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.

Not as cool as a drive-thru synagogue but close:

At 10 o’clock on a recent Thursday night, the corner of 53rd Street and 13th Avenue in the heart of Borough Park was bustling with traffic. In this neighborhood, an ultra-Orthodox stronghold for the past decade, a sea of religious Jews clad in traditional black and white garb scurried in every direction for late-night prayer, shopping or something to eat. This corner of Brooklyn never sleeps, or so it seems.

The main attraction is Congregation Shomrei Shabbos, a 24-hour synagogue where a service begins every 15 minutes. What started more than three-quarters of a century ago as a tiny congregation has grown into a mainstay of this community: transit hub, soup kitchen, community center, bookstore and prayer hall all in one.

The late-night traffic generated by the synagogue has spilled onto the streets, so much so that over the past few years a neighborhood has literally grown up around it. Restaurants and stores are open long past midnight. Peddlers vie for street space in the wee hours. Religious music streams from a small boombox. Men stop their cars in the middle of darkened streets to announce the birth of a child.

Even in a city renowned for the hours it keeps, the late-night liveliness here is remarkable.

. . .

Thanks to all this activity, the once-inconspicuous synagogue is now a trigger for local nightlife.

“Real estate surrounding the synagogue is in high demand,” said Mendy Handler, owner of Cellular 4 Less, one of several local businesses that stay open past midnight to attract late-night synagogue-goers. His busiest hours are from 6 p.m. to midnight. “People can drop off their phones to be fixed while they are praying next door,” said Sol Oberlander, the store’s manager.

Other businesses have followed suit. Copy Corner stays open until midnight, as does Gal Paz, a music store. Sub Express, a kosher fast-food restaurant whose menu includes what is described as a unique “brisket egg roll,” keeps its doors open until 1 a.m.

Williamsburg hipsters — that cynical and fully debased class of people that represents exactly why they hate our freedom — move from post-modern post-feminist:

It may not have the draw and commercial viability of the NFL yet. But the PFL — the Pillow Fight League — is making its U.S. debut tonight in front of a sold-out crowd at Williamsburg’s Galapagos (and repeating the feat tomorrow night).

The Toronto-based group is staging its World Championship between Betty Clock’er and Champain. New York ladies in the audience will be invited to participate in amateur matches, as well.

“This isn’t about a trained opera singer or people trained in fights,” said Matt Harsant, 31, a PFL producer and senior referee. “It’s about you and your neighbor and your sister and aunt kicking off her heels and getting into the ring. We say, ‘Real women, real fights.’”

The five-minute bouts can get pretty nasty with drop kicks and smothering — though there’s a five-second time limit on smothering. Almost anything goes as long as the pillow makes the first point of contact. The goal is to pin down an opponent for three seconds.

“It’s derived from mixed martial arts, judo, boxing and good, old-fashioned catfights,” Harsant said.

*Time was, positive voices of conscience — Phranc, for example! — unironically decried Female Mud Wrestling . . . obviously that was so 1986.

The framers of the constitution weren’t able to anticipate many things including, for example, jumping off of skyscapers:

In an eight-page decision, state Supreme Court Judge Michael Ambrecht dismissed a felony charge of reckless endangerment against a California stuntman, Jeb Corliss, because his conduct, “while dangerous and ill-conceived, does not rise to the level of depraved indifference” and is, in fact, “constitutionally protected freedom of expression.”

Mr. Corliss, 30, was arrested last April as he was about to dive off the Empire State Building, which is 1,453 feet tall. He concealed his parachute inside a “fat suit” to get through the building’s metal detectors, and made it as far as the ledge on the 86th floor’s observation deck before security guards and police handcuffed him to a fence.

. . .

Mr. Corliss’s lawyer, Mark Heller, said his client had meticulously prepared for the jump by analyzing traffic patterns, wind conditions, and other risks. He has made more than 1,000 jumps in 16 different countries, including from the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Mr. Heller said.

For Mr. Corliss, BASE jumping, which refers to leaping from bridge, antenna, span, and earth, is a creative act, Mr. Heller said.

“When he jumps off of a building, he moves his body in different directions, flips and turns, and flies through the air with the greatest of ease,” he said. “This is his way of expressing himself.”

. . .

Mr. Heller called the decision a “landmark case” that may allow anyone to jump from a tall building or structure without facing consequences.

The antiques dealer who filed a $1 million lawsuit to keep a group of homeless away from his store seems to have succeeded in drawing attention to the matter:

The dealer, Karl Kemp, who owns Karl Kemp & Associates at 833 Madison Avenue near 69th Street, says he has put up with the group, in particular one bearded homeless man and his “island” of filthy belongings, for more than two years and hopes the suit will compel the city to have them removed from the area.

Besides seeking $1 million in damages — the dealer’s lawyer said he put in a figure for legal reasons — the suit also asks for a restraining order requiring them to stay at least 100 feet from the store.

. . .

Allan Schiller, Mr. Kemp’s lawyer, said the lawsuit was a last resort by Mr. Kemp in an effort to resolve something he had been dealing with for two years.

Mr. Kemp, Mr. Schiller said, has even asked the owner of the building that houses the store to remove or reroute the heating duct outside the building to deter the homeless from seeking its warmth. But nothing has worked, Mr. Schiller said.

. . .

Mr. Schiller, the lawyer, said: “They’re not really breaking any law besides being vagrants, and it’s my understanding that vagrancy really isn’t a reason to pick anyone up anymore. The fact is, they are creating a nuisance by standing in front of you constantly. You are not my guest. I did not invite you here. And they have attached themselves to my client’s property.”

Jose Perez, who works at Cesare Paciotti, a shoe store next to Mr. Kemp’s shop, said the bearded man who seemed to be the focus of Mr. Kemp’s complaints never bothered any of his store’s customers. “He has a very bad smell,” Mr. Perez said. “But besides that he causes no problem. We never asked him to leave.”

Because sometimes while out dancing or enjoying a pasta dish you’ll find your hair has a little too much frizz:

It’s hard to know what goes on behind bathroom stalls in New York City nightclubs, but starting next month denizens of the night will have one more service they can purchase there — hair straightening.

Aimed at women and men who want to de-frizz their locks while out on the town, the machines are already popular at nightspots all across London and other cities in the United Kingdom.

The wall-mounted hair-straightening flat iron machines charge patrons a small fee for use. In England, the service costs a pound for 90 seconds; here in New York, businessmen are thinking of charging a dollar for 60 seconds. The machines here would accept bills.

. . .

The manager of an Italian eatery in Murray Hill called Bistango Restaurant, Anthony Avellino, said he would consider installing a flat iron machine in his restaurant. “Being that I have three daughters who use straightening irons all the time,” Mr. Avellino said. “I think it could be an added plus.” Others in the industry, however, aren’t so keen on the idea of placing hot ceramic tongs in the hands of customers who may be inebriated.

“It sounds dangerous,” a bartender at Rogue Restaurant and Bar in midtown, Jessica Freeborn, said, “I don’t know if America is ready for hair straighteners in bathrooms.”

But it’s still unclear whether even the performance will have enough for a minyan:

Impressive, those names in the sanctuary of the little synagogue on West 47th Street in Manhattan: Joe E. Lewis and Sophie Tucker on the stained-glass windows, Jack Benny on a plaque in the rear. The names tell you why, in its golden age, this synagogue became known as the Actors’ Temple. They also tell you something about when that golden age was.

Recently — say, oh, during the last half-century — this temple, with a declining membership and a vanishing budget, has not been doing so well. So starting with an official opening night tomorrow, the Actors’ Temple, for the first time in its 89-year history, will be moonlighting as an Off Broadway theater.

. . .

The temple was a tough sell, with restrictions over and above the usual constraints of a small theater. Sets need to be flexible enough so they don’t interfere with services; food taken into the temple must be kosher; and shows must go dark on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. (The Saturday matinee is a sore point at the temple, but sometimes you’ve got to give an inch.) Holidays are booked, too, of course.

“You can’t move Yom Kippur because you have a show on,” Mr. Kifferstein said.

Board members talked with the producers of “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn,” a nostalgic comedy that seemed like just the thing, but negotiations broke down, and that show went to the 37 Arts, an Off Broadway theater on West 37th Street.

I have to say, this would make for a totally outrageous third act:

Estranged from his father, a gay Brooklyn man came home yesterday to make peace, only to make a horrifying discovery: His mother had been hiding his dad’s corpse in the family’s apartment for three years, police sources said.

. . .

Her horrific secret was exposed when her 38-year-old son, Paul Iversen, knocked on the apartment door early yesterday. He had not been home since he came out of the closet well before his dad’s death, the sources said.

“I want to see Dad,” Paul Iversen told his mom, the sources said. “I want to make everything right.”

The elderly woman — who almost never allowed anyone into her Bay Ridge apartment — opened the door, sources said. “He’s in the bedroom,” she told her son.

Paul Iversen walked through the filthy apartment and to his horror found the skeletal remains of his dad, Frank Iversen, 75, in a fetal position under a pile of bed covers and clothes, the sources said.

And here’s the kicker:

At the 68th Precinct stationhouse, Joanne Iversen told cops that she and her husband had made a pact to hide the death of whoever passed away first so the surviving spouse could continue collecting Social Security benefits.

“He died of natural causes,” she told cops, the sources said. “It was three years ago.”

Detectives questioned the woman for several hours, but released her last night without filing charges. Cops were investigating whether she illegally obtained Social Security checks since her husband’s death.

A police source said Joanne Iversen had told another estranged son she had buried her husband years ago.

Tenants in the Bay Ridge Parkway apartment building between Ridge Blvd. and Third Ave. said they noticed Frank Iversen, a quiet man who had worked as a painter, hadn’t been around in years. But his wife always told them he had moved upstate.

“I always wondered if he was dead in there,” said neighbor Bonnie King. “Frank just disappeared. There was no explanation.” Other residents said there were clues, but no one put it all together.

“There were odor issues in that apartment,” said Carole Clements, 64. “We complained a lot, but I would have never guessed there was a body inside.”

The couple who survives in a 265-square-foot apartment* one-ups themselves by having a baby:

When Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan told friends late last winter that she was pregnant, they offered the obligatory congratulations. Then they asked when she was moving.

It was assumed that she and her husband, Maxwell, would have to go somewhere else. For four years the couple shared a 265-square-foot, one-bedroom rental on Bedford Street in the West Village, an apartment so preposterously miniature it could fit neatly inside the foyer of many apartments uptown. They made it work for the two of them in part by jettisoning clothes, a television and a home office. “It never felt too small,” said Ms. Gillingham-Ryan, 31, a food writer. “It helps to keep your life well edited.”

No amount of editing, it seemed, would create enough room for a baby. But after looking at more than a dozen apartments, and weighing the benefits of more square footage against the burden of debt, they decided to stay on Bedford Street, where they pay $780 a month for rent. And they would renovate to accomplish the seemingly impossible: accommodate a baby.

. . .

“The only problem with all this is kids,” Mr. Gillingham-Ryan said one day last month while Ursula napped in the bedroom. “She’s a ticking time bomb. She’s going to need room. We know we can’t stay here for long.”

*I guess the apartment gained 15 square feet since we last read about it.

I don’t know — sounds sorta self-consciously oddball to me:

A chic bar in Park Slope hosted a master class on how to mount dead animals.

Taxidermy, of course, is an activity more commonly associated with union halls upstate than with Union Hall, the bar on Union Street.

But at 5:30 pm last Saturday night, Scott Bibus, a member of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, sat down at a long table in the pub’s trendy basement, for once church-like in its silence.

Bibus put his scalpel to the breast of a white-feathered chicken, and sliced it down the middle, all the way to its “vent,” an industry euphemism for anus.

Then he took his latex-gloved finger and inserted it into the carcass to begin separating its delicate skin from the “inner anatomy.”

. . .

Afterwards, there was the inevitable taxidermy contest, an experience that was, arguably, even more other-worldly than the master class.

Brooklynites converged on the makeshift stage with every manner of preserved animal body.

The competing specimens included a mounted chicken skeleton called Genus Nicoleais Richias, the testicles of a dog named Merlot preserved in a jar of rubbing alcohol, an Indonesian “tringaling,” and a naturally mummified rat.

But the top prizes went to a pair of squirrel testicles mounted on a plaque, a pigeon specimen, and two gaffes — a Fiji mermaid and a Coney Island “searabbit.”

I think this whole Indian-fusion thing may have gone too far:

Talk of the Town opened about a month ago, and offers the familiar flavors of India with a twist. You’ll find classic staples of Indian cooking on the menu, such as lamb vindaloo, chicken curry, and aloo gobi, as well as tandoori offerings. But Talk of the Town goes a little further than even the expansive breadth of exotic flavors that characterize India’s broad culinary palette, blending Chinese, Italian, and even Irish cooking into the menu.

If you aren’t quite in the mood for Indian cooking, Talk of the Town makes an Irish lamb stew, which is cubes of carrot and potato in mild Irish flavors. They also serve up a chicken a la Roma — chicken sauteed with Marseilles wine and topped with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese.

Enterprising bikini traffickers try their hardest to erase whatever culture remains in Manhattan:

Owners of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, an 800-person-capacity restaurant that just opened on 49th Street, recruited ambitious women from pageant competitions across America as its first wave of bikini-clad employees. Those women have since been joined by 82 local waitresses.

The out-of-towners live in a dorm-like apartment on the Upper East Side — it’s “The Real World” meets “Gidget.”

“It is a great opportunity for me to get closer to my dreams of becoming a model,” said Jennifer Johnson, a 26-year-old who left her job teaching fourth grade in Dallas after winning the Miss Texas Hawaiian Tropic contest.

Her roommate and fellow Texan, Sarah Jo Lammers, a 24-year-old from Corpus Christi with a finance degree, bolted the business world to pursue a modeling dream here.

The Texans live with eight other recruits in two three-bedroom pads in an eight-story walkup on the Upper East Side owned by Dennis Riese, who owns the Hawaiian Tropic Zone with PM nightclub honcho Adam Hock.

Under the terms of their Hawaiian Tropic Zone deals, the models live rent free for six months, pay $200 for the seventh month, $400 the eighth and $600 a month until they leave. They also get discounted gym memberships and tanning, because they’re required to take part in both.

In return, they weave in and out between crowded tables as waitresses for the restaurant, welcoming guests, serving drinks and taking dinner orders while wearing Nicole Miller bikinis.

Every night is a beauty pageant. The waitresses strut their stuff twice a shift in front of the usual crowd of suit-clad bankers and brokers who quiet down and cast their paper ballots for the hottie they most admire.

The pageant winner gets a $100 bonus on top of $100 for each eight-hour shift and tips as high as $100 per table.

“I went out and bought shoes, which are everywhere in this city,” Johnson said, recalling a whopping gratuity from one admirer.

Preschoolers don’t just seem older, they actually are older:

Children who turn 5 even in June or earlier are sometimes considered not ready for kindergarten these days, as parents harbor an almost Darwinian desire to ensure that their own child is not the runt of the class. Although a spate of literature in the last few years about boys’ academic difficulties helped prompt some parents to hold their sons back a year, girls, too, are being held back. Yet research on whether the extra year helps is inconclusive.

Fueled by the increasingly rigorous nature of kindergarten and a generation of parents intent on giving their children every edge, the practice is flourishing in New York City private schools and suburban public schools. A crop of 5-year-olds in nursery school and kindergartners pushing 7 are among the most striking results.

“These summer boys have now evolved to including girls and going back as far as March,” said Dana Haddad, admissions director at the Claremont Preparatory School, in Lower Manhattan, referring to children who turned 5 in those months but stayed in nursery school. “It’s become a huge epidemic.” In some corners, the decision of when to enroll a child in kindergarten has mushroomed from a non-issue into an agonizing choice, as anxiety-generating as, well, the private school kindergarten admissions process itself.

“It’s kind of crazy to hold them back,” said Jessica Siegel, 40, whose daughter, Mirit Skeen is back for another year at Montclair Community Pre-K in New Jersey, although she turned 5 in late August and the public school cutoff there for kindergarten is Oct. 1. “Someone’s going to be the youngest. Someone’s going to be the smallest.”

Ms. Siegel and her husband considered the decision for months, waiting until the week before public school started before making it final in case Mirit “suddenly had some kind of huge emotional shift.”

“I felt like her whole experience is about being the smallest and the youngest, and I wanted to change that experience for her,” Ms. Siegel said, adding, “The more people do it, the more people do it — partially because you don’t want yours to be the last.”

To stave off preschool fatigue, some city parents send their children to public school kindergarten for a year, hoping to transfer them to a private kindergarten the next year. Columbus Park West Nursery School on the Upper West Side is considering opening a “junior kindergarten” to accommodate children who in the past would simply have headed for the real thing.

1-800-HowsMyDriving for nannies:

While nanny is minding the baby, passersby now can rat out a Mary Poppins who’s less than practically perfect in every way.

Under a plan pushed by a New York City prosecutor, all they’ll have to do is take down the “license plate” on the tot’s stroller and send an e-mail to the parents.

The plates are registered to www.howsmynanny.com, a site where informants can plug in the tag’s unique number to alert parents to a nanny’s indiscretions.

Unlike the vague, gossipy “bad nanny” sightings that proliferate on mommy blogs but don’t necessarily reach a tots’ parents, “There’s no guesswork. You don’t have to say, ‘Is this my nanny?’” said Jill Starishevsky, the assistant district attorney hawking the plates.

Buyers pay $50 for a 4-inch-by-7-inch plate and private access to notes from tipsters, who can remain anonymous.

Then there’s 1-800-HowsMyParenting:

Starishevsky admitted the system isn’t perfect: Parents could find themselves in the position of receiving reports about themselves.

“So when my husband is doing pop-o-wheelies with the stroller, someone can tell me he’s doing an illegal act?” joked Jo-el Shea, who was jogging with her 14-week-old son in Central Park this week.

A gay-bashing sting operation nabs surly dickhead in Union Square:

A Brooklyn man chose the wrong targets to gay-bash when he picked on two undercover cops pretending to be snuggling paramours in Union Square Park, authorities said yesterday.

Tyrone George, 20, was arrested on hate-crime charges at around 1:15 p.m. Monday after he threatened and spat at the officers, who were in the park on the lookout for gang activity, police said.

The cops, a sergeant and a police officer assigned to the Transit Borough Manhattan Task Force, were perched on a bench like lovebirds, with the sergeant’s arm wrapped around his subordinate’s shoulder, authorities said.

George approached them, screamed that he hated “homos,” told them to get out of his park, called them “faggots” and gave the sergeant the middle finger, according to a Criminal Court complaint.

Minutes later, George circled back and continued his anti-gay rant, threatened to assault them and spat on the sergeant’s foot, authorities said.

With that, the cops arrested George, who struggled and said he didn’t want “faggots touching him,” court papers state.

Choose your own snark:

• Sure they were “pretending” . . . sure.
• Posing as a drug buyer is one thing, but snuggling with your partner — now there’s an assignment.
• When this is ripped from the headlines, perhaps Jesse L. Martin will reprise his role in Rent?

While in Midtown the United Nations debated sanctions on North Korea, in the Village NYU students participated in the largest Connect Four game ever (or at least we hope the largest ever):

Each decision was crucial. Nerves were high and the pressure was on. But it wasn’t the Superbowl or the World Series — no, this was far bigger. This was Weinstein’s version of Connect Four on Saturday in which event planners taped yellow paper to the windows of Weinstein residence hall facing University Place to replicate the board.

“It was definitely not good that they came and woke me up just to hang up things in my window,” CAS freshman Michael Bliss said of the RAs preparation for the event.

The windows in between represented the empty spaces the competitors chose where to place their “pieces” — or in this case, large sheets of red or black paper. Via cell phone, the two players chose where they wanted their pieces to fall by contacting RAs on each floor who then taped the appropriate team’s square on whoever’s window it happened to be.

“In terms of doing a good job, this is the kind of stuff we should be doing more of — using our buildings in creative ways,” Weinstein’s Community Development Educator Ryan Sylvester said. “Plus, it would be cool to say we had the largest game of Connect Four ever.”

The game started last week with the elimination of 43 players. During those rounds, games were played on traditional tabletop boards. Stern freshman Tommy Wong and CAS freshman Catherine Kelso emerged as Connect Four champions, and were then given the opportunity to rake in five million points for Weinstein’s Floor Wars, should they win the building-sized version of the game.

. . .

Trying to withstand the bitter wind across the street, Wong and Kelso battled it out with intense strategy as fellow residents cheered them on.

“This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me this morning,” CAS freshman Gabriel Leinwand said.

Rejected Post headline — “It’s Not The Size, It’s What You Do With It”:

City cops are on the alert for the SwissMiniGun — a 2.16-inch replica of a Colt Python capable of shooting bullets that are just one-third of an inch long.

The six-shot revolver — which sells for about $500 and can literally fit in the palm of a hand — is capable of causing serious damage, authorities say.

The guns cannot be imported legally, but smuggling is a concern, officials said.

Cops are also watching out for plastic handcuff keys that are approximately the size of a nickel.

The keys cannot be picked up by metal detectors and look like a pendant when worn on a chain.

The NYPD last Saturday warned the city’s 36,000 officers to “use extreme vigilance” when searching, guarding and transporting prisoners.

An evangelical group targets rootless Brooklyn hipsters:

While Greenpoint hipsters sip lattes and leaf through the Sunday papers at Café Grumpy on Meserole Ave., a fervent group of young neighborhood churchgoers prays behind them.

“I am evil, born in sin,” chant worshipers in the newly established Williamsburg Church.

Since July, a congregation of 15 has been gathering on Sunday nights in a nook in the back of the cafe, an area that operates as an art gallery the rest of the week.

“A church isn’t a building, it’s a people,” said pastor Robert Elkin, who moved to Brooklyn six months ago to open the church.

Elkin is a member of the Heritage Bible Church, a 1,400-person evangelical group based in Greer, S.C. The born-again missionaries hope to open churches across the country, particularly in areas where religion isn’t at the top of people’s to-do lists.

“It’s a ripe environment, but it’s a challenge,” said Elkin, who sees “hedonism” in Williamsburg and Greenpoint’s youth culture.

The group’s target audience is hip, young New Yorkers who have ignored God for too long — and have been overlooked by God’s messengers.

. . .

Café Grumpy owner Caroline Bell didn’t want to talk about her new tenant. “Anybody who wants to rent out the back can,” she said.

One thing should be for sure — God willing, you won’t be complaining to the community board about your noisy neighbors:

New Yorkers with a zest for life — and $1 million to spend — are dying to move into a luxury condo building with a killer view of Green-Wood Cemetery and its 560,000 permanent residents.

About a third of the condos at the ritzy “Simone” in Windsor Terrace overlook the cemetery and some of its famous graves — artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, editor Horace Greeley and political titan William (Boss) Tweed.

“A lot of people haven’t said anything about the cemetery,” said Corcoran sales associate Andrew Booth. “Or they say they like it because they know nothing will ever be built on it.”

Booth said 19 of the building’s 35 condos are in contract — at prices ranging from $275,000 to $999,000 — and buyers can expect to move in by early next year.

. . .

Brooklyn residents yesterday seemed to envy their new neighbors’ graveyard views, but some were deadly serious about the once-blue collar area’s skyrocketing housing prices.

“I can’t see paying that much anywhere, never mind next to a cemetery,” said Lang Price, 54, an attorney who lives nearby.

“But that’s what the market has done to real estate in this city. People will pay anything to live anywhere.”

Location Scout: Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Manhattan Cat, whose entire existence is informed by dank, cramped apartments they never leave, gets much, much freakier:

Josh is a $4,000 cat, bred to keep from setting off allergic reactions like sniffles, teary eyes and hives in people like me — who until now could never have a meaningful relationship with a feline.

The 3-year-old male was bred by a company called Allerca, which set up our meeting yesterday at the W Hotel.

After hiding under the bed, then behind a pillow, he let me cradle him in my arms.

I waited and . . . nothing. No sneezing. No tears.

. . .

The special cats won’t be available to the general public until early next year. Already, there’s a long waiting list. New Yorkers are actually paying an extra $2,000 to be bumped to the front of the line.

Allerca developed the pets by selectively breeding cats that had a “changed” glycoprotein, the genetic property that triggers an allergy, said Bernadine Cruz, Josh’s vet. One in 50,000 cats has this altered protein.

“Joshua is second generation and there’s many more to come,” Cruz said, adding that he’s the result of three years of research.

Just say no to genetically modified cats!

Père Lachaise, Hollywood Forever and . . . a tree planter on East 67th Street:

For the past six years, Transit Authority dispatcher Vinnie Lepani has been marking the passing of the famous and infamous with miniature headstones fashioned from tongue depressors in a smidgen of soil within a tree planter.

The makeshift cemetery has become an attraction in the upper East Side neighborhood. Tourists stop to take photos and neighborhood hospital workers occasionally add their favorite dearly departed to the display.

“We try to keep it as current as possible — depending on the weather,” Lepani said in a thick Brooklyn accent as he penciled movie star Glenn Ford’s name on a stick last week. “It makes conversation, and conversation is what makes me go.”

Lepani started the cemetery as a lark, with a trio of tombstones for three rock ‘n’ roll stars who died in a 1959 plane crash, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.

The next day he noticed that someone had added a fourth marker — he can’t remember the name — so he answered with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. It grew from there, and now includes anyone Lepani considers boldface material.

Comedian Red Buttons, civil rights pioneer Coretta Scott King, talk-show host Mike Douglas, actor Pat Morita and musician Billy Preston are some of the recent additions.

“Tupac is in there. We don’t discriminate,” he said. “We had a big one for the King, Elvis Presley, but it’s gone. People steal them.”

. . .

Lepani has only one rule for the graveyard — anyone who wants to get in it better be famous.

Sometimes, the relatives of patients who died at Sloan-Kettering or New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell across the street ask to commemorate their loved ones. But unless they are marquee names, Lepani usually lets them down gently.

Renegade signage causes havoc in DUMBO; DOT flummoxed:

A “No Parking” sign mysteriously appeared on a stretch of Front St. in Brooklyn this week, prompting the police to ticket and tow cars left there.

The only problem, the city Transportation Department said yesterday, is that there are no parking restrictions on the south side of Front St., between Washington and Main Sts. — and they have no idea who put up the official sign.

“This is crazy,” cried towing victim David Bourgeois, a 38-year-old freelance writer who lives in the neighborhood.

It was the latest twist in a Twilight Zone-like week for Bourgeois, who parked his Mini Cooper on Front St. Sunday night when the sign — barring parking from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays — wasn’t there.

When he went to check on his wheels Wednesday morning, the sign was there — and his car was gone.

He found his Mini in a police tow pound in Brooklyn Wednesday night. He paid $205 to drive it to freedom. Adding insult to injury, a $60 parking ticket was on the windshield.

“It’s just outrageous,” he said. “I’m definitely going to fight this.”

DOT spokeswoman Kay Sarlin said the agency would work with the city Finance Department to dismiss the ticket. An NYPD spokesman said officials were looking into waiving the towing fee.

The latter is clever but developers don’t offer amenities unless they have to . . . the housing bubble is upon us:

When luxury condominiums open early next year at 20 Pine St., a former bank in the Financial District, tenants will be able to cap off their days by soaking in a Turkish bath, practicing their swings with a golf simulator, or perfecting their yoga poses in a private exercise studio.

Instead of hailing a taxi, those moving into 255 Hudson St. in SoHo will be able to slide behind the wheel of one of the vintage automobiles at the building’s disposal. Residents at 15 Central Park West will be able to watch a DVD in that condominium’s screening room or select a book from its private library. Meanwhile in Brooklyn, overwhelmed parents living at the Court Street Lofts can call on a “nanny concierge” to arrange playdates for their toddlers.

With a bevy of condos hitting the market, many residential developments are luring apartment-hunters with amenities that are transforming apartment buildings into veritable self-contained villages.

Call it “assisted living” for the family set.

“The market has demanded it,” a senior managing director of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, Anne Young, said. “People in New York work so hard. At the end of the day, we do not want to leave our homes, but we still want the gracious lifestyle we think we’re entitled to. We want to go home to our own gym, our own movie theater, our own golf simulator.”

In this newly condo-crowded city, developers are looking to stand out, an executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Tamir Shemesh, said. “They’re saying, ‘You’re going to pay $2,000 per square foot, but we’re going to give you extras that you won’t be able to find at other places,’” he said. “They’re not looking at reducing the price, but they are looking to give you more for your buck.”

. . .

The Ariel — two luxury high-rises in the West 90s — will offer tenants access to an on-site La Palestra fitness center, a billiards room, and a “pet salon,” where residents can “bathe their dog, without putting them into your tea-for-two tub in their $3 million home,” Ms. Trazzera said.

“We’re empowering New Yorkers to become the overachievers that we’re all expected to be,” a managing director of Corcoran Sunshine, Daniel Cordeiro, said.

Mr. Cordeiro said building-based services — from dog spas to steam rooms to at-your-service concierges — are quickly becoming commonplace in new condominiums. “To me, it’s like the Internet or a Blackberry,” he said. “It’s not a luxury anymore.”

He added: “These amenities, in hindsight, you think, ‘How could we live without this?’” [Emph. added to underscore hopeful spin]

Twelve hours on how to sell factory-seconds electronics and cheaply made socks:

Starting next month, aspiring entrepreneurs will be able to attend a seminar that will teach them the marketing skills they’ll need to be vendors at an indoor flea market in Far Rockaway, Queens.

The “How to Become a Successful Flea Market Vendor” workshop was set up by organizers of the Seaside Flea Market, who are seeking locals who yearn to own their own businesses and are willing to set up shop at the market, which reopens this fall.

“When we saw there was an opportunity for something to happen in the Rockaways, we jumped at the chance,” said flea market vendor Valerie Vargas, 45, who co-owns Pisces Arts & Crafts with her husband, Max.

The Far Rockaway couple took the 12-hour course earlier this year and on summer weekends have sold their handmade jewelry and oils at the flea market, located at 1700 Seagirt Blvd.

“We went there open-minded. We didn’t know we had a knack for this, and I’m enjoying it,” said Vargas, 45, who also works as a production editor. “We’ve done quite well this summer, and we have repeat customers. Our goal and dream is to have our own store.”

The vendor course instructs participants how to choose a product for sale, how to set uptheir selling area and salesmanship.

“Anyone who is interested in extra income or starting their own business can learn how to do it on their own,” said Abbey Feldman, course instructor and a market organizer. “It is ideal for people who like the boutique business concept.”

Where do all the Talk of the Town rejections go? To silenceofthecity.com*:

The prospect of breaking into the seemingly impenetrable fortress that is The New Yorker can make a writer contemplate crazy and desperate things. So it was for Mac Montandon, when, a couple years ago, he received an assignment to write an article on spec for the magazine’s Talk of the Town section. To Montandon, who’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to break into the magazine, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But on the day he’d arranged to conduct the crucial interview, one that couldn’t be postponed, his wife went into labor with the couple’s first child. “I’ll probably sound like the bastard of all time,” the 35-year-old journalist says, “but I was a little conflicted.”

On the day his daughter, Oona, was born, he was to meet Bob Pollard, the frontman of the band Guided by Voices, who, Montandon had learned, planned to announce the dissolution of the band to a capacity crowd at the Bowery Ballroom that evening. It promised to be one of those offbeat New York moments that Talk of the Town stories capture so well, and Pollard seemed the type of quirky, yet complex, persona that might intrigue New Yorker readers. Luckily, Oona was born in time for Montandon to meet Pollard that afternoon. And making trips back and forth from the venue to the hospital, he even caught one of Guided by Voices’ final performances. Later, Montandon framed his story with the elegance, wit, and detail he believed were the ingredients of a successful Talk story. In the end, though, the magazine never published it. “I think that was the closest I’ve come to cracking into the golden tower,” recalls Montandon, a senior editor at the soon-to-be-relaunched Radar magazine, who estimates he’s pitched Talk of the Town 15 times over the past four years. (One of his most recent: a piece on the etiquette of holding subway and elevator doors open for other passengers—do you make a token effort with the “dainty one-toe” technique or take “the full-body approach”? In retrospect, he concedes, his pitch may have been a bit too “high-concept.”)

Rejection, of course, is simply a rite of passage for most writers. For Montandon, though, it formed the seed of an idea. Since there was no shortage of writers like him who’d tried and failed to make The New Yorker’s pages, he figured there was an abundance of unpublished Talk stories lying around New York City. About a year ago he set out to provide a home for the orphan submissions, quietly launching silenceofthecity.com, where he resurrects the unpublished contributions of Talk of the Town rejectees.

. . .

Though Montandon has yet to receive any feedback from The New Yorker about Silence of the City and was unsure whether anyone there had even come across it, staffers at the magazine have been aware of the site for some time. “We were flattered by it more than anything,” says Lauren Collins, a 26-year-old New Yorker staffer who writes for Talk of the Town and assists in putting the section together. “I think it’s good-humored and a fun spoof on what we do.”

“I thought that the stories were pretty good and fun to read,” adds Susan Morrison, who’s edited Talk for the past 10 years, “so it’s providing a service, I suppose, because we don’t have that much space to run many stories.”

*This Voice article is the most meta thing you’ll read all year.

See also: Silence of the City.

Debate rages over whether using sex to sell condos is “fun” or if it just reveals that the market for high-end real estate has, er, shot its wad:

A woman with tousled hair straddles a grinning, shirtless man on a bed alongside the words: “Try This at Home.” This was not an advertisement for beer, perfume or instructional Kama Sutra DVD’s. It was an advertisement for the Herald Towers condominiums in Midtown Manhattan.

In a print advertisement for the Link condominiums, also in Midtown, a red-lipped topless woman (only a sliver of one breast was visible) is shown sitting in an apartment while a tattoo is applied to her exposed back.

A glossy advertisement for the Altair 20 in Chelsea has lush greenery framing a shower stall and a svelte, wet, naked woman with a strategically positioned banner that reads “To the Altair 20 Rainforest.”

Some of the advertisements for new condominiums this year look more like ads for condoms, and that has caused more than a few eyes to linger on traditionally staid real estate listings. These provocative advertisements have also raised eyebrows among real estate and advertising professionals who say sex has never been germane to real estate marketing the way it is, say, to music and underwear.

. . .

Lizzie Grubman Public Relations has increasingly been sought by real estate companies in the last year, including Corcoran, which calls itself the city’s largest residential real estate company. “Companies have come to our agency because they want to go beyond the tradition,” said Sabrina Levine, Ms. Grubman’s partner. “Now it’s all about making their building buzz-worthy.”

. . .

Mr. [Neil] Binder of Bellmarc and [NYU Stern Business School] Professor [Sam] Craig suggested that when marketers play the sex card, it is an indication of trouble, though no marketing executive would admit to such a thing.

Still, Mr. Binder said, “I can’t deny the legitimacy of the strategy.”

Fulfilling motorists’ desire to honor the memory of those who perished on Sept. 11, the state DMV will begin issuing 9/11 commemorative license plates:

4-GET ordering vanity plates that read 911WTC, 9FDNY11 or WTC4EVA.

The state still doesn’t issue custom license plates linked to 9/11, but those wishing to honor Sept. 11 victims on their cars could soon do so — thanks to New York lawmakers.

The state Senate passed a bill last week allowing for the sale of a “distinctive” Sept. 11 commemorative plate, said state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans), who co-sponsored the bill.

The Department of Motor Vehicles in 2001 placed a moratorium on Sept. 11-themed plates “because of the pain and suffering, and out of respect of all of the family and rescue workers,” explained DMV spokesman Ken Brown.

There had been an immediate rush for such plates after the terror attacks. One person requested WTC911 “before noon” on Sept. 11, DMV officials told The Associated Press in 2001.

Several states already sell Sept. 11 commemorative plates.

First someone walks every street in Manhattan, now a man sets out to jog every street in Brooklyn:

Brand new Brooklynite Gary Jarvis plans to jog all 1,599 miles of Kings County in the next two years — and document it on his Web site, Runsbrooklyn.blogspot.com.

“It’s an absolutely fantastic way to get to know the place,” said Jarvis, a former New Jersey telephone repairman who runs about 30 miles a week.

Jarvis’ mission began June 20 when he moved into his girlfriend’s Park Slope pad after 10 years in Iowa City, where he studied history at the University of Iowa.

While in Iowa, the avid marathon runner made a pact to jog the college town’s 230 miles but neglected to chronicle the undertaking and the landmarks he discovered along the way.

That won’t happen again, he said.

Each jog will culminate with Jarvis heading home and mapping his route, which he said will be chosen on a whim each morning when he heads out the door. He’ll post the routes and his observations on the Web later in the day.

“Most people just kind of stick to their own neighborhoods,” said Jarvis, who is moving into a new apartment in Greenpoint next month. “It may sound naive to New Yorkers but to me it just sounded like a great idea.”

Jarvis has already clocked about 45 miles in parts of Crown Heights, Flatbush, Greenwood Heights, Kensington, Midwood, Park Slope, and Sunset Park. He has also seen some of the borough’s best-known landmarks, such as the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, Green-Wood Cemetery and St. Michael’s Catholic Church.

As for Brooklyn’s 4,440 acres of parkland, Jarvis has already circled the perimeter of Prospect Park and plans to duck inside the borough’s other pastures along the way.

“As long as pedestrians are allowed, I’m going to do it,” said Jarvis, who tends to jog alone. “Obviously, I won’t be jogging the BQE, the Gowanus or the Belt, but everything else is fair game.”

7/8 update: Hey, he’s already been to Junius Street! Props to the running guy!

This answers once and for all whether it’s possible to blast your way into an ATM:

A man set off a small explosive device last night in a failed attempt to rob an automated teller machine in the West Village, police said.

No one was hurt in the 11:40 p.m. blast outside New York City Bagels on Sixth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets.

Cops said the small blast didn’t even dent the cash machine, which is attached to a wall outside the store, facing the street.

I’m gonna say it and you can’t stop me — only in New York, Kids, only in New York:

If one hangs around Lower Manhattan long enough, one may see a white Ford van with its exterior adorned with Hebrew lettering and diagrams about the Kabbalah, the ancient mystical movement often studied by Hasidic Jews that deals with the nature of divinity and creation of the soul.

The van is not filled with Jewish missionaries, but rather with a greasy jumble of valves, fan motors, blowtorches and other equipment and tools. On the door, in English, is the company name: Aleph Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Service. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

. . .

So what is with these mystical messages on a gritty construction van parked with other banged-up service vehicles on busy Manhattan streets?

Its owner, Nelson Cabezas, 58, is just waiting for you to ask, and if you catch him when he is not fixing a walk-in freezer, air-conditioning unit, sushi refrigerator or ice machine, he will offer as much explanation as you want.

Mr. Cabezas is not like most Kabbalah scholars. He is not a rabbi — he is not even Jewish. His parents came from Nicaragua, and he was raised on tough Bronx streets in the 1950’s and 60’s.

He is a refrigerator and air-conditioner mechanic with a theology degree. He is an ordained interfaith minister with a refrigeration engineer’s license, who has spent the past few decades of his life studying refrigeration and the Kabbalah in tandem.

Mr. Cabezas draws a direct parallel between divine energy and the raw electricity created in power plants and sent through the heavy-duty power grids in and around New York City. Like God’s energy, he says, the raw electricity is so powerful that it must be “stepped down” many times with transformers, from thousands of volts to the 115-volt level that powers household appliances.

“For example, Con Edison produces thousands of volts of energy that is way too powerful for us to use, the same way God must reduce his energy through the 10 universes described in the Kabbalah, so that our material universe can comprehend it,” Mr. Cabezas said.

He explained this while he examined the cooling system of a walk-in freezer in the busy basement kitchen of Chef and Company, a catering business on West 18th Street.