Stick To The Privacy Issues, Which Are Slightly More Believable

Nice try:

A burning cab ignited controversy yesterday when the Taxi Workers Alliance claimed a newly installed GPS system started the blaze.

But taxi authorities and independent mechanics disputed the claim, arguing that it was all but impossible for a properly installed system to catch fire.

The cab fire — the third in Manhattan in as many weeks — happened at around 2 p.m. It was caused by what appeared to be a burned-out alternator. At the scene, both the the driver and an Alliance representative pointed the finger at a GPS system installed on Saturday.

“It started smoking, I could smell it, I could see it was flaming. This is going to cost me around $450 to fix,” said the driver, Samuel Asenso, 51. “GPS is an electrical system. The alternator controls all the electrical systems in the car. Whenever the cab is overloaded, the alternator catches on fire.”

. . .

Alliance member Bill Lindauer was on the scene to direct reporters around the stricken vehicle. He said he would reserve final judgement until the car was inspected by a mechanic, but firmly believed the GPS system was responsible.

“This is the least reliable system ever invented by mankind,” he said. “There is a mass of self-delusion in the [Taxi & Limousine Commission] running amok.”

Backstory: There You Go Again.

Maybe Add Some Celebrity Impersonators To Officiate? Woody Allen? Frank Sinatra? Martin Scorsese? What About (The Reverend) Al Sharpton!?

Apparently they assume that people go there for the ambiance and good service:

Mayor Bloomberg is giving a wedding gift to lovebirds who tie the knot at the city chapel — a multimillion-dollar Marriage Bureau makeover overseen by Hizzoner’s personal interior designer — in a bid to make New York the nation’s coupling capital, The Post has learned.

“It’s going to be fabulous,” said one source of the planned revamp, which will move the City Clerk’s Office — where a major function is issuing marriage licenses and performing weddings — from its current, dingy digs at 1 Centre St. to the first floor of 80 Centre.

It will occupy the offices that once housed the Department of Motor Vehicles, with a fresh look designed by society decorator Jamie Drake.

Drake adorned Mayor Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse with Egyptian marble, and also was tapped by the mayor to give Gracie Mansion a face lift five years ago.

The city will use the new chapel as part of a worldwide marketing effort to lure marriage-minded visitors, sources said. It’s part of a goal to bring 50 million tourists here by 2015 and contribute to the economy.

“Vegas might be one location where people go” to get married, the source said.

“But a lot of Europeans, if they go somewhere romantic and are coming to America, one of the first things they think about is New York City.”

The goal is to replace Las Vegas and make New York “the premier marriage location in America,” the source added.

. . .

The Marriage Bureau, now on the second floor of the Municipal Building, has sterile marble, and the door to the wedding chapel is painted deep red.

Couples sit on plastic chairs lining the walls in the hallway until their names are called; there is graffiti scratched into the walls; and, worst of all, there are no bathrooms nearby.

Sources said Drake, who also decorated the billionaire mayor’s London townhouse, will work at a reduced rate on the project, which has a $13 million budget and should be finished by spring 2008.

The new space will be about 6,000 square feet larger, and will have proper seating areas, attractive marble floors and columns, as well as bathrooms and vanity rooms where brides and grooms can primp.

It will be a storefront, with a streamlined security system. As of now, brides dressed in white must walk through a magnetometer to get hitched.

“I feel like I’m at the DMV,” said one man, who was at the clerk’s office to witness a friend’s wedding.

The bride-to-be agreed, saying, “It’s so institutionalized — not really what you picture your wedding day” to be.

Location Scout: City Clerk’s Office.

The Gowanus Canal Has The Clap

You might be wondering how a body of water can catch a venereal disease. So is everyone:

Scientists have discovered that the long-contaminated Gowanus Canal is not just toxic, it’s also infected with gonorrhea.

The cringe-inducing find was revealed by New York City College of Technology biologist Dr. Niloufar Haque in this month’s Scienceline, an NYU publication.

While developers have envisioned the canal someday turning Brooklyn into a bit of Venice with idyllic gondola rides, Haque’s team found their own emergence of hanky-panky in the Gowanus’ waters.

“One group of students found gonorrhea in a water drop,” the professor told Scienceline.

It’s not the first time the toxic waterway — dubbed the Lavender Lake because of its oily, purplish hue — has come up positive with disease. In the mid-1970s, the channel was found to contain typhus, typhoid and cholera.

Location Scout: Gowanus Canal.

That M15 Bus You See Two Blocks Away Will Arrive In 15 Minutes

There’s also a low-tech version of this, which is called a bus schedule:

The wait for a bus may seem more predictable at 11 stops where New York City Transit has begun testing electronic signs that show when the next one is due.

The signs relay information from a satellite positioning system that has been installed as part of a pilot project on 168 buses that operate on several routes in Manhattan. The routes include the city’s busiest, the M15, which runs on First and Second Avenues, where seven of the signs have been placed.

Under the system, each bus communicates location data to satellites, which transmit the information to a center in Brooklyn. From there, a radio signal goes to the electronic signs, which post the number of minutes until the next bus.

Such Is the Problem When You Attach Your Name To Something . . .

There is a lawsuit against Bloomberg L.P., which is the company the mayor no longer is involved with, except that it may be that he is more involved with the organization than initial reports let on:

The three women whose complaints of discrimination at Bloomberg L.P. spurred a federal lawsuit last week say Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is involved in running the company despite his public statements to the contrary.

The mayor, who remains the firm’s majority owner, has maintained that he has had nothing to do with the company’s day-to-day operations since he was elected in 2001, and a company spokeswoman strongly denied any suggestion that Mr. Bloomberg was involved.

However, a motion filed yesterday by the women, who have accused the company of discriminating against them after they became pregnant, contends that the mayor is in touch with Lex Fenwick, the company’s chief executive, and discussed complaints of mistreatment of female executives with Mr. Fenwick.

The lawsuit, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is the latest and most sweeping of a string of discrimination and sexual harassment complaints filed since the 1990s by individuals against Bloomberg L.P., the media and financial services giant.

One of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, Janet Loures, says in the motion that she attended a company meeting last month about a Bloomberg service known as People Product during which a senior manager stated: “Mike calls Lex all the time about People Product — he probably shouldn’t, but he does.”

Mr. Bloomberg declined to be interviewed yesterday, and his aides referred questions to the company. Judith Czelusniak, a Bloomberg L.P. spokeswoman, declined to address the specific allegations.