[Adjusts Monocle] “I Do Say, Driver, What Is That Fanciful Poured Concrete Rising Forth From The Van Wyck?”

A tale of two airport commutes, from Sunday’s FYI column:

Though I often go to the airport, I don’t know anyone who has used the AirTrain to get from Jamaica to Kennedy Airport. Do many people ride it, and does it make any money?

Grrr . . . why don’t you just get back in your helicopter, jackass?

And here’s what you’re missing.

“Sports Bars,” He Sneers, “I Hate Those Guys”

Hizzoner hosts Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl in an effort to get illegal guns off the streets (“The new mayor of Pittsburgh came to City Hall yesterday to sign on to Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition of mayors against illegal guns. . . . ‘While the scale might be a little bit different, we do certainly face the same challenges and illegal guns are definitely one of those,’ Ravenstahl said.”).

What’s not clear, however, is whether the two mayors discussed Lower Manhattan’s latest liquor-related imbroglio:

Buster’s Garage might have been the bar of choice for local Steelers fans, but Tribeca residents have a different opinion of the recently defunct watering hole — and may stop it from ever returning to their neighborhood.

“This is the wrong, wrong business for this neighborhood,” said an angry Tribeca resident at a recent Community Board 1 committee meeting to consider a liquor license for Buster’s Garage, which hopes to move around the corner from its previous home at 180 W. Broadway to 24 Leonard St. Scores of residents turned out to oppose the application, squeezing into the small meeting room and pouring out into the hallway.

When the sports bar opened in 2003, it quickly became a favorite of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. In a neighborhood known more for celebrity eateries like Nobu and Montrachet, Buster’s Garage was beloved for its cheap beer and burgers. In 2005, the Village Voice rated it the “best place to fix your NASCAR jones” and in 2004, the New York Daily News listed it as one of the best sports bars in the city.

“We do so much business with the Tribeca blue collar community,” Buster’s general manager Eric Ness told Downtown Express after the meeting. “The reason we opened was because there’s nowhere around here where you can get a cheap beer and a burger — not everyone can afford Nobu every night.”

. . .

But after two failed attempts to move to a new location — including a plan to move to Carmine St. that was blocked by residents there — the owners opted to stay in North Tribeca. Construction recently began in the ground floor of a four-story parking garage on Leonard St., directly behind the old Buster’s site. The Provenzano family owns Buster’s and the garage the bar plans to move to, Louis Provenzano, Inc. The family also owns the 180 W. Broadway property, which it leased to developer Gregg Rechler of R Squared to build the 13-story condo.

. . .

The meeting was at times strident and heated as residents shouted at Provenzano representatives.

“I want you to make money — that’s the American way — but I don’t want it to be a sports bar,” Kristopher Brown, president of the Juilliard Building condo board at 18 Leonard St., told Buster’s representatives. Brown, the father of two small children, moved to the neighborhood in 2000 and worries the noise and crowds will keep his children awake.

Which is when shit got crazy:

Tensions reached a fevered pitched the following morning when Brown’s wife went to the Provenzano garage to retrieve her car and was told she was no longer welcome there. Word quickly spread through the Juilliard building that all residents would lose their coveted parking spaces as retribution.

. . .

“That would be crazy! We try to get customers, not lose customers.” Robert Pharaoh, manager of the garage told Downtown Express last week. Several monthly parkers had rushed down to the garage that morning fearing they too had lost their spots. Pharaoh eventually told the doorman at Julliard that no other residents had been evicted. “It was a personal dispute between the owner and one person,” he said.

Look, It Could Be Worse — Instead Of Making A Tasteless Comparison To Beirut, You Could Actually Be In Beirut

If Manhattan is the playground of the rich, the Battery is the spot over in the back where the older, cooler kids set off M-80s late into the evening:

On a mid-July night in Battery Park City, the architect David Rockwell threw a loft party for 400 friends in celebration of his 50th birthday.

There was food put out from about 20 of the city’s top chefs (many from restaurants that Rockwell had designed). Clowns and players from Cirque du Soliel performed and circulated through the crowd. And at exactly 9:30 p.m. a spectacular fireworks show was launched into the Lower Manhattan sky in honor of the birthday boy.

The party recieved a glowing account in Business Week magazine. Local reviews were less kind. Alarmed by the sound of unannounced exploding fireworks on a Wednesday night, Battery Park City residents began firing off e-mails.

The emails were addressed to Jim Lauer, the chief inspector of the explosive’s [sic] unit for the New York City Fire Department, which handles the permits for all fireworks shows in the city. For the past year, his office has mass e-mailed Downtown residents a listing of the times and locations of the shows. The monthly list and mailing began at the urging of Community Board 1.

“This is B.S,” one e-mailer, a Gateway Plaza resident, wrote. “I am really pissed. There is NO mention of ANY fireworks event in this neighborhood in this sheet.”

Another wrote: “Sounds like Beirut. What idiots are behind these fireworks?”

The unfortunate Beirut reference aside, there’s not much the inspector can do about it:

Later called before CB1’s Quality of Life Committee, Lauer brought the letters with him and read them aloud.

“I don’t need this,” he said.

Anyone with enough money or political pull, he told the committee, can get a permit for a private fireworks show with little more than a day or two notice.

“These people have money to burn” Lauer told the Trib. “What am I going to do, say no?”

According to the list, there have been 18 permits approved for shows in New York Harbor so far this year, three of them launched from a barge just 1,000 off shore near Battery Park.

“Is there any way that we could get less fireworks?” asked Pat Moore, the committee’s chairwoman.

“You could move,” said Lauer.

$30 An Hour Is My Rate

Cute story but it won’t really be something until they start advertising on Craig’s List for help:

Parents — and, in some cases, their baby sitters, nannies, secretaries, and family members — will begin working the phones this morning in an effort to snag highly coveted 2007–08 preschool applications.

Beginning early this morning, the phone lines at the 92nd Street Y, All Souls, and Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, as well as a host of other power preschools throughout the city, are expected to be jammed, as New Yorkers with toddlers clamor for their limited applications. With an education at a top city preschool widely perceived as a gateway to the Ivy League, those applications are more prized than ever.

“People are trying desperately to get through to preschools before they run out of applications, before they say, ‘Sorry, we’ve already given out 300,'” the founder of Manhattan Private School Advisors, Amanda Uhry, said.

“Some parents I work with have 10 people calling for them,” she added. “These parents will stop at nothing.”

. . .

A mother who plans to enroll her 2-year-old daughter in an Upper East Side nursery school said she would enlist her parents, her in-laws, her office assistant, and several friends to help call for applications this week. “I’m trying not to get stressed out,” the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Susan, said. “I’ll take it in stride — unless we start making phone calls, and all the lines are busy.”

Who Needs The Hamptons When You Can Barbecue In Brownsville?

Struggling to find people who will stay in town this weekend, the Daily News is forced to traipse out to the city’s poorer census tracts:

The Hamptons and the Jersey Shore may seem inviting, but it’s a shorter trip to the southern shores of Brooklyn, where some said they would go to catch one last dip in the ocean.

“I am going to Coney Island Beach to relax and enjoy myself,” said Mike Owens, 37, of Crown Heights, a courthouse maintenance worker in downtown Brooklyn. “Plus, it’s my birthday, so I am really going to have fun.”

Others were craving some excitement on their mini-vacation.

“I am going to a big party on Sunday,” said Kevin Chinnis, 32, a concierge from East New York. “On Monday, I am going to the Caribbean Day Parade.”

It also was time to kick back and use the time off to bond with family and friends.

“I am going to stay with the kids and take them to Astroland, maybe to a movie,” said Louis Epps, 44, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, who also does courthouse maintenance. “Whatever they want to do.”

“I am headed to a bunch of barbecues with friends and family,” said Dane Conde, 48, a mail sorter from Brownsville. “We all just get together, eat, drink and catch up.”

Others are just looking to lay low, relax and check out a flick.

“I’m going to see ‘The Descent,'” said Shelly Edwards, 38, of East New York. “I hear it’s really good.” [Emph. added to underscore the obvious]

Better headline: “Economy Lags For Many”