Not Only Did He Do That But He Lives In The Neighborhood!

Things that illustrate a lack of good judgement include making a big show of tearing down a cop’s 9/11 memorial that sits directly across the street from the police station at which he once worked:

Adnan Emre, 26, tore down a portion of Officer Paul Talty’s tribute attached to a light post at 50th Avenue and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, police sources said.

It consisted of 5-inch-by-7-inch picture of the late officer, a cross, a plaque and crossed American and Irish flags. The plaque is inscribed, “Rest in Peace, Paul. We miss you. God Bless.”

Emre ripped down the cross at about 7:52 a.m., cops said, and announced his deed by screaming, “This is political!”

. . .

A passing MTA booth clerk witnessed the vandalism and called cops, who responded from the 108th Precinct station house just down the block.

Emre was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, said a spokeswoman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. He faces a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

. . .

Emre is a native of Turkey but now lives in Long Island City, police said.

Local residents were outraged by the destruction.

“If I caught him, he’d be dead, the bastard!” fumed Tom Ledden, 71, a long-time Long Island City resident and military veteran.

Sung Park, owner of a deli across the street from Talty’s memorial, said he fondly remembers the cop as a friendly, regular customer:

“I only have good memories of him,” he said.

“Who would do this? He’s a nut. People died on 9/11 and this sicko destroys the memorial? You must be really sick.”

A Step Below The Tobacco Lobby

Banning food may be stupid, but national ad campaigns aimed at defending trans fats may be stupider:

A national group opposed to the city’s proposed ban on trans fats responded yesterday with a vivid commercial that takes aim at the “food police.”

In the opening scene, an ice cream is snatched from a child’s hand. In another, a man getting ready to enjoy a hot dog is crestfallen when an unseen person grabs it and takes it away.

“Everywhere you turn, someone’s telling us what we can’t eat,” the narrator says.

The Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom is spending $125,000 to put the commercial in heavy rotation this week on CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Sarah Longwell from the center said the spot shows food being snapped from consumers’ hands because “that is exactly what the New York City Board of Health proposes to do.”

Defending the right of people to consume trans fats somehow seems worse than defending smoking . . . dying from Twinkies is so much lamer!

Everybody Loves Lists!

The New York Press’ Best of Manhattan for 2006 is out (it seems like every year they have to make some sort of half-assed apology for why it’s still called “Best of Manhattan”). This year includes “Best Worst Smelling Subway Station” (in City Life):

If you need a good reason to vomit, transfer from the V or the E train to an uptown 6 train at 53rd Street. The underground passageway between these two tracks either hosts a nightly pissing competition that gives bonus points for projectile sharting, or it captures the scent of a nearby chef who boils soiled toilet water. In any case, when you reach the top of the escalator off the E/V line, begin breathing deeply in preparation. Nevermind the salty taste of group body odor trailing from your fellow commuters; it pales in comparison to the soggy air trapped between the semen-coated walls that awaits you. At the top of the steps, hold your breath and run. Don’t walk. Don’t even walk fast. Run. And don’t be afraid to take out any hobbling meanderers up ahead. The smell is ruthless and so must you be.

Concur.

Most stations have a particular terroir — personally, I find the Lexington Avenue Express tracks at 59th Street a lovely musty odor evocative of an ice skating rink — but the stank-ass mop water miasma of the passage between the downtown and uptown 6 lines (If I’m understanding them, I think that’s what they’re referring to — meaning the passage commuters move through between downtown 6 trains and the E/V — of course, you probably only know this if you’re heading out to or coming from Queens . . . ha!) is one of the worst.

When “Retro” Is “Overtaken By Events”: Greenpoint’s Concept Of Vintage Is A Black Hole That Collapses Into Itself

The game of Hipster Or Fresh Off The Boat? just got a lot harder:

I just got my bangs trimmed today,” a woman told her friend as they waited to enter Studio B, a new club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “How do they look? Kind of like Jean Shrimpton, maybe? Just tell me that.”

Formerly a Polish dance hall, Studio B is now home to people who want to look Shrimptonesque — or at the very least, retro. A week and a half ago, the opening-night crowd was decked out in Members Only jackets, mod dresses and blouses with foofy neck bows — just like the crowd at every other neighborhood club. But Studio B has a lot of features that are local rarities, among them a brightly illuminated sign, large bathrooms, and a V.I.P. room with leather couches. Nice, clean leather couches.

And unlike its neighbors, Studio B comes with a night life pedigree: the D.J. Justine D. is the creative director, and Todd P., a well-regarded indie music promoter, will book some acts. The proprietors also own the Delancey on the Lower East Side and Studio A, a hipster rock nightclub in downtown Miami.

. . .

The owners have left many of the previous occupant’s fixtures intact; there’s a smoke machine and automated swirling lights that make the dance floor glow (O.K., it is a little Miami). Several patrons said it reminded them of the early rave scene — not always in a good way.

“It’s like the worst imitation of the 80’s,” said Bert Kietzerow, 39, a hairstylist who lives in Williamsburg.

Mostly, though, the retro vibe fits.

“It’s not slick or fancy, it’s cheesy,” said Leslie Hermelin, 27, a music publicist. It’s also enormous (9,500 square feet). At 1 a.m., when the Belgian D.J.’s Soulwax took the stage, the club was jammed, the dance floor a sea of pumping fists and flashing camera phones. Even Mr. Kietzerow succumbed to the beat and the fog.

“That smoke machine is so lame,” Ms. Hermelin said, “it’s cool.”

Real Estate Brokers Agree — Follow The Lesbians

Sure, blame it on the strollers:

As the Park Slope mommies, daddies and Bugaboos multiply, a fringe group that once dominated a piece of the neighborhood has taken itself back to the fringe.

. . .

The southward shift of the lesbian community is far from surprising.

One obvious reason is the skyrocketing cost of living in Park Slope. On average, men earn 21 percent more than women, an income discrepancy that becomes wider for women-only households. But finances are only part of the neighborhood’s waning desirability among lesbians.

In the end, the real turnoff may be simply too many people who look like one another.

“I went to the Tea Lounge the other day and it totally freaked me out,” said Gabrielle Belfiglio, a lesbian who once lived in Park Slope, but has since moved to Windsor Terrace. “Everyone looked like they were part of the same photo shoot, posing with a laptop or a baby.

“There used to be a sense of diversity that isn’t there anymore,” she added. “You can walk around Windsor Terrace and Kensington and see a Hassid next to a woman in hijab next to a Jamaican kid. You can be who you are in that mix of people.”

It’s great to feel comfortable in a “mix of people” . . . do the Hassids and women in hijab feel the same?

And although I like the idea of tying the decline of lesbian community in Park Slope to the male-female economic gap — interesting theory! — this story isn’t exactly new, is it? Even the Times was writing about the exodus from “Dyke Slope” back in January 2005:

When Emily Haddad moved to New York shortly after finishing college in 2001, she didn’t know much about the city, but being gay, she knew she wanted to live in a gay-friendly community.

Her neighborhood of choice? Park Slope.

“It seemed like lesbian central in New York,” said Ms. Haddad, 24, whose unaccented speech belies her North Carolina roots.

Park Slope was the neighborhood where she marched in the Brooklyn Pride Parade during her first summer in New York. She spent another afternoon at the Rising Cafe, a lesbian coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, and ended up in a spirited discussion with some women from Dyke TV, a weekly television show. It was also the neighborhood where she volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, on 14th Street near Prospect Park. The Archives, and by extension Park Slope, became her adopted home.

But she never did make Park Slope her actual home, nor did any of her lesbian friends. “Dyke Slope,” as it is affectionately called by many lesbians, was too expensive for them, as it has become for many other New Yorkers. Instead, Ms. Haddad found a cheap, newly renovated two-bedroom apartment in a rowhouse on 51st Street, deep amid the residential sleepiness of Sunset Park. She splits the $1,500 monthly rent with a female roommate, who is straight.

(In fact, it’s such old news that the Brooklyn Paper story even features a picture of someone who was interviewed in the Times piece. She’s still not living in Park Slope.)