly making parts of New York City unaffordable:

“I don’t know if you do this with your husband,” Parker says. “But say one of us is walking down the street, I’ll call him and say, ‘You know, the laundromat is closed!’ And he’ll say, ‘What?’ I’ll be like, ‘The laundromat at 11th and West 4th Street is closed!’”

Parker and Broderick keep a running count of these changes, a mutual mourning for the transformation of their neighborhood into a luxe, tree-lined shopping mall. She knows this sounds absurd coming from her, that people blame Sex and the City for the ruination of the West Village; even Broderick says, “That’s your fault!” when he sees a thong poking up from low-slung jeans, and her close friend John Benjamin Hickey, an actor, longs for the days before “those girls on buses.” Parker clarifies that she doesn’t want to sound like Madonna bemoaning what’s happened to New York: It’s not that there’s no “creative energy” in the air, it’s simply been priced out of this particular borough.

Still, she says, her New York, like that of many New Yorkers, is one that is no longer quite there. “You know, when I arrived in the city in 1976, New York was financially a wreck,” she remembers. “But to me it’s the New York that Matthew and I literally try to find every day of our lives. It was the best place in the world. It was literature. It promised everything. And for someone who loved food and smells and stimulation, who was rocked to sleep by the sound of taxis — well, there’s just so much money now, and the city is so affluent, and all the colors, all the shops, the look of a street from block to block is just terribly absent of distinguishing coffee shops, bodegas. All of that stuff that made it possible to live in New York is gone.” Even Brooklyn is “very chic” now, she adds. “I guess there are places in Queens that are affordable.”

Today’s essay topic, gentrification in 50 words or less:

The rezoning would remake 125th Street, one of the city’s liveliest streets — and home to many small businesses like clothing stores, pawn shops and hair salons — into a regional business hub with office towers and more than 2,000 new market-rate condominiums.

The plight of the self-consciously trendy is they’re always a step or two behind:

The promise of learning the cold, hard realities of today’s housing market is what brought more than a dozen skinny-jean-wearing, tattoo-sporting members of Williamsburg’s art and music scene to Hugs bar last month to attend [real estate agent Eve] Levine’s first “Hipster Mortgage Night.”

It’s the latest version of a marketing campaign Levin first began as mere barroom lectures.

“There is so much information people just don’t know,” said Levine, a musician and artist herself who created the event not only as a tool for marketing her own business, but also a means of supplying financial and home buying know-how to a group of people she bluntly describes as “the opposite of Wall Street.”

Members of that group, frankly, agree with that assessment.

“Figuring out how to buy a home in New York City is like climbing Mount Everest,” said Margaret Raimondi, who attended the event with her fiancé, Brad Augustine.

“Hopefully, ‘Hipster Mortgage Night’ will make it more like climbing Mount Rainier,” she added, referring to the much-shorter mountain in Washington State.

All your venues belong to us now that “Downtown has moved to Queens”:

Robert Prichard hopes to illuminate Long Island City with some emphatic Times Square-style signage.

“I’d like it to be visible from the 59th Street Bridge,” he said. “First, it flashes ‘Queens,’ then ‘Bridge,’ then ‘Theater,’ and then ‘Queensbridge Theater.’ And then maybe an arrow that lights up and points down to our loading dock.”

Mr. Prichard, 52, has long had a flair for the dramatic. This is the same guy, after all, who nearly a decade ago led a conga line up Avenue A in protest of the city’s antiquated cabaret laws.

Nowadays, he’s participating in a perhaps farther-reaching kind of procession — the ongoing exodus of artists, musicians and other creative types abandoning Manhattan in droves.

Adopting the slogan “Downtown Has Moved to Queens,” the former Lower East Side stalwart is partnering with developer Michael Waldman to open what he called a “rock ‘n’ roll supper club, similar to a Bowery Ballroom or a Mercury Lounge with a restaurant — a first for Long Island City, a first for Queens.”

Scheduled to open this summer, the 5,000-square-foot Queensbridge Theater, located at 37-31 10th Street, may be somewhat unique in concept. (After the nighttime entertainment ends at 4 a.m., the proprietors intend to open back up just three hours later for breakfast, with homemade bread baked fresh on the premises.)

Bwahahahaha!

Better to decamp to Jackson, Prospect or even Morris Heights than whoring every detail of your life for clicks, according to the person who started it all (by portraying someone who started it all):

Budding Carrie Bradshaws better think about moving to Queens, says “Sex and the City” icon Sarah Jessica Parker.

Manhattan is bracing for another influx of Blahnik-wearing career girls after the film is released May 30. But New York is “a really hard city, and it’s very expensive and it’s not what it used to be,” Parker told me at the Cinema Society and Linda Wells’ screening of her new film, “Smart People.”

“That’s why the outer boroughs are so desirable,” she said. “The outer boroughs are pretty sexy. It’s just a matter of time before they have their own shows.”

Well, it’s a good thing they rushed to tear down all those people’s homes:

The slowing economy, weighed down by a widening credit crisis, is likely to delay the signature office tower and three residential buildings at the heart of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the developer said.

“It may hold up the office building,” the developer, Bruce C. Ratner, said in a recent interview. “And the bond market may slow the pace of the residential buildings.”

Mr. Ratner, chief executive of Forest City Ratner, did not specify the kinds of delays possible, but suggested that construction could be put off for years. His comments are his first public indication that the darkening economy has slowed the ambitious project, spanning 22 acres at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.

The developer did say he was confident about starting construction on a $950 million basketball arena for the Nets by the end of the year. The arena was to be surrounded by the office tower, known as Miss Brooklyn, and three residential buildings in the first phase of the project.

But Mr. Ratner has yet to secure an anchor tenant for the Miss Brooklyn building, and now plans to phase in the residential buildings slowly.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

The complaints about Water Taxi Beach, the Hipster Guantanamo temporary-ish waterfront attraction that was established a couple of summers ago in a desolate corner of Long Island City, seem to be coming from the restaurant across the street. You don’t say:

Despite the official and popular support it has gained, at the request of the owner of Water Taxi Beach, a special meeting was held in early March to air and answer charges that the ferry terminal and summer resort on the shore of the East River in Long Island City is a public nuisance. The charges, dealing mainly with drunken and disorderly behavior, are so strong they threaten the continued life of Water Taxi Beach during the summer months.

. . .

. . . detractors said, when the sun goes down on summer weekends, trouble begins, particularly toward and into the early morning. An alleged source of disruption is P.S. 1, the Museum for Contemporary Art, which holds weekend events in its yard on Jackson Avenue. When they are concluded, according to this version of events, many of the celebrants go looking for further alcoholic consumption down at Water Taxi Beach and other places in Hunters Point. WTB gets the main share of attention because it can handle hundreds of persons at a time.

The complaints came mainly from workers at the Waterfront Crabhouse, at 51st Avenue and 2nd Street. They said that many persons, several of them barely qualified to drink legally, come up from the beach and into the restaurant to use the restrooms or to continue drinking. If refused service or told the restrooms are for patrons only, they often become obstreperous and present a problem for Crabhouse security personnel, the restaurant’s workers, mainly women, told the meeting. One of them said she has endured incidents where young drinkers have come toward the restaurant “in droves” and yelled insults she described as “extremely vile” at her. She related being on a smoke break one night when one inebriated man tried to relieve himself in her ashtray.

. . .

[Water Taxi Beach owner Tom] Fox had a few things to say, both in his defense and about changing the situation. He admitted it was bad, though not as dire as his critics believed it was. He said he would move up last call on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 4 a.m. to 2 a.m. and have the place closed and dark by 3 a.m.

Location Scout: Water Taxi Beach.

Ah, how I’ve missed hearing the mellifluous combination of “Uncle Tom” and “sellout”:

Amid shouts of “Uncle Tom” and “sellout,” the City Planning Commission yesterday approved a controversial rezoning plan for 125th Street that would create condos, more performing-arts space and a 21-story office tower with such tony tenants as Major League Baseball.

The plan was approved 11-2 and now goes to the City Council.

When the vote was over, opponents booed and Michael Henry Adams, an architectural historian and author of “Harlem Lost & Found,” began a diatribe against the commission’s chairwoman, Amanda Burden.

“You’re a rich, rich, rich horrible person. You’re destroying our communities. You’re a rich, rich socialite. You’re a rich, rich socialite. How dare you! You’re destroying Harlem. You’re getting rid of all the black people,” he screamed.

He was ejected.

Earlier: All Bloomberg Needs Now Is To Give Kanye An Opportunity To Say That He Doesn’t Care About Black People.

. . . and then attack:

Tyrus, a 7-year-old, 60-pound female pit bull who lives in Apartment 708 in the former Olcott Hotel at 27 W. 72nd St., has run up a $90,000 tab, the building’s residents charges.

The condo is suing her owner for the amount, accusing Tyrus of chasing tenants, defecating in the halls, nearly killing a Pomeranian, and mauling several other pets.

Neighbors call the dog a “lunatic” who stalks the halls, leaving residents and management of the Upper West Side condo terrified.

They claim the owner never walks her but instead lets her out alone in the hall, where she goes to the bathroom and roams free.

“Every time I enter or exit my apartment, I am fearful that the dog in Unit 708 will be loose . . . or will attack,” wrote a neighbor as part of the suit filed late last month in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The owners of Pumpkin, a 4-pound Pomeranian, said they were walking in the seventh-floor hallway on Jan. 31, when Tyrus leapt through of an ajar apartment door and lunged at them.

“She knocked me to the ground and started eating my dogs,” said Elisa Schindler, who along with her boyfriend, Larry Frankel, was with Pumpkin and two other Pomeranians, Sugarplum and Marshmallow.

Frankel threw his jacket over Tyrus. But, he said, the attack stopped only after a visitor came out of Apartment 708, grabbed the pit bull and went back inside without a word.

Blood and fur coated the corridor after the attack, Schindler said. It took three surgeries and about 100 sutures to save the nearly eviscerated Pumpkin.

“I would have been mauled, except my boyfriend pulled me into my apartment and wouldn’t let me save my dog,” Schindler said.

The couple called 911, and responding cops hauled the visitor out in handcuffs. He was charged with possession of cocaine, a police report said.

With any luck, this should make that ridiculous VP talk go away as well:

The street may not be much to look at now, say people who grew up in Harlem during the 1950s and 1960s, but back then, 125th Street seemed like the bustling center of the world.

At Moore’s book shop, a lawyer named Thurgood Marshall was often seen browsing through volumes of African-American history, while at the corner of Lenox Avenue, Malcolm X could be heard proselytizing as a young boxer named Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, listened intently among the crowd.

Up the street, Aretha Franklin or Stevie Wonder performed periodically at the Apollo Theater, and Fidel Castro once conferred with Nikita Khrushchev over lunch at the Hotel Theresa. Blumstein’s may not have been Macy’s, but it did have black mannequins and, at Christmastime, a black Santa Claus.

The street has long been in decline, though national chain stores like Starbucks have taken an interest in it more recently. Now the Bloomberg administration has proposed the most sweeping zoning changes for the street since 1961, when there was a citywide rezoning and 125th Street was at the heart of African-American cultural life.

The rezoning, which is expected to be approved by the city’s Planning Commission in the coming weeks, is part of package of city plans that call for the thoroughfare to be transformed from a low-rise boulevard lined with businesses like hair salons and buffet-style soul food restaurants into a regional business hub with office towers as high as 29 stories and more than 2,000 new market-rate condominium apartments, as well as hotels, bookstores, art galleries and nightclubs.

The corridor between 124th and 126th Streets from Broadway to Second Avenue would be rezoned, which could ultimately force out more than 70 small businesses and their 975 workers and might lead to the razing of some of the street’s century-old buildings.

. . .

“This would be signing Harlem’s death warrant,” said Craig Schley, executive director of a group called VOTE People, which opposes the rezoning. “It is part of the continuing ‘Katrina-fication’ of Harlem, carried out with a pen instead of a hurricane. They intend to remove people in this area, plain and simple.”

The neighborhood gets less divey:

On a recent Friday at Sophie’s bar in the East Village, owner Bob Corton sat on a corner barstool like any other of the wizened patrons he’s served for more than two decades. He reminisced about 21 years spent inside his decidedly unrefined dive with the customers that became his closest confidants.

Corton, 54, who opened Sophie’s in 1986, and later the nearby Mona’s in 1989, can trace the evolution of the neighborhood as it played out in his rough-hewn saloon: from the early days when the art community thrived in the low-rent district shared with indigent drug users, to the present day where a predominance of swanky lounges has reduced his unmarked hole in the wall to another blip on the grid of nightlife destinations.

But to anyone who spent time at either of the well-worn watering holes — which Corton announced last month would likely shutter due to his ailing health — the bars posses a mythical quality wrought by waves of well-lubricated patrons who found solace inside the shabby spaces. The regulars spin tales of mirth no doubt emboldened by the heavy flow of whiskey and beer, but no less poignant given the setting. Now, for these two muses of the Downtown drinking class, the stories might be the only thing Sophie’s and Mona’s have left to save.

. . .

Jeff, a holdover from the neighborhood’s heyday who still sported long, gray hair from beneath his woolen cap, struck an even more plaintive note about the new East Village.

“We won’t be able to go anywhere. . . . It’s just the last peg of a dying neighborhood,” said the Sophie’s fixture, who’s been coming for “a couple of years, or a couple of hundred” but declined to give his last name. “This place is like a church for drunks.”

The pints still pour amid gossip over the bars’ future, giving regulars a chance to eulogize their hangout with the imminent sale. It’s where barflies named Jimmy Tokens, Johnny Red, Caveman and Degenerate John took up years of residency on the tattered barstools, earning renown for their eccentric character traits.

Caveman, described as a large, brutish man with full beard, famously slugged pitchers of beer at a time — drinking directly from the source instead of a glass. Degenerate John, a postman who had a history of back injuries, regularly extended his own brand of chivalry by greeting all women patrons with the offer to “sit on my face.”

There’s a new transparency in police investigations these days:

Since Thanksgiving week, a luxurious sport utility vehicle disfigured by bullet holes has been blocking a bus stop on Union Street in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, several local residents and store owners said.

The driver’s side seats of the Audi Q7 are draped with black and yellow plastic, the rear window is shattered, and it appears that some dried blood is on the back seat. The four bullet holes on the driver’s side back door are marked with police evidence labels.

“Something like this doesn’t make residents feel safe,” Nate Shaw, 38, who had previously noticed the vehicle while walking with his 4-year-old daughter, said. “My two sons would probably think it’s cool, but I think having to explain it got shot up would be worrisome,” a 40-year-old carpenter from Carroll Gardens, Greg Paul, said. “Why doesn’t the police department have more space to store shot vehicles?”

. . .

“An officer drove it into the spot and it has been there for at least two weeks,” the manager of Francesco Pizzeria, which has large windows facing onto the street where the car is parked, Anthony Caravello, said.

The vehicle was confiscated in connection with a homicide investigation, police said.

On October 6, an unknown number of suspects riding in the Audi shot at Andre Garcia in front of 66 Sullivan St. in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, which shares a police precinct with Carroll Gardens.

Garcia, 24, who was shot multiple times in the stomach, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Opposition is organizing in and around Queens’ Iron Triangle in the next great eminent domain battle:

. . . 10 businesses have taken a stand and formed the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, intent on fighting tooth and nail for their rights.

The City plans to relocate all the businesses from the area adjacent to Shea Stadium and start fresh with 5,500 residential units, 1.7 million square feet of retail and entertainment space, nearly 1 million square feet of office and convention center space, a 650-pupil school, a hotel, a park and eight acres of green space.

This is the last thing Dan Feinstein, of Feinstein Steel Works, wants to see happen.

“We’ll use every means under the law to protect ourselves,” he said. “We’ll do whatever we have to, to make sure the city doesn’t screw us.”

This City has said on record that it is looking out for the Willets Point businesses and is in negotiations to relocate them. However, Daniel Sambucci Jr., of Sambucci Bros. Salvage Yards, said this is misleading.

“We’ve had meetings and they’ve shown me properties for $40 million,” he said. “But the city doesn’t own the property and they don’t know how they’re going to get it.”

Sambucci said he is worried there is not enough property in the city zoned for heavy industrial to accommodate all the businesses.

“They don’t have a final development plan, a developer — they don’t know how much it’s going to cost and they don’t know where they can move us,” he said.

. . .

In 1991, a study conducted by the City’s Economic Development Corporation found Willets Point would flourish once sewers and basic services were provided, however, this has yet to happen.

“This place would look completely different by now if they had done what the study suggested,” Dan Scully, of Tully Environmental, said. “But [former Borough President] Claire Shulman ignored it.”

Anthony J. Fodera, president Fodera Foods, said the problems of Willets Point is a story of purposeful neglect.

“We call the police or 311 and once we tell them were we are they say ‘oh you’re in that area,’ and never come,” he said.

Feinstein said the business owners are not so stubborn that they would impede the public good but the redevelopment plans do not serve the public good more than his company does.

“If they were planning on building an airport or needed a state highway here, we’re not happy but we understand,” he said. “But don’t say you don’t like my house and your friend’s going to build another one.”

*But most parents don’t — and that’s saying nothing of the idea of staying at a hotel in the flightpath, or attending a concert in the flightpath (is any soundproofing that good?), much less actually living in the flightpath.

Backstory: “Trendy” Willets Point?; Willets Point Junkyards Threatened!; If By “Vibrant And Attractive New Urban Community” You Mean A Superfund Site In A Flood Plain In The Flight Path To LaGuardia, Then I’m Right There With Ya!; First You Tap That Ass, Then You Tax It; Don’t Worry — That’s Just 20 Minutes Of War In Iraq.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.

. . . so the knish gets gentrified:

They may say potato is king at Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, but it is starting to get some competition from nontraditional ingredients.

While the bakery is still firmly devoted to its original savory and sweet cheese knishes, special knishes periodically appear on the menu that reflect the neighborhood’s changing tastes and demographics. As the knishery moves closer to its centennial in 2010, it now caters to a number of distinct crowds: the traditional knish lover who grew up on them; tourists who don’t know what a knish is; and a newer, younger generation that may not necessarily have had knishes before or know they are supposed to be eaten with a dollop of mustard.

With these varied groups in mind, Yonah Schimmel now produces special knishes, including jalapeno and cheddar, salmon and pizza — and even pumpkin-raisin in October and November.

“It tastes like pumpkin pie,” employee Dane Lepson said of the pumpkin-raisin knish.

“I invent lots of new ones,” Lepson said. “Do you know what the next knish is going to be?”

“Ice cream?” manager Alex Wolfman joked.

“Spinach and feta,” Lepson said.

This is a far cry from the knishes Yonah Schimmel himself made when he opened the store in 1910.

Definitely something all New Yorkers can take pride in — a bunch of upscale chainstores drove up rents and turned Fifth Avenue into one giant overvalued loss leader for retailers:

Rodeo Drive? Puh-leeze!

The country’s far-and-away leader in elite retail remains Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, by a $7 million mile.

Real-estate firm Colliers International ranked the most expensive shopping streets in the United States by price paid per square foot, and Fifth Avenue took top honors, with an average rent of $1,350.

Rodeo Drive, by comparison, ranked third with a relatively bargain-basement price of $480 per square foot.

“Retailers, and in particular luxury retailers, continue to desire prime street-front locations,” said Ross Moore, senior vice president at Colliers.

And more than anywhere else in the country, “prime” means Fifth Avenue.

“Fifth Avenue is iconic. It’s synonymous with fashion and shopping,” said Tiffany Townsend, communications director at the city’s marketing organization, NYC & Company.

. . .

The influx of such global brands as Apple, Hugo Boss and others has dramatically driven up prices along Fifth, rising from an average of just $1,000 a year ago.

Gucci last year agreed to a record retail price of $1,500 per square foot for the right to bring back their flagship store to The Trump Building.

“Fifth Avenue is by far the greatest retail street not just in the nation but, in my opinion, the world,” said Stephen Siegel, chairman of Global Brokerage at CB Richard Ellis, who brokered the Gucci deal.

. . .

Fifth Avenue, however, just misses being the priciest stretch on Earth, with London’s Old Bond Street taking the top spot at $1,400.

Only in New York will thousands of “settlers” “homestead” a “neighborhood” years before even basic infrastructure needs are met:

The settlers of a neighborhood called Queens West do not exactly have to plow the earth for their sustenance, but they do have to lug their groceries in from Manhattan or Brooklyn, often on crowded subway cars. Many just buy their groceries online.

There is no supermarket in Queens West, the name used by real estate agents and residents of this luxury community rising in the borough’s Hunters Point section, and the selection at nearby convenience stores is limited and pricey.

So in an oft-repeated daily ritual, a white truck stamped with a FreshDirect logo arrives at the doorstep of a high-rise building. A deliveryman hops out to unload box upon box of veggies, cold cuts, cereal and more. The truck is then off to the next multimillion-dollar high-rise.

This fading industrial sector may be experiencing a renewed vitality because of its perch across the East River from Midtown, but its renaissance is at a quirky phase: The influx of residents is outpacing the goods and services that make a neighborhood. It is a car without an engine, a cup of ramen noodles awaiting a splash of hot water.

FreshDirect, the online grocery delivery company whose headquarters are near Queens West, has therefore become essential since it began service to the community in August 2005. But the community’s point-and-click culture faces a drastic — and for some, welcome — change early next year.

Rockrose Development Corporation, one of the major developers in the area, recently signed an agreement with the Amish Market to open a 21,000-square-foot store on the ground floor of one of its buildings. The supermarket, along with a Duane Reade drugstore, is expected to open early next year, signs that Queens West could be maturing from a settlement to a community.

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.

More pining for the bad old days:

It opened in 1916 as a vaudeville theater called the Ideal and closed a few weeks ago as the Playpen, a seedy porno emporium on the ragged rim of Times Square. It now faces the wrecking ball despite a last-minute attempt to rescue it.

With few theaters dating from the early 20th century still in existence, one of Gotham’s oldest “shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of progress,” said Michael Perlman, a self-appointed preservationist who wants to keep the building’s Beaux Art facade — with its curved central arch, pilasters, statues and other ornate features — by incorporating it into a new building, or moving it to another location.

This is a “culturally and architecturally significant structure, and we hope to preserve this gem for future generations,” he said.

. . .

. . . [T]here appears little or no chance of [saving] the Playpen, which was doomed when partners headed by Tishman Realty Corp. acquired the property on 8th Avenue at 44th Street in July, reportedly for a new high-rise building. The group said Thursday it was “currently exploring development options.”

Unlike other historic theaters in the area that have been saved and renovated, the Playpen was never given official landmark status that would prevent its being destroyed.

“We gave it the old college try,” said Anna Levin, who chairs the local community board’s land use committee. “This was looked at three times but we were completely rebuffed by the City Planning Commission.”

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission also studied the issue and decided the building “did not meet three necessary criteria — architectural features, history and cultural contributions to the city,” said the agency’s spokeswoman, Lisi DeBourbon.

Earlier: Landmarks Body Considers Topless Bar — remember, three and it’s a trend!

Then again, Dan Doctoroff’s big reshape-the-untamed-city-like-Robert-Moses moment was always really more about getting rid of those pesky downmarket nail salons*:

The City Council overwhelmingly passed the largest rezoning in New York City’s history Monday, voting to radically reshape Jamaica in eastern Queens.

The 368-block plan, which spans across four councilmembers’ districts, allows for hotels and office towers in downtown Jamaica, permits six-story buildings along Hillside Avenue and restricts development in some residential areas.

“To have the biggest rezoning in the history of the city not be in Manhattan but be in Queens sends an important message,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a major backer, along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of the new rules.

. . .

Supporters of the rezoning hope to transform Jamaica into a transportation and retail hub, taking advantage of its close proximity to the AirTrain and the Long Island Rail Road.

The neighborhood was once the city’s fourth largest shopping district, but has been transformed during the past three decades into vacant strip malls, discount stores, and nail salons.

*Or are nail salons not entrepreneurial enough for you?

An elegy for the Balloon Water Race Game. Long live the Balloon Water Race Game:

Astroland completed another season yesterday, but its flashy neon lights may never again brighten the boardwalk.

Last November, Carol and Jerome Albert, whose family has owned Astroland since it opened in 1962, sold the property for an undisclosed price to a developer, Thor Equities. The developer plans to erect a new park, hotel, restaurants and time-share units on 10 acres of land between West 10th and West 15th Streets and south of Surf Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood; Astroland occupies about one-third of that area.

The Cyclone, the wooden roller coaster, which is part of Astroland, has been an official city landmark since 1988 and therefore is not in danger of being destroyed for the project.

The project could be completed by 2011, but it cannot start until the city approves a zoning change, a process that is likely to be long and hotly contested, since many local residents are opposed to the construction of tall, high-density structures at the beachfront spot. Most of the area is now zoned for entertainment use.

City officials have also voiced concern about the proposal. Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said in an interview that “high-density residential is not appropriate for the core entertainment or amusement district.”

“The main goal of the rezoning would be to expand and improve the amusement district, while maintaining Coney Island’s iconic and unique nature,” Ms. Patterson added.

Ms. Albert said that her family paid $170,000 to lease the land this season, which began in April, and that they hoped to lease it again in 2008, but said that the developer wanted $3 million this time, a price she calls “way beyond what we could afford.”

“I don’t understand why they’re asking for so much, since there seems to be no reason in the rational world not to keep us there another year if they can’t do anything with the property until the zoning is changed,” Ms. Albert said. “We’re hoping for an 11th-hour change of heart, but as each day passes, our hopes grow dimmer.”

Posters taped to ticket booths and poles issued a plea to the developer: “Give Us One More Year.”

A spokesman for Thor Equities, Stefan Friedman, said: “Thor remains in negotiation to extend Astroland’s lease,” adding that “no matter the outcome of this negotiation, Thor is totally committed to having amusement and games in the neighborhood for years to come.”

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

The “Zipper” and the “Spider” sound like classics but have you ever gone on them for a ride? No matter, they’re off to Honduras now:

Two longtime Coney Island rides were shut down yesterday to be sent overseas, the latest casualties of a developer’s stalled bid to bring a $1.5 billion entertainment complex to the amusement district.

Workers yesterday began dismantling the Spider and Zipper rides near the West 12th Street shoreline, so both could be sent to an amusement park in Honduras.

The workers said the rides’ operator opted to sell the attractions after being unable to obtain a land-lease extension with developer Joseph Sitt, who owns 10 acres in the heart of the amusement district but is having difficulty getting city approval for his controversial project.

. . .

“I think people are in denial about what we’re facing for next year,” said Dianna Carlin, the owner of Lola Staar Souvenir Boutique on the boardwalk.

But a Sitt spokesman yesterday said the developer won’t let Coney Island become a ghost town and there will be plenty of amusements in future years.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

And here you thought Coney Island wasn’t gentrifying:

For 15 years, Eak the Geek earned his living as a “freak” in the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, wowing thousands of spectacle seekers each summer with his spacey facial tattoos and signature stunt: the Bed of Nails sandwich.

Then he decided it was time for a career change. He thought he’d like to be a lawyer — maybe even a city councilman one day. And so Eak — whose given name is Eduardo Arrocha — is headed back to school at age 45.

“Coney Island was very good to me, but it was just time to go,” said Eak, in a recent phone interview from Lansing, Mich., where he will start classes in contracts, torts and constitutional law at Thomas M. Cooley Law School on Tuesday.

He left the sideshow, but Eak is careful to point out this new foray into law isn’t a rejection of his fellow freaks. On the contrary, he’s doing it to help them.

“I know it sounds weird, but I want to be a freak lawyer,” he said. “I hope to have a little office in New York and work with the alternative people . . . all the so-called riff-raff, to give them legal representation that is not judgmental.”

Eak is six feet tall with a clean-shaven head and burly 220-pound frame, and says he’s been deflecting suspicious side glances and many times open looks of disdain since he began the process of having his body tattooed from head-to-toe.

There are at least two acts in there somewhere (some enterprising whippersnapper needs to supply the third):

The Carroll Gardens widow who fought to die in the home she’d lived in her entire life, won a Pyrrhic victory this month — dying in the apartment on Aug. 12 and defeating a developer’s two-year-long quest to evict her.

Angelina Visconti, 88, died of natural causes at Long Island College Hospital, though she was still a resident of the Cheever Place rowhouse.

“She got her wish, and that was what it was all about,” said Leonard Visconti, her son. “She always said she was born here, she wanted to die here.”

Visconti’s residency became an issue in 2005, when her nephew Joseph DeLeonibus, the son of Visconti’s late twin sister, tried to evict her so he could make a killing in the booming Carroll Gardens real-estate market.

The house was eventually sold for $1.13 million to developer Wayne Warnock, who picked up the eviction proceedings where DeLeonibus left off.

Earlier: Notices To Quit Thicker Than Blood.

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 . . .

This may be one of the few examples of the Sunday Styles vows section as clever political protest*:

It’s getting damn close to the end times for opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, the massive basketball, housing, and retail complex slated to rise up on the rail yards between Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. With two lawsuits drawing to a close in the next few months, lead anti–Atlantic Yards organizer Daniel Goldstein has been dreaming up every way possible to rally support for his cause. When the development company Forest City Ratner started offering lucrative buyouts to the owners of the condo building where he lives, Goldstein was the lone holdout. He’s since spent two years living alone in his 31-unit building, right where the New Jersey Nets will theoretically hit their jumpers.

Now, loner Goldstein has found romance with fellow anti–Atlantic Yards activist Shabnam Merchant, and the two plan to get married next month. And they’ve even cooked up a scheme to use their wedding to advance the anti-Ratner campaign. They’ve submitted their nuptials to the New York Times Sunday wedding-vows section, in the hope that editors will find the concept of NIMBY love too irresistible to pass up — and give the Atlantic Yards campaign a little free publicity to boot.

“I kinda doubt they would run it,” Goldstein says, even as he squirms at the prospect of his personal life bleeding into La Causa. “They get tons of submissions. But I don’t think there’s a more interesting wedding occurring this month.” If they give him a pass, he adds, he wouldn’t be surprised. After all, his arch-nemesis Ratner built the Times’s new headquarters.

*Not counting the Times’ decision back in 2002 to include gay and lesbian unions.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

After making inroads with 9/11 first responders and the City Council, The Church of Scientology spreads its influence up to 125th Street:

Harlem, beware! The neighborhood long weary of gentrification may soon have to deal with the likes of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley.

The Church of Scientology, known for its celebrity devotees, is making a big push to expand its empire along 125th Street, purchasing three properties there last week, and planning a major recruitment drive in the neighborhood.

The Rev. John Carmichael, president of the church in New York, declined to give details about the purchase, but reports put the total sales price at $10.2 million.

Carmichael said the three buildings — 228 through 232 E. 125th St. — will house a main Scientology complex and a community center that will offer literacy programs and drug counseling.

Two of the properties were formerly owned by St. Samuel Church of God in Christ, which moved a block away.

The church will be exempt from property tax in New York City, Carmichael said, and added that the church has no plans to buy any more property on that block or in the neighborhood.

“It’s 50,000 square feet in all,” Carmichael said. “It’s a pretty generous space.”

. . . but there’s something about those views:

Meanwhile, rumors are circulating that [Richard] Goldring and his associates might be looking to unload the sprawling 10,000-square-foot stripper-plex on West 28th Street, which last sold for $10 million in 2004 and now could go for four times that sum.

“At the right price, it’s available,” said Manhattan nightclub broker Alex Picken of Picken Real Estate, who’s been marketing several other nightclub properties in a rapidly changing West Chelsea.

A converted parking garage, the Scores West building on West 28th Street sits along a former industrial strip that was recently rezoned to allow for new residential development.

Could condos soon replace the beleaguered pole-dancing palace? Would each condo come equipped with its own stripper pole?

Oh lord — it really is over. Gentrification hits the city pools:

As the August heat settles over the city, more and more cash-poor young creative professionals have been visiting the Olympic-sized public pool in Red Hook, walking the long desolate industrial blocks from the F train or using a friend’s car to change into their string bikinis. At the door, a long list of prohibited items includes cellphones and iPods — meaning pool-goers actually have to (gasp) socialize with their fellow New Yorkers.

These hipsters tend to congregate in the southwest corner of the pool courtyard, isolating themselves from the splashing local families. They read trashy magazines and Atlas Shrugged. They take a dip — some even swimming a few laps. They have found their summertime Mecca.

Kit Giordano, 26, who works at development at Miramax Films, was there on a recent warm Saturday wearing a navy blue bikini top from J. Crew and light-blue board shorts, looking through one script, another at her feet. Next to her rested a bottle of SPF 30 sunblock, a Nalgene beverage container that read “Lefties Do It Right” and a Princeton classmate, Erin Culbertson, now a law student, who was paging through Entertainment Weekly. “We’re thinking about doing some handstands,” Ms. Culbertson said.

Further along rested Amy Donaldson, a 37-year-old graphic designer generously slathered in SPF 45 who had shlepped from the Upper West Side to meet some friends. “We were just talking about the elasticity of our bathing suits,” she said. Ms. Donaldson praised the comparatively “mellow” atmosphere of the Red Hook retreat. “There are a greater variety of people at this pool, as opposed to Lasker Pool, where there are more people from Harlem,” she said.

. . .

Julee Resendez, 36, was prone, stomach-down, on a white blanket with pink roses, wearing huge oval sunglasses, bright red fingernails and a black sparkly bikini and reading The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Underneath her arm was concealed a verboten cellphone. “I’m very clever,” she said. Ms. Resendez, originally from Seattle, now lives in Bed-Stuy. “The hood,” she said.

It’s been the subject of Craig’s List performance art and a television show. Now, there’s the musical:

With its residents already sporting multicolored neckties, cowboy boots and top hats, Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhood already resembles a costume drama. Now Billyburg is about to hit the stage for real, in a musical, no less, featuring songs such as “Craigslist Hookup” and ode-to-the-L-Train “One Stop [To Excitement].”

See also: Williamsburg! The Musical.

New York City extends the brand into Wyoming as remnants of its cultural heritage go west, young man:

If you want to enjoy the unmistakable ambience of a real New York diner, head to Wyoming. The Moondance Diner, whose iconic, crescent-shaped sign has long beckoned hungry pedestrians on the western edge of SoHo, is heading to the small town of La Barge, Wyo.

A couple, Vincent and Cheryl Pierce, recently bought the diner and are working out the details — including permits to close off Sixth Avenue and Grand Street — to move the building west, as in the Wild West, not “West Side Story.” According to the Star-Tribune of Casper, Wyo., which broke the news yesterday, Ms. Pierce’s husband and father plan to drive a semi-tractor-trailer to New York City in order to relocate the Moondance to a rural town surrounded by oil and gas fields about five miles north of the Oregon Trail from near the West Side Highway.

. . .

The Pierces bought the diner from a Rhode Island-based nonprofit, American Diner Museum, to which it was donated by Extell Development, the company that is developing the diner’s former site on Sixth Avenue into luxury residences.

. . .

“I’m excited,” a teacher at La Barge Elementary, Eileen Stewart, said. “We are in desperate need of a restaurant.” Currently, there are only two gas stations and convenience stores that serve hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried chicken. A restaurant called Timberline, which served American cuisine, was once part of the landscape, and the Moondance may also get a competitor, to be called the Hideaway Café.

Previously, hungry La Barge residents have gone 20 miles north to Big Piney, Wyo., to eat Mexican cuisine at Los Cabos or American cuisine at Annie’s Place, which is in a log building that has been an American Legion Hall, a clothing store, and a schoolhouse where Cub Scouts once met. Annie Phillips, who started Annie’s Place after taking over Gatzke’s Grubhouse, serves a 12-ounce New York steak for $17.95.

Ms. Phillips said New Yorkers who travel to La Barge and Big Piney will find a “friendly atmosphere and good people.”

The executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, called the move a “disconcerting trend.” He said: “It’s an indication that the real estate market in New York, and particularly in Manhattan, is so superheated that anything that doesn’t dedicate itself to the super luxury market does not seem to be able to survive.”

The Moondance is not the first rural rescue of a diner. A real estate developer, Jeremy Gorelick, was one of 15 people who banded together to save the 1940s-era Munson Diner on 49th Street and haul it to Liberty, N.Y., in 2005. “A diner can do well anywhere,” he said, adding that it was terrific that so many people have the vision to save diners, which are pieces of Americana.

The director of the SoHo Alliance, Sean Sweeney said, “I’m thinking — SoHo is getting Starbucks and Wyoming is getting the Moondance Diner. Is this a fair trade?”