The Bride, Until Last Month, Resided In A Building On Pacific Street . . .

This may be one of the few examples of the Sunday Styles vows section as clever political protest*:

It’s getting damn close to the end times for opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, the massive basketball, housing, and retail complex slated to rise up on the rail yards between Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. With two lawsuits drawing to a close in the next few months, lead anti–Atlantic Yards organizer Daniel Goldstein has been dreaming up every way possible to rally support for his cause. When the development company Forest City Ratner started offering lucrative buyouts to the owners of the condo building where he lives, Goldstein was the lone holdout. He’s since spent two years living alone in his 31-unit building, right where the New Jersey Nets will theoretically hit their jumpers.

Now, loner Goldstein has found romance with fellow anti–Atlantic Yards activist Shabnam Merchant, and the two plan to get married next month. And they’ve even cooked up a scheme to use their wedding to advance the anti-Ratner campaign. They’ve submitted their nuptials to the New York Times Sunday wedding-vows section, in the hope that editors will find the concept of NIMBY love too irresistible to pass up — and give the Atlantic Yards campaign a little free publicity to boot.

“I kinda doubt they would run it,” Goldstein says, even as he squirms at the prospect of his personal life bleeding into La Causa. “They get tons of submissions. But I don’t think there’s a more interesting wedding occurring this month.” If they give him a pass, he adds, he wouldn’t be surprised. After all, his arch-nemesis Ratner built the Times’s new headquarters.

*Not counting the Times’ decision back in 2002 to include gay and lesbian unions.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Jack Kerouac Was A Hero To Most But He Never Meant IT (That’s Capital “I,” Capital “T”) To Me

And the horrible truth about Jack Kerouac is that “On The Road” is probably way overrated anyway:

Go to the places in Queens that Jack Kerouac once frequented — from the home on Cross Bay Boulevard where he lived for six years to the bar he patronized across the street to another house in Richmond Hill — and you will find widespread apathy that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the publishing of “On The Road,” the novel that spawned the Beat Generation.

And there appears to be no celebration in the borough to mark the milestone.

Joanne King, a spokeswoman for the Queens Library, said the library had no events listed.

In fact, finding some evidence that Kerouac once had roots in Queens — the starting point of his cross-country journey documented in “On The Road” — is hard to come by.

A small, red plaque hangs discreetly on the bricks of his former home at 133-01 Cross Bay Blvd. in Ozone Park.

“The poet and novelist lived here from 1943 to 1949,” it reads. “During those years, he wrote his first novel, The Town And The City (1950) and planned On The Road (1957), his seminal novel that would define the Beat Generation.”

. . .

Talk to patrons at Glen Patrick’s Pub, formerly McNolte’s Tavern in Kerouac’s day, and they know the Kerouac name and can point to the left corner seat at the bar where he used to sit and drink. They know that Kerouac enjoyed throwing darts but have not read one page of “On The Road.”

“This guy’s a legend or something,” said the bartender, who only wanted to be identified as Chick-E. “For whatever reason, I don’t know. He’s like a folk hero, this guy. I can’t believe it.”

The bar’s customers were equally clueless.

“This “On the Road” — is it a good book?,” asked John Riepe. “There’s not one person in this place that’s read the book.”

“All we know is from what we read on that thing,” he said, pointing to a 1990 Newsday article about Kerouac framed on the bar’s back wall.

“Everybody that comes in here reads that,” Chick-E said. “Everyone, strangers off the street and they come take pictures.”

Kerouac spent six years at the Cross Bay Boulevard home before moving to a house at 94-21 134th St. in Richmond Hill.

A resident of the Richmond Hill house said the fact that Kerouac once lived there “don’t mean nothing” to him.

Germ Warfare On Mosquitoes . . .

. . . sounds creepy when you put it that way:

In an ongoing campaign to prevent a possible outbreak of West Nile virus, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has announced yet another round of helicopter missions to eliminate mosquito larvae.

According to DOHMH, the helicopters will be dropping “natural bacterial granules” on non-residential marshlands in Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, on Thursday, August 16, Friday, August 17 and Monday, August 20, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. In case of rain, the campaign will continue the following day.

DOHMH says the “larvicide” pellets are meant to kill the mosquito larvae, which live near the surface of pools of stagnant water, before they can emerge as adult insects.

. . .

The agents being used by DOHMH are VectoBac CG and/or VectoLex CG, which contain a bacteria, bacillus thuringiensis israelensis.

Cab Gat-Away (Hi-De Hi-De That Ammo!)

Apparently the weapon was in plain view*:

A Port Richmond man who had the bad luck to be riding in a cab pulled over for a traffic violation near Journeay Street landed in some hot water of his own when he tried to ditch the gun he was carrying Tuesday night, cops allege.

Brian Burel, 21, of the 200 block of Charles Avenue, took the gun, a loaded .45 semiautomatic Ruger, out of his waistband and tried to place it on the floor of the cab, according to court papers.

Cops said they spotted Burel in the act, and charged him with second- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and possession of pistol or revolver ammunition.

*Because otherwise, police aren’t allowed to search a passenger in a cab, right? Where are the Fourth Amendment scholars out there?

Baby, I’m Not Staring — I’m Just Normally Admiring God’s Creation In A Casual Or Cursory Manner*

Peter Vallone Jr.’s bill to outlaw looking just gets more and more confusing:

When women in his Queens district started complaining of a strange man standing under the steps of the elevated subway at Ditmars Boulevard, looking up their skirts, City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. said he was as surprised as anyone to learn there was no law against it.

So he wrote one.

. . .

The bill would make it illegal to look at a person’s “sexual or other intimate parts” for more than a brief period, “in other than a casual or cursory manner,” for the purpose of entertainment, sexual arousal or gratification, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing the person being viewed.

The New York Civil Liberties Union issued a statement yesterday calling the proposal “creepy lawmaking.”

“The problem with this legislation is that it’s trying to get at this amorphous, vague behavior of looking, which is very imprecise,” said Donna Lieberman, the group’s executive director. “The language of the bill reflects how vague the activity that they’re trying to get at is, and the problem is that it’s an invitation to abuse, to selective enforcement based on the whims or prejudice of the individual police officer.”

She added, “What kind of a look is degrading, and therefore unlawful, who’s to say?”

Mr. Vallone responded that his bill was very narrowly drawn.

“We took great pains to make sure that the normal admiration of God’s creation was not made illegal,” Mr. Vallone said.

*And I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that kind of street harassment before . . .