Never Forget . . . It Goes On The Expense Account

We could invest $6 billion to build a rail link between Lower Manhattan and JFK* but I’m fairly sure people would still be willing to spend more to get to JFK on a helicopter than on an actual airplane to, say, California, and that probably says something about either the importance of a rail link or the willingness of executives to fritter away stockholders’ earnings, I’m not sure which. Oh, and did we mention that the TSA is providing security for the helicopterists? Because you might have missed that detail:

At 7 a.m., U.S. Helicopter, a start-up company, whisked its first passengers from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, over Brooklyn, Queens and the security lines at Kennedy, to the American Airlines terminal. The hourly flights, which last less than 10 minutes, cost $139 each way.

Included in that price is the luxury of avoiding the long security screening lines at the airport. At the request of U.S. Helicopter’s executives, the federal Transportation Security Administration set up a checkpoint, with X-ray and bomb-detection machines, to screen passengers and their luggage at the heliport.

The security agency is spending $560,000 this year to operate the checkpoint with a staff of eight screeners and is considering adding a checkpoint at the heliport at the east end of 34th Street. The agency’s involvement has drawn criticism from some elected officials.

[Chuck Schumer quote deleted to avoid having to provide him an outlet in which to grandstand]

But Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Wall Street heliport, on Pier 6 in the East River, called the resumption of the service a boon for the downtown economy.

“This is much more than just to have something nice,” Mr. Gargano said. “It is an essential element to rebuilding Lower Manhattan.”

Spare us . . .

But who actually uses this service?

Most of those passengers are expected to be investment bankers and other business travelers who want to save time and avoid the hassles of the normal trek to the airport.

. . .

Bobby Weiss, a self-employed stock trader and real estate broker who was U.S. Helicopter’s first paying customer yesterday, said he would pay $300 for a round trip to Kennedy, and he expected most corporate executives would, too.

“It’s $300, but so what? It goes on the expense account,” said Mr. Weiss, adding that he had no qualms about the diversion of federal resources to smooth the path of highfliers. “Maybe a richer guy may save a little time at the expense of a poorer guy who spends a little more time in line.”

Which companies did it say I have in my mutual fund?

*And if you ask me, the $6 billion project is of course the perfect way to honor the memory of those who perished on Sept. 11. Because nothing says, “Never Forget” like “One-seat ride between Manhattan and JFK.”

I’ve Been Crushing Aggregate, You Little Punk While You Were Still Swimming In Your Daddy’s Balls

Contractors bemoan the closing of Red Hook Crushers (another great band name), which means they’ll be forced to travel to Maspeth (gasp!) to dump concrete detritus from Brooklyn construction sites:

The “new” Brooklyn is being built, stoop-by-stoop, gut-rehab-by-gut-rehab, bluestone-by-bluestone, in neighborhoods like Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Gowanus, the South Slope and Clinton Hill.

But a big problem has emerged: Where will the “old” Brooklyn be thrown out?

In Queens, actually.

Last month, the city shut down Red Hook Crushers, a company that played a vital, and often-overlooked, role in the borough’s surging construction industry.

For two decades, the company’s crushing equipment along the banks of the Gowanus Canal have taken in broken up cement, demolished brick walls and other debris and churned it into base material to be used again in roads, runways and sidewalks.

But since Red Hook Crushers closed on Feb. 8, hundreds of small-time contractors — the thick-calloused guys who rip up an old concrete stoop and turn it into a Yuppie’s bluestone dream — are now being forced to truck that unwanted cement all the way to the closest similar facility in Maspeth.

And all that driving is driving them nuts.

. . .

“I work in all these up-and-coming neighborhoods, fixing sidewalks, rebuilding stoops, renovating backyards,” said John Kiamie, owner of Sure Foundation.

“Now I have to drive to Maspeth — it’s two hours, back and forth on the BQE! — to dump the old stoop or sidewalk after I fix it. If I make two trips, I lose half a day on the road while my workers just sit around waiting for me to get back.”

Kiamie said he’s now turning down the small jobs that were his bread-and-butter.

“They shut this guy down without a contingency plan!” he said. “What am I supposed to do?! It’s clinical insanity! It’s a good thing it’s not our busy season or I’d never be able to stay calm!”

And don’t pretend like thick-calloused guys don’t have a keen sense of irony:

The reality is that the Crushers once-desolate Gowanus site has become very desirable. Whole Foods, whose first Brooklyn supermarket is being slowly built next door, is said to covet the space, and new apartment buildings are springing up in an area once written off as a waste land.

“The irony is that Whole Foods dumped plenty of concrete with us,” said Crushers co-owner Tom Saccomanno Jr., a copy of Pit & Quarry magazine on his desk.

Like Saccomanno, Kiamie said he certainly welcomed newcomers.

“If they want to turn the Gowanus Canal into a new Venice, God bless ’em,” he said. “It’s great. They’ll need us to do the work. But I need a place to dump the garbage or else the BQE will be a parking lot all day and all night.”

The Department of Sanitation, for its part, says that contractors will just have to “deal with it.”

If By “Arrogant” You Mean “Optimistic” Then I’m The Biggest, Most Arrogant Sonovabitch Out There

The Post, in an EXCLUSIVE, reports on the details of an internal memo from Attorney General candidate Mark Green’s campaign:

A secret “talking points” memo from Mark Green’s attorney-general campaign dumps on “lightweight” Andrew Cuomo — and instructs supporters how to defend against oft-heard charges that Green is arrogant.

The 3 1/2-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, gives surrogates for the onetime public advocate and mayoral also-ran answers to tough questions including: “Isn’t Green arrogant?”

“No staff or friend or family member who knows this believes this. It’s the slander of opponents,” says the memo.

“Mark is a confidant (sic), optimistic person, which some confuse for arrogance. It’s impossible to think MG arrogant in a field with Andy Cuomo,” the memo continues.

Looks Only A Mother Could Love

The details of Randy Johnson’s child support payments to the mother of a 16-year-old he fathered and the controversy surrounding the issue are not terribly interesting. What you will not be able to shake, however, is this visual:

[Laurel] Roszell claims that Johnson — who later married and had four children with his wife, Lisa — has ignored Heather’s written pleas to meet him.

“He hurts her feelings,” she said.

The hot-tempered future Hall of Famer, who is a born-again Christian, has seen Heather only once — right after her out-of-wedlock birth in 1989, and he demanded a paternity test when Roszell first sought child support in 1998.

The 6-foot-1 high-school student “looks like him, walking and talking, a young girl with attitude,” said Roszell, who is married and has a son. [Emph. added to make sure that his Yankee teammates can tease him about this in the locker room this season]

I Can’t Tell You Why But I’m Trapped By Your Love And I’m Chained To Your Side

Astorians Coming Together to show that they are interesting, too:

While taking a ride on the N or W trains to Astoria these days, one is likely to notice a musician hauling a guitar or an actor reading a script or maybe a young artist sketching the city views from the elevated tracks.

With proximity to Manhattan, public safety, good cuisine and still-affordable rents, Astoria and neighboring Long Island City have been seeing a migration of newcomers in recent years — many belonging to the creative set.

Now these artists have a place to congregate in the form of a monthly gathering that kicked off last week.

The idea is “to give people a nice chance, in an intimate setting, to meet each other and get to know each other,” said Andrea Reese, a writer, performer and one of the founders of the group B-QUACK, which stands for Borough of Queens United Artists Collective Kum-Ba-Ya.

The first meeting was held last Thursday night at Waltz, an artistic-minded coffee shop on Ditmars Blvd. More than two dozen artists, playwrights and musicians mingled at the inaugural event.

“There was a feeling of a lot of excitement,” said Reese, an actor in a one-woman show about Jackie O. “It was really a lot of fun.”

B-QUACK is the brainchild of five locals: Reese, performer Jen Ryan, director and theater editor Leonard Jacobs, designer Rik Sansone and David Gibbs, a publicist.

. . .

“We’re a little tired of hearing about Brooklyn,” said Jacobs, who moved to Astoria from the Theater District three years ago after the notion of artists being able to afford Manhattan rents turned into “a laughingstock” and after many Brooklyn neighborhoods became nearly as expensive.

“It is time for us to say we are here, we are interesting,” Jacobs said.