It’s Nothing A Little Whirlpooling Won’t Fix . . .

Oh lord — it really is over. Gentrification hits the city pools:

As the August heat settles over the city, more and more cash-poor young creative professionals have been visiting the Olympic-sized public pool in Red Hook, walking the long desolate industrial blocks from the F train or using a friend’s car to change into their string bikinis. At the door, a long list of prohibited items includes cellphones and iPods — meaning pool-goers actually have to (gasp) socialize with their fellow New Yorkers.

These hipsters tend to congregate in the southwest corner of the pool courtyard, isolating themselves from the splashing local families. They read trashy magazines and Atlas Shrugged. They take a dip — some even swimming a few laps. They have found their summertime Mecca.

Kit Giordano, 26, who works at development at Miramax Films, was there on a recent warm Saturday wearing a navy blue bikini top from J. Crew and light-blue board shorts, looking through one script, another at her feet. Next to her rested a bottle of SPF 30 sunblock, a Nalgene beverage container that read “Lefties Do It Right” and a Princeton classmate, Erin Culbertson, now a law student, who was paging through Entertainment Weekly. “We’re thinking about doing some handstands,” Ms. Culbertson said.

Further along rested Amy Donaldson, a 37-year-old graphic designer generously slathered in SPF 45 who had shlepped from the Upper West Side to meet some friends. “We were just talking about the elasticity of our bathing suits,” she said. Ms. Donaldson praised the comparatively “mellow” atmosphere of the Red Hook retreat. “There are a greater variety of people at this pool, as opposed to Lasker Pool, where there are more people from Harlem,” she said.

. . .

Julee Resendez, 36, was prone, stomach-down, on a white blanket with pink roses, wearing huge oval sunglasses, bright red fingernails and a black sparkly bikini and reading The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Underneath her arm was concealed a verboten cellphone. “I’m very clever,” she said. Ms. Resendez, originally from Seattle, now lives in Bed-Stuy. “The hood,” she said.

Who’s Your Daddy Now?

When Papa John’s gets offensive:

There really is a John inside Johnny’s Pizza in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — John Miniaci Jr., whose father, John Sr., founded the neighborhood pizzeria in 1968.

There will soon be another John right next door on Fifth Avenue — Papa John’s Pizza, a franchise outlet. John Jr. considers this as an insult to his own papa John, who died just one month ago. Of all the spots the franchise could have chosen, why, he asks, did it have to be on the other side of the wall where two centurion busts stand guard above customers waiting for zeppoles or Sicilian slices?

“This is a neighborhood that has had businesses in the same family for two and three generations,” Mr. Miniaci said. “These big corporations come in and don’t see the value of that.”

That’s why Johnny’s latest delivery is a petition — to Papa John’s corporate headquarters in Kentucky. Some 2,200 people — shopkeepers and customers, including other pizzeria owners — have come to Mr. Miniaci’s defense. They have signed a declaration “to stop the establishment of Papa John’s in our neighborhood.”

Your Arguments Have Been Deemed Structurally Deficient By The U.S. Department Of Transportation

When tragedy hits, use it:

In the wake of the fatal collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, news reports about the poor condition of the Brooklyn Bridge have brought fears of that tragedy close to home.

The iconic bridge was one of only three run by the New York City Department of Transportation to be given a poor rating in the city’s latest annual bridge report card, according to a report by the New York Times. Despite this rating, the bridge was still deemed safe by city officials. Another crucial piece of Brooklyn’s infrastructure, the Gowanus Expressway, was not included in the report, but is in serious disrepair.

To those carefully observing the state of the Gowanus Expressway, which runs along Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, it is increasingly clear that the 45-year-old structure was not intended to sustain today’s heavy traffic load.

“[The structure] is totally inadequate to handle the weight and volume of traffic that it’s getting now,” said Buddy Scotto, who co-founded the Gowanus Expressway Community Coalition. Scotto added that every time an 18-wheeler hits the airbrakes, it takes off half the concrete.

And then there’s the one-hand-clapping sort of riddle about cars and trucks that enter Staten Island but never leave it:

In late 1980s, a federal highway bill was passed that included a provision that eliminated the Verrazano Bridge’s inbound toll while doubling the price of the outbound toll.

JoAnne Simon, former chair of the Gowanus Community Stakeholders Group and current state committeewoman from the 52nd Assembly District is concerned about the volume of trucks that ride the Gowanus after a free pass on the Verrazano. “One-way toll on the Verrazano encourages extra traffic,” she said, emphasizing that trucks ride it “to save about $40 a day.”

A two-way toll would “reduce concentration on the Gowanus,” Ben Meskin, who found the Gowanus Coalition with Scotto, said. “There will always be bad traffic, but you have to spread it out,” he added.

Is there a special non-tolled route through Staten Island that the rest of us don’t know about?

When You Put It That Way . . .

The Daily News wants you to know that we are all going to die:

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of 166 city bridges labeled “structurally deficient,” putting it in the same category as the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River.

In fact, under the the feds’ rating system, the Brooklyn Bridge scored dramatically lower than the doomed Minneapolis bridge — and the Willis Ave. Bridge, which connects East Harlem to the Bronx, was not much better.

The Brooklyn Bridge also got lousy marks from the state, which called it one of three city bridges in “poor” condition with rusting steel joints and deteriorating brick and mortar on its ramps.

The biggest problem was the roadway deck on the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches.

The state felt the “poor” rating was enough to raise concerns but not enough to shut down traffic like it did with the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1988.

At the city’s iconic landmark, a reporter observed considerable rust on metal structures and areas of missing brick work on the Manhattan anchorage.

Responding to the Daily News’ findings, Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, said, “The bottom line is, if a bridge is unsafe, we close it. Obviously the Brooklyn Bridge was not deemed to be unsafe, but there are issues we’re going to be addressing.”

. . .

City officials stood by what they termed a “state of the art” inspection system and declined to perform additional checks on any of its bridges.

In New York, the federal government has labeled 2,110 bridges “structurally deficient,” of which 166 are in New York City, records show. The feds define this as structures with “deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements.”

All of these bridges are rated by the U.S. Department of Transportation on the same 1-to-100 scale that gave the Minneapolis bridge a “sufficiency rating” of 50.

Considering factors such as structural adequacy and safety, serviceability and functional obsolescence, the Brooklyn Bridge was given the lowest possible “sufficiency rating,” a zero.

On the other hand, Sewell Chan is not into fear mongering*:

More than 2,000 bridges in New York State meet the federal government’s definition of “structurally deficient,” from the heavily traveled on-ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge to a 28-foot span across Trout Brook near the Canadian border.

The bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis had also been labeled structurally deficient. But the term can have a variety of implications, and does not necessarily mean that any of the bridges are in real danger of significant failure. Typically the finding means inspectors have identified some kind of deterioration, cracks or movement.

The ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, which carries about 132,000 vehicles a day, were downgraded last year from fair to poor condition. Yesterday, city officials said $149 million in repairs to the span were under way and that the bridge was safe. Still, city inspectors were at the bridge yesterday afternoon to check on its condition.

. . .

In the last eight years, the city has spent $3 billion improving some of the 787 bridges it controls, said Lori A. Ardito, the first deputy transportation commissioner. As a result, Ms. Ardito said, the number of bridges that the city deems to be in poor condition dropped to 3 last year from 40 in 1997.

In addition to the Brooklyn Bridge, the two others were a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

Ms. Ardito said “poor” did not mean a structure was at risk of collapse. At the Brooklyn Bridge, the major problem is the roadway deck on the ramps, and not structures that support the roadway. She said a more complete rehabilitation was expected to start in 2010.

“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” she said. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge, not the span of the bridge.”

*Not that he didn’t try . . .

Earlier: Nothing A Little Paint Won’t Fix.

Location Scout: Brooklyn Bridge.

As The Residents Living On Avenue Q Will Tell You, It’s All Downhill Once The Music Meets The Book

It’s been the subject of Craig’s List performance art and a television show. Now, there’s the musical:

With its residents already sporting multicolored neckties, cowboy boots and top hats, Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhood already resembles a costume drama. Now Billyburg is about to hit the stage for real, in a musical, no less, featuring songs such as “Craigslist Hookup” and ode-to-the-L-Train “One Stop [To Excitement].”

See also: Williamsburg! The Musical.