You Can Either Read Bad Science Fiction Or Write It Yourself!

Buried lede — the rush hour commute on the F train from Brooklyn is really fucking long:

[Peter] Brett, 36, tapped out most of “The Warded Man,” which hit U.S. bookshelves last month, on his smartphone on daily trips from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop near his Kensington home to his job in Times Square.

“I started out just trying to take notes. I’d sit on the subway, I’d get a good idea and I’d jot something down,” said Brett, who works in medical publishing.

“I got very fast at writing with my thumbs. I found myself writing more and more.”

Soon, he was averaging 400 words each morning and evening.

“I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time,” he said.

“I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half.”

Brett went armed with an iPod to block out distractions, and he was prepared to fight for a seat.

“There’s no way to write with your thumbs when you’re standing up,” he said.

“I was raised to give up my seat to just about everyone. [Now] unless you’re really old or pregnant, I’m getting that seat.”

In Case You Happen To Be Factchecking A Car Chase Scene . . .

Apparently you can escape a five-story fall in a vehicle with only minor cuts and scrapes:

Shortly after 3 p.m. today a silver Mercedes fell out of the fifth floor window of the Hertz parking garage (12 E. 13th St.) behind NYU’s Fairchild building at 7 E. 12 St., landing on the courtyard behind the NYU building. The driver, a parking attendant at the garage, was transported to St. Vincent’s Hospital in stable condition, suffering from minor scrapes and cuts. The accident was reportedly due to brake failure, according to the NYU Office of Emergency Management.

. . .

Ninette Gironella, who works in the Registrar’s office on the third floor, was sitting in her office when she saw the car back out and fall. Recalling the response of emergency operators when she called 911, Gironella said, “They didn’t grasp the fact that a car had gone out the window.”

New York Post Sez: New Yankee Stadium Still Sucks This Week!

And may the Post’s New-Yankee-Stadium-Sucks stories never end, for they are too much fun to read. First, either no one is buying, or at least sitting in, $2600 seats (“Maybe the reason the best tickets at the new Yankee Stadium are called ‘Legends’ seats is that fans willing to fork over $2,625 a game are mostly mythical. . . . At Sunday’s game, nearly 7,000 seats at the stadium were empty, the large majority of them at field level”) and then the 84-year-old longtime superfan is shut out of the place:

Freddy “Sez” Schuman, the one-eyed, cookware-clanking octogenarian who’s been an unofficial pinstripe mascot for 22 seasons, was forced to panhandle for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

In years past, Schuman, who, like Yogi Berra, turns 84 next month, received free season tickets from sponsors such as Modell’s, or was simply let through the press gate with a wink from a Stadium official.

On Opening Day, he had no trouble getting into the new ballpark for free through the press gate, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday he had to depend on the kindness of fellow Yankee fans for free seats.

On Sunday, he stood outside the Stadium holding his frying pan and a sign that read, “Freddy ‘Sez’ Yankees say, ‘I can’t go in; must buy ticket!!'”

. . .

He cannot afford the seats at the new Stadium, and doesn’t really need one, since he spends his time in the Stadium walking around and letting fans clank his pan with a spoon for good luck.

“Frankly, I don’t know how some fans are going to afford these new prices,” he said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Wow, They’ll Really Light The Empire State Building Whatever Color You Want

Including, of course, green:

This week, the turtles are celebrating their 25th anniversary in New York City with a public “galabunga” (a play on the turtles’ “cowabunga” cry). The Empire State Building is being lit up green on Thursday

Location Scout: Empire State Building.

Leading Economic Indicators: The Hot Dog Vendor Bump

Like a Brooklyn-Queens real estate spike that indicates people are cutting back, the hot dog vendor bump may be short-lived, and portend worse things to come:

The sinking economy has taken a big bite out of the borough’s top-grossing hot dog carts — which are now struggling to lure enough customers to pay their sky-high rents.

Vendor Timothaos Ayad, who pays the borough’s top-dog price of $48,000 a year in rent to the city to set up his cart outside Brooklyn Supreme Court, said business is down nearly 50% since August.

“I hope I will break even,” said Ayad, 46, a father of three, who has had the pricey contract for more than two years.

Ayad, who peddles $1.75 hot dogs and $5 gyros to the throngs of court workers, jurors and others passing through the bustling downtown Brooklyn spot, said he has been hurt by the fact that so many people now bring their lunches from home as a way to save money.

“In the morning, I see everybody coming by with their bag of lunch,” he said, adding he has decided to throw in the towel and not bid on the spot when it is up again at the end of the year.

“The job is too tiring and the economy is bad, so it’s not worth it anymore,” he said, adding he has to finish out his contract or lose his hefty deposit.