Who Would Have Thought That Manhattan Prefers To Watch Documentaries About Itself?

The Post analyzes top Netflix choices by borough and finds it says much about who we are:

Manhattan’s top choice is a documentary about itself, followed by “Barbarians at the Gate,” a film about money and excess, the foreign flick “Divorce, Italian Style,” and the patriotic musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Brooklyn’s top picks are about Hasidic Jews and graffiti, and local hero Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn.”

Queens’ list reveals its mixed personality — with Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” taking the top spot, followed by the counter-terror hit “24,” and the kvetching of “Seinfeld” creator Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Rounding it out is a film about suicide bombers in Israel and “The Chorus,” a French film about a singing troupe.

In The Bronx, the hip-hop crime drama “Killa Season” is No. 1, followed by documentaries about Puerto Ricans in America and the Latin Kings, and the Paul Newman police flick, “Fort Apache, the Bronx.”

And Staten Island is all over the map, starting with the original version of the horror film “The Omen,” followed by the gang-war classic “The Warriors,” a show about plastic surgery, the straight-to-video action film “Covert One: The Hades Factor,” and “Dumbo.”

“Everyone Can Hold Their Chin Up”

City Councilman Eric Gioia gets results:

The storage company that riled straphangers with its ads mocking the city’s boroughs outside Manhattan has agreed to pull its posters, though company officials insist they didn’t mean to offend anyone.

“If anything, our posters are meant to poke fun at the excessive prices of self-storage in Manhattan, and certainly not as a cultural critique of the outer boroughs,” an executive at Public Storage wrote in response to a stern letter from City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) last week calling for the ads to be removed.

. . .

“We will take care to develop future advertising themes that are consistent with our commitment to the diversity of New York City,” [Public Storage senior vice president Mark Bilfield] said.

Gioia, who repeated his invitation to the company’s chief executive to tour the city with him, called it “a victory for everyone who’s proud to live in the five boroughs.”

“I’m very happy to see them taking down their ads,” Gioia said. “Everyone can hold their chin up. We stood up for ourselves and we won.”

Backstory: No Offense Taken . . .

If Crisco Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Use Crisco

Hizznanny wants to ban trans fats — not at schools, not in public facilities, but everywhere:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing.

As you might assume, the restaurant industry was skeptical:

E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 3,500 restaurants in New York City, said the proposal before the city’s Board of Health would most likely lead to litigation. The group plans to fight the proposal at an Oct. 30 public hearing.

“They’re going way beyond the scope of an appointed agency,” Mr. Hunt said of the health department. He added that such an action “could be considered in restraint of interstate commerce” even if it was enacted by the mayor and City Council and that there could be grounds for a lawsuit.

. . .

And Mr. Hunt wondered how small restaurants would adapt. “For a health inspector to walk into a mom and pop restaurant in Queens, where they barely speak English, and find a can of Crisco shortening on the shelf and then fine them $1,000,” he said, “well, that’s unreasonable.”

But at least one local restauranteur went off message, reasoning that since his establishment didn’t use trans fats, he didn’t feel the need to speak out:

Some restaurant owners support the plan. Mark Maynard-Parisi, 39, managing partner at Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in Gramercy Park, said the plan was “wonderful.”

Blue Smoke uses a blend of canola and vegetable oils for frying that was recently certified as trans fat free by the health department, Mr. Maynard-Parisi said. “I’m not trying to pass us off as a healthy restaurant,” he said. But, he said, he and his partners “wanted it to be real and, to us, margarine,” which is rich in trans fats, “isn’t real.”

First they came for the trans fats . . .

Then again, why worry? After all, in large swaths of the city, even the smoking ban is largely unenforced.

Or alternatively, let the Health Department inspect places like Blue Smoke in Manhattan all they want — everyone grandstands, no one is punished, everyone wins.

One Day, My Son, You Will Look Fondly On These Important Years

A future Frank Bruni tackles NYU Dining Hall options. Menus range from “not bad”:

Available every Friday night at Rubin, the seafood-themed dinner serves not only numerous fruitti de mer but also the enticing regular menu items offered every night.

The rustic dining hall is adorned with fishing nets and clamshells in an attempt to play up the theme. The adequately lit dining area does a fair job of creating a comfortable atmosphere. Seafood night starts at 7 p.m. and the lines are not lengthy at all — minus the batch of students hovering around the made-to-order pasta station served with red or white clam sauce. Little did they know the five-plus minute wait would only pay off with a bowl of lackluster pasta doused in an insipid, watery sauce and bottom-dollar clams.

The hand-carved herb crusted tuna — though lacking in a distinct flavor and zest — provided some hope along with a station featuring fresh shrimp station laid over ice.

. . . to “sort of bad”:

True carnivores, on the other hand, should make sure to set aside Sunday Nights for a trip to Third North for its protein-laden menu.

Upon entry, each meal swipe is granted one meal voucher redeemable for either a grilled, mass-produced peppery T-bone or an eight-ounce slice of medium-well ribeye hand-cut by the one and only Tony.

Even with the cowboy-decorated carving station and wooden bucket of potatoes strategically spread about the table, the dining service managers staring down each customer created an apprehensive atmosphere for the steak-hungry patrons.

On top of that, the service, as with most dining halls, requires that the customer utter no more than four complete sentences with the employees before a broken path of communication and confusion ensues. In retrospect, one should grab their food and sit down by utilizing the fewest possible words.

Help The Local Economy — Apply For Food Stamps

It is often said that for every dollar the State of New York sends to the federal government in taxes, the state receives only 80 to 85 cents in return. That is about to change:

More than 500,000 New Yorkers are passing up food stamps that could add nearly $1 billion a year to the city’s economy, City Council members and advocates for the poor said.

In a new initiative begun last week, Council Speaker Christine Quinn vowed to sign up at least 350,000 additional eligible recipients by December 2009.

And she’s recruiting her fellow councilmembers to go into targeted communities at least once a month to help get the job done by her self-imposed deadline.

. . .

Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) said the city is passing up tens of millions of dollars of federal funds that would be spent in local grocery stores, supermarkets, bodegas, greenmarkets and other food retailers.

Many of those eligible don’t know they qualify or consider the application process too difficult. Still others may feel there’s a stigma to receiving food stamps, officials said.