Are People In Los Angeles That Stupid?

It’s the barfly’s version of the $60 barrel of oil:

According to “Zagat New York City Nightlife 2007/08,” the average drink now costs $10.12, up 7 percent from last year.

Only Los Angeles and Las Vegas (minus the free drinks in the casinos) cost more at $10.66 and $11.86, respectively.

“People have more money in their pockets these days,” said Mario Stewart of Mantra 986, a Midtown lounge that opened in January.

“People might actually get suspicious — like they walked into a dive bar — if you charge too little.”

As a possible result of the costlier hooch, there are fewer clubgoers waiting behind velvet ropes to get into Gotham’s nightspots.

About 36 percent of those surveyed by Zagat said they are going out less often.

Bass — How Low Can You Go? Little Earthquakes!

Today’s cops are DJs weaving together a symphony of sirens, with motorists as muses:

There is the yelp, an electronic yodel that grabs attention at intersections or kicks off chases. There is the wail, more traditional; it sounds like the windup police sirens of yore. There is the “hi-lo,” dubbed the “European” siren by some, because it evokes the police chases seen — and heard — in French and Italian films.

The air-horn siren works well, officers say, for clearing intersections of pedestrians and getting the attention of speeding drivers. And the fast, or priority, siren sounds like an asteroid blaster from an old video game, and feels like a jackhammer assault on the ears.

That is the menu of sirens available to New York City police officers, each one making a specific impression, each at an officer’s fingertips. The sirens allow officers to choose sounds with a personal touch, like the conductors of a screeching, sound-bending orchestra.

And there is something new. Christened with a tantalizing name, the Rumbler, it sends out low, bone-rattling vibrations, so it is not only heard, but also felt. One has been tested on the streets of New York, but the jury is out on whether it is effective, offensive or terrifying.

. . .

Every time you hear that distinct and invasive wail, which may not technically be a wail, chances are the police officer behind it has made a deliberate, even aesthetic choice.

The decision is wholly subjective; there are no guidelines. Officers are simply told to mix the sirens up.

On a recent spin around Manhattan, up the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and then down the West Side Highway, Officer Spiros Komis, who has been with the highway patrol for 20 years, offered up an aural palette of what sirens he uses, and when. What would he do if he were chasing a speeding driver?

“I go through the whole mode,” he said, his fingers hovering above a dash-mounted keyboard that controls a police car’s lights and sounds.

“But I might start with a wail,” he said, pressing a button. The air filled with a familiar nasal drone. “And then I’d go to a constant yelp,” he said, and the car began bleating. A red Acura driving ahead promptly pulled right, into the center lane, its driver nervously checking his speed. “Then I’d give a little bit of the air horn; I’d give it a little toot,” he said, and gave it a little toot.

And then there’s the Rumbler:

To experience it is to feel a little earthquake beneath one’s feet.

Robert S. Martinez, director of the department’s fleet services unit, says the Rumbler has brought pedestrians and traffic to a dead stop every time he has tried out the test model. Departments in Alexandria, Va., and elsewhere in the Washington area already have Rumblers, according to Tom Morgan of Federal Signal, a leading siren supplier. It works like a bass-heavy boombox, sending out vibrations through two woofers.

But though the Rumbler is bound to grab the attention of even the most jaded New Yorker, it may frighten too many people, Mr. Martinez said.

“It’s debatable whether this would be good or bad for New York City,” he said. “You don’t want to hurt people’s ears. Even though it’s a lower decibel, it almost seems offensive.”

$3 Slice? Not Until 2010, Cheese!

A Brooklyn pizzeria charges $2.30, shocking local economists who know that the price of a slice is pegged to the cost of subway fare*:

A slice of pizza has hit $2.30 in Carroll Gardens — and the shop’s owner says it’s “just a matter of time” before a perfect storm of soaring cheese prices and higher fuel costs hit Brooklyn with the ultimate insult: the $3 slice.

Sal’s Pizzeria, a venerable joint at the corner of Court and DeGraw streets, has punched a huge hole in the informal guideline that the price of a slice should mirror the price of a swipe on the subway.

Last week, owner John Esposito hung a sign in his front window blaming “an increase in cheese prices” for the sudden price hike from $2.15, which he set last year.

To bolster his case, Esposito also posted copies of a typewritten “update” from his Wisconsin-based cheese supplier, Grande Cheese, explaining that its prices had risen 35 cents a pound because of an “unprecedented” 18-percent spike in milk costs.

“We didn’t want to hammer our customers, so we’re trying to explain that we have to raise our prices to survive,” he said.

But why is Sal’s leading the pack?

“Maybe the other guys are still asleep,” Esposito said. “But the cost of cheese is way up. The cost of energy is up and the cost of staying in business is up. I don’t think [the costs] are going to come down again anytime soon.”

Cheese is now $1.98 a pound on the commodities market — up 64 percent from last year, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The fuel to transport ingredients from one place to another is on a comparably steep incline, too.

. . .

“A pizzeria’s costs go up like everything goes up, but $2 a slice is still pretty fair,” said Sal Leonardi, part owner of Front Street Pizza in DUMBO.

Leonardi’s cheese supplier, Joseph Campagna and Sons, also hiked prices, raising the cost of making a Front Street pie by 63 cents — but Leonardi said that his joint won’t stray from the subway ride rule.

“Every three years, the price goes up about a dime to cover [the price increases]. That seems right to me,” he said. “We don’t even see $2.10 coming yet, so I don’t see $3 for another seven years.”

*Which, if true, means that slices should not rise to $3, as the Brooklyn Paper headline scares, until 2010.

The Bitch Barked Softly

The last feral dog in Red Hook has been rounded up and relocated:

Two weeks ago, Mama Dulce took her last run around the vacant lot next to the massive steel frame of the soon-to-be superstore before stepping into a humane animal trap. It was the first time the muscular, straw-colored dog — matriarch of a pack of mutts that had lived for years on the site of the old Revere Sugar Refinery — had ever been enclosed.

The bitch barked softly all the way to the city’s Animal Care and Control center. Last week, she was resettled in a Pennsylvania home, reuniting with another refinery rescue, Big Mama.

“She had to go,” said Harriet Zucker, a set designer and dog trainer who led the rescue, her 60th over the last 12 years.

“The dogs had lived there for many years and they were relatively safe. When construction began, the [danger began]. It was an accident waiting to happen.”

. . .

The guards who watched generations of dogs settle on the rubble-strewn Revere property had let Zucker feed the brood for months, until she found people to adopt them.

After the puppy daddy, a Airedale named Scrappy, was adopted by a truck driver, the two mamas and a third feral companion were left alone at the old sugar plant, where they lived without a bark of trouble until 2005, when developer Thor Equities bought the rusting hulk for $40 million.

As construction crews began to demolish the plant, the dogs made a new home in the vacant, graffiti-covered lot nearby on the corner of Halleck and Ostego streets. Zucker delivered them hamburgers from the Fairway supermarket a few streets away.

“When I starting coming, their tails were curled up close to their bodies because they were scared,” said Zucker. “[Eventually they began to] wag their tails. They are wild dogs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a domestic instinct.”

Yet Another Thing To Blame Bush For

Thanks to the Bush Administration’s solid lock on Congress, that giant vat of federal money for congestion pricing is a slam dunk:

A powerful congressman has warned Gov. Spitzer and legislative leaders that the $500 million in federal aid that Mayor Bloomberg claims will be available for his congestion-pricing plan has not been approved.

Rep. Peter DeFasio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, told Spitzer, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno in a letter that even if the money is eventually authorized, New York City may not be eligible to receive it.

“I write to express my concerns about the assurances by [U.S. Transportation] Secretary Mary Peters . . . that New York City will receive a significant amount of federal funding for implementation of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed congestion-pricing program,” DeFasio wrote in the letter obtained by The Post.

“You should know that Congress has not authorized the [Transportation Department’s] Congestion Initiative or its component parts,” DeFasio added.

DeFasio told Spitzer he had “serious doubts that New York City or Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing program” would be eligible for federal funding under several DOT projects from which the funds had been expected to come.

“Before you rush to enact legislation authorizing the establishment of Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing program, I urge that you obtain all the relevant information, including asking Secretary Peters and DOT for clarification, and written assurances, that New York City will be eligible to receive federal funding under the programs,” wrote DeFasio in the letter to Spitzer, which was copied to Silver and Bruno.

“I caution you to carefully consider the expectation that the federal government will deliver those funds,” he continued.