I Know Americans Are Hurting — I See It At The Greenmarket

AM New York reminds everyone that higher gas prices affect you no matter how much you use the subway:

With crude oil trading at about $70 barrel and gas going for more than $3 a gallon, the cost of food and other basic goods will probably go up, too. Oil prices affect everything from shampoo and your rent to diapers and air fares.

“We all go to the grocery store, and the tomatoes and cucumbers have to be trucked in somehow,” said Mike Davis, an economics and finance professor at Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. “It’s useful to think of plastics and pharmaceutical goods too. Even though the material costs are a relatively small proportion of the total costs, an awful lot of things you see are petroleum-based, from paints to plastics. You can go on with these lists forever.”

Morse Pitts, a Montgomery, N.Y., farmer who sells salad greens at the Union Square Greenmarket, said rising oil prices have affected all of his operations.

“Everything costs us more; our seed costs us more, the machinery that we use runs on gas and the plastic containers we use are more because of the petro-chemicals used to make them,” Pitts said.

Pitts used to charge $5.50 a quarter-pound for a container of small greens, but beginning Wednesday he had to charge $6 so he could keep the price of large greens the same.

Who Knew?

This explains why New York seemed to have so few outdoor heaters, period:

The much-too-short sidewalk-cafe season is about to be extended under new rules that would, for the first time, allow city restaurants to install outdoor heaters, The Post has learned.

After more than a year of discussions with the restaurant industry, the Department of Consumer Affairs is preparing regulations that would make nonpropane heaters legal at unenclosed cafes, officials said.

Sidewalk cafes are huge profit centers for restaurant owners squeezed by high rents.

Dina Improta, a spokeswoman for Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, confirmed that the agency plans to amend its rules for sidewalk heaters.

The Daily News On Your Side!

The gas station featured in the Daily News yesterday quickly dropped the price of a gallon of gas by over 60 cents:

A gas station under the Brooklyn Bridge slashed its prices by over 60 cents yesterday — thanks to the Daily News’ revelation yesterday that it was charging an extraordinary $4.50 a gallon for premium.

“I came down here to take a look and was ready to scream at the people who work here,” said Nancy Gossard, 56, who lives nearby in Brooklyn Heights. “This just reeks of price gouging.”

The new prices at the Gulf station on Old Fulton St. now range from $3.50 a gallon of regular gasoline for cash-paying drivers to $3.89 a gallon for credit card customers who want premium.

Though those prices are still far higher than most nearby station – which top out around $3.20 — they were still dramatically less than the day before, when the cheapest gallon of regular gas still cost $4.14 for cash.

But that did little to assuage the anger of New Yorkers who felt that the small station was trying to rip off its customers.

“I try to avoid this place because it’s always high but sometimes I have no choice,” said Barry Lu, 38, who pulled up to the pump but stepped back into his Honda Civic without filling after glancing at the prices.

“But I’ll boycott this place now, I’ll never come back,” he said.

But don’t call it price gouging:

One customer winced as she put nearly $40 of regular gas into her Chevrolet minivan but only laughed when asked if she blamed the Gulf station for the hit to her wallet.

“It’s not these guys’ fault, it’s the oil companies, this war in Iraq, and this President,” said Mary Teague, 45, of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. “This is capitalism at its most perverse.”

Gas, Grass Or Ass . . . How About Gas?

Pumps in Brooklyn Heights give drivers a taste of what a massive gasoline tax would look like. And drivers do not like what they see:

With pump prices rising fast, a gas station under the Brooklyn Bridge took a quantum leap into outrageousness — charging a jaw-dropping $4.50 a gallon!

That’s what the Gulf Station on Old Fulton St. in Brooklyn Heights was charging credit card customers for a gallon of premium yesterday.

A gallon of regular gas was no bargain, either, at $4.14 for cash or $4.26 on plastic.

“That’s crazy,” said Mike Charles, 49, after gawking at the astronomical rates. “I’ve never seen gas prices like that before.”

“There’s no way I’d ever pay that much,” he added. “I don’t care how badly I needed gas.”

Around the city, motorists were bracing for prices to crest at $3, a figure the Brooklyn station left in the dust.

A Daily News reporter spent nearly 90 minutes outside the station yesterday evening before a driver finally decided to fork over an exorbitant amount of dough for some fuel.

“I had no other options,” said Carey Macaleer, 29, as she paid a whopping $49.16 to fill up her navy blue Subaru Outback. “I’m virtually empty and I’m going to Westchester.”

And We Should Photograph Their License Plates While We’re At It

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn goes all Stephen Baldwin on Wal-Mart, making it clear that New Yorkers should continue to drive to Jersey in order to shop there:

Cost-cutting colossus Wal-Mart is not welcome in New York at any price, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn declared yesterday.

“I don’t want Wal-Mart in the City of New York unless they change their corporate behavior,” said Quinn (D-Manhattan), eliciting applause from the crowd at a breakfast forum in midtown Manhattan sponsored by Crain’s Business New York.

“It is well documented across the country that Wal-Mart frequently uses the public insurance programs of the cities they are in as their own health insurance programs,” Quinn charged. “We can’t put that additional strain on our Health and Hospitals Corp., which is working as hard as it can to take care of uninsured New Yorkers.”