Beaded-Seat Back Industry Takes Massive Hit

The end of beaded-seat backs is nigh:

A longtime city policy requiring vinyl seat covers in taxis to keep them free of the gunk and grime that passengers leave behind may have inadvertently compromised the safety of thousands of cabs.

For decades, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has required all cab owners to install the vinyl covers, which unlike cloth seats do not absorb all manner of stain and stink.

But on newer vehicles, which account for roughly 20 percent of the city’s 13,000-cab fleet, the front seats are equipped with sensors to detect the presence and size of passengers in order to determine whether and how forcefully to deploy the air bags in the event of an accident.

And the vinyl seat covers are pulled so tightly over the seat that they may disable these sensors and cause the air bag not to deploy, the city was recently told by a Nissan employee, who was visiting the TLC’s inspection facility earlier this summer.

“Once we were made aware of the potential problem, the TLC responded quickly with a directive to remove the vinyl seat coverings,” TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg said.

Most taxi owners have already complied, but tomorrow, the agency will make the rule change official, Fromberg said.

The beaded seat backs and other cushions beloved by taxi drivers for themselves as a way to make the job more comfortable also render the side air bags inoperable and will no longer be permitted, Fromberg said.

Then There’s The Issue Of Buying Something Without Knowing What It Actually Looks Like

Oh, that wily Eloise:

Low ceilings. Columns in the living room. Drainage grates outside the windows.

What sounds like a Lower East Side tenement is actually a $53.5 million pair of Plaza penthouses bought by Russian hedge-fund manager Andrei Vavilov, who says the developer promised him the epitome of luxury and then handed over an “attic-like space.”

In a $31 million suit, Vavilov says the purchase — which would have represented the second-highest amount for a residential sale in New York City history — was the result of a bait-and-switch scam. Unlike The Plaza hotel of the children’s story “Eloise,” where rooms “embodied the height of elegance and sophistication, the same cannot be said of the penthouses,” said lawyer Y. David Scharf, who filed the suit Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“The disparity between what they were supposed to get and what [developer] El-Ad was planning to deliver to them is outrageous.”

Vavilov’s wife, Russian actress Maryana Tsaregradskaya, “burst into tears” when she first saw the finished unit on June 28.

It Was Part Of It, Uh . . . The Tragedy

It’s like that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode — what a day to die:

Henryk “Henry” Siwiak is the Sept. 11, 2001 murder victim few people know about — the only person not killed by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

A Polish immigrant trying to make his way in the big city, away from his wife and two children, Siwiak was gunned down in Bedford-Stuyvesant that night after getting lost on his way to a new job with a cleaning service for a Flatbush Pathmark.

Seven years later, the case remains unsolved. His family has suspected that Siwiak was mistaken for a militant Arab — he had olive skin and was wearing an military fatigue jacket — and was set upon by someone furious about the attacks.

“That rumor is out there,” says Det. Michael Prate, the 79th Precinct investigator who now has the case. “But there’s nothing there to support that. He wasn’t robbed of anything, but we think whoever did this was trying to rob him.”

. . .

The widow, who teaches elementary and high school biology, says her unique grief is oddly comforting, in that millions of others will also pause to remember on Sept. 11.

“In some kind of thinking,” she says, “it makes it easier.”

Two Birds, One Stone

The mayor’s drive to rid the city streets of cars gets a boost from the beneficiary of one of his other major initiatives:

A couple inches more, and this story would have been Francisco Vizuete’s obituary.

Instead, the 60-year-old limo driver has an amazing tale to tell: He barely escaped being crushed to death Monday by a tree that toppled onto his car.

The father of two grown daughters felt so lucky he bought a Lotto ticket last night.

“Maybe my guardian angel is still with me,” he smiled.

Vizuete, who drives for Long Island-based Vital Transportation, was about to pull away from 411 W. 54th St. to pick up a “VIP going to Newark Airport” when death knocked.

“I put the key in the ignition, heard this loud noise, and looked to my left,” he said, recalling he was too stunned to move. “The tree was falling straight at me. It was like slow motion. I couldn’t believe it.

“It was coming 5 or 6 inches from my head,” he said. “Glass went all over me and everything went dark for a while.”

The honey locust pancaked the front end of the limo, which Vizuete owns, but didn’t touch him. Saturday’s storm apparently split the tree down the middle and made it unstable.

When Vizuete opened his eyes, people were taking pictures and a passing bicyclist, Darryl Pitt, was dragging him out through the back passenger side door.

You Know What The Problem Is, Brucie? Rats Used To Mean Things In This Country . . . Now We Just Take Pictures Of The Rat For Our Scrapbooks

Time was, you’d inflate the rat and people would notice, they got disturbed. Now, things are different, and in ways I just don’t understand:

More than just a symbol of labor grievance, the giant inflatable sidewalk protest rat has apparently also become a symbol of New York City for out-of-town visitors. By and large, it is safe to assume, there’s nothing quite like it back home.

Take this cigar-chomping, money-bag-clutching behemoth, stationed last week in front of the Lincoln Building, across East 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal.

His handlers — Laborers’ Local 78, on this particular day — intended to convey the message that only responsible contractors ought to be permitted to perform the hazardous work of asbestos removal.

That message, however, seemed entirely incidental to the groups posing for snapshots in front of the rat every couple of minutes. Radek Korek, one of the Local 78 members on the scene, said the creature seemed popular with foreign visitors, especially those from China, where the Year of the Rat is being observed.

See also: Union Rat.