What, You Don’t Get The Food Network?

If lately you have been perplexed by the concept of the “celebrity chef,” take heart — four out of five velvet ropes agree:

Mario Batali and Wylie Dufresne may be celebrities to the foodie set, but to the doorman at Downtown Cipriani, they don’t make the cut. On a recent snowy evening, Jean-Georges Vongerichten hosted an intimate dinner for his 50th birthday upstairs there. Phil Suarez, Daniel Boulud, and John McDonald were on hand to sip Cristal. But when Dufresne arrived, followed by Batali (in his trademark shorts and clogs), both were refused entry. When Vongerichten explained their credentials, the doorman merely shrugged. “I work for the Ciprianis. I do not know chefs.” Dufresne says, “It was brutal outside. Don’t underestimate my ability to dress inappropriately, so it’s no surprise I was left to stand out in the cold.

Honey, Please Drop The Scaffolding — Loudly, In Front Of Confused Construction Workers

No doubt coordinated with the Post to burnish his tough-guy image:

Never say Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter is afraid to do the heavy lifting.

The gray-maned magazine mogul took matters into his own hands over the weekend when workers raised a racket as they erected a 22-foot scaffold outside his tony home and near an eatery he owns on Bank Street in lower Manhattan.

Annoyed by the noise, Carter rushed out of his three-story, $5 million townhouse in frigid, 36-degree temps wearing shorts, snatched a 5-foot rail and flung it to the ground in exasperation.

“Scaffold hurling . . . It’s a venerated Canadian sport, like curling,” the Canadian-born Carter joked to The Post yesterday.

“Everybody up there does it.”

Carter then explained, “Fact is, I’ve had construction across the street from me and next door to me for four years. On Saturday morning, a flatbed pulled up and began unloading scaffolding. It blocked the street off and on all day.

“At 7:30 that night, I was home with my family and the sound — and it was loud — just continued.”

To make matters even worse, he said, “cars were by now honking.”

So, he said, “I headed out into the street in my scaffold-hurling gear to see if I could get them to stop.

“I couldn’t get their attention, so I grabbed one of the pieces of scaffolding.

“Not the most appropriate response in such a situation, but there you have it.”

Well Who Wouldn’t Want To Be Tim Robbins’ Charity Case?

Successful street musicians need nothing more than their own entrepreneurial spirit to guide them:

The intersection of 23rd St. and Seventh Ave. is arguably one of the busiest in Chelsea, a blur of auto and pedestrian traffic that would intimidate most aspiring sidewalk musicians for fear of being drowned out.

Vladimir Laksin doesn’t seem to mind. For a year and a half, the scrappy 55-year-old Polish immigrant with strawberry blond hair and raspy voice has made a second home of the intersection’s southwest corner, slapping away at his honey-colored Fender Squire Stratocaster and crooning his unique combination of blues and rock in front of the stairs to the Downtown 1 subway line, a stone’s throw away from the lively scene surrounding the nearby Hotel Chelsea.

. . .

A graphic designer and photo re-toucher by trade, Laksin fell on hard times three years ago when he was laid off and subsequently had a mild heart attack. While convalescing, he bought himself a guitar to pass the time in front of the television. Soon, he began playing outside the Lemon Lime coffee shop on Sixth Ave. between 20th and 21st Sts., which was owned by a friend.

“I didn’t play well at all, but people start giving me money. So, I says, O.K., that’s great,” said Laksin in a thick Eastern European accent. “That worked for a while, but when they sold the restaurant, I need a new spot.”

The corner nook created by the 23rd St. subway sign and DOCS health clinic appealed to him, with it’s MTV-like electronic billboard and close proximity to the famed Chelsea Guitars store. He befriended the guys at the shop, buying strings, and eventually his current guitar, from them and hanging out during breaks. That kept him coming back, and before long, he was showing up daily for “work.”

Response is generally mixed:

Actor Tim Robbins dropped a few dollars in his tip case and asked him for his telephone number a few months ago, and Laksin regularly runs into celebrity musicians who come by the guitar shop, including Carlos Santana on one occasion.

“I was playing my songs, and his bodyguards went, ‘All right, rock on, man,’ and went on and on and got all excited. Then this other guy just say very quietly, ‘Can you make it weep?’ before going around the corner. I didn’t realize it was Santana until after!” Laksin said wearing a Cheshire grin.

Other passersby are a nuisance at best and an occupational hazard at worst, however.

One man regularly puts a banana peel into Laksin’s tip case, and another came by frequently starting six months ago and tipped him in cash, only to proposition him for a threesome with him and his wife. When the guitarist told him to take his money back and bug off, the man grew hostile until another pedestrian called the police.

And even if the average music fan doesn’t “get it,” celebrities certainly know talent when they see it:

On occasion, opportunity knocks and he picks up more lucrative music gigs. Recently, a photographer snapping pictures of Laksin invited him to play at his exhibition on Varick St., netting the guitarist $150 for three hours’ work. The owner of B.B. King’s Blues Club also asked him to play in front of the famed venue last year; but New York’s Finest sent Laksin on his way for not having a permit, which the owner was subsequently unable to secure for him.

Then there’s the odd recording invitation, one of which was recently proffered by a session musician who used to play with Lou Reed.

“He wants to get together and record some of my tunes with his band,” said Laksin. “We’ll see.”

Meantime, the former bass player, who picked up a guitar for the first time just three years ago, works on his technique, entirely self-taught. He eschews standards, choosing instead to make up lyrics on the spot: “Woke up this morning. My baby’s gone. She took all my money, you know. She’s gone, and I’ve been wronged.”

When he’s feeling his mojo and picks up a head of steam, Laksin knocks his knees together in a butterfly stance like a young Elvis Costello and thrusts his head forward, his pale, gentle face scrunched up into a mean scowl like a true rock ‘n’ roll star.

Spectator Mike Fischer, a Queens resident who spends a lot of time in Chelsea, was less than impressed with Laksin’s playing on Monday, however.

“He needs some tuning up,” he said. “Maybe he can figure out where to go from here.”

Anna Wintour Eagerly Anticipates Opportunity To Out-Preserve Woody Allen*

Is the Landmarks Preservation Commission really swayed by a letter from Anna Wintour or Jeff Koons? God, I hope not:

Developer Aby Rosen is beseeching his rich and famous pals to write to a key city panel in support of his controversial bid to build a 30-story tower on the Upper East Side.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour was among the glitterati to respond to Rosen’s call to arms, a form letter that asked some of the wealthiest New Yorkers to show their stripes for the redevelopment of 980 Madison Ave. at 76th Street.

Rosen and architect Lord Norman Foster have pitted themselves against many of the area’s well-heeled residents, who don’t want the 355-foot elliptical glass tower to be added to the Parke-Bernet Galleries.

The residential tower would forever alter the area’s skyline by matching the height of the nearby Carlyle Hotel.

The Landmarks Preservation Council, which has the final say, received hundreds of submissions before today’s 5 p.m. deadline.

The proposal has caused so much controversy that after 150 people turned up a public meeting to testify, the deadline for submissions was extended twice.

While the majority of submissions have called for the council to ax the tower, which is much taller than most buildings in the neighborhood, Rosen has banded together a gaggle of famous supporters.

Wintour, artist Jeff Koons, Betsy Bloomingdale, businessman Ron Perelman and celebrity doctor Patricia Wexler, along with several millionaires, artists and collectors, are among those who have declared themselves in the Rosen camp.

*See, for example.

Manhattan’s Celebrity Cemetery

Père Lachaise, Hollywood Forever and . . . a tree planter on East 67th Street:

For the past six years, Transit Authority dispatcher Vinnie Lepani has been marking the passing of the famous and infamous with miniature headstones fashioned from tongue depressors in a smidgen of soil within a tree planter.

The makeshift cemetery has become an attraction in the upper East Side neighborhood. Tourists stop to take photos and neighborhood hospital workers occasionally add their favorite dearly departed to the display.

“We try to keep it as current as possible — depending on the weather,” Lepani said in a thick Brooklyn accent as he penciled movie star Glenn Ford’s name on a stick last week. “It makes conversation, and conversation is what makes me go.”

Lepani started the cemetery as a lark, with a trio of tombstones for three rock ‘n’ roll stars who died in a 1959 plane crash, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.

The next day he noticed that someone had added a fourth marker — he can’t remember the name — so he answered with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. It grew from there, and now includes anyone Lepani considers boldface material.

Comedian Red Buttons, civil rights pioneer Coretta Scott King, talk-show host Mike Douglas, actor Pat Morita and musician Billy Preston are some of the recent additions.

“Tupac is in there. We don’t discriminate,” he said. “We had a big one for the King, Elvis Presley, but it’s gone. People steal them.”

. . .

Lepani has only one rule for the graveyard — anyone who wants to get in it better be famous.

Sometimes, the relatives of patients who died at Sloan-Kettering or New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell across the street ask to commemorate their loved ones. But unless they are marquee names, Lepani usually lets them down gently.