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.

The plan to pay off poverty is moving forward:

Poor kids and their parents will pocket cash rewards — from $25 for good school attendance to $200 for visiting the doctor to $3,000 for passing five Regents exams — under an innovative anti-poverty program unveiled by city officials yesterday.

The “conditional cash transfer” program, modeled on plans in places like Mexico and Brazil, is privately funded but administered by the city.

. . .

About 14,000 participants will take part in the two-year $53 million pilot program beginning this fall.

As many as 5,100 families of three living below the poverty line in six low-earning neighborhoods, with at least one kid in fourth, seventh or ninth grade in a public school, would participate in the educational part of the program.

Half of the families (the rest will serve as a control group to measure results) will get paid as much as $5,000 a year for meeting various clean-living goals.

Among those families, teenagers will get paid directly $50 for taking the PSAT (a warm-up for the SAT, the most widely used college entrance exam), $300 for getting 11 high school credits a year and $50 for getting a library card — and a whopping $600 for every Regents exam passed, up to a maximum of five.

That means some teens could be directly paid as much as $3,000 by the city. Five Regents are needed to graduate high school.

. . .

Recipients, being selected this summer before the program begins in the fall, can have the money deposited directly into their bank accounts.

Also, 4,100 adults who get Section 8 federal housing vouchers — with half serving as the control group — will get $150 monthly for working 30 hours a week, and $600 for every block of 140 hours in job training.

And about 18,000 fourth- and seventh-graders from 80 pre-selected schools will get paid between $5 and $10 a test for 10 exams overall throughout the year that they finish. There are incentive bonuses thrown in for perfect scores.

In a media-obsessed city, this sort of fetish seems almost natural*:

A UPS manager was arrested for delivering cash to a teenage girl who fulfilled his sick sexual fetish by letting him prod her with a ballpoint pen, authorities said yesterday.

Prosecutors said Frank Ranieri, 25, of Ashton Drive on Staten Island, sometimes posed as a cop to win the trust of high-school girls in front of whom he would masturbate after “puncturing their buttocks” with a pin or a pen, according to a criminal complaint.

Although Ranieri was arrested for sexually assaulting only one of the girls, a 17-year-old, prosecutors said the deranged delivery man carried on with at least four other high school students, including one who was 15.

“Several thousand dollars have been laid out for these acts,” said Wanda DeOliveira, a prosecutor for the Staten Island district attorney.

DeOliveira said that starting in 2003, Ranieri used money and a promise of paper routes to target girls at Tottenville HS.

Cops said his latest victim was assaulted numerous times over two weeks in April, during which he paid her at least $500.

The victim suffered bleeding, bruising and substantial pain, according to officials.

Ranieri was busted after one of the girls came forward to cops.

Or is this an “I have a gub” moment? The Daily News seems to have heard it differently:

A former NYPD recruit told investigators he got pleasure out of paying underage girls on Staten Island to pierce their flesh with pins, law enforcement sources said yesterday.

Frank Ranieri, 25, was arraigned in Staten Island Criminal Court on charges of second-degree assault as a sexually motivated crime, authorities said.

“He said he liked to see the pins go through muscle and flesh,” a police source said. “A sexual deviant. He didn’t see much wrong with it.”

*In fact, I’m surprised this wasn’t included in Peter B.’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

You could lazily view the city from the comfort of your computer or you could actually get out there and do it yourself. Wish them good luck and god speed:

Remember Matt Green and Don Badaczewski, those two guys who last August broke the record for circumnavigating the city by subway?

Well, Green is back — with a new teammate, college buddy Rob Moncure — for another urban adventure: a five-day, 150-mile walk across the city. That’s 30 miles of pavement, or roughly 10 hours of trekking, a day, starting Monday on Staten Island.

“We’re most worried about how our feet and knees are going to hold up, rather than being concerned about our cardio-vascular health,” said Green, 27, a transportation engineer living in Bay Ridge. “We’re going to wear sneakers. We were considering hiking boots because they’re waterproof, but we just want to wear what’s most lightweight.”

They will have plenty of moleskin for blisters and extra pairs of socks. They’ll also stock up on underwear and an emergency roll of toilet paper, Green explained.

They won’t be carrying much in the way of food, because walking is not all the duo expects to do. They have a quirky checklist, too, that includes eating “as much ethnic cuisine as we can,” Green said.

Other items on the checklist: ride a camel (Bronx Zoo), “go to a hipster bar without looking or acting hip,” perform music on a subway platform, go fishing (Central Park rents rods, Green said) and go swimming on top of a sewage treatment plant (Riverbank State Park on 145th Street). On Staten Island, they plan to scale Todt Hill (elevation 410 feet), the highest natural point in the city.

If you were perhaps concerned by all the Volkswagen Beetles you’ve noticed videotaping your apartment, rest assured that it’s just Google’s ambitious new bodega-mapping project:

Heralded by observers as a step that could change the way people travel, live, and work in the city, Microsoft and Google have launched features that allow computer users to fly over realistic 3-D renderings of the city’s skyscrapers or take street-level tours such as following Broadway between Battery Park and Yonkers.

The developments were announced yesterday at the Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, Calif.

Google users may view 180-degree photographs of almost every street and intersection in Manhattan, as well as sections of the other boroughs. For the past 18 months a company, Immersive Media, has sent Volkswagen Beetles outfitted with about $250,000 worth of video equipment to drive almost every mile of Manhattan and other parts of the city, the company’s president and CEO, Miles McGovern, said.

On top of the car is a dodecahedron camera with 11 lenses, each taking in streaming video at 30 frames a second. Google licensed the images and integrated them with its maps.

Mr. McGovern estimated that the 40,000 miles of America his company has documented — 2,000 of them in New York City — are captured in about 120 million spherical images.

. . .

A product manager for Google Maps, Stephen Chow, said he used the technology to scope out neighborhoods where he was looking for apartments in San Francisco.

“I would go to that location and see whether the listing was right for nearby restaurants and public transportation,” he said. He said he could also zoom in on parking signs to find out when he had to move his car to avoid getting a ticket.

(Nice URL, by the way.)

Is it creeping Gioiaism or is landmarking a building really the only way to preserve affording housing in some neighborhoods? Things are pretty bad when you have to resort to having the Landmarks Commission step in:

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx, not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

“This is where it came from,” said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. “This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else.”

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor, Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

Throughout the city, housing advocates said, buildings like 1520 Sedgwick are becoming harder to find as owners opt out of subsidy programs so they can eventually charge higher rents on the open market.

The Sedgwick building is part of the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, in which private landlords who receive tax breaks and subsidized mortgages agree to limit their return on equity and rent to people who meet modest income limits.

Of course this is in the paper, so maybe it works!

PETA piqued by peacock playthings, Post reports (Anna Wintour angle always appreciated):

Bird-huggers’ feathers are ruffled over a celeb-packed gala thrown by Vogue editrix Anna Wintour — where her minions allegedly scared peacocks into serving as cruel party decorations.

PETA claims organizers used rabbits — which peacocks see as a threat — to frighten the fowl into seeking shelter on dangerous, swinging perches eight feet off the ground.

Although the perched birds appeared as nothing more than stately additions to the soiree decor, they were actually fearing for their lives, PETA says.

. . .

Vogue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — where the party was held — and the trainer that brought the peacocks all deny scaring the birds or treating them cruelly.

Bird handler Norman Johnson admitted, however, placing “a single guinea pig” in a small carrier inside the birdcage to make them strut with their fantails fully extended.

Four peacocks were on display at the Costume Institute Gala, hosted by Wintour. Partygoers — including Scarlett Johansson, Kate Moss, Kirsten Dunst and Lindsay Lohan — paid up to $6,500 for a seat.

. . .

Bird keeper Johnson said that he never used rabbits.

“I can see where they would deduce that from logic, but that wasn’t true at all,” said Johnson, who has bred peacocks for 16 years.

He said that to get the birds on the perch, he placed one there and the rest followed on their own.

“They acted a bit dazed and confused for the first hour. I expected that. And then one of the organizer’s designers asked if I would put [one of them] on a perch. I did that, and after a while, the others followed,” he said.

He also said he used a few tricks get the birds to show their plumes. He kept them from mating for a month so that at party time they would be more likely to do their mating displays. He said he also put mirrors up in the cage, because peacocks often spread their feathers when they see their reflections.

Isn’t it strange that a cab driver will drive someone from Queens to Arizona but not from Manhattan to Queens? Yes, yes it is:

Betty and Bob Matas are set to move next week from their current home in Queens to a new one in Sedona, Ariz.

They arranged to send their belongings, but they were in a quandary about how to transport themselves. The native New Yorkers don’t drive, and they were concerned that their two cats might not make it on a plane.

A solution presented itself in the form of taxi driver Douglas Guldeniz, whom the Matases met when they hailed his cab after a Manhattan shopping trip several weeks ago.

They got to talking about their upcoming move, and “we said, ‘Do you want to come?”‘ said Bob Matas, 72, a former audio and video engineer for advertising agencies. “And he said, ‘Sure.’

It was initially “a gag,” Matas said, but it became a real plan over the ensuing weeks. Guldeniz plans to drive 10 hours a day and charge a flat fee of $3,000 for the trip. The Matases also are to pay for Guldeniz’ gas, meals and lodging.

The standard, metered fare would come to about $5,000 — each way, according to David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety, a drivers’ group. But city Taxi and Limousine Commission rules direct drivers and passengers to negotiate a flat fare for trips outside the city and a few suburban areas.

Now if I could only remember what I did with my library card:

In what would be a first in the United States, the Brooklyn Public Library hopes to team up with Netflix to deliver DVDs and videos to anyone in the borough with a library card, The Post has learned.

The price would be unbeatable — free.

The disclosure was made by John Vitali, the library’s chief fiscal officer, following an announcement at Brooklyn Borough Hall that Dionne Mack-Harvin had been named executive director of the borough’s library system.

. . .

“What we want to do is work with Netflix and really get that inventory together, really use Netflix as the delivery mechanism,” Vitali said.

“We’re getting some good vibrations back. Nothing formal has been settled. What’s really exciting is — it’s my understanding — really the first of its kind, a model for that kind of corporate partnership.”

Netflix has an inventory of 75,000 movies.

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said he knew nothing about a possible partnership with the library and seemed surprised by the news.

Vitali said that if the partnership works out, the library and the movie-delivery service would develop a separate list. But it would include popular films.

“DVDs are very expensive to buy, and they’re also very expensive to move because they’re delicate,” Vitali said.

“Instead of buying the DVDs, we’d be outsourcing from Netflix to, in effect, create a free inventory of DVDs that would be available to our customers.”

[Emphasis added but let's skip the details, shall we?]

East Village residents are going to great lengths to argue against bars operating in their neighborhood:

Death & Co., an upscale new nightspot that serves drinks and appetizers, has attracted glowing reviews and throngs of patrons since it opened at the beginning of January. But the bar and restaurant at 433 E. Sixth St. has also attracted sharp criticism from several neighbors and Community Board 3. In fact, with its ominous name and décor, Death & Co. actually has some neighbors scared, dredging up their worst nightmares — while other neighbors say their nights are literally haunted by the bar’s din.

. . .

. . . Members of Synagogue Anshe Meseritz, at 415 E. Sixth St., object to Death & Co.’s name and appearance.

The windowless bronze facade stands out from the surrounding buildings, and features 100-year-old cedar planks, cast-iron columns and a black flag. Inside, gold-flecked wallpaper catches light from chandeliers and candles, and a long mirror reflects plush booths and the bar’s marble countertop.

“We don’t need another bar on the block,” said Les Sussman, an Anshe Meseritz congregant who attended the meeting but has not been inside Death & Co. “We don’t need one with Nazi devil symbolism, [with a] gothic satanic door and a black flag flying.”

The facade looks like a boxcar used to transport Jews to concentration camps, Sussman said, and disturbs elderly synagogue members who survived the Holocaust.

“They don’t want to pass a place that is frightening,” he said.

“I have a Holocaust relative myself,” [Death & Co. owner David] Kaplan responded. “I am Jewish, and I never considered it offensive in that way.”

Death & Co.’s name comes from the title of a Prohibition propaganda poster, and “has nothing to do with anything dark or gothic, and nothing to do with death itself,” Kaplan said.

There’s is simply too much expendable income burning holes in people’s pockets, even on the Upper West Side:

A fragrant mix of smoky sage and red willow bark filled an Upper West Side meeting room that’s windows were covered with blankets and plastic sheeting and whose door jams were sealed with duct tape.

Side note: if a healing ceremony starts with “sealing openings with duct tape,” count me right out.

Standing near the center of the room, an American Indian chief and medicine man, Harold “White Horse” Thompson, chanted and waved stone-filled rattles that pierce the darkness with streaks of light.

About 30 men and women who had come to the Children of Life interfaith center sat around the chief. They had come to participate in an American Indian healing ceremony called a Lowampi.

A small but growing number of New Yorkers are embracing Mr. Thompson’s holistic healing philosophy and making periodic trips to meet with him in South Dakota. In November, some of his adherents paid for him to travel to New York City, and last week they brought him back for another two-week stint.