The MPAA Smells That Smell

Drugs, bombs and pirated DVDs. It’s all about priorities:

DVD piracy costs New York City about $50 million in lost sales taxes each year. Drawing on his background as a federal prosecutor, John Malcolm decided to try a low-tech solution to the high-tech crime.

“Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs. Lo and behold, they can.”

At a demonstration here yesterday, two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo were able to pick out boxes full of DVDs. They made no critical judgments — for them, all movies stink. They can’t tell the difference between legitimate or pirated products, DVDs or CDs. But their ability to unearth discs makes the jobs of police and customs officials much easier.

“We’d like to get law enforcement interested in using similar dogs,” explained Malcolm.

Because Collapsing Bridges Are Inherently Funny

And here I thought those higher office rumors had all been unfounded*:

With a nod to Senator Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg is putting to rest that pesky gossip about a bid for national office: He says he does not want to be the nation’s next attorney general. “Despite any rumors you may have heard, I did not come to Washington as part of a stealth campaign to become the new attorney general,” Mayor Bloomberg quipped to an audience at the National Press Club that appeared well-versed in the rampant speculation about his aspirations for the White House.

. . .

[T]he mayor did poke a little fun at [Senator Schumer] over some “nasty comments” Mr. Schumer made about the condition of New York City’s bridges following the collapse of the Interstate 35W span in Minnesota earlier this month. Drawing laughter, Mr. Bloomberg recalled pointing out that three weeks earlier, Mr. Schumer’s wife, who was the city’s transportation commissioner, had pronounced the bridges in “great shape.”

After delivering a speech on poverty, the mayor issued his ritual denial of a presidential run. But he was spotted outside the National Press Building posing for photographs with supporters holding “Bloomberg ’08” signs.

*Is a MBA a good enough substitute for a law degree (not that you necessarily need one . . .)?

The Subway Experience As Multi-User Dungeon

Perhaps the “multi-user dungeon” part might hold some people back:

Being poked on the subway is annoying. On Facebook it’s a compliment. A new application on the site hopes to bridge that divide.

Subway Status allows riders to post updates, meet their neighbors and read service announcements pulled from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Web site. Users can check for delays, complain about local transit issues — such as the campaign for an F train express — and keep track of weekend changes, all without leaving their social network.

“The interesting thing about the subway experience is that everyone has it, but no one shares it,” said Amos Bloomberg (no relation to the Mayor), who designed the application. “There’s currently no forum for this discussion, and it certainly doesn’t happen on the train itself. I’m trying to explore that issue.”

. . .

“I see it like those ‘multi-user dungeons’ from the early days of computers,” he said. “The idea is that you are exploring a system with lots of rooms and different people. There are tribes of people on each train, and I want them to organize themselves into little pockets.”

Shebam! Pow! Blop! Fizz!

In the recession years of the early 90s Harlem’s real estate was in much better shape compared to that of the East Village simply because of Upper Manhattan’s excellent subway access, something people on Columbia Street in Brooklyn are realizing today:

Two years ago Freddy Saint-Aignan and his wife, Angelika, found the perfect location for their fledgling bar/restaurant, the Sugar Lounge: Columbia Street in Brooklyn.

The building was just the right size, had a spacious backyard garden and sat beside Upper New York Bay. The city had big plans for the area: green space and parks, cruise ship piers a few blocks away

The Columbia Street Waterfront District, as it is called, was going to be resurrected to its past stature as a social and commercial hub. It was going to rival Smith Street in Boerum Hill, which had gone through a renaissance, attracting high-end boutiques and specialty stores, restaurants and a steadily swelling flow of shoppers and diners.

But that was two years ago, and instead of a silver lining along the Manhattan skyline, which the Saint-Aignans can see from the lounge’s front window, they see the outstretched arms of backhoes, cranes and industrial containers. Where there was to be a park across the street there is shredded earth, construction vehicles and exposed sewer pipes. The sidewalk is dirty and ragged, and aside from the occasional dog walker, jogger or in-line skater (along smoother stretches) there is very little foot traffic.

At night, the street outside the lounge is dark, the street lights dimmed by damage and disrepair. The promises of better days for Columbia Street have crumbled like the sidewalk in front of the Sugar Lounge, Mr. Saint-Aignan said yesterday.

“Smith Street has everything,” Mr. Saint-Aignan said from his cozy lounge, pointing out the contrast with Columbia Street. “With all the construction, there is no place for parking. We have no access, no subway, no buses. At night we have no lights.”

The Columbia Street corridor has struggled to propel itself into the orbit of the Brooklyn revival. Depending on whom you ask, the Columbia Street commercial strip is in Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens or — more recently — Red Hook. It is bordered on the west by New York Bay, on the east by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, on the north by Atlantic Avenue, and on the south by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

Mr. Saint-Aignan, formerly the general manager of Bar Tabac on Smith Street, said he had had to take on two other jobs to stay afloat.

The wishful thinking about Columbia Street’s being the new Smith Street goes only so far. The magical combination that makes one street hot and another tepid can seem elusive, but not here, where the reasons for the stalled revival are painfully clear. Continuing construction, a sense of geographic isolation and waning buzz continue to hush the “pop” that speculators had predicted.

For a while, “everyone wanted to come,” said Frank Manzione, who owns a real estate company on Columbia Street. “There were new condos being built, more people were moving in. A lot of the stores that were closed up started to get rented.”

Fantasy Internal Memo Dated Today: “Adjust Equivocal Wording Of ‘Believe’ And ‘Goal’ In ‘Throughout URS We Believe That Accidents Are Preventable, And Our Goal Is Zero Workplace Incidents’ To Something A Little More Unambiguous . . . Like Now”

Gives added meaning to the concept of damage control:

A construction firm involved in the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building is the same company that assured Minnesota officials a highway bridge was safe before it collapsed this summer.

The firm, URS, which stands for United Research Services, was hired to investigate the stability of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis in 2003. After finding numerous weaknesses, URS engineers told Minnesota transportation officials in January it would be able to find cracks and fix them before they became dangerous, according to news reports.

The eight-lane bridge collapsed seven months later, taking with it about 50 cars and killing at least 12 people.