Hmm . . . actually I can think of a few cooler things, but to each his own:

The only thing cooler than a pool party on a summer night in New York City is a secret pool party.

And the only thing cooler than that, as a few enterprising developers recently discovered, is a secret pool party in a pool made out of a Dumpster on the banks of the Gowanus Canal in industrial Brooklyn.

. . .

“The water’s amazingly fresh, for swimming in a Dumpster,” said Alexis Bloom, a documentary filmmaker from TriBeCa, after doing a few laps. She compared it favorably to the pool at Soho House, an actual urban country club.

Pleasurecraft docking in that big oil spill between Brooklyn and Queens:

It’s one of the most polluted waterways in New York — a fetid stew of oil, sewage and sludge.

But Newtown Creek is paradise for Max Mulhern.

The 47-year-old London-based sculptor is spending part of his U.S. vacation docked at the notorious waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens as part of a quirky family boat trip.

“I like to stay off the beaten path,” Mulhern said on Thursday aboard his 40-foot sailboat. “It leads to much more interesting encounters.”

Keeping his boat tethered to a crumbling cement wall in an industrial section of Long Island City has another key perk: he’s staying in the city rent-free.

Mulhern, an accomplished skipper on an artist’s budget, seeks out the desolate and sometimes very dirty nooks as he travels along the East Coast en route to Maine.

On this, his second such boating trip in as many years, Mulhern has already spent two days docked at another unlikely locale, Coney Island Creek.

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

Speaks for itself:

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the money and drugs appeared to have been what the robbers were after when they burst into Special Moments Daycare in East Flatbush on Friday afternoon — while a dozen or so children were napping.

Three men were arrested at the scene, including a suspect who was shot by the police.

“It now appears the day care center was a drug haven, or where drugs in significant quantities were kept, primarily marijuana,” Mr. Kelly said . . .

It’s like The Warriors meets West Side Story:

A subway dance troupe turned militant on May 25 when the dancers viciously mugged a 22-year-old straphanger on the J train.

The violent attack began when the victim started conversing with the dancers after they finished an acrobatic performance near the Lorimer Street stop at around 3:40 am.

That’s when one of the perps asked the victim if he would like to “see something mesmerizing.”

The victim said yes, so the perp pulled himself into the air on the train’s metal bars and unleashed a powerful kick to the victim’s chest. Two other dancers then joined in the attack and started punching and kicking the victim in the head and body.

The victim called out to the other two dancers for help, but his pleas only convinced the other performers to join in the walloping.

Eventually, one of the perps demanded that the victim hand over his belongings.

Mayor Bloomberg wants $45 million to retrain employees who are probably the least likely to trust government job training programs:

Just as Michigan is scrambling to retrain laid-off auto workers, New York City officials have come up with a plan to find new work for the unemployed from one of its core industries: financial services.

Under a program unveiled on Wednesday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said.

. . .

The mayor announced the 11-part program at a building at 160 Varick Street that will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

All told, city officials plan to spend about $15 million on the program, in addition to the $30 million of federal money. They estimate that over 10 years, it could stimulate the creation of at least 25,000 jobs and contribute $750 million to the local economy, but Mr. Bloomberg referred to those projections as a “guess.”

*And think of how many housing project roofs or elevators that could be fixed with $45 million . . .

Don’t show those griping cab drivers this heartwarming story:

There’s no such thing as a bad penny in Barbara Humphrey’s mind.

The Staten Island mom is obsessed with collecting change she finds on the street and blogging about it — and it’s paying off.

With the help of her husband, an Army sergeant, and their two daughters, Humphrey has saved more than $1,000 in three years.

“We find it everywhere,” said Humphrey, who started keeping track of her small-change scores three years ago while waiting for a college class to start.

“I saw a nickel and two pennies on the ground,” she said.

“I thought, ‘Let me start a little blog about finding change.’ So that first day I found seven cents. The next day I found a dime. Then my husband started finding quarters here and there.”

I’m thinking Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson:

Like his laidoff owner, Louie the 5-pound wonder dog is waiting for work.

Deborah Chusid, 46, lost her advertising job on Sept. 26, another New York casualty of the economic downturn.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when she phoned her ex to ask him to put their 14-year-old son, Jonah, on his health plan, there was another blow. He had lost his job the same day.

Now what?

. . .

Why not put the dog to work? Surely everyone would think Louie — a friendly black-and-white Mi-Ki named after Louis Armstrong — is as adorable as she and Jonah do.

. . .

Like people showbiz, it’s a dog-eat-dog world for animals trying to break in. [Linda Hanrahan, the president of Advertising for Animals and owner of the now departed Toonces the Cat of "Saturday Night Live" fame] advised that Louie not get his hind legs up too high, as the reality is often disappointing.

“I’ll try to get that poor little dog a week’s worth of dog food,” added Hanrahan, noting that most pet owners should not plan on their pooch becoming a meal ticket. Then in a whispered tone, she confided, “If she had a Jack Russell, it’s so much easier.”

Yada yada yada:

The latest sign of the rising cost of everything greets shoppers at the registers of Eli’s fine-food warehouse on the Upper East Side like a slap with a wet fish.

“Attention customers,” the sign reads. “An energy surcharge of 1.8 percent will be added to every purchase.”

Look down at the receipt and sure enough, there it is, right below the totaled items: another add-on that yanks the price of an $8.99 pound of fresh figs to $9.15.

. . .

[Eli] Zabar, whose greenness quotient is such that he uses the excess heat from his bakery a few blocks away to warm his rooftop greenhouses, said that joking was the last thing on his mind.

“I could have easily just raised prices in the store — which we do all the time anyway,” he said.

“But I’m making a statement here. This is to make my customers aware of the differences of running a food business, as opposed to any other kind of business. The infrastructure that powers a supermarket is huge — the perishability, yada yada yada. The ice that keeps the fish fresh. It takes a lot of energy to roast coffee.”

. . . they wouldn’t have given him so much grief:

Sexually active New Yorkers looking to wise up before turning the lights down can verify their partners’ sexual health status with a simple glance in their wallet.

Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history “license” with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential partners.

More than 15,000 people nationwide have signed up for the STFree service, launched in 2004 by Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, native Eli Dancy.

Dancy, a former club promoter, said he saw “a lot of irresponsibility” in his neighborhood and created the STFree card to help raise awareness.

“In places like where I grew up and where I worked, there are incredibly high HIV and STD rates,” said Dancy, 28. “This card opens up the conversation for people to talk about it.”

. . .

At registration, which can be completed online or inside an STFree van that travels citywide, program subscribers must provide a detailed sexual profile and be tested.

To access the testing history of an STFree cardholder, partners must have access to the phone number located on the back of the card as well as to a PIN number provided only to the STFree member.

“This card will keep people from lying and get it all out in the open,” said Bronx beautician Lorna Smith, 51, who lives in the borough with the highest AIDS death toll citywide.

“It will let you know who’s safe, and who’s not. It’s definitely a good idea,” said fireproofer Eric Lopez, 28, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

STFree members pay a one-time $19.99 fee for the service — which Dancy said will allow more people to join.

Counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags, sure. But counterfeit condoms, too? Not to sound harsh, but if you’re cheap enough to buy condoms at a 99-cent store, you probably deserve what you get:

Careful with those Trojan brand condoms from the discount store. They may not be the real thing.

Same with the Barbie doll and the Louis Vuitton handbag.

In raids in the metropolitan area yesterday, federal agents arrested at least eight people and charged them with heading a counterfeit products ring. Authorities say the ring has been smuggling into the country and then distributing massive quantities of fake brand-name goods manufactured in China, including Apple iPods, Major League Baseball and National Football League caps and Marvel comic books.

The counterfeits, which included millions of the phony Trojans, were sold for the past three years mainly in small discount stores in the area, as well as elsewhere in the country, including Texas and Virginia, according to court documents.

A spokeswoman for Church and Dwight, the company that manufactures the legitimate Trojan condoms in the United States, declined to comment on whether the counterfeit Chinese condoms could fail to prevent pregnancies or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But a source familiar with the federal investigation said that while the counterfeit condoms were of inferior quality, samples had been tested and they were no riskier to use than legitimate ones.

The packaging of the Chinese condoms is almost identical to the legitimate ones, except that the counterfeit packaging is plastic, while the legitimate product is packaged in aluminum foil, said another source familiar with the investigation. “They [the counterfeiters] spent all their money on printing,” said the source.

The scam of bottled water just gets verticalized:

A dozen city restaurants and hotels have declared bottled water politically incorrect and are bouncing it from their premises — so get ready to pay for tap water.

At the Waverly Inn, a hot spot for boldface names in Greenwich Village, bottled water is being nixed in about two months.

It’s already 86′d at Il Buco, Mario Batali’s Del Posto, Gemma in the Bowery Hotel, Bobo, Gusto Organics and Broadway East.

Even the Park Slope Food-Co-op will vote later this month on banning bottled water from their shelves and hawking filters and reusable thermoses instead.

These green-thinking foodies are faced with the fact that it takes 41 million barrels of oil a year to make, transport and refrigerate water bottles, and that a crushing 30 million plastic water containers end up in landfills each day.

But both plastic and glass bottles are going.

Instead, places like The Waverly Inn will begin offering politically correct pints on the menu.

“It just seems simple and painless,” said Sean MacPherson, an owner of Waverly Inn and Gemma.

Waverly will serve flat tap water for free, and charge $5 per glass for its homemade, specially treated sparkling water from the tap — as MacPherson does at Gemma.

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t do it,” MacPherson said. “It helps out the environment and tastes good.”

At Per Se, a filtration system was installed in January. Sales of the house brand have risen while sales of bottled water — which continue for now — have dropped off.

Growth of bottled-water sales was just 6 percent last year, down from 9 percent in 2006, while sales of filtration and purification systems are skyrocketing. Filter maker Brita reported double-digit sales growth last year, and competitor Natura Water’s sales surged more than 100 percent in the last six months.

. . .

The Marriott Downtown has also jumped on the bandwagon. The hotel installed a filtration system in its Roy’s restaurant but still offers bottled water for now. By summer, the filtration system will be hotel-wide.

“We still give people some choice,” said Anthony Mardach, director of Marriott’s New York restaurants. “But people love it and no one says, ‘How dare you charge me for tap water!’”

Who has some of the most progressive work arrangements in this country? Illegal drug operations:

Cops raiding a suspected Hamilton Heights drug operation were surprised to find a working day-care center on the premises, prosecutors said yesterday.

They also found cash, a scale and three pounds of pot.

In yet another sign of the cooling economy, small businesses are struggling to get off the ground:

A team of self-made paranormalists is offering to come over to your house in the middle of the night to chase away any unwanted spirits.

“I’m fascinated with the supernatural,” says Sal Cicconi, 27.

Cicconi, along with Sergio Ocasio, 20, and Samantha Ramirez, 18, have plastered Brooklyn offering their services for just $20 an hour.

Their business plan is a bit unorthodox, but then again, so are they.

“When I was a kid, I had this ability, this gift,” Cicconi said in an interview in the trio’s East New York apartment. “When I was 10 years old, I started to see things — spirits and ghosts.”

The three, who call themselves Brooklyn Ghost Investigations, are otherwise unemployed.

Their only client is a Red Hook man who said he had two ghosts in his apartment.

The drive-in-a-garage theater is drawing dozens back to the movies:

As he stepped into the small storefront on Norfolk Street, Stephen Kushner, a hairdresser from Long Island, was transported to a youth spent steaming up car windows with his steady at drive-in theaters.

A movie screen hung in front of a single blue 1965 Ford Falcon convertible. A romantic starry sky — actually tiny light clusters peeking through sheer black fabric — stretched across to the side.

“Hey, can we make out?” he asked aloud, eliciting a giggle from Mr. Kushner’s wife and a gag from their 18-year-old daughter.

Stuffed inside the 250-square-foot space is DRV-IN, Manhattan’s only (and quite possibly the world’s smallest) drive-in cinema. The vintage Ford, parked in front of a 102-inch screen, has a shiny red interior that seats up to six cinephiles.

. . .

To see a movie, patrons can visit 139norfolk.com, select a show time and a title, and pay $75. Sometimes the roster of movies is predetermined — in February 102 high school movies from 1950 onward were shown — but any film may be requested as long as there is time to buy it on DVD.

. . . the City Council sees a need to limit the size of for sale signs:

The slumping housing market is presenting a new wrinkle in the city — oversized “for sale” lawn signs that one Staten Island city councilman has made his latest quality-of-life target.

Michael McMahon (D-North Shore) yesterday introduced a bill that would limit the size of such signs throughout the city.

Claiming the signs have a “detrimental effect on the aesthetic value of New York City’s residential neighborhoods,” the proposed legislation limits “for sale” signs on residential properties to a maximum size of 4 square feet.

“While traveling in my district, I have noticed what seems to be an explosion in the size of real estate signs on front lawns to a degree that is practically obnoxious,” McMahon said in a prepared statement. “Real estate companies have the right to advertise, but let’s keep it tasteful.”

. . .

The measure is also catching flak from one Realtor, who said his signs must be large enough to attract buyers.

“If you have a property, you have to bring it to the public’s eye,” said George Wonica Sr., president of Wonica Realtors. He said the 2-by-2 foot signs McMahon is proposing are not large enough to lure business. “You might as well not have anything there. I agree with bringing it down, but I don’t think 2-by-2 is the proper dimension.”

Social scientists and policy makers know that some behaviors are impossible to regulate without sending practitioners underground and that it might be better in the end to provide safe ways for people to engage in such socially stigmatized behavior:

“Safe pigeon-feeding zones” may be designated around the city as part of the negotiations between animal rights groups and the Brooklyn city councilman who has proposed fining pigeon feeders as much as $1,000 as strategy to control New York’s pigeon population.

. . .

“If our idea was, there are too many pigeons around where people are walking, waiting for the subway, sitting in parks, etc.,” said Eric Kuo, a spokesman for Mr. Felder. “Someone brought up, if there are areas where people are not around, what’s the harm of allowing feeding there?”

The pigeon-friendly zones could include less-densely trafficked areas in Central Park and Prospect Park, Mr. Kuo said. The City Council’s lawyers who draft legislation have been asked to see if such a plan is feasible.

If no one wants to build condos there we can at least scare straight surly middle schoolers:

Developers responded so weakly to a city invitation for ideas for retail and residential use at the soon-to-reopen Brooklyn House of Detention that the city is now considering putting a middle school in the space.

For months, the city has said it plans to reopen — and double the capacity of — the 11-story, 750-inmate Big House on Atlantic Avenue between Smith Street and Boerum Place.

But last year, when the city solicited bids for ground-floor shops in the infamous holding pen, retailers showed only lukewarm interest.

Besides the weak response from retailers, only one developer submitted a bid to build a residential tower adjacent to the soon-to-reopen jail.

As a result, Corrections Commissioner Martin Horn told a group of local pols and community activists at a Jan. 2 meeting that he is considering housing a new middle school in the jail.

Location Scout: Brooklyn House of Detention.

Because it’s not like anyone would notice you wheeling a dead man over to the check cashing place:

Two men used an office chair to wheel a dead man to a Midtown check-cashing establishment yesterday and attempted to cash his Social Security check, police said. The men were detained by police after onlookers noticed the dead body falling from side to side as the men pushed him along Ninth Avenue near 52nd street — but not before they entered the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store and attempted to cash his check. The dead man, identified by police as Virgilio Cintron, 66, was the roommate of one of the suspects. He apparently died of natural causes, police said. The suspects lived around the corner from the Pay-O-Matic, and were known to the employees there.

The roommate and a third man, who was a friend of the deceased, reportedly left Cintron outside as they entered the establishment, pointing to him through the window when the cashier told them that Cintron would have to be present to cash the check, according to the police account. When the cashier asked them to bring Cintron inside, they exited the building, where they were confronted by an on-duty Real Time Crime Center detective who had been in the building next door when he noticed the commotion.

On the eve of an exhibit on the history of the Department of Sanitation, NYU professor Robin Nagle discusses her goal of a full-fledged Sanitation Museum:

It’s long overdue. The department is kind of a victim of its own success. For the most part they do the job so well, you don’t have to think about them. It’s as if they’re forgotten. Sanitation personnel are used to being disregarded, so they forget to celebrate themselves. I have the privilege — since I come from the outside, but straddle both words — to say, “Look at how important you are.”

. . .

This is a modest start. It’s one room. But it signals to the world we have big goals. Once this is done, we’ll sit down and do the homework to file as a not-for-profit and raise money. We envision the museum as a cultural and education center.

Staff meeting from 8:00 to 8:30, phone conference with the main office at 9 and torah study at 9:30:

Rabbi Stuart Shiff, one of six New York rabbis employed by Aish HaTorah, a nonprofit Jewish-education organization, carries two pieces of equipment: a BlackBerry and a book of the Torah. Weekdays, he treks to businesses around the city on behalf of Aish’s Executive Learning Program — for a voluntary donation (average: ten thousand dollars), bosses who are too busy to go to shul can have a rabbi meet them at the office. “Studying the Torah took my mind off the stress,” Lisa Shalett, the C.E.O. of Sanford Bernstein, says in an Aish brochure.

“What this program does is it blows away all the excuses,” Shiff explained recently, in one of Aish’s conference rooms in midtown. “We have almost a postal carrier’s motto: nothing stops us.” It was 9:30 A.M. on the day before Hanukkah, and Shiff — who was wearing a black velvet yarmulke — had a meeting with Seth Horowitz, the former chief executive of Everlast, the boxing-supply company (which he had just sold for a reported hundred and sixty-eight million dollars). Horowitz, who is thirty-one, started studying with Shiff eighteen months ago. “I just needed to talk to someone,” he said, turning off his iPhone. “I’ve gained so much knowledge. This is the beauty of the program — the rabbi comes to your office, you discuss the Torah, and you talk about life.”

In case you’re approached on the subway and asked if you’ve ever done modeling, know that it may not actually be for an episode of Candid Camera:

Every weekday evening, Simon Rogers rides the uptown No. 1 train from his job in the garment district to his home on the Upper West Side. He usually sits near the door for a good view of people climbing aboard, but on this day Mr. Rogers was seated near the center of the car because the train was crowded. Almost automatically, he began evaluating his fellow passengers, and his eyes found an older man in a newsboy cap and glasses.

There was something intangibly compelling about the man, and Mr. Rogers weaved his way through the throng of subway riders toward the stranger. As he approached, Mr. Rogers, a native of England, leaned in close. In a winsome British accent, he said quietly, “Excuse me, sir. I own a talent agency and I think you’d be good for it. There’s something unique about you.”

Mr. Rogers, who specializes in so-called real-people models, fished out a business card emblazoned with the name Ugly New York and handed it to his catch, who introduced himself as Russell Avery.

Before Mr. Avery could get the wrong idea, Mr. Rogers quickly added: “We have all kinds at my agency. All shapes, all sizes. Tall, short, fat, thin. Great-looking people, people who’ve really been hit with the ugly stick, and everything in between. If you’re interested at all, there’s a Web site at the bottom that you can check out and give us a call.”

After placing not just one but a second story in the Sunday papers, may he get a thousand voice mail messages tomorrow from hopefuls.

. . . 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.

So what does the Post do? They go with a lede that the neither the principal nor PTA will be able to photocopy and send around. Real thoughtful:

“Hoe” is not an insult at John Bowne HS in Queens — it’s a learning tool.

That’s because the 2,900-student Flushing school hosts the Department of Education’s sole agricultural program — with a 3.7-acre farm, barnyard animals and all — which made history yesterday by serving student-harvested crops on the lunch menu.

Yes, the five vegetables in the veggie wrap, the basil in the pesto sauce and the cherry tomatoes in the pasta dish were all homegrown, shipped hundreds of feet, not miles.

“It’s just unbelievable. I didn’t know it would be real hands-on stuff,” said senior Sasha Ford, 17, one of the 540 students who manage the farm.

“You get to plant the stuff, grow, harvest and sell them, and it makes people happy to buy them.”

Students spend two of their four years working year-round on the farm, which in addition to producing apples, raspberries and collard greens is also home to chickens, goats and alpacas.

Three sightings makes a trend:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When a Brooklyn man eats only what he farms in his own backyard, we discover that “eating locally,” ironically, can go too far:

In three weeks of eating nothing but Farm-fresh food, I lost 29 pounds, down from my pre-Farm weight of 234. Abs: That’s the upside of only two meals a day. The downside is the expense. Not counting my own labor, which was unending, I spent about $11,000 to produce what, all told, is barely enough to feed one grown man for a month. But I did learn something about food: Unless you really know what you’re doing, raising it is miserable, soul-crushing work. Eating food fresh from the farm, on the other hand, is delightful.

(Hey, no need to punish yourself!)

Thank god summer’s over — everyone but you has been relaxing, recreating and honing their particular set of skills while you’ve been slaving away here in the city:

Once a month on a sleepy Wednesday night at the Slipper Room, women from around the city gather with pasties, costumes and a stack of striptease autobiographies to gab about burlesque.

. . .

The salon lasts for about an hour, and gives burlesque dancers a chance to try out new acts and receive feedback from other performers. In between workshops, they take turns reading passages from the autobiographies of famous burlesque dancers and, much like a Bible study, discuss what they can learn from the reading.

“The experience of burlesque then and the experience of burlesque now are completely unrecognizable, don’t you find?” Professor Jo Boobs, who leads the salon, said after a reading about Gypsy Rose Lee. “I think a lot of us focus on the community because no matter how hard you work, the focus on burlesque is no longer on the income.”

Jo Boobs has just returned from a burlesque retreat in the woods of Washington state. She is an important figure in the New York burlesque scene, teaching several classes annually and serving as a G-string godmother to the new girls . . .

(You might think this has a “Hack Heaven” feel to it but it in fact seems to be real . . . besides, it would be extraordinarily lame to do that in Metro New York, wouldn’t it?)

And the best thing is that you’ll never again have to worry about the Christmas tip:

[Colin] Foster is the vice president of sales and marketing for Virtual Doorman, the top product of a security firm called Virtual Service, which promises to offer residents and managers of small buildings the services of a professional doorman at a fraction of the cost — without skimping on security or convenience.

It used to be that small walkups were second-class buildings,” Foster said. “They did not fetch the same pricing as a doorman building. Now, small buildings can offer those same amenities.”

Virtual Doorman is a standalone, computerized system that integrates with a building’s own computers while linking its high-end color video monitors with the building’s existing intercoms, Foster said.

The electronic system is manned remotely 24 hours a day by a third-party agency that is linked directly to the building’s local fire department, police and medical services.

The system is monitored constantly, and can perform all the tasks of an old-fashioned, human doorman, Foster said, including screening guests, accepting deliveries and laundry, and unlocking doors for tenants who lost their keys.

Foster insists man and machine can co-exist. It is written into their policy that Virtual Doorman will not replace any members of 32BJ, the union that represents workers including New York doormen.

. . .

Still, the union thinks there’s no substitution for old-fashioned manpower. “The experience and training of doormen, combined with their familiarity of residents cannot be replaced by electronic services that control building access from remote locations,” according to a 32BJ statement.

“The safety of New Yorkers living in condominiums and apartments belongs in the real-life hands of diligent doormen who can maintain on-site control of their buildings.”

Backstory: Here’s A Tip . . .

Where running and minimalism meet:

Imagine, for a moment, running 3,100 miles — the distance from Queens to Los Angeles plus an additional 300 miles — all around a single city block in Jamaica Hill. This is how 10 men and one woman are spending part of their summer.

The Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race began June 17, and Asprihanal Aalto of Finland was the first to finish Monday at about 10:30 a.m., completing the race in 43 days, four hours, 26 minutes and 32 seconds of pounding the pavement. Yet he was right back at the race course Tuesday morning to offer encouragement to the other runners.

“My heart is still in the race,” Aalto said, checking a photocopied sheet with each runner’s mileage and laps completed per day. “I saw Smarana [Puntigam, of Austria, currently in fourth place] had a bad day yesterday — he only did 108 laps — so I went to talk to him.”

The remaining 10 are on track to complete 5,657 loops of the block around Thomas Edison Career and Technical High School, bounded by the Grand Central Parkway eastbound service road, 168th Street, 164th Place and 84th Avenue. The man in second place, Ayojan Stojanovich, of Serbia, was expected to finish the race Wednesday on day 45, and most runners take about 51 days. A support team tracks the runners’ laps and mileage, offers encouragement and keeps a supply of water and high-fat, high-calorie snacks on the tables at the finish line.

. . .

The runners stay moving from 6 a.m. to midnight every day, jogging, trudging or walking.

“You can’t do this race looking behind you. You have to look deep inside,” [runner Suprabha] Beckjord said.

Abichal Watkins, of Wales, said he had to drop out the first year he applied for the race because his visa expired before he had completed the 3,100 miles.

“I came back the next year to finish,” he said. “This is the longest certified footrace in the world. It’s an opportunity to self-transcend, do something you’ve never done before.”

More proof that New Yorkers will pay for virtually anything:

A typical passenger might expect to see certain things when spending $50 for a two-hour cruise, like a wonder of the world, or a leaping dolphin or two.

But yesterday, a two-story taxi boat was almost full to capacity with people who spent about that much for a tour of one of New York’s most polluted waterways, Newtown Creek.

Cameras flickered away and passengers gawked as the industrial buildings, recycling plants and toxic sites that flank the creek slid by.

“The $50 is a lot, but it’s worth it,” said Gene Pizzolo, 60, one of the 64 people on the boat.

. . .

Some of the creek is accessible by foot, but most of its banks are private property, so the best way in is by water.

At least one passenger said she detected an oily smell.

An explosion in 1950 leaked an estimated 17 million gallons of oil and gasoline, more than the Exxon Valdez spill, into the creek and its banks, and lawsuits seeking a faster cleanup continue today.

During heavy rains, the city’s sewer system overflows and dumps raw sewage into the creek, among other places.

. . .

Many passengers walked back and forth on the boat trying to find the perfect camera shot.

“I consider it money well spent,” said Liza Drake, 59, enjoying the view from the top deck. “I can’t think of any other way to get on the creek for cheaper.”

Thank goodness every other day is Spare Your Co-Workers Your Stinky Pet Day:

June 22 will mark Pet Sitters International’s ninth annual “Take Your Dog to Work Day,” a unique opportunity for owners and their pets to share a positive bonding experience in the workplace.

“‘Take Your Dog To Work Day’ works because it confronts the realities of pet overpopulation in a positive and proactive way,” said PSI president Patti Moran.

Dog owners who feel guilty about leaving their beloved pooch sitting alone in an empty house all day will have the opportunity to show them what their masters do while they would normally be catching a snooze on the couch.

. . .

The Staten Island Chamber of Commerce also will be participating in the event but has extended the invitation to felines as well.

“It’s discriminatory that it’s just for dogs,” joked Jennifer Fontana of Dongan Hills, who is excitedly bringing her chocolate Labrador, Jade, and puggle, Louie, to work on Friday.