As Which World Turns?

Bemused Midwood residents still don’t understand what happens “As The World Turns”:

The show has been filmed in New York for its entire 51-year history, and it’s safe to say that its souped-up world of sex and chicanery rarely resembles life on the sidewalks outside. But seven years ago the producers moved their studio from Midtown to Midwood, and with a healthy dose of real estate irony, the relocation coincided with a sharp growth in the local Orthodox Jewish community. As Midwood’s Orthodox population soared to perhaps three-quarters of the neighborhood, the gap between sidewalk and soap opera became a gulf.

Now, when Oakdale’s powerful, scheming blondes and sensitive, square-jawed men step out of the warehouse at Avenue M and East 14th Street, they encounter women wearing very long skirts and men with very long beards.

In Oakdale, your daily life might include falling into a coma, learning that you have an evil twin, or developing amnesia. Your romantic relationships would be more fleeting and unstable than the average high schooler’s. Above all, you would be in constant danger of getting kidnapped — Lily Snyder, for instance, has been kidnapped no fewer than eight times.

Outside the studio, by contrast, all premarital contact between the sexes, even handshakes, is forbidden, and many residents do not allow television into their homes.

Inside the studio, a woman might be hanging from a bell tower by her fingernails, while in the streets outside, the most dramatic scene is the group of elderly people holding court in the kosher Dunkin’ Donuts.

“We’re strangers in a strange land,” said Christopher Goutman, the show’s executive producer. “There aren’t even any bars around here.”

The studio, which was built in the late 1920s, still features Esther Williams’s old pool and more recently provided the setting for “The Cosby Show.” But the good citizens of Midwood are oblivious to the past and present dramas unfolding within the high fortress walls, and even close neighbors are unclear about the building’s function.

The owner of the Korean deli around the corner was sure that some type of cartoon was being filmed there, and the restaurateur across the street insisted that the warehouse contained “the news.” When informed of the building’s true purpose, most were still in the dark.

“Soap opera?” asked a pale 19-year-old who would identify himself only as Tzviyanky. “Those are the shows where everybody’s cheating on each other, right?”

There’s Ecotourism In Costa Rica, Disaster Tourism In New Orleans, Sex Tourism In Southeast Asia . . .*

. . . and now in Brooklyn the latest in travel trends — Gentrification Tourism:

The Brooklyn Paper got a first peek inside Brooklyn’s first boutique hotel — Hotel Le Bleu — and discovered a very modern, tasteful, 48-room, glass-and-steel complex.

But looking out the window onto Fourth Avenue certainly brings you back to the real world. Sandwiched between a taxi depot and a Staples office supply store, it’s not a stretch to wonder if this is really the stuff that four-star hotels are made of.

“We want to be ahead of the curve on everything that’s happening in Brooklyn — particularly [on Fourth Avenue],” General Manager Robert Gaeta said. “There are a lot of exciting things happening in this area. It’s reminiscent of DUMBO or Williamsburg.”

The hotel, which is at Fifth street, will open for business on Aug. 1, though its chic in-house restaurant and rooftop bar won’t be ready until later this year. At that point, Le Bleu — which is owned by Globiwest International, a California-based hotel chain — hopes to draw local traffic to the Gowanus Canal area.

“This could be Venice in the United States,” Gaeta said.

Financially, it already is: Le Bleu rooms will go for the Venice-like price of $300–$400 a night, but, Gaeta quickly pointed out, the tariff includes luxury amenities like concierge service, plasma-screen televisions and botanical bath products in the glass-walled showers.

*And how could we forget graffiti tourism?

Where Some Borough Presidents Are Fond Of Press Conferences, Others Simply Like To Shop

Ooh, Nordstrom . . . so fancy:

The borough president who helped bring Trader Joe’s to Atlantic Avenue has set his sights on a new upscale target — a Nordstrom department store.

“Now that [Trader Joe’s] is done, we can go to the next one,” Borough President Markowitz told The Brooklyn Paper several days after leading a jubilant parade from Borough Hall to the Court Street bank building where the gourmet grocer is setting up its first Kings County store.

“Nordstrom would be awesome in Brooklyn. Now we have Trader Joe’s, Ikea, Whole Foods and all the other great retailers. That would complete it,” Markowitz said, still exuberant from his Joe’s victory lap.

The beep said he spent several years working to get the California-based purveyor of wasabi hummus and chicken dumplings to the corner of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue before last week’s announcement.

“My mother-and father-in-law, Joan and Jules Snow, would go to the Nassau County store and come back with chips and spreads that they couldn’t wait to bring out and show me,” he said. “I found out about Trader Joe’s and I started pitching,” he said.

. . .

Nordstrom does not have a New York City location. Most of the company’s stores — with their live pianists and marbled-floored restroom “lounges” — are in upscale shopping malls in the suburbs.

But Michael Boyd, a Nordstrom spokesman, said the company appreciated the borough president’s invitation.

“It’s very flattering,” he said. “We certainly appreciate the attention and are always happy to discuss new locations.”

Ah, but what locations? Retail experts said that finding a location for the high-end, mall chain could be tough in economically diverse, tightly packed Downtown Brooklyn.

“A Nordstrom would need the correct neighbors and something like a million square feet of retail space,” said Joseph Aquino, executive vice president for retail leasing and sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Aquino said that Fulton Mall, once a mecca for white-gloved department stores and still home to Macy’s, was not quite fancy enough for Nordstrom.

“The retailers there are not the right neighbors,” he said.

(That makes me want to hear the Beep and Charles Barron debate. Darned term limits!)

Public Appearances Are Difficult To Pull Off When No One Recognizes You; Man-On-The-Street Interviews Few And Far Between (Like G Train Service!)

MTA CEO Elliot Sander gets the full-on Jews-for-Jesus treatment from commuters at Grand Central; exactly one citizen stops to talk:

MTA CEO Elliot Sander campaigned like a politician yesterday at the Grand Central side of the Times Square shuttle, handing commuters flyers describing the preliminary 2008 budget, which includes higher fares and tolls.

“Keep the fare down, bastards!” one man bellowed at Sander as the transit chief paused for a media interview.

One man heading from a train not only declined to take the flyer info but barked, “You’re blocking the way.”

When Sander told commuter Jean Callaham that the MTA faces $6 billion in deficits over the next four years, the Staten Islander replied that she feels she pays enough already.

“I’m angry they want to raise the fare again,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? How are we going to survive?”

The 30-minute platform campaign highlighted the difficulty the MTA may have convincing riders a fare hike really is needed since the agency has a surplus this year — and past predictions of deep deficits proved inaccurate.

That lady is everywhere:

Mr. Sander, dressed in a dark suit, began handing out leaflets at 8 a.m. to hurrying subway riders on the platform of the shuttle train to Times Square.

Very few people seemed to recognize him, and only one or two stopped for a chat. Most merely brushed past him: New Yorkers in a hurry to get on or off the train.

The leaflet was titled “The Fare Facts,” and it said that growing pension and debt service costs had made “modest increases in fares and tolls” necessary.

It did not mention that the rate increase in fares and tolls would average 6.5 percent. And it also did not mention that for the last year the authority has operated with a cash surplus of nearly $1 billion.

But the surplus was on the mind of one woman who stopped to speak to Mr. Sander. She asked him where the money had gone.

Mr. Sander told her that the authority was facing rising deficits, and he invited her to send her opinions in an e-mail message, through the M.T.A.’s Web site.

The woman, Jean Callaham, said it took her two hours to get to work from her home on Staten Island. She told Mr. Sander that the $20 she pays each week in subway fares and the $9 toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that her relatives pay when they visit her were already high enough.

Speaking to a reporter afterward, Ms. Callaham, who works at a financial services firm, said she leaves her house at 6:15 a.m., drives to the Staten Island Railway and takes the train to the Staten Island ferry. After crossing the harbor, she takes a subway to Times Square and then takes the shuttle to Grand Central. She gets to work at 8:15.

At times she has taken an express bus, which cuts the trip to an hour. But the cost is much higher.

Ms. Callaham said that when she got off the shuttle yesterday morning she mistook Mr. Sander for another public official.

“I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman standing there, and I thought it was Mayor Bloomberg,” she said. “Then he handed me this flier, and I said, ‘Who are you?'”

No, literally everywhere:

Since the MTA is crying poverty it can’t afford a p.r. campaign. So Sander greeted commuters with “Fare Facts” fliers that try to justify the “modest increases in fares and tolls.”

One rider, Jean Callaham, of Staten Island, wasn’t buying the pitch.

“I told him that I’m tired of having to pay, pay, pay. I can’t afford to ride express buses and they want to raise the fare,” she said.

Another rider shouted, “Keep the fares down, bastard!” then stormed away.

Next Step: Vivi’s Law

After almost a year and a half, the hunt for Vivi moves from a search & rescue operation to the inspiration for a movement:

Vivi, the champion whippet, has been missing in Queens for almost 1-1/2 years and her heartbroken volunteers are now mounting a campaign to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Organized as the Vivi Crusade, a handful of dedicated animal lovers want the airlines to be more responsive to shipped dogs and cats, which they say are being treated like luggage instead of living, breathing creatures. To further their cause, the volunteers have devised a questionnaire to gather information from across the country on airline incidents of injured, killed, misplaced or lost pets.

Bonnie Folz, of Howard Beach, who served as search coordinator during the active stages of looking for Vivi, is co-founder of the new Vivi Crusade.

“We know there are problems (with the airlines) and we are looking for solutions,” she said. “We want to work with the airlines; we don’t want it to be one-sided.”

. . .

Despite the efforts of about a dozen hard-core volunteers, Vivi was never found.

“I think she was out there,” Folz said, “and I hope someone has her and doesn’t realize who she is and is taking good care of her.”

Folz is realistic enough to know that Vivi could have been hit by a car and died and there will never be any resolution.

“If we could just know she’s okay,” she said. “We haven’t had a sighting in almost a year.”

Vivi’s California owners were astounded with the level of commitment by the volunteers, who actively searched for the dog for so long. Aging posters of the whippet still can be found throughout the borough.

“I don’t know if we’d do anything different,” Folz said. “It was a learning experience.”

Despite their disappointment in not recovering Vivi, volunteers were able to rescue 40 dogs in New York City and 20 out of town as a result of the attention brought by the whippet’s disappearance.

Whippets are particularly difficut to recover because they become feral very quickly, go into a survival mode and run extremely fast. They are also excellent hunters.

Trying to turn the experience into a positive, Folz is soldiering on in hopes that other pets won’t meet the same fate as Vivi.

“We are starting off with educating the public and the airlines,” she said, “and improving what’s already in place. We don’t want to go in there like gangbusters.”

She believes reporting incidents of lost, injured or killed pets and proper training of airline employees and pet owners are the key. One possibility is designing a better crate that can withstand rough handling. At this time, Folz noted, it is up to the pet owners to additionally secure crates on their own, even if the cages have locks.

She added that there seems to be no real tracking done on the crates in transit. Although airlines are required by law to report if an animal is not recovered, other cases, where a pet goes to the wrong airport or is lost temporarily are not reported.

“These are not pieces of luggage,” she added. “The airlines must have compassion for living beings.”

Last year, Delta considered Vivi missing baggage and reimbursed one of the owners $2,800.

See also: Vivi the Whippet.