It’s Always All About New York, Isn’t It?

Freakin’ Mets fans are everywhere:

Matt Murphy is now the luckiest man in baseball. The 21-year-old Elmhurst native is the proud owner of Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th career home run ball after attending Tuesday night’s San Francisco Giants game from the centerfield bleachers.

In an exclusive phone interview with the TimesLedger Wednesday, Murphy said he initially bought the ticket because he was excited by the chance to watch Barry Bonds become a baseball legend. Bonds had already tied the all-time career home run record on Saturday, and there was a good chance that Tuesday would be the night he would shatter it.

“All I wanted to do was just be in the building,” Murphy said.

When Bonds hit the homer in the fifth inning, Murphy not only got to be part of the historic moment but was able to take it away with him. While the cameras were on Bonds circling the bases, Murphy and more than a dozen fans scuffled, pushed and fought for the piece of baseball history. Murphy ultimately scooped the ball up and hid it in his Mets T-shirt, which he proudly wore despite the boos and jeers of Giants fans.

Ballpark security immediately escorted Murphy out of the stadium as he raised his arms in triumph, sporting the battle scars of his scuffle: a bloody nose, twisted ankle and hot dog ketchup stain.

Murphy said he was grateful to security helping him out of the ruckus and back to his hotel room, as many of the fans were already peeved that he came in dressed in full Mets paraphernalia, including a Jose Reyes jersey and cap.

. . .

Murphy’s friends from Archbishop Molloy High School were amazed to see their classmate all over the sports pages and television early Wednesday morning. Just hours after the lucky moment, Murphy’s pals a created group on the online social network Facebook titled “Matt Murphy just caught Barry Bonds’ 756th Homerun,” which has already attracted more than 50 members.

“It’s very cool. He was representing both Queens and Met fans and that’s always something to be happy about,” said Murphy’s classmate Joe Sommo, 22, of Middle Village, who is a member of the group.

Do You Really Want Cameras Installed At The Beach? Perv!

Staten Island Councilmember suggests installing security cameras at New Dorp Beach Park:

Days after New Dorp Beach Park was vandalized, City Councilman James Oddo visited the site and urged Staten Islanders to voice their opinions on whether or not security cameras should be installed there.

“What we’re trying to do is ask Staten Islanders what they want. Do they want cameras in our parks?” asked Oddo. “They can call or e-mail us. They can make their voice heard.”

“If the decision was mine, I would do it. But it’s not, it should be Staten Islanders.”

Aiming cameras at beachgoers . . . interesting . . . but you know what bored CCTV operators do, don’t you?

Then again, why put in the real thing when you can just use a decoy?

Red State-Blue State Divide Narrows

They’re not in Kansas anymore:

It took experts until late in the afternoon yesterday to confirm what many in southwestern Brooklyn knew had descended on their neighborhoods as a new workday dawned. It was a tornado — the first to hit Brooklyn since modern record-keeping began — and it turned whole sections of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge upside down.

Roofs were torn off houses. More than 30 families were forced from their homes. Tall trees as thick as men were yanked out by the roots. No one was seriously injured, but cars were turned sideways, awnings and aluminum siding shredded, and countless windows and windshields shattered, in a destructive rain of brick and branch and water that concentrated much of its wrath on 58th Street in Sunset Park.

. . .

The National Weather Service declared the storm a Category 2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with winds from 111 to 135 miles an hour. It was the first tornado recorded in Brooklyn since record-keeping began in 1950, said Jeffrey M. Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, and only the sixth recorded in New York City since 1950 and the first since a weak one touched down on Staten Island in 2003.

Can A Steamroller Really Stop 1.7 Inches Of Rain From Falling In One Hour Just Before Rush Hour?

The Governor fully intends to give the weather the full Sandy Weill treatment:

After a heavy rainstorm crippled the subway system in September 2004, an investigation laid the blame on New York City Transit, saying that the agency had neglected basic maintenance of its drainage system, and that once the tunnels started to fill with water, the response was haphazard and ineffective.

The agency promised major changes.

But yesterday, the subway was paralyzed again, when a strikingly similar storm dropped 1.7 inches of rain on Central Park between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., just before the morning rush.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with the transportation authority facing an angry public and accusations of incompetence, said yesterday that the measures it had put in place were not enough.

Governor Spitzer gave the Metropolitan Transportation Authority 30 days to come up with a plan to address the chronic flooding problems.

But more importantly, can a steamroller fix the National Weather Service? And can it actually stop global warming?

Elliot G. Sander, the chief executive of the transportation authority, who appeared at a Midtown press conference with the governor, said the torrential rainfall had overwhelmed pumps that routinely move water out of the subway system and had also backed up city sewers, meaning that water pumped out of the subway had nowhere to go.

“The timing and intensity of the storm took us by surprise because it was not predicted by the National Weather Service,” Mr. Sander said.

What happened yesterday was remarkably similar to the events of Sept. 8, 2004, when 1.76 inches of rain fell in Central Park between 6:51 a.m. and 7:51 a.m., according to a report issued by the transportation authority’s inspector general’s office.

The report, issued 18 months after the storm, found that, as in yesterday’s flooding, weather forecasters had not predicted such a heavy rainfall, and that the transit agency had been caught off guard. Authority officials at the time provided the same types of explanations they were offering yesterday, blaming overwhelmed pumps and a city sewer system that could not handle such a large quantity of water.

. . .

In 2004, transit officials referred to the unusually heavy rain that brought the subway system to a halt as “an act of God.” Yesterday, Mr. Sander seemed to hint at a more contemporary, although perhaps no less celestial explanation: climate change.

“We may be dealing with meteorological conditions that are unprecedented,” Mr. Sander said.

It’s Nothing A Little Whirlpooling Won’t Fix . . .

Oh lord — it really is over. Gentrification hits the city pools:

As the August heat settles over the city, more and more cash-poor young creative professionals have been visiting the Olympic-sized public pool in Red Hook, walking the long desolate industrial blocks from the F train or using a friend’s car to change into their string bikinis. At the door, a long list of prohibited items includes cellphones and iPods — meaning pool-goers actually have to (gasp) socialize with their fellow New Yorkers.

These hipsters tend to congregate in the southwest corner of the pool courtyard, isolating themselves from the splashing local families. They read trashy magazines and Atlas Shrugged. They take a dip — some even swimming a few laps. They have found their summertime Mecca.

Kit Giordano, 26, who works at development at Miramax Films, was there on a recent warm Saturday wearing a navy blue bikini top from J. Crew and light-blue board shorts, looking through one script, another at her feet. Next to her rested a bottle of SPF 30 sunblock, a Nalgene beverage container that read “Lefties Do It Right” and a Princeton classmate, Erin Culbertson, now a law student, who was paging through Entertainment Weekly. “We’re thinking about doing some handstands,” Ms. Culbertson said.

Further along rested Amy Donaldson, a 37-year-old graphic designer generously slathered in SPF 45 who had shlepped from the Upper West Side to meet some friends. “We were just talking about the elasticity of our bathing suits,” she said. Ms. Donaldson praised the comparatively “mellow” atmosphere of the Red Hook retreat. “There are a greater variety of people at this pool, as opposed to Lasker Pool, where there are more people from Harlem,” she said.

. . .

Julee Resendez, 36, was prone, stomach-down, on a white blanket with pink roses, wearing huge oval sunglasses, bright red fingernails and a black sparkly bikini and reading The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Underneath her arm was concealed a verboten cellphone. “I’m very clever,” she said. Ms. Resendez, originally from Seattle, now lives in Bed-Stuy. “The hood,” she said.