In: Security Cameras; Out: 30-Sided Dice

Is it a convenient way to use up some of that Homeland Security money or a profound cultural shift? You know, like role-playing games once were:

E-Tech Computers, located at 71-06 Grand Avenue in Maspeth, recently introduced a new security camera system that offers 360-degree views, making them ideal for warding off burglars, prowlers and other miscreants.

Eric, the proprietor of the store, said the time seemed right to expand into the field of home security. Currently, E-Tech has a variety of high-tech models for sale, some having the familiar security camera shape, while others are half-spherical and offer full-room views to guard against blind spots.

The employees of E-Tech take great personal pride in the cameras and security they offer. Not only are the cameras on the cutting edge, Eric said, but he believes they have never been more necessary in Maspeth, Middle Village or just about any part of the big city. “People get robbed,” he said. “Bad stuff happens.”

Staff members at the store agreed. “Right now, New York is becoming less safe,” one worker claimed. “People need something to record what happens.”

Still, the cameras represent a slight departure from the usual merchandise E-Tech sells. The store, which has been in business for five years, is best known for dealing in hardware and software, not surveillance technology.

Eric and his E-Tech co-workers, however, have the freedom to change directions depending on what they presume the market demands. After all, the store is not part of a computer conglomerate, but like so many Grand Avenue retailers, a homegrown business financed out of Eric’s own pocket. As such, the store offers some items one wouldn’t expect in a traditional computer store, such as 30-sided dice and replicas of samurai swords.

Vallone Also Understands The Creepy Subtext Of Hitchcock’s Rear Window

That telescope you set up in the bay window is one thing (New York City astronomer . . . sure!) but now even idle gazing may get you in trouble, too*:

At one time or another, many New Yorkers unwittingly find themselves staring into the window of an adjacent building and spotting a neighbor in a state of undress. It’s almost unavoidable among the city’s close quarters and some might go so far as to call it a beloved pastime. But it may become illegal under new legislation before the City Council.

Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens is proposing to outlaw voyeurism by extending a state law that forbids non-consensual peeping with cameras to peeping with the naked eye.

In addition to targeting repeat offenders who crane their necks to peer under the dresses of women scampering up and down subway stairs, the legislation would also crack down on anyone caught staring into the window of a private bedroom or bathroom.

. . .

While the bill was designed to deal with repeat offenders who do their peeping in public, Mr. Vallone acknowledged that, “invariably, other situations are going to get caught up in this.”

Vallone of course is pretty proficient when it comes to devising constitutionally problematic legislation . . .

*And the first on the list will be these people . . .

High-End Manhattan Real Estate Is A Riche Market

New York is Tijuana for the European middle classes and now Cabo for the Euro-rich:

Meanwhile, the housing market everywhere else in the country is morbid, Wall Street is skittish and even Mayor Bloomberg says pricing here should be coming down. “You might think we were being set up for some major reversal,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman senior vice president George W. van der Ploeg.

But New York is unfallen: This autumn’s new batch of listings will trek onward and upward.

According to two sources, Roger Barnett (CEO of natural products company Shaklee) and his wife Sloan (cellphone billionaire George Lindemann’s daughter) have begun to quietly ask around $62 million for their 125-year-old neo-Georgian town house. The 33-foot-wide mansion at 16 East 69th Street, designed by Peter Marino, was bought less than seven years ago for $11.5 million.

. . .

No townhouse in New York City has ever been officially listed for more than the Barnett place. Likewise, no apartment had sold for $50 million before two spreads in the newly made-over Plaza broke that sacred ceiling this summer.

Our city knows its real estate is monstrous and anarchic, and that the sales price of an average apartment has tripled over the past decade. But that stat is trivial compared to the high-end’s dazzling rise. There are more big-ticket buyers around who are willing to spend their money on “fine art” real estate, even if prices are so much vaster than last decade’s.

“The disparity between the rich and the superrich is becoming ever greater,” Mr. Henckels said, “and until that reverses itself, the prices at the very high end are safe.”

Downtown is getting in on the superrich action too. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson sold his family’s West 10th Street townhouse this March for $33.15 million, though he reportedly paid $7.35 million in 2000. And a full-floor penthouse at 200 11th Avenue, with an en-suite car garage space, will go on the market this September for around $18 million, which listing broker Leonard Steinberg at Douglas Elliman said will be the biggest Chelsea listing ever.

In an e-mail, Mr. Steinberg cited demand from “the NOUVEAU nouveau riche” — homegrown but especially foreign.

“Everyone with euros or pounds,” said Kathy Sloane, the Clinton family broker and another Brown Harris director, “thinks we’re giving real estate away.” She said she’s broken records at every building she’s sold in this year.

Cause You Are Entitled To Tap That Ass

The CW network’s new Gossip Girl series finds Central Park rather busy this time of year:

Unlike Gossip Girl’s great-aunt Beverly Hills, 90210, there’s no morality play at work (in other words, no Brandon Walsh drinking and crashing!): They do drugs, have sex, plot how to get into the Ivy League and seem tiredly resigned to, well, life.

“Do you ever feel like our whole lives are planned out for us?” one boy asks another, as they stroll through Central Park sharing a joint. “Aren’t we entitled to be happy?”

“What we’re entitled to is a trust fund,” his friend replies. “Maybe a house in the Hamptons and a prescription drug problem. . . . But happiness? Does not seem to be on the menu. . . . So smoke up, and seal the deal with Blair, ’cause you are entitled to tap that ass.”

. . .

[Penn] Badgley’s character, Dan Humphrey, is the requisite outsider trying to break in — the one who’s standing in for us. Dan’s father is a former 90’s rock star, and his family lives in (gasp) Brooklyn (judging from the confusing exterior shots, a loft that is in both Carroll Gardens and Dumbo at the same time!).

“In the book Dan lived on the Upper West Side, which I felt was a little subtle for the rest of the world,” said [series co-creator Josh] Schwartz. “We moved him to Brooklyn, which is apparently our new Chino.”

. . .

“We were going to walk away from the show if they didn’t let us shoot in New York,” said Mr. Schwartz. “For us, to do another teen drama and to get excited about it was that this is the most exciting time in these kids’ lives in the most exciting city in the world. To try to fake that in Burbank or Canada just felt like it would be lacking that thing you get from shooting in New York. It’s a character in the show.”

Back in Central Park, that character was not cooperating. The rain arrived in force, and the next scene, a dramatic and emotional moment between the best friends-turned-enemies, was supposed to happen while the girls fed ducks in the Bethesda Fountain. The crew quickly packed up and switched locations to the Bethesda Terrace Arcade with its pretty Minton tile ceiling and arched entrance.

It turned out also to be a favorite spot for Thoth, a street performer famous in his own right (and the subject of an Academy Award–winning short documentary), decked out in a gold loincloth, red feather headdress and not much else, who plays violin, sings falsetto soprano and shakes the bells around his ankles. An assistant director quietly spoke into his ear while Thoth sat on his knees, unyielding. In the darker corners of the underpass various homeless people slept on the concrete benches, untroubled.

In Death As In Life

Sooner or later everyone eventually decamps to the suburbs:

Leona Helmsley, for years the imperious head of a multibillion dollar real estate and hotel empire, will spend eternity inside a $1.4 million suburban mausoleum with a magnificent view, alongside her beloved husband Harry.

“You know what they say: location, location, location,” said Philip Zegarelli, mayor of the quiet Westchester County town where Helmsley will be buried this week. “It’s very nice setting, well picked and well positioned.”

The ornate granite mausoleum boasts 1,300 square feet, with a dozen Doric columns and stained glass windows recreating the Manhattan skyline — including the Empire State Building, once the crown jewel of the Helmsley properties.

The Pocantico River gurgles past the Helmsley holding in the tree-lined Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a historic 19th century locale where Washington Irving and Andrew Carnegie were joined last week by philanthropist Brooke Astor.

. . .

Harry Helmsley came to the northern suburb of Sleepy Hollow last year after Leona engaged in an ugly battle with Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where the real estate magnate was originally buried in 1997. The expansive family mausoleum there was memorably described as a “tomb with a view.”

But the sweeping vista disappeared when a public mausoleum — potentially filled with those “little people” who paid taxes — went up nearby three years ago.

An irate Leona called the new construction “a disgrace,” and resolved to relocate the remains of her husband and her son, Jay Panzirer.

She purchased a piece of land in the cemetery, 14 miles north of New York City, to construct a new mausoleum — and quickly alienated her husband’s new, living neighbors. In typical take-no-prisoners style, a wooded section of the cemetery was stripped clean of trees in summer 2005.

The new construction lacked permits, and village officials quickly shut down the project, Zegarelli said.