Are People In Los Angeles That Stupid?

It’s the barfly’s version of the $60 barrel of oil:

According to “Zagat New York City Nightlife 2007/08,” the average drink now costs $10.12, up 7 percent from last year.

Only Los Angeles and Las Vegas (minus the free drinks in the casinos) cost more at $10.66 and $11.86, respectively.

“People have more money in their pockets these days,” said Mario Stewart of Mantra 986, a Midtown lounge that opened in January.

“People might actually get suspicious — like they walked into a dive bar — if you charge too little.”

As a possible result of the costlier hooch, there are fewer clubgoers waiting behind velvet ropes to get into Gotham’s nightspots.

About 36 percent of those surveyed by Zagat said they are going out less often.

$3 Slice? Not Until 2010, Cheese!

A Brooklyn pizzeria charges $2.30, shocking local economists who know that the price of a slice is pegged to the cost of subway fare*:

A slice of pizza has hit $2.30 in Carroll Gardens — and the shop’s owner says it’s “just a matter of time” before a perfect storm of soaring cheese prices and higher fuel costs hit Brooklyn with the ultimate insult: the $3 slice.

Sal’s Pizzeria, a venerable joint at the corner of Court and DeGraw streets, has punched a huge hole in the informal guideline that the price of a slice should mirror the price of a swipe on the subway.

Last week, owner John Esposito hung a sign in his front window blaming “an increase in cheese prices” for the sudden price hike from $2.15, which he set last year.

To bolster his case, Esposito also posted copies of a typewritten “update” from his Wisconsin-based cheese supplier, Grande Cheese, explaining that its prices had risen 35 cents a pound because of an “unprecedented” 18-percent spike in milk costs.

“We didn’t want to hammer our customers, so we’re trying to explain that we have to raise our prices to survive,” he said.

But why is Sal’s leading the pack?

“Maybe the other guys are still asleep,” Esposito said. “But the cost of cheese is way up. The cost of energy is up and the cost of staying in business is up. I don’t think [the costs] are going to come down again anytime soon.”

Cheese is now $1.98 a pound on the commodities market — up 64 percent from last year, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The fuel to transport ingredients from one place to another is on a comparably steep incline, too.

. . .

“A pizzeria’s costs go up like everything goes up, but $2 a slice is still pretty fair,” said Sal Leonardi, part owner of Front Street Pizza in DUMBO.

Leonardi’s cheese supplier, Joseph Campagna and Sons, also hiked prices, raising the cost of making a Front Street pie by 63 cents — but Leonardi said that his joint won’t stray from the subway ride rule.

“Every three years, the price goes up about a dime to cover [the price increases]. That seems right to me,” he said. “We don’t even see $2.10 coming yet, so I don’t see $3 for another seven years.”

*Which, if true, means that slices should not rise to $3, as the Brooklyn Paper headline scares, until 2010.

Catch 22(0 Volts)

Chutzpah, and by being unable to deliver basic services because of a lack of money for infrastructure improvements give them bonus points for the perverse Catch-22 scenario:

Consolidated Edison asked state regulators for permission yesterday to substantially raise electricity rates next April — by 17 percent for a typical residential customer and by 10.7 percent for a typical business.

Under the proposal, which met with immediate criticism, the total monthly electric bills for the utility’s 3.2 million electricity customers in New York City and most of Westchester County would rise by 11.6 percent in 2008.

Bills would increase by another 3.2 percent in 2009 and by 3.7 percent in 2010.

The rate increase request, the first since 2004, raised hackles among politicians and community advocates who were infuriated by the utility’s sluggish response to a nine-day blackout in western Queens last July that affected some 170,000 people.

. . .

Kevin M. Burke, the chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, defended the rate increase yesterday in a statement that made no mention of the blackout, although it did cite improvements planned for the underground network in Long Island City, Queens, where the blackout began.

. . .

Under the Con Edison proposal, the average monthly bill would increase to $82 from $70 for a typical residential customer and to $2,435 from $2,200 for a typical business.

Con Edison said it planned to spend billions of dollars on improvements over its next three-year rate plan, including $942 million on substations, $899 million on transformers and related equipment and $467 million on new underground primary cables.

Con Edison’s chief financial officer, Robert N. Hoglund, said the company would need an average of nearly $2 billion in new investor capital each year to pay for such improvements. The company needs the increase to obtain such capital, he said. Con Edison has $12 billion in annual revenues.

Tonight, A Proud City Celebrates The Great Public Service The Gristedes And Food Emporiums Of Our Community Offer

Wal-Mart finally decides that it can make boatloads of cash elsewhere without all the bullshit:

Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.

Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart in cities like New York is led by unions. Organized labor, fearing that the retailer’s low prices and modest wages will undercut unionized stores, have built anti-Wal-Mart alliances with Democratic members of city councils.

And then there’s this:

Yesterday, labor leaders, upon learning of Wal-Mart’s apparent retreat from New York — or at the very least Manhattan — returned Mr. Scott’s sentiment.

“We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”

We do? Which ones? Oh yeah, the ones where you pay more for a box of cereal than you would for a movie ticket. Or the ones where a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas — in France. Such paragons of public service. Thank god none of them have to worry about competition. I myself enjoy being gouged at the one bodega (doubtless unionized — yeah, right) that’s open in my neighborhood — and I can even somewhat afford to spend more to preserve my lousy small footprint. I’m sure those at the bottom of the economic feeding chain feel even better. There’s a reason the middle class is disappearing in the New York area and it’s only partly because of high housing costs.

Then again, I’m sure Bentonville will get a kick out of seeing the New York Times frame it like this:

. . . Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.

But really, Wal-Mart shouldn’t feel so bad because they’ve still got scoreboard. And that’s something even Philadelphia defied. New York City — frequently, often — is incredibly full of itself. Manhattan deserves all the Food Emporiums it gets.

Shame Them Once, Shame On Me, Shame Them Twice . . . Oh, I’ll Probably Eat There Anyway

Since I don’t much care whether Joe’s Falafel Cart has adequate hand-washing stations or if his ingredients are stored too close together, I wonder whether this could perhaps work:

Restaurant-goers would know if they’re in for a fine or filthy din ing experience under a new A-to-F rating system proposed by a state lawmaker.

State Sen. Jeff Klein has reintroduced a bill that would overhaul the state’s restaurant inspection system, modeling it after California’s, which requires stricter inspections and violations posted right on the restaurant’s entrance.

“It’s a simple system that would allow people to see clearly what the grade is as they enter — A, B, C, D or F,” said Klein, a Bronx Democrat. “The only way to ensure cleanliness and food safety is to make a restaurant’s grade public knowledge. That forces the owner to get it right.”

The measure would allow the city Health Department to devise its own criteria.

The legislator criticized the city’s current inspections, which use a Byzantine scoring system that allows eateries to remain open even if live rodents or rat droppings are found.

This is what they do in Los Angeles County, and there eating at a “B” or lower is sometimes even considered a sort of badge of honor.