So How Did The Bryant Park Holiday Market Do Yesterday?

It’s suspicious, is all:

Police closed most of Union Square Park for more than an hour yesterday while they investigated several small piles of what a park security guard said was later identified as bleached flour.

At 9:30 a.m., park security officers discovered nine piles of a white powder scattered around the park and called police to investigate, the security officer said. Police cordoned off three-quarters of the park and ordered a quarter of the stalls that are part of the park’s holiday craft market to close during the course of their investigation.

Once the substance was identified, police officials sprayed a mixture of soap, water, and bleach on the crushed piles. One official said the powder piles may have been a prank, but they are investigating further.

Location Scout: Union Square Holiday Market.

No New Tree-Lined Boulevard!

Now that an ambitious expansion of the Javits Center is all but dead, maybe we should reconsider that subway stop:

Two years after the Far West Side was rezoned for large-scale development, a growing number of elected officials, environmentalists and community groups are questioning the city’s and state’s plans for the area.

The city has set aside $2.1 billion for the extension of the No. 7 line from Times Square to the Javits Convention Center and the West Side railyards, the rights to which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to auction off for high-rise residential and commercial development. But in an effort to stay within the budget, the city recently eliminated one of two stops along the 1.1-mile extension from the current tunneling contract.

Representative Jerrold Nadler; the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr.; and other officials said in a Dec. 19 letter to Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff that it was “imperative” that the city build that subway station, at 10th Avenue and 41st Street, as part of the extension, work on which began last month. Not doing so, they said, would “represent a failure to the area’s growing residential population” and “puts at risk several million square feet of potential commercial and residential development.”

Those officials suggested financing the station by diverting money from projects that could be put on hold temporarily, like building a tree-lined boulevard between 10 and 11th Avenues, from 34th to 39th Streets. Those projects are part of the city’s larger vision for rebuilding the Far West Side.

A tree-lined boulevard? Where did that come from?

Who Needs A Fare Hike When The MTA Is There To Nickel And Dime You Into Solvency?

The MTA takes a page from the decrepit bottler/distributor industry by cleaning up on riders who can’t be bothered to use up every last cent on their MetroCards:

Beginning in March, many subway and bus riders will have to learn a new math — and it could leave them scratching their heads. Or gnashing their teeth.

On Wednesday, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to reduce the bonus that riders receive on pay-per-ride MetroCards, from 20 to 15 percent. The board also decided to increase some other fares.

The change in the bonus means many riders will see odd amounts of spare change — as little as a nickel or a dime — left over on their MetroCards. And if large numbers of exasperated riders throw away cards with balances of just 5 or 10 cents, the result could add up to a windfall to the authority in unclaimed fares.

The current 20 percent bonus system makes for simple math: Buy five rides and you get one ride free. In other words, if you feed $10 into a MetroCard vending machine, the card will come out showing a balance of $12.

Under the new plan, the minimum that riders must spend to qualify for a bonus will be reduced to $7, from $10, in an effort to put a fare discount within the reach of more people with lower incomes. But in that case, when someone puts $7 on a card, an additional $1.05 will appear on the card, for a total of $8.05.

If they take four subway trips, at $2 each, that will leave a balance on the card of five cents. If they refill the card with another $7, it will then show a total value of $8.10, enough for four rides, with a dime left over. The real challenge is figuring out how much to put on the card to bring it up to a round sum.

Hot Dog Vendor Not Kosher

War veteran undercuts Big Hot Dog. In other news, Tony Avella threatens to unseat John Liu and Eric Gioia as biggest grandstander on the City Council*:

Out in front of the crowded entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the more lucrative spots in Manhattan to sell hot dogs. It is so good, in fact, that one of the largest pushcart vending companies in New York City pays $574,000 a year to the city for the right to place two hot dog carts there.

And since mid-July, Dan Rossi has also had a hot dog cart there, on Fifth Avenue near 82nd Street, and has been paying absolutely nothing for the spot. The carts belonging to the big company, New York One, formerly named M & T Pretzel, are off to each side of the museum steps, but Mr. Rossi’s cart is smack in front, and because he charges less for some items, he often has a line of customers when the other carts do not.

“I’m not really doing it for the money, I’m doing it for the veterans,” Mr. Rossi said while selling hot dogs briskly one recent Sunday afternoon. Mr. Rossi said he is a Vietnam veteran and claims that the city, about a decade ago, wrongly began limiting the number of pushcart permits given to war veterans.

“I’ve been summonsed, fined, threatened with arrest and shut down by the police, but I keep coming back,” said Mr. Rossi, 58, of the Bronx.

City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens, who also criticizes the city over permits for veterans, held a news conference on Tuesday morning at City Hall to call attention to what he said was a “disgrace by the city, to forget its veterans.”

“The right of veterans to get permits has a long history in this city, and for the past few years, when veterans try to apply for one, they can’t get one,” he said. New York State has allowed veterans free vending permits since the Civil War, he said.

*Avella vs. John Liu vs. Queens Councilmember Eric Gioia.

Location Scout: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As Ernie Banks Might Say, “Let’s Play Two!”

A helpful reminder that when robbing banks, it’s sometimes good to think outside the box:

For Orlando Taylor, a 26-year-old Brooklyn man who apparently had a strange attraction to a couple of bank branches at the bustling Fulton Mall, three times was a charm. So was the fourth time. But according to the police, when he returned on Tuesday to commit a fifth robbery in five days, his luck ran out.

The police said Mr. Taylor first struck at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, robbing an HSBC branch at 342 Fulton Street of $450. On Saturday, the police said, he showed up two doors down at a Bank of America branch, and robbed that one too, making off with nearly $3,500.

On Monday, growing more brazen, the police said, Mr. Taylor showed up twice more at the same Bank of America branch, at 350 Fulton Street — first at 10 a.m. and then at 2:20 p.m. Each time, they said, he demanded that tellers turn over cash. He fled with more than $3,800 from the two robberies into the teeming crowds of holiday shoppers.

The police have rarely experienced a string of bank robberies in such quick succession and proximity. So when the two branches opened on Tuesday, dozens of officers in uniform and in plainclothes were on the lookout inside and positioned outside along the Fulton Mall’s sidewalks.

They would have little trouble recognizing Mr. Taylor if he showed up again, investigators said, because his image had been captured by bank surveillance cameras.

Despite the long odds against another successful holdup, the police said, Mr. Taylor was spotted shortly after 9 a.m. by plainclothes officers on the sidewalk outside his original target, the HSBC branch. Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said Mr. Taylor was seen looking from the sidewalk through the branch’s windows, where he apparently spotted uniformed officers, and turned to walk away.