Instead of Budweiser tall boys, brew-seekers have found “no beer” signs since Thursday, said a cashier for the Liberty Cafe, the onboard snack shop which usually sells the beer. The problem may be a liquor license issue, according to the cashier who declined to give his name.

Beer has not been banned from the Staten Island Ferry, said city Department of Transportation spokesman Seth Solomonow. Each class of boats obtains its own liquor license from the State Liquor Authority (SLA), he said.

If the problem is with the liquor license, it would only affect the Molinari-class of boats, not the entire fleet. Only the Molinari and the Spirit of America would be affected because the John J. Marchi is out of service.

The rodents find safe haven in the often unkempt properties.

Neighbors of homes that have been on the market for months or even years are frustrated by the rodent infestation and are powerless to keep the critters away.

. . .

“Many times, if there’s a foreclosure, people just walk away,” said Mark Loffredo, president of Post Exterminating Co. in Tompkinsville. “The yards get overgrown and rodents find it conducive to habitation. If they recognize that there’s nothing to stop them getting in, they will nest in the house. They do search for habitat and they’re always searching for food.”

Corton, 54, who opened Sophie’s in 1986, and later the nearby Mona’s in 1989, can trace the evolution of the neighborhood as it played out in his rough-hewn saloon: from the early days when the art community thrived in the low-rent district shared with indigent drug users, to the present day where a predominance of swanky lounges has reduced his unmarked hole in the wall to another blip on the grid of nightlife destinations.

But to anyone who spent time at either of the well-worn watering holes — which Corton announced last month would likely shutter due to his ailing health — the bars posses a mythical quality wrought by waves of well-lubricated patrons who found solace inside the shabby spaces. The regulars spin tales of mirth no doubt emboldened by the heavy flow of whiskey and beer, but no less poignant given the setting. Now, for these two muses of the Downtown drinking class, the stories might be the only thing Sophie’s and Mona’s have left to save.

. . .

Jeff, a holdover from the neighborhood’s heyday who still sported long, gray hair from beneath his woolen cap, struck an even more plaintive note about the new East Village.

“We won’t be able to go anywhere. . . . It’s just the last peg of a dying neighborhood,” said the Sophie’s fixture, who’s been coming for “a couple of years, or a couple of hundred” but declined to give his last name. “This place is like a church for drunks.”

The pints still pour amid gossip over the bars’ future, giving regulars a chance to eulogize their hangout with the imminent sale. It’s where barflies named Jimmy Tokens, Johnny Red, Caveman and Degenerate John took up years of residency on the tattered barstools, earning renown for their eccentric character traits.

Members of the [media-whoring Kansas church] said they would protest the funeral at the Frank F. Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan. A date has not yet been set.

In a message posted on the group’s Web log, members promised to bring signs reading “Brokeback in Hell.” The message said Ledger was in hell because of his role in a film that taught the world “it’s OK to be gay.”

. . .

The ADL, which monitors anti-Semitism as well as the activities of hate groups, said the church gained notoriety when followers picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard with signs reading “No Fags in Heaven.”

“There are plenty of people who are LGBT in the military right now, so I don’t even understand why it’s such a fuss,” one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, Council Member Gale Brewer, said yesterday. “They are extremely good officers like anyone else.”