Lord, these people need to get out of their heads, and perhaps off that island, too, but at the very least get out of the neighborhood for even an afternoon — there are many nice parks, for example — or maybe they should think about a trip to the beach, or take in an afternoon ballgame . . .:

Some are celebrating it as a reclaimed pedestrian space and a welcome amenity for local residents and tourists. Others, like longtime neighborhood resident Erik Wensburg, are questioning the “mammary motif” of the circular bollards. But everyone agrees that the once-chaotic and hazardous five-way intersection at Gansevoort St. and Ninth Ave. is no longer what it used to be.

Less than a month ago, construction was completed on the new Gansevoort Plaza in the heart of the historic Meatpacking District. The cobblestone intersection, formerly a bottleneck clogged by truck and taxi traffic, now is home to an array of scattered tree planters, stone slabs conducive to sitting and bollards with white reflectors on top resembling, in the eyes of some, a female breast. Meanwhile, traffic flow has been reduced to a single lane.

The project is the fruit of a community-based effort that began in 2005 with the recognition that the Meatpacking District was moving farther away from its traditional uses and toward a new identity as a center for nightlife and upscale shopping, with all the traffic that accompanies such a change. A group of community leaders formed the Greater Gansevoort Urban Improvement Project to spearhead a ground-up initiative to address their concerns about traffic, safety and preservation of a neighborhood that had been designated a historic district by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2003.

. . .

The plaza is a temporary D.O.T. project that will continue to be shaped by community input and available funding down the line. The streetscape improvement was paid for out of D.O.T.’s budget, with contributions by [the Meatpacking District Initiative] for additional plantings. M.P.D.I. has assumed responsibility for the plaza’s maintenance for the meantime. However, M.P.D.I. ultimately hopes a formal business improvement district, or BID, is approved for the area, after which a funding stream will become available for streetscape maintenance. M.P.D.I. is four months into the roughly 18-month process to gain approval from the city to form a BID.

For now, M.P.D.I. will be distributing a survey to local residents and business owners to solicit feedback on the plaza’s design and use. The organization will then compile these results and submit them to D.O.T. for review. The space is currently being considered for outdoor events and a weekly Greenmarket.

Some active residents, however, have already informally let their opinions be known, expressing concerns over the choices of materials used and design scheme. Marge Colt, vice president of the Horatio Street Association, pointed specifically to what she called the “defacement” of the cobblestone street, the “senseless” traffic pattern and the “conflicting” seating designs.

“I think the whole thing is an abomination,” Colt said. “It looks like it has been thrown together by people who have no design experience. And the breasts must go.”

How does a firefighter afford a Cadillac SUV? That looks like an Escalade. Prices start at $56,890:

A Cadillac SUV registered to Firefighter Christopher Santana was photographed parked just 3 feet from a fire hydrant on a Bronx street.

And in what seems to be a pathetic attempt to dodge a ticket for the gross — and potentially dangerous — parking violation, a handwritten note was placed on the dashboard alongside a worthless fire union parking placard. “I’m really a fireman,” the note read. “I work in Engine 46.”

“Ask Traffic Agent Maria Daniel,” the note continued. “Thank you for your courtesy.”

The black SUV — boasting the vanity license plate BRAVEST1 — was parked on Van Cortlandt Park South at the corner of Gale Place in Kingsbridge on Sunday afternoon. Neighbors said the car was frequently parked in that spot. It was stationed just 3 feet from the fireplug, far less than the 15 feet required by city law.

“Every firefighter in the City of New York knows not to park in front of a hydrant,” said one high-ranking FDNY source. “Don’t they teach that on the first day of the [Fire] Academy?”

“Could you imagine if a fire engine couldn’t reach the hydrant because of that guy?” the source asked.

Santana, 34, is assigned to Engine 46 and has been with the Fire Department for more than four years, according to an FDNY official.

There’s a reason you wait until the last minute to publicly address traffic and parking concerns:

IKEA officials yesterday revealed plans for how they plan to pacify Red Hook, Brooklyn once thousands of shoppers start heading there daily on June 18 when the Swedish home-furniture giant opens its first New York City store on the Beard Street waterfront.

Highlighting the transportation improvements arranged specifically for the new IKEA is free water-taxi service to and from lower Manhattan.

The service, to be provided by New York Water Taxi, will run every 40 minutes during store hours, said store manager Mike Baker. Water taxis will dock along a 6.5-acre public esplanade that IKEA had to build behind the store to help garner elected officials’ support for the controversial $100 million project.

Other transit improvements will include beefed-up bus service and free shuttle service connecting to the three closest subway stops, which are still over a mile away.

. . .

Red Hook itself is fenced off from the rest of the borough by the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and even the nearest highway entrance on the BQE is over a mile away from the 346,000-square-foot store.

IKEA is offering 1,400 parking spots, although the project’s environmental impact statement estimates about 14,000 cars arriving on Saturdays. [Red Hook Civic Alliance co-chair John] McGettrick says he believes it will actually be 20,000.

But IKEA spokesman Joseph Roth said he expects most New Yorkers to leave their cars home and use the new transit options.

For example, IKEA is offering free shuttle service every ten minutes from three subway stations: Borough Hall/Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, Smith/9th Street in Carroll Gardens, and 4th Avenue/9th Street in Gowanus.

And the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is extending the B61 and B77 bus routes to stop directly in front of the store.

And some of them might even be your friends:

Living in a top-floor walk-up in New York City is a mixed blessing.

Sure there are those stairs; all those stairs. There is the moment of dread when you look up the stairs and contemplate the trek up, up and up, carrying groceries, children, luggage, furniture, whatever.

But that’s not all there is. In the current real estate market, top-floor walk-ups may well be the best deals. They can also be quiet spaces that are flooded with light and that have open views of the city, especially if they peek out above their surrounding neighbors. In some cases, they also have a deck or terrace that can become an outdoor living room with the twinkling night sky as a backdrop.

. . .

Since 1968, the city has generally required builders to install elevators in all new residential buildings that have five or more stories. But under certain zoning provisions, a five-story building can be built without an elevator.

Brokers say there are some developers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who have gotten approval to build five-story walk-ups by setting the top floor back from the front of the building and by keeping ceiling height under eight feet.

At five stories, “having an elevator would mean pretty significant common charges,” said Roberto Gonzalez, an agent at Bond New York. “Developers will do walk-ups because they want to be competitive, and they want to use as much of the footprint as they can for living space as opposed to an elevator shaft.”

David Kazemi, a vice president at Bond New York, said that walk-ups don’t seem to bother many of the young professionals looking to buy in Williamsburg. “A lot of people prefer it actually because they don’t want the luxury high-rise lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not the point of living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.”

. . .

People who live in top-floor walk-ups say they have a variety of coping mechanisms that help them deal with the daily hike up the stairs.

Ms. Stern said she learned very quickly not to focus on the number of steps. She counted and knew the exact number at one point. “But that was discouraging because then I found myself counting every time I went up,” she said. “It was much better when I stayed focused on the mission and the goal of just getting home.”

Big shopping trips to the grocery store are replaced by more frequent and smaller purchases, and heavy items like kitty litter might be put on the Fresh Direct order, along with a generous tip to the delivery man.

Mr. Gonzalez, the Bond agent, recently bought a fifth-floor walk-up for himself in Williamsburg, and he said that he had learned to become more organized to avoid having to run up and down the stairs several times a day to retrieve forgotten items. “Before I leave the house now I have a little saying: ‘Money, keys, phone. Money, keys, phone. Money, keys, phone,’” he said. “Because if I forget one of them, that’s when I regret the top floor.”

Mr. Nguyen, the owner in Inwood, said the one thing that he takes special care with is the trash and recycling. “I make sure it’s well secured for the trip down because I don’t want it breaking,” he said.

Also, after spending a week personally gutting and renovating the apartment’s kitchen with a friend, he said, “If I’d known what all we had to go through, I’d have probably hired somebody else to do it.”

He and his friend hauled up 15 kitchen cabinets, two 7-foot-tall storage units, countless bags of grout, boxes of tile and piles of new floorboards. “We sort of had to do a lot of maneuvering and we had to shimmy a lot of things around corners on the stairs to make it fit,” he said. “But it’s amazing what you can do with sheer will and determination.”

Allow 16- and 17-year-old representatives to vote:

State law does not allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote on community boards. State and city bills introduced last month would allow 16- and 17-year olds to vote on the boards, which have advisory responsibilities.

Francine Baras, executive director of Future Voters of America, a nonprofit group, described the effort as a compromise stemming from an earlier effort to lower the voting age in city elections that met considerable opposition.

“It’s funny,” said Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who introduced the bill calling for a lowered age limit in the City Council. “People are nervous about 16- and 17-year-olds.”

Ms. Brewer’s resolution lists some things 16- and 17-year-old state residents can already do: obtain a learner’s permit to drive, be tried and charged as adults in criminal matters, obtain a marriage license with parental consent, hold a job and pay taxes. In the language of her bill, imposing these responsibilities yet denying members of this age group the right to take part in their city government leaves them “disenfranchised” and “second-class citizens.”

Supporters say that 16- and 17-year-olds would bring a unique perspective to local government, especially with regard to issues involving schools and youth services, and suggest that youthful enthusiasm that has been evident in national politics in recent months can fuel involvement at the local level.

Think about the irony of allowing underage members to approve liquor licenses . . . in an advisory capacity only, of course. Brilliant!

Maybe we can finally get a legal definition of “luck”:

The New York Lottery’s impish “Little Bit of Luck” character is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing, according to a Staten Island woman who’s suing the state and shopkeepers, alleging fraud and racketeering.

The class-action lawsuit, filed on behalf of a woman identified only as M. McKee, accuses the New York State Division of Lottery and vendors of teaming up to dupe countless consumers into playing Take Five based on ads that exaggerate the odds of winning.

Players who plunk down hard-earned cash day after day actually believe in the slogans, “All you need is a little bit of luck” and “There’s a hundred thousand winners every day,” according to the suit, filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court.

The ads put the chances of winning at 1 in 9, but McKee’s lawyer Craig Lanza said consumers need only look at the state Lottery’s Web site to see this is “patently false.”

Let’s see — drag racing at a high rate of speed, being ejected from the back seat . . . so what were those concrete bollards doing there anyway? You tell me:

A drag race on a Charleston service road led to the crash that killed an Annadale teenager, prosecutors contend.

But the father of the victim, Michelle Arout, is seeking to spread the blame to the city and a number of its agencies.

John Arout maintains that two concrete-filled steel stanchions, or bollards, guarding a fire hydrant at the crash site negated the hydrant’s built-in “breakaway” design feature and figured in his daughter’s death.

The 2003 Honda in which Miss Arout was riding collided at a high rate of speed with a Ford Mustang, then slammed into one or both bollards and split in two.

The 17-year-old was ejected from the back seat and suffered fatal injuries in the July 23 crash on Veterans Road West near Bricktown Centre.

Arout, who is administrator of his daughter’s estate, seeks unspecified monetary damages in the civil action, recently filed in state Supreme Court, St. George.

Named as defendants are the city and its Environmental Protection, Transportation and Fire departments. . . .

Automobile use as “alternative transportation” . . . of course it is:

Another Manhattan luxury is making its way to the Bronx — and it’s eco-friendly.

Zipcar, the urban car share service, is bringing 12 cars to the borough that will be stationed in four parking lots. It has plans to have at least 20 more in three additional lots by summer’s end.

“We think New Yorkers everywhere need access to alternative transportation,” said Joel Johnson, general manager of the company. “Traditional services like rental car companies tend to shy away from areas underserved like the Bronx. We are open to serve the entire city.”

Zipcar already operates in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It has 200,000 members nationwide.

Unlike rental cars, the 12 Mini Coopers and eco-friendly hybrid Toyota Priuses in the Bronx can be reserved by the hour or day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Members reserve the cars online or by phone whenever they want, and have automated access to the cars using a “Zipcard” to unlock the door and drive away.

The four lots to first have the cars are located at 1020 Grand Concourse, 3000 Third Ave., 1752 Morris Ave. and 250 E. 188th St.

But the real question is how DOT can replace a sign without charging taxpayers:

Newcomers to the city searching for Mercer Street over the weekend may have run into some trouble at the corner of West Houston Street, where a city sign pointed the way to “Merser Street.”

Despite the popularity of the name Mercer (and of its bearers), and even though the street corner is in a heavily trafficked area — less than a block from such SoHo landmarks as the Mercer Hotel, MercBar, and this season’s new hot watering hole, subMercer — the sloppily spelled street sign lingered for all to see for four balmy spring days before being taken down yesterday afternoon.

Where the blame lies for “Merser Street” is not clear — the culprit could be the sign manufacturer, the originating work order, or someone who sought to link the proud name of Mercer with MRSA, aka Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka the superbug. Department of Transportation workers replaced the sign at no cost to taxpayers.

You know, parts of Queens actually don’t look too much different than Philadelphia, and if you squint, Center City is reminiscent of Brooklyn:

Karen Giberson’s day starts at 5:30 a.m. She gets up, gets ready, and drives to 30th Street Station, where she catches the 6:52 a.m. train to Manhattan and her jobs as president of the Accessories Council, a nonprofit trade association, and an associate at Anomaly, an ad agency.

At 5:39 p.m., Giberson is on a return train for Philadelphia; by about 7:20 p.m., she’s back home in Glen Mills.

“It’s a very long day,” says Giberson, 42, who’s been making the trek for 2 1/2 years. “But I love what I do and it’s there, and I love where I live and that’s here. It’s a compromise.”

One that puts her in good company with scores of other long-distance commuters who choose to make their homes here while pursuing their careers in New York. Whether it’s because of lower real estate prices in this region or plum jobs that happen to be roughly 90 miles to the north, enough people are willing to make the trek that Amtrak estimates it pulled in $9.4 million from 220,800 rides on multi-trip tickets on the Philadelphia-New York route in 2007 — an all-time revenue high.

. . .

For most of these commuters, it is real estate that keeps them riding the rails, especially when the average purchase price for a Manhattan apartment is $1.4 million. That can make Amtrak’s monthly rail pass seem like a cheap alternative at $1,098, especially when people are willing to move deeper into the suburbs and travel farther to work so they can afford the houses they want.

“I love the New York area, but I also have kids,” said Giberson, who bought her house in 2001 for $310,000. “It wouldn’t really be an option to hike it up there and stick everybody in a little bitty apartment and move everyone from the schools and friends they love.”

According to the Census Bureau, 15.9 million commuters leave for work between midnight and 5:59 a.m., and 3 million commute more than 90 minutes a day. Is there that much of a difference between driving an hour from Medford to Philadelphia in rush-hour traffic and taking an hour-and-a-half train ride from Philadelphia to New York?

Instead of spending that time driving, a lot of long-distance workers opt for the train, a time-honored mode of transportation in the long history of the metropolis-to-metropolis commute. In this wired era, folks work as they go, via wireless Internet and cell phone.

“The commute in is actually one of the most pleasurable parts of my day,” says Giberson. “I sit in the cafe car, spread my stuff out, get on the computer, and I work from the time I sit down until we hit the tunnel.”

If you want to depend on Amtrak, godspeed . . . and hope there isn’t a freight train holding you up somewhere outside of Elizabeth.

You know, you don’t need new planners or spokespeople to administer a toll, or even a sales tax:

The city is already seeking résumés for high-paying gigs with its congestion-pricing initiative — despite the fact it might never be approved.

And, according to the salaries being offered, drivers aren’t the only ones who’ll pay if the plan gets off the ground.

The Department of Transportation posted 10 positions — paying up to a combined $1.2 million — for engineers, planners and spokespersons who would work in a variety of capacities promoting and managing Mayor Bloomberg’s contentious plan to charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan’s business districts.

“Starting the search now is necessary, so we can quickly hire the engineering and planning professionals we need to implement the many components of congestion pricing efficiently within one year of approval,” said DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow.

The gigs, advertised on the DOT’s Web site and on Craigslist, run the gamut from press officers to planners.

The position of “administrative city planner” can earn a maximum of $162,790 while an “administrative public-information specialist” can make up to $135,240.

Even low-end salaries in DOT’s want ads are in the ranges of $50,000 to $60,000.

This seems like a losing proposition, but they should know, I guess:

A group of Brooklyn judges is preparing to sue the city to preserve its parking privileges in a park next to Borough Hall, claiming that the removal of 20 or so spaces will endanger the judges’ safety because the nearest garage is two blocks away.

Oh yeah, Brooklyn judges . . . I seem to remember reading something about them.

The BQE is historic, but not in a good way:

A state agency has lifted a puzzling bureaucratic roadblock that significantly delayed a long-awaited plan to replace the traffic-choked Kosciuszko Bridge.

The Historic Preservation Office last week abandoned its push to preserve the deteriorating bridge, thus ending an inter-agency squabble that delayed final approval of the project by at least six months, the Daily News confirmed Wednesday.

The state Transportation Department had originally anticipated receiving federal authorization for the roughly $700 million project — the final regulatory hurdle — by the end of last year.

However, as The News first reported last month, the DOT was forced to shelve the project last November after Historic Preservation objected to final design plans that call for the Kosciuszko to be demolished and replaced by two new parallel bridges.

Preservation officials deemed the aging span “a significant and unusual variation of the Warren truss type bridge” and argued that a rehab was “a prudent and feasible alternative to demolition,” according to a letter obtained by The News.

In response, DOT officials presented Historic Preservation with a report justifying replacement of the 1939 bridge, which carries the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway over Newtown Creek between Maspeth, Queens, and Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The report addressed safety concerns, such as its steep grade and substandard merging lanes — factors responsible for bottlenecked traffic and a high accident rate, according to the DOT.

In a written response on Friday, Historic Preservation officials threw in the towel.

“We concur that there are no prudent and feasible alternatives to the demolition of this historic bridge,” an official wrote. “We find that correction of many of the substandard safety features would significantly alter character-defining features of the bridge.”

Leaving the house without makeup does not a trend make, though some will try*:

“I dress like a boy because I feel like boys are generally more comfortable than women,” said Ali Tenenbaum the other day, sitting at a West Village coffee shop and wearing a “typical” outfit of black Hudson jeans, blue J. Crew cardigan, yellow T-shirt and designer sneakers. Ms. Tenenbaum, 38 (whose family was the inspiration for the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums, though she said the actual resemblance is slight), has unfussy brown hair that falls to several inches above her shoulders, and clear, radiant skin. She doesn’t wear makeup. She is a professional photo organizer who meets with her (largely) Upper East Side clientele wearing sneakers. “Sometimes it throws them off a bit, but then I charm them and they’re fine with it!” she said.

It was just a few years ago that everyone was nattering about the metrosexual, the New York man who, though straight, loved his Kiehl’s and Thomas Pink tattersall shirts and is addicted to Grey’s Anatomy. Less discussed has been his female counterpart: gals who, while not lesbians, dress like guys (young guys), well into their 30’s; who leap into games of pickup basketball with male friends while the rest of us watch wanly from the sidelines; who affect a wry detachment from their sex’s conventional concerns of shoe-shopping, man-hunting and family. Think of the comedienne Sarah Silverman, mugging and shrugging and strumming her way through an “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” video, a birthday gift to her boyfriend, ABC talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel. Or matter-of-fact Juno actress Ellen Page. Or surly pop star Avril Lavigne.

And these gals are everywhere in New York. Urbane tomboys in $200 jeans, they wear sneakers to the office or the studio (they probably work in a creative industry). They’ve largely given up on mainstream women’s fashion, with its expensive, often unflattering vicissitudes, finding refuge in an eternal sporty girlhood that may or may not be tied to any real athletic bent. They borrow from men’s wear, which is more constant, comfortable and, lately, focused on well-made basics like jeans and T-shirts, and they profess ignorance of female grooming rituals, even if they have a secret love of eyeliner. Ever self-deprecating, this kind of woman is quick to tell you she “wears the same thing every day,” or that she dresses like her husband or boyfriend.

. . .

They like to order Scotch at bars, rather than fruity drinks like cosmos; roll their own cigarettes; and profess to not know their way around a powder puff.

. . .

Many fellas, as girly girls can attest, are all too enchanted with the novelty of the urbane tomboy.

“If you go to a club and you pick someone up and they’re all dressed up and they have a lot of makeup on, you take them home and you roll around in bed and they wake up and take a shower, who knows what they’ll look like?” said Adam Parker Smith, 29, a sculptor from Brooklyn.

Avril Lavigne? For reals?

*[checks calendar; no it's not April 1 yet]

Other things you don’t want to know include that six-ton piece of steel is held up there by a $50 piece of nylon webbing:

A prime suspect in Saturday’s East Side crane collapse — a spectacular disaster across two Manhattan blocks that has now claimed seven lives and is expected to cost untold millions — is a $50 piece of nylon webbing that investigators suspect may have broken while hoisting a six-ton piece of steel.

A photograph taken at the site shows the yellow nylon sling ragged at the end like a child’s broken shoelace, indicating, according to experts, the immense force that may have torn it apart.

The investigation into the accident continued on Monday as workers recovered three more bodies from the rubble of a four-story town house on East 50th Street that was demolished when a section of the toppling crane slammed into it. That brought the death toll from the collapse to seven, making it one of the deadliest construction accidents in New York City in recent memory.

It takes chutzpah, when the city’s schools are already underfunded, to ask the City to also provide security for private and parochial schools:

In the wake of a school shooting at a Jewish seminary in Israel last week, a group of City Council members is proposing to publicly fund security services at private and parochial schools around the city.

A bill being introduced today would require the New York City Department of Education and the New York City Police Department to provide to nonpublic schools all of the security services currently provided to public schools. The services could include the placement of school safety officers who are members of the NYPD, video surveillance cameras, and metal detectors, according to a draft of the bill provided to The New York Sun yesterday.

Lawmakers would discuss with private and parochial schools what sorts of services they needed and then develop a budget proposal.

. . .

“In this time of heightened security awareness, we must do everything we can to ensure the safety of all our children,” Council Member Simcha Felder, a co-sponsor of the new bill, said. Council members Joel Rivera and John Liu are also supporting the bill.

Good thing there are a lot of cops in this city:

Nate Banton — New York City’s only bagpipe maker — opened his business in a Neponsit bungalow four months ago. The 30-year-old craftsman specializes in two types of bagpipes: border pipes and small pipes.

“I’m interested in making hand-crafted pipes with an attention to detail,” said Banton, who grew up in Maine. “It’s a good business to be in. I make a product that people can make art with.”

Banton, who apprenticed for three years under noted pipe maker Seth Gallagher in upstate Cold Spring, N.Y., said he had a hard time breaking into the industry.

. . .

Banton uses dozens of handmade tools and relies on his 1940s South Bend lathe, a hardsaw and a drill press for the bulkwork.

A set will take roughly three weeks to complete. Banton now has a three-month waiting list for his pipes.

“I think he’s well on his way to be successful,” said Brian Bigley, 23, who shares the workspace with Banton and is working on his own design for a uilleann pipe — a traditional Irish bagpipe. “The Celtic music industry is doing really well.”

Simplify your life, call 311:

The city is launching an advertising campaign discouraging New Yorkers from giving money, food, and clothing to homeless people and asking well-wishers to call 311 for help instead.

“Giving money to a panhandler may seem like you’re being compassionate,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday at City Hall. “But you’re really not helping that person long-term, and just keeping that person going in a life that is probably going to continue to spiral out of control.”

. . . people physically attack each other over boxes filled with tomatoes and $29:

A money giveaway in Union Square by a company called Cashtomato.com turned rotten Friday when the impatient crowd bum-rushed the costumed organizers and ran off with the loot. One person was injured in the free-for-all.

“Make it rain!” and “Give me my money!” passersby shouted as the clock ticked down to the scheduled 2:29 p.m. publicity stunt, timed to mark Leap Day.

With five minutes to go, the antsy mob of 100 surged toward three workers dressed to resemble tomatoes and holding sacks and boxes of prizes up to $29.

“People grabbed and pulled on the bag,” said Jason Buzi, an executive at the fledgling video-sharing Internet company.

“I didn’t feel safe, so I let it go.”

As he fled across the street, his colleagues dropped their sacks and scattered across the park - and a wild grab for the booty ensued.

Scavengers dove to the ground and elbowed each other out of the way to get at cash-stuffed envelopes and balloons and flyers and fresh tomatoes with bills attached.

“I got pushed down and trampled, but instead of money, all I got were tomatoes,” said a dejected 29-year-old homeless woman who gave her name as Christine.

. . .

Buzi, who said he has organized giveaways in five other cities without incident, seemed dazed by the debacle.

“They grabbed all the bags and the money from us,” he said.

“I expected maybe a few homeless people, but it turned out to be a lot of aggressive people,” Buzi said.

Oh lord:

With 36 members of the City Council being forced out of office next year due to term limits, the election of 2009 could be the biggest and most expensive to hit New York.

At least 45 New Yorkers already are amassing campaign war chests to run for council seats and many more are expected to enter races in the coming months. One political consultant who is advising council candidates says he has identified more than 300 candidates he expects to run in 2009.

The early start to council campaigning and fund-raising efforts mirrors the early start to this year’s presidential race, with local candidates saying they want to put fund raising behind them so they can focus on campaigning as the city election nears.

. . .

A race to replace Council Member Alan Gerson in Lower Manhattan is providing political junkies with an early dose of campaign intrigue, with a fight over Internet domain names under way between a likely candidate who is chairwoman of Community Board 1, Julie Menin, and a retired firefighter and former police officer running for the open seat, Peter Gleason.

Mr. Gleason purchased the domain names juliemenin.com, juliemenin.net, and juliemenin.org and plans to post information about his anticipated opponent on them, prompting Ms. Menin to hire an attorney to help her get control of the sites. The dispute was first reported in the Villager newspaper.

“These kinds of things shouldn’t happen,” Ms. Menin said in an interview with The New York Sun. “It’s just not an honest way to do things.”

Mr. Gleason said Ms. Menin should have known to purchase her own domain names.

Fish tanks, full of tropical fish:

Tanks packed with 20 tons of water — holding 400 tropical fish and costing $750,000 — were unveiled by Mayor Bloomberg at the Staten Island ferry terminal Tuesday.

And the mayor also showcased a very fishy sense of humor.

“I just have to say, ‘holy mackerel,’” he said as his audience groaned. “What’s the porpoise, you might ask? These are beautiful tanks that are destined to become a great new attraction on Staten Island.”

The 8-foot-high tanks hold fish usually found on colorful coral reefs — including powder blue tang, Pakistani butterfly and scribbled angel.

The tanks are so heavy, steel beams have had to be used to reinforce the terminal floor.

“The tanks will exert a calming influence on harried commuters,” said Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, who was inspired after seeing similar aquariums at an airport in Sarasota, Fla.

Bloomberg is known to be a fish fan and installed tanks in his offices decades ago.

“I’ve been hooked ever since,” he said.

And Gene Russianoff is being ironic, right?

The cash for the project, which will be maintained by staff at the Staten Island Zoo, came from the borough’s capital fund.

“I really don’t think people have a reason to carp about this,” Bloomberg quipped.

Gene Russianoff, spokesman for the Straphangers Campaign, said his group had no problem with the money’s use.

Location Scout: St. George Ferry Terminal.

One way to get public school teachers to live in the community — let them dock their boats at Riverside Park:

Leslie Day flirted, dated, married, raised a family and found her life’s work in Manhattan — or rather, just off its shore.

Born on the Upper West Side, she moved to a 34-foot houseboat at the 79th Street Boat Basin when she was 30, single and a masseuse. She found her future husband, a biologist, on the 43-foot houseboat next door. After they were wed, they traded up to a 57-foot houseboat, and they raised a son. Now, as empty-nesters, the couple live on a 43-foot cruiser.

Dr. Day, 62, who is now an elementary school teacher, recently wrote “Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City.” When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored her book last fall in a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, he reached the part of his script that noted where she lived and ad-libbed a reaction she had heard many times. “Do you really?” he said. “That’s amazing. Thirty-two years and it never sunk or anything like that?”

Since 1937, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, the 79th Street Boat Basin has been an object of fascination off the island of Manhattan, part fishing village, part Monte Carlo and all floating opera all of the time.

The boat basin floats on five main docks on the banks of the Hudson River. For decades, there have been as many as 100 pleasure craft, some pristine, others slovenly — schooners, houseboats, yachts and trawlers — tethered just off the Riverside Park promenade, three blocks from Broadway and Zabar’s.

Critics have called the residents squatters on public property, in a high-end trailer park; even the city government, which owns the docks, has not always been comfortable with the arrangement.

But the boaters call themselves a community with rights like any other. Residents have ranged from millionaires to those between jobs. All seem to embrace self-expression. One man liked wearing a Superman sweatshirt as he bounced on a trampoline on the dock.

Location Scout: 79th Street Boat Basin.

For more on the Carnegie Hall squatters see here.

Cab drivers’ refusal to accept credit cards has finally gone too far:

There have been a number of reports of cab drivers balking at customers who try to pay with credit cards, but a woman is accusing a cabbie of actually punching her after she tried to charge a ride.

Tamara Perez tells CBS 2 HD she still can’t believe it happened.

The incident happened Tuesday after Perez ran to her East Village home to pick up some papers. Once in the cab, the 35-year-old realized she had no cash the pay the $10 fare. Instead, she pulled out a credit card, but the cabbie wasn’t having it.

“He wouldn’t let me use the card, he wouldn’t press the button,” she tells CBS 2. “I said, ‘You have to press the button,’ and he’s like, ‘No, no I don’t know, I don’t know how to use it.’”

Perez says the driver got out of the cab and told her to go get cash. She refused, said she wanted to use the machine and would tip well.

“I tried to walk past him and he pushed me back into the cab. I got up and told him I was calling my husband who is a professional boxer,” she says. “I started dialing the phone and he said, ‘I give you a punch in the mouth’ and he turned around and he socked me in the mouth.”

Because of course Mary Kate Olsen (in California!) is the first person to think of when someone is unconscious:

“I think he might be dead. I’m calling 911!” masseuse Diane Lee Wolozin finally shouted at the celebrity twin as the hard-partying Ledger’s corpse lay motionless.

“I already have people coming over,” Olsen replied, according to police sources.

. . .

Twenty-four hours after the sudden and stunning death of the 2006 Oscar nominee, police detailed a bizarre sequence of events that included Wolozin setting up a massage table near Ledger’s body.

1 p.m.: Housekeeper Teresa Solomon, on her regularly scheduled Tuesday stop at Ledger’s home, hears him snoring while she’s changing a bathroom light bulb. She looks into the room.

2:45 p.m.: Wolozin arrives at the $24,000-a-month Broome St. apartment 15 minutes early for a 3 p.m. appointment.

3 p.m.: Concerned when Ledger doesn’t appear, Wolozin dials his cell-phone number — and when he doesn’t answer, she walks into his bedroom several minutes later. He’s lying facedown, with the covers pulled up to his shoulders.

3:11 p.m.: Thinking the actor is asleep, Wolozin calls his name while pulling the massage table from a closet. Wolozin then grabs Ledger to shake him awake, but his body is cold to the touch.

3:12 p.m.: The frightened masseuse — who knew Olsen and Ledger — takes Ledger’s cell phone and hits the speed dial for Olsen in California. Olsen instructs the masseuse to hold on, promising to send her security guards.

3:26 p.m.: When Ledger doesn’t respond to a second round of shaking, Wolozin calls back to tell Olsen she is calling paramedics. She dials 911, and the operator instructs her to perform CPR.

3:33 p.m.: Emergency workers and the Olsen security arrive simultaneously. The medical workers move Ledger’s body to the floor for another round of CPR and a shot from a defibrillator.

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.

Even with the best ideas there is always someone who wants to naysay:

The Greenwich Village Pigeon Club use lighters printed with their logo as their business card because “lighters change hands more than anything else.”

Although the club brought the lighters to a City Hall rally in November against legislation proposed by Brooklyn Councilmember Simcha Felder that is aimed at curtailing the pigeon population, they were not as popular as the T-shirts that read “I [heart] NY” followed by a red pigeon symbol.

“It wasn’t really a lighter crowd at City Hall,” said Jackie Mock, 21, a founding member of the group.

. . .

“This club started as a fun experiment, but it turned into something a lot bigger,” said Mock. “The pigeon ban really brought us out into the open. In a way it is the first really serious thing we have done.”

Felder’s proposed legislation recommends creating a “pigeon czar” to oversee the pigeon population, fining people for feeding pigeons, feeding the pigeons birth control, “dovecotting” — or replacing pigeon eggs with fakes — and reintroducing hawks and falcons into the urban habitat, as well as experimenting with the use of robotic hawks.

“There is a real sci-fi twinge to the methods proposed,” said Millholland. “Releasing hawks to kill the pigeons seems a lot worse than just having pigeons. And replacing the eggs with fake eggs is just mean.”

. . .

Millholland said that, in her view, the pigeon ban does seem like a “publicity thing” for Felder. Felder did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Similar attempts at pigeon population control have been enacted in London, Basel, Switzerland and Los Angeles.

“We got an e-mail from someone in Germany who said that he liked coming to New York because, unlike where he lived, there are no laws against feeding pigeons here,” said Mock.

A helpful reminder that when robbing banks, it’s sometimes good to think outside the box:

For Orlando Taylor, a 26-year-old Brooklyn man who apparently had a strange attraction to a couple of bank branches at the bustling Fulton Mall, three times was a charm. So was the fourth time. But according to the police, when he returned on Tuesday to commit a fifth robbery in five days, his luck ran out.

The police said Mr. Taylor first struck at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, robbing an HSBC branch at 342 Fulton Street of $450. On Saturday, the police said, he showed up two doors down at a Bank of America branch, and robbed that one too, making off with nearly $3,500.

On Monday, growing more brazen, the police said, Mr. Taylor showed up twice more at the same Bank of America branch, at 350 Fulton Street — first at 10 a.m. and then at 2:20 p.m. Each time, they said, he demanded that tellers turn over cash. He fled with more than $3,800 from the two robberies into the teeming crowds of holiday shoppers.

The police have rarely experienced a string of bank robberies in such quick succession and proximity. So when the two branches opened on Tuesday, dozens of officers in uniform and in plainclothes were on the lookout inside and positioned outside along the Fulton Mall’s sidewalks.

They would have little trouble recognizing Mr. Taylor if he showed up again, investigators said, because his image had been captured by bank surveillance cameras.

Despite the long odds against another successful holdup, the police said, Mr. Taylor was spotted shortly after 9 a.m. by plainclothes officers on the sidewalk outside his original target, the HSBC branch. Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said Mr. Taylor was seen looking from the sidewalk through the branch’s windows, where he apparently spotted uniformed officers, and turned to walk away.

It’s kind of like looking for “a white van” — there are thousands of white vans out on the roads:

While other New Yorkers have been holding their heads in their hands over the steroid scandal enveloping past and present Bronx Bombers, [Benjamin] Soto wrongly spent a week in prison on Rikers Island — just for proudly wearing a Yankee jacket.

. . .

The Staten Island man’s odyssey began Nov. 10, when cops approached him with guns drawn as he walked home from his girlfriend’s house in Port Richmond.

“They were screaming, ‘Where’s the weapon? Where’s the stuff you stole? Where are the credit cards?’” he said.

“They threw me up against a fence, and I was asking, ‘What’s going on? What did I do? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

Turns out Soto, 35, loosely matched the description of one of three young men who had robbed a teen at knifepoint nearby. The victim told cops one of the men was wearing a Yankee jacket.

Two other men, Terence Ascensio, 17, Andre Glover, 18, were arrested separately.

Before Soto knew what was going on, he was handcuffed in front of his neighbors, hauled off to jail, arraigned on robbery charges and held in lieu of $25,000 bail — which as a YMCA custodian, he could not raise.

Sure, the project is a lot less “sexy” but it at least provides some useful purpose:

There are many longstanding, seemingly intractable shortcomings in the city’s family court system that might delay a parent in getting a child back from foster care: unprepared lawyers, overcrowded dockets and long waiting lists for drug treatment and mental health services.

But Bronx Family Court has added a new obstacle: broken elevators.

For about a year, the elevators at the courthouse have been a disaster, people who work there say. Breakdowns have long been routine. This year, repair work has only added to the problem.

Lines to use a working elevator can stretch around the corner. People sometimes wait for hours to get to hearings, which are held on the seventh and eighth floors. Frequently, hearings have to be postponed because clients and witnesses cannot get to them.

“It’s absolutely an outrage,” says Ava Gutfriend, a lawyer who often represents parents in child welfare cases. “But in the Bronx it happens all the time.”

In some cases, warrants have even been issued for people who are downstairs waiting for an elevator; judges know only that they are not in the courtroom, said Bill Nicholas, the assistant attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s office at the court.

. . .

In a city full of aging towers, many people view elevator breakdowns as a common annoyance of life. But the scale of the waiting at Bronx Family Court, which often extends to an hour or more, is beyond what most New Yorkers face. And the potential loss is not simply that of time wasted, but of the quality of justice that is dispensed. Consider the case of a client of Ms. Gutfriend’s who was scheduled for a hearing in mid-November to determine whether she could get her daughter back from foster care, where the child had been for 10 months.

The hearing was set for 10 a.m., Ms. Gutfriend recalled, but it was a day when only two of the four elevators in the building were working. The lines to get on the elevator and up to the hearing rooms stretched back two city blocks. Her client phoned upstairs to let her know she was stuck in the line, but was not able to get upstairs in time.

The judge agreed to call the hearing again an hour later, but the client was still in line. So the judge, who had something like 70 other cases to try that day, rescheduled the no-shows for the next available date. For this mother, the next chance to plead her case and get her child back was in January.

*I don’t care if it’s a reductionist apples-oranges argument — this is horrifying.

It’s actually more like a matchbook by the toilet than anything “fancy” like Chanel No. 5:

It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of trying to cover up bad body odor with Chanel No. 5.

For more than a year, residents of one Brooklyn neighborhood have been complaining about a stomach-churning smell wafting from the site of a former sewer pipe project.

The city’s response? Tossing nylon socks filled with pine deodorizer into the catch basins.

That hasn’t stanched the stench. In fact, locals say the scent of raw sewage is even more noticeable now.

“I think that adding the pine made the existing smell even more potent,” said Aaron Green, 27, one of the Bay Ridge residents who is sick of the stink.

The stink has been hovering over a stretch of Fort Hamilton Parkway between Marine Ave. and 99th St.

The odor cropped up in the summer of 2006 after the completion of a $6.9 million project to combine the underground sewer pipes there, residents say.

As complaints mounted, the community board notified the city Department of Environmental Protection, which began dumping piney perfume onto the site.