Start Packing

The “-packing” suffix trend is something that must be quickly and quietly eliminated:

Though other areas of the city offer one or a few of these services, Union Square is becoming a one-stop destination for those who consider themselves health-conscious, eco-friendly and deserving of the kind of spiritual and bodily nurturing that in the past was mainly the province of spa vacations. If the meatpacking district is where you go to party, Union Square is where you detoxify.

“We call it the wheatpacking district,” said Lisa Blau, who with Amanda Freeman founded VitalJuiceDaily.com, an e-mail newsletter devoted to healthy living that they publish from an office in the neighborhood.

What’s next? Downtown Brooklyn as the Courtpacking District? The neighborhoods served by the 6 line now comprise the Seatpacking District? Will the area the Brooklyn Gun Court is targeting become known as the Heatpacking District? Can 8th Street keep up its reputation as the city’s Feetpacking District?

Oooh That Smell, Can’t You Smell That Smell?

From the Amorphophallus titanum to the Elegant Stinkhorn, Brooklyn leads the city in flora that evokes the odor of putrefying meat:

The stench of raw meat has taken over parts of the Hillside Dog Park on Columbia Heights near Middagh Street. But don’t look for roadkill. The villain here is a slimy florescent orange stalk shooting up between the wood chips and covered with flies.

Say hello to your new neighbor: the Elegant Stinkhorn mushroom.

The Hillside Dog Park, which is covered in wood chips, is practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mushroom, which spends its time decomposing the moist, woody pieces.

. . .

The Stinkhorn’s eau de toilet is its aroma of decaying flesh, and the flies can’t get enough. Lured in by the scent, the flies grab some of the Stinkhorn’s sticky slime and spread the mushroom’s spores.

Don’t Monkey With The Constitution

What was assumed to have been a garden-variety monkey meat-smuggling operation may evolve into a serious constitutional dispute:

What started as a late-night talk show joke topic — a New York woman originally from Liberia who was indicted for allegedly trying to smuggle steaks of monkey meat into America via John F. Kennedy International Airport — is shaping up into a potentially major religious freedom dispute.

The woman, who says she imported the monkey parts for religious ceremonies, has attracted pro bono legal assistance from a top law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. And a professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School, Jacob Olupona, may testify on her behalf.

At a hearing earlier this month, Chief Judge Raymond Dearie of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruled that Mamie Manneh, 39, of Staten Island, has legal standing to argue that her religious beliefs should exempt her from criminal prosecution for smuggling the contraband bushmeat.

As depositions and testimony emerge during the run-up to trial, court papers provide a glimpse into a world of religious rites that lawyers in the case are struggling to find ways to explain to those who are unfamiliar with them.

“Frankly, I sort of analogize it more just in my own personal experience with certain foods that you might have at something like a seder . . . you know, bitter herbs and that might have some reference to the Exodus or something along those lines,” Jan Rostal, an attorney for Manneh, told the judge earlier this month, according to a transcript.

. . .

A professor of law at George Washington University who specializes in religious freedom issues, Ira Lupu, said that Manneh’s case is “not total nonsense,” considering the Supreme Court’s decision last year.

Norman Foster . . . Perv!

If anyone has a copy of the memo instructing Cosmo staff to keep their legs closed, well, you know where to reach us:

The cascading glass escalators in the lobby of Norman Foster’s new Hearst Tower, which carry the ladies of Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, and Harper’s Bazaar to their offices, also offer a view up their skirts. Some editors were concerned enough that they warned members of their staff prone to wearing trendy mini-minidresses or ballooning short skirts to take care to keep their legs closed. “It’s the visitors that see the ‘view,'” said one editor. “A lot of tourists walk in from the streets to see the building.” Other employees were more blasé. . . . [one editor said,] “I’m not sure it’s that much of a problem considering the fact that I can probably count the number of straight men who work in the building on one hand.”

If You’ve Had A Dose Of A Freaky Ghost . . .

If only Discovery were doing reality programming in 1984, there’d be such a tie-in opportunity:

There might be an appliance theme to the haunting of the Merchant’s House, a nineteenth-century town house in the East Village that was owned by a single family until 1933, when it was turned into a museum. In the nineteen-seventies, someone decided to fit the kitchen with a cast-iron stove. One day, the story goes, a museum worker witnessed the stove shaking violently, as if someone were pushing it from behind. In the early nineties, the museum’s curator installed a computer. The machine froze every time she typed “Tredwell” — the last name of the house’s original owner. “Well, not every time, but three out of five,” Pi Gardiner, the museum’s current executive director, explained one night recently. “Our theory was that the spirits were, like, ‘What is all this newfangled technology?’ ”

. . .

Seabury Tredwell, the patriarch of the presumed ghost family, bought the house for his wife and their seven children in 1835. When he died, his kids stuck around — most notably Gertrude, the youngest, who stayed until her death, at the age of ninety-three. [Dan] Sturges, a veteran of more than fifty missions with Paranormal Investigation of NYC, is searching for their spirits pro bono. (He did the same for the Belasco Theatre and for the restaurant One If by Land, Two If by Sea. He supplements his income with acting gigs; see the 2002 Hungry Man “XXL” commercial.)

Sturges unpacked his equipment: a digital-video recorder, two electromagnetic-field meters, a thermocouple — like an iPod, with a metal coil to tell temperature (you look for cold spots) — a digital camera, and a tape recorder. “My dad was a fisherman,” he said. “I tell people I go out fishing. You don’t always catch something. Plenty of times, you get skunked.”

. . .

Using the tape recorder, he conducted an Electronic Voice Phenomena test. “Is there anybody in the kitchen tonight?” he asked. (“Ideally, we would hear, ‘Yes! It’s Gertrude!'” he explained.) No reply. In the family room, he inspected two mannequins — one bald, both in yellowed nineteenth-century dresses. He held up the recorder again: “If there’s anybody here in this room, can you make a noise? . . . Can you shake the chandelier? A knock on the wall or the ceiling would be great.” There was a sort of shuffle outside, on East Fourth Street, but Sturges dismissed it.