Kevin Sheekey Leaks One Or Two Little Tidbits And Then They All Go Cheney On You

See, this is what you get when you float a possible run for higher office:

Before he was elected mayor in 2001, Michael R. Bloomberg had surgery to have two stents implanted in a coronary artery because of blockage in his heart, a person with knowledge of Mr. Bloomberg’s health said last night.

Mayor Bloomberg has not had heart disease since the stents were put in, according to this person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Mr. Bloomberg had not authorized release of the information. The mayor is in excellent health today, this person said.

Newsweek magazine first reported the implants this week. The person with knowledge of the mayor’s health said the procedure took place in 2000 after Mr. Bloomberg complained of discomfort and tiredness. NY1 News also reported last night that Mr. Bloomberg was advised by a doctor to undergo the procedure and that he recovered quickly.

A spokesman for the mayor, Stu Loeser, declined to comment on the stents or on Mr. Bloomberg’s health last night.

The health of the mayor, 65, as well as other facets of his personal and professional life, have come under new scrutiny in the last week since he spurred intense speculation about his possible presidential ambitions by changing his party registration from Republican to independent.

Not Too Soon?

Crazy to think that today’s vandals are only dimly aware of Sept. 11:

Borough President James P. Molinaro yesterday said that another plaque at the Staten Island World Trade Center memorial was damaged during a recent incident.

In light of the vandalism, Molinaro said he would ask the city to install video surveillance cameras near the St. George memorial.

Initial reports said part of a granite plaque devoted to Jason Christopher DeFazio, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee from Sunnyside, was shattered and its pieces scattered on the rocky shoreline near the memorial. The pieces were later recovered.

Yesterday, Molinaro said the plaque adjacent to DeFazio’s, belonging to Firefighter Jeffrey James Olsen of Great Kills, is missing its silhouette-style profile.

Authorities didn’t initially notice the vandalism to Olsen’s plaque because the layout of the 9/11 “Postcards” memorial can make it difficult to match victims’ profiles with their corresponding nameplates, the borough president said.

“It’s an easy mistake to make,” Molinaro added.

The part of the plaque containing Olsen’s name was not damaged.

Olsen’s mother, Carol Olsen, said the vandalism was “awful,” noting, “Many families rely on that memorial.”

She said her family wanted nothing to do with the memorial planned for Manhattan because it’s “too controversial.” Said Mrs. Olsen of the St. George site, “This is where we come.”

Officials believe that all the vandalism occurred sometime last weekend.

And by the way, how many other surveillance cameras around the city are only decoys?

Molinaro said two surveillance cameras mounted on light poles near the memorial are actually decoys. He said he’d never requested working cameras be installed at the memorial because “I was naive enough to think that people wouldn’t damage it.”

He also didn’t want to potentially invade the privacy of grieving family members by having them videotaped.

“Now I see we’re at a different level,” said Molinaro. “It’s necessary that you do it.”

Location Scout: Postcards Memorial.

Because It’s Not Like You Find Packets Of Oyster Crackers At Every Other Seafood Shack Along The Eastern Seaboard Or Anything

An intellectual property suit filed by the owners of Pearl Oyster Bar will test the boundaries of how much you can rip off and then try to accuse others of having ripped off:

Sometimes, Rebecca Charles wishes she were a little less influential.

She was, she asserts, the first chef in New York who took lobster rolls, fried clams and other sturdy utility players of New England seafood cookery and lifted them to all-star status on her menu. Since opening Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village 10 years ago, she has ruefully watched the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers “knockoffs” of her own.

Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo and her sous-chef at Pearl for six years.

The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed’s Lobster Bar copies “each and every element” of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.

God bless Caesar Cardini. But of course it’s not just about the Caesar:

Ms. Charles’s investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for about $120,000 — a cost that in today’s market qualifies as an early-bird special.

She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.

“My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my family,” she said. “That restaurant is me.”

White marble bars — OK, everyone has that — but I totally own the Maine seascape!

Though “Splasher” Still Sounds Like Something Gross Old Uncle Henry (That Coot) Obnoxiously Announces Upon Finishing In The Restroom, They Do Get Props For Vailiantly Pushing “If I Did It” Back Into A City’s Consciousness

All I know is that it’s taken far too long for O.J.’s “If I Did It . . .” conceit to catch on in popular culture:

Street artists have speculated for months about the identity of a mysterious figure who has become known as “the Splasher” because he or she hurled colorful blobs of paint at prominent pieces of art on exterior walls in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan.

The only clues left behind in the paint assaults were bold manifestoes — phrases like “destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere” — that appeared to critique the commercialization of art.

Now it appears that there may be more than one Splasher, and those claiming responsibility for the attacks have offered additional information about themselves.

One hint came Saturday night, when several people showed up at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea during a reception for the artist Shepard Fairey, who is known for his stenciled images of the wrestler Andre the Giant. They distributed a 16-page newsprint tabloid with the title, “If We Did It, This Is How It Would’ve Happened.” The cover was illustrated by a photograph of a piece of art by Mr. Fairey that had been splattered by paint.

And That’s Not “Erupt” Figuratively Like They Say After One Of Your Garden-Variety 30-Point Performances, He Means Literally “Erupt”

In an interview with Metro New York, competitive eating expert and Horsemen of the Esophagus author Jason Fagone guesses that Kobayashi’s jaw arthritis is probably for real though he does seem to suggest while answering a question about the potential for other repetitive injuries through competitive eating that deep down, spectators have a perverse sort of White Bronco infatuation with the sport:

I’m waiting for Joey Chestnut to erupt. I’m waiting for the first stomach rupture. It probably won’t happen with one of the top eaters, because they’ve brought their capacity up so gradually. It certainly can happen with an eater who is doing it for the first time or second time or third time and just overdoes it.