I Don’t Know About You, But Describing A Strip Club’s Atmosphere As “Turgid” Just Gives Me The Willies . . .

Club Kalua goes on, despite the odds:

The club where Sean Bell spent the final moments of his life celebrating at his bachelor party still occupies a narrow plot at 143-08 94th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. Half-naked women still twirl on poles, trying to interest dollar-tossing patrons. The A.T.M. with the high surcharge still occupies a corner in the back.

But there is something very different these days about this place, the Club Kalua: The alcohol is gone.

No more watered-down $20 glasses of Champagne for strippers to push on patrons. No more $16 Long Island iced teas to keep the bartenders busy. No more drink menu on the wall.

The state stripped the Club Kalua of its liquor license more than two weeks ago, reducing the club, essentially, to a juice bar with strippers.

But what surely would have been a death knell for many other bars is, for this gritty dive, merely the latest chapter in its remarkable, and in many ways inexplicable, longevity. It remains open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Nothing, it seems, can bring down the Club Kalua.

. . .

At midnight Wednesday, there were nine men and four strippers around Kalua’s main bar. The atmosphere was turgid.

One dancer approached the bar, sighed and said, “I need some liquor.”

Not too long ago, a stripper could make more than $500 a night working at the Club Kalua. Now, one is lucky to walk away with more than $100, a dancer said.

Regulars like Andre, 36, a music producer who goes by the nickname Boogie, are among the dancers’ biggest supporters. Andre, who refused to give his last name, said that he felt it was his civic duty to be there, despite the absence of alcohol.

“It’s about supporting the community,” he said, sucking on an unlit Black and Mild cigar and twirling a small plastic cup of water with his hands. “These girls, they’re part of the community. Some of them got children. It’s about giving back.”

Great Pizza . . . And Now Throwing Stars, Too

The elusive Ninja Burglar turns out to be up to three Albanians:

The NYPD has quietly closed the book on Staten Island’s so-called Ninja Burglar case, after authorities started deportation proceedings against at least one Albanian man they believe to be connected to the string of break-ins, police sources told the Advance.

About a week and a half ago, the police department dismantled the investigative team hunting for the serial burglar, those sources said.

“The investigation is dormant, with no new leads,” Paul Browne, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, confirmed to the Advance yesterday afternoon. “Investigators believe that an individual suspected [but with insufficient evidence to make an arrest] of being the burglar is among three Albanian nationals currently facing deportation because of their illegal status in the United States.”

Browne did not name the three Albanian nationals.

The Advance broke the story on its Web site, silive.com, yesterday afternoon.

Police had linked the “Ninja Burglar” — who received the nickname from the media after a Dongan Hills man reported fighting off a nunchuk-wielding intruder in a ninja costume last September — to 19 separate break-ins, mainly in the Todt Hill and Grymes Hill neighborhoods, between May 2007 and January of this year.

Multiple law-enforcement sources close to the investigation told the Advance that investigators were first clued into a possible Albanian connection to the burglary pattern last fall, when they learned that several Albanian men from the same area in neighboring Macedonia had formed a loosely knit crew to commit burglaries.

In some instances, they would wait for the other members of their Albanian community to go out to cultural events, then strike their vacant homes, the sources said.

. . .

. . . [S]ources said, two other members of the group were believed responsible for several of the break-ins in the Ninja Burglar case, but were never charged.

With their forensic and investigative leads exhausted, police contacted federal immigration officials, who started deportation proceedings against several members of the group last month, according to police sources.

The Luxury Of Trees

So at this rate, it will only take $545 million more to reach the lofty goal of 1 million new trees:

David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael Bloomberg — two of the city’s biggest philanthropists — spent yesterday afternoon in front of East Harlem’s Thomas Jefferson public housing complex, where they planted a rosebud tree. They hope it is just one of many.

Rockefeller gave $5 million to help fund the mayor’s initiative to plant 1 million trees as part of PlaNYC, his sustainability agenda for the city. Bloomberg matched Rockefeller’s gift with his own $5 million.

“We’re all in this together,” Bloomberg said. “We shouldn’t wait for others to do it.” Not only do the trees provide shade and clean the air, he said, they “also improve property values.”

The $10 million announced yesterday will cover the cost of 18,000 new trees, “nearly three-quarters of all the trees in Central Park,” Bloomberg said.

. . .

He expects to have 250,000 of the 1 million trees in the ground before he leaves office. But then what? The initiative is funded by charitable donations and has no legal mandate.

“They should plant jobs,” added Olga Bernabi, who works at the Jefferson Houses library. “I know a lot of people getting pink slips.”

Central Park has 26,000 trees in 840 acres (31 trees an acre). New York City (at 322 square miles) has 206,080 total acres — 1 million new trees means adding 4.8 trees to each acre of land in the city. A city block is 2.5 acres. That’s 12 new trees on each city block . . . in addition to the 592,130 street trees, which have stocked city streets to 73% capacity, with room for 220,000 more trees. So then there are 780,000 left to be accounted for . . . um, has anyone figured out where all the new trees will go? And don’t tell us that this will simply replace old trees because that’s just cooking the books . . .

So If 300 Calories Costs X, 1,400 Calories Of Y Must Be A Great Value Then . . .

As Health Department-mandated chain restaurant calorie counts seem to be surviving last-minute legal maneuvers, some customers yawn:

In an unused corner of a Burger King on Hylan Boulevard, an official-looking sign goes unremarked.

Its tiny print, disclosing the nutritional facts of the fast food on offer, resembles nothing so much as the legal mumbo-jumbo that no one really wants to acknowledge.

But if the city Health Department gets its way, the information soon will be front and center.

Health Code 81.50 mandates that all New York restaurants that are part of a nationwide chain of 15 or more locations must post a calorie count on their menu.

The Restaurant Association, which claims that the proposed law goes against the First Amendment, has until Friday to seek a stay from an appellate court.

While some eateries, such as Starbucks, Quiznos, Jamba Juice and Chevy’s, have accepted the new regulations and posted nutritional information in restaurants, others, such as McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Taco Bell, have refused.

. . .

Freida Dibartolo, who admits to not being a regular customer of Burger King, agrees that information should be readily accessible, but doesn’t believe it will affect how people order.

“If you don’t eat it often, you don’t pay attention the few times you eat it. If you eat it everyday, you don’t give a (expletive),” said the Dongan Hills resident.

You Weren’t The Only One Who Thought Closer Was Tedious And Overwrought

There’s a scenario for some fetishist here somewhere:

She may be an international movie star, but this impudent pooch can’t tell the difference between Natalie Portman and a fire hydrant.

The “Star Wars” cutie was the unfortunate victim of a surprise soaking as she dropped by a downtown dog run.

Portman, who has been spotted in the West Village in recent days with her bearded boyfriend, Venezuelan-born folk singer Devendra Banhart, was walking her dog with him yesterday when the brazen piddling took place.

While she was getting a pup’s-eye view of the surroundings from ground level, another stroller’s frisky pet raised its hind leg, relieved itself right on her shoes — and then ambled on its way.