Tastes Great, Less Filling

If they’re not perpetuating Italian stereotypes in cell phone ads, then they’re reminding us of that damn landfill:

Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro is having a meltdown over a frozen treat called Staten Island Landfill — one of eight flavors made by New York’s own 5 Boroughs Ice Cream.

“I’m outraged and disgusted that you would name your Staten Island-themed ice-cream Landfill,'” Molinaro wrote in an angry letter to the company founders.

In bright red type stripped across the top of the borough president’s Web site, Molinaro yesterday called on local businesses to boycott the company.

Kim and Scott Myles, the Queens couple who founded 5 Boroughs Ice Cream in their Astoria kitchen in 2002, said they wanted to take the Ben & Jerry’s concept to an urban extreme — and they meant no harm.

“It’s got chocolate hearts because it’s a flavor with heart,” Kim Myles, 33, said of Landfill, a vanilla ice cream stuffed with brownie chunks, heart-shaped chocolate crunchies, chocolate fudge and cherries.

Landfill does seem a bit harsh compared with the other more whimsical flavor names: South Bronx Cha Cha Chocolate, Bay Ridge Amaretto Amoré and Jackson Heights Mangodesh. And there’s NYPB, a peanut butter-flavored chocolate ice cream, with 5% of the profits going to the New York Police & Fire Widows’ & Children’s Benefit Fund. But another flavor has a cold bite to its name: Upper East Side Rich White Vanilla.

“The upper East Side suffers from a stereotype, that everybody is white and everybody is wealthy,” said the chairman of the neighborhood’s Community Board 8, David Liston.

The Borough With Everything — Including A Very Viable Candidate For Some Higher Office

Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s Pataki-esque new ads let everyone know the good news about the Bronx’s fine hospitals:

Television viewers in the New York region will learn about a new and intriguing tourist destination this month. It is an exotic land the size of Paris, an urban retreat that gave the world not only hip-hop but also Billy Joel, and is home to a zoo, a baseball stadium and a jeer disguised as a cheer.

The Bronx.

A series of television commercials promoting the borough of 1.3 million will be on the airwaves starting June 25. The 30-second spots, the first television advertisements the Bronx has used to sell itself, are part of a marketing campaign called “We’re Talking the Bronx,” starring Adolfo Carrión Jr., the borough president.

. . .

The ads will run for nine weeks on cable networks including CNN and ESPN in parts of the Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester County. They could be seen by roughly one million viewers, according to Weinrib & Connor, the White Plains advertising agency that produced the commercials.

The spots promoting one of New York City’s grittier boroughs give the place a rather old-fashioned, small-town feel. A fiddle plays pleasantly in the background as Mr. Carrión and others smile at the camera, though the borough’s homegrown musical legacies include hip-hop, doo-wop and salsa.

In one ad, an unidentified representative of Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the financial sponsors of the campaign, stares into the camera and says: “Whether preplanning or at a time of need, come talk with us.”

In others, viewers are whisked from the borough’s Little Italy on Arthur Avenue to the blue-backed seats of Yankee Stadium to the interior of North Central Bronx Hospital, “the hospital of choice for the Norwood community.” There are shots of Mike’s Deli on Arthur Avenue and the eager staff of a Ridgewood Savings Bank branch.

. . .

Mr. Carrión said the goal of the campaign was to generate more tourism to the borough, which attracted about seven million visitors last year. The ads also raise the profile of Mr. Carrión, who is considered a possible candidate for mayor in 2009.

When asked if the ads would help his political future, he said yesterday: “Every time I wake up in the morning and do my job right, it helps me to do whatever I’m going to do next.”

Just A Little Sniffling Now, But Moving Towards Full-Blown Congestion For Sure

The idea of raising $400 million a year for public transit through fees on drivers isn’t terribly interesting. A bold plan to reduce traffic almost 15 percent through technologically exciting EZ-Pass doodads is slightly more interesting. Linking those doodads to reduced asthma rates for the children is pretty smart. But co-opting Critical Mass riders is basically a masterstroke:

At the first Legislative hearing on congestion pricing on June 8, the hearing room, in the stately Association of the Bar of the City of New York building in midtown, was packed with hundreds of supporters of congestion pricing wearing “I Breathe & I Vote” T-shirts. They ride their bikes to work, or eat vegetarian, or strive to leave a zero carbon footprint in their daily lives — in other words, they looked like the future.

Does it work? Check the polls:

The survey, conducted for a pro-plan group by Penn, Schoen & Berland, found 41 percent of residents of the city and the suburbs backed the plan when first asked, compared to just 13 percent opposed. Forty-six percent said they didn’t know enough to form an opinion.

When those polled were told of potential plan benefits, such as ending gridlock and reducing pollution-related health problems, support for the proposal jumped to 81 percent, according to the Campaign for New York’s Future, which funded the survey.

. . .

Campaign for New York’s Future spokesman Michael O’Loughlin said the poll showed that the more New Yorkers learn of Bloomberg’s plan, “the more they like it.”

However, in a separate statement, the polling firm noted that after being told that the plan would impose an $8 “congestion fee” on cars entering Manhattan below 86th Street during working hours, New Yorkers split 46 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed.

No more gridlock! No more asthma! Who wouldn’t agree? But for $8 . . . I don’t know.

Wearing Latex Food Service Gloves Just Doesn’t Feel Right

Taco Bell notwithstanding, if the mayor is not careful, perceived Health Department overinspection of DiFara may unravel his administration’s nannyism:

“Put it back in the oven,” Domenico DeMarco was told.

The godfather of Brooklyn pizzadom had just pulled one of his signature pies out of the same old gas oven he’s used since Mayor Wagner’s administration — the temperature cranked up, the way he likes it, to around 750 degrees.

With his bare hand, he sprinkled some extra cheese onto the piping-hot pie.

That’s when the health inspector cried foul. She was spying from the usual packed crowd of pie tasters that assemble daily at Mr. DeMarco’s landmark Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood.

“My customers, they want it the way I do it,” said the legendary 70-year-old pizza-slinger. “I use good cheese. Parmesan Reggiano! So, I told her that.”

The inspector was not impressed. “She made me put it back in the oven,” Mr. DeMarco said.

Then she made him lock the front door.

Busted! Barehanded. Again.

On June 4, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shut down Mr. DeMarco’s popular pizza parlor on Avenue J for the second time this year, citing “unsanitary conditions including mouse infestation, flies, and bare hand contact with food.”

“Having failed five of six inspections in the last 18 months,” the regulators concluded, “[Di Fara’s] inspection history indicates an unwillingness or inability to meet health code.”

. . .

At press time, the pizzeria remained closed, though Mr. DeMarco and his family had tentatively brokered a set of stipulations that would allow them to reopen by week’s end. Still, Di Fara’s patriarch stressed that he would not reopen until he alone was ready: “The last time they close me up, after they give me the O.K., I say, ‘Nah, I have to close a few days because I want to close.'”

Even locked-up, Mr. DeMarco’s place was an attraction. “All day long, they’re looking in,” he remarked, as passers-by repeatedly pressed their faces up to the locked glass door.

“We’re with you, Maestro!” one supporter wrote in magic marker across a Health Department “CLOSED” sign posted to Di Fara’s door. “DOMINICK FOR PRESIDENT!” scrawled another.

Location Scout: Di Fara Pizza.

When You Want To Be The Freakiest, Only The Freakiest Will Do

Joe Sitt will have a hard time rebranding Coney Island if someone beats him to it:

The Shmaltz Brewing Company, maker of “He’Brew, the Chosen Beer,” last week released Coney Island Lager, the first of a side-show-inspired series of beers.

The logo, designed by Brooklyn-based tattoo artist Dave Wallin, features a tattooed and pierced version of the iconic Steeplechase smiling-face surrounded by slogans such as “Freak’s Favorite Beer” and “Alive.” The beer will be brewed in Brooklyn and profits will go to Coney Island USA, a nonprofit arts group that runs the sideshow and the annual Mermaid Parade.

Jeremy Cowan, the owner of Shmaltz, was approached by Coney Island USA with the idea shortly after his company put out beer commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Lenny Bruce.

. . .

Shmaltz plans to roll out Coney Island Lager over the next month.

“Coney Island Lager is already the freakiest new beer in the world,” said Dick Zigun, the head of Coney Island USA. “When we expand our Freak Bar, it will be featured as our bar’s house brand.”