Commuters Uneasy About New LIRR Volunteer Program

Taking its cue from the Parks Department and Board of Education, the Long Island Rail Road recently instituted a new volunteer program to encourage community participation and trim costs:

A witness has told police that a Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train bound for New York City.

MTA Police Chief Michael Coan says the train ran smoothly and no one was injured.

The witness told police that he saw another passenger in the cab without the engineer during part of the run on July 2.

The double-decker train left Port Jefferson at 6:45 a.m. It normally has about 400 passengers and goes up to 80 mph.

The Best Thing About Running For Citywide Office?

OK, I’ll bite . . . it’s the pizza. There are a lot worse reasons to run for office than the opportunity to sample pizza in every borough:

[City Councilman John] Liu is most readily known among the press corps in Queens for his overbooked schedule and uncanny ability to rattle off reporters’ phone numbers from memory. But in an interview with TimesLedger Newspapers about his ambitions for comptroller, Liu displayed a lesser known trait: pizza aficionado.

“I eat pizza almost every day,” Liu said, while taking a bite of his second slice of cheese pizza at Amore Pizza in Flushing. “That’s one of the best things about running for a citywide office: I get to sample pizza from all over the city. No matter where you are in New York, there’s always at least one pizza place.”

Liu’s discerning taste quickly became apparent as he rattled off the equivalent of his cheers and jeers list of pizzerias.

“VIPizza, yes. That’s a good place. You know what else is good up at the Whitestone Shopping Centeri Pizza Chef, you should try that one,” Liu said. “But one place you should never go, and I won’t mention names, but there’s a place right across from the Empire State Building that’s just awful. How they can even have the audacity to call that pizza is beyond me.”

Liu also dismissed the popular John’s of Bleecker Street.

“That’s not a real pizza joint,” he said. “There’s a clear difference between a pizza joint and a pizzeria that is more of a restaurant.”

And big props to Liu for having the stugots to publicly diss John’s. He may earn a vote or two from that.

Now You’ve Heard Everything

Pleasurecraft docking in that big oil spill between Brooklyn and Queens:

It’s one of the most polluted waterways in New York — a fetid stew of oil, sewage and sludge.

But Newtown Creek is paradise for Max Mulhern.

The 47-year-old London-based sculptor is spending part of his U.S. vacation docked at the notorious waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens as part of a quirky family boat trip.

“I like to stay off the beaten path,” Mulhern said on Thursday aboard his 40-foot sailboat. “It leads to much more interesting encounters.”

Keeping his boat tethered to a crumbling cement wall in an industrial section of Long Island City has another key perk: he’s staying in the city rent-free.

Mulhern, an accomplished skipper on an artist’s budget, seeks out the desolate and sometimes very dirty nooks as he travels along the East Coast en route to Maine.

On this, his second such boating trip in as many years, Mulhern has already spent two days docked at another unlikely locale, Coney Island Creek.

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

I don’t know, but I doubt it would involve setting off firecrackers in front of Starbucks, as is alleged:

When a homemade bomb constructed from fireworks explosives, a plastic bottle and electrical tape was set off outside a Starbucks coffee shop on the Upper East Side early on May 25, the police initially thought the explosion might be linked to three others with similar profiles.

But on Wednesday, after the arrest of a Chelsea teenager in the Starbucks attack, the police said there was no connection between that attack and the three others. Instead, the Starbucks bomber had his own agenda, the police said: to emulate the assaults on corporate America planned by a character in the movie “Fight Club.”

The teenager, Kyle Shaw, 17, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with first-degree arson and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the authorities said.

“His statements indicated he was launching his own ‘Project Mayhem,’ ” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference on Wednesday, referring to a plan hatched by the protagonist of “Fight Club,” played by Brad Pitt, to sabotage corporations by destroying property. Mr. Shaw had told a friend to “watch the news on Memorial Day,” May 25, Mr. Kelly said.

. . .

Mr. Shaw’s affinity for “Fight Club” was well known.

“He saw the movie and he read the book,” Mr. Lewis said. “He wanted to watch the movie in our English class in the 11th grade. We were discussing existentialism in class, and he suggested we watch the movie as an example. We ended up watching ‘I Heart Huckabees.’ “

Can’t We Let It Go On A Little Longer?

If only for newspaper ledes like this:

As mayoral control of city schools teetered on the brink Tuesday, an angry Mayor Bloomberg said state senators should stay in Albany until they put him back in charge.