You Saw The Concert, Now Buy The Tour Shirt

Take a stand on the issue of economically unsustainable benefits packages for the working man and, oh yeah, support Roger Toussaint’s TWU Local 100 reelection campaign by purchasing official Roger Toussaint transit strike merchandise:

Roger Toussaint’s reelection campaign is hawking $2 signed photos of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 president from the union’s big battle with the MTA.

One photo shows Toussaint at a rally and one shows him leading a march across the Brooklyn Bridge as he headed to jail for leading the three-day December walkout.

A third simply shows an empty bus shelter with a “TWU on Strike” sign.

The photos are going for $2 each, or three for $5. The campaign — through the Web site www.rogertoussaintvictory2006 — also is selling T-shirts. They bear the inscription, “It’s About Respect. NYC Transit Strike 2005.”

“There is a market out there for mementos or memorabilia from the strike,” Toussaint said. “After all, the strike was historic, there’s no doubt about it.”

That market goes beyond transit workers because, he said, the union took a stand to protect pension and health benefits, which resonates with all workers.

. . .

Token booth clerk Gloria Browne, however, said she just might buy a few T-shirts for family members, and a Toussaint photograph for herself. The T-shirts are selling for $17.50.

How could they not mention the Livestrong-esque Transit Strike bracelets which are also on sale? Sweet!

When “Retro” Is “Overtaken By Events”: Greenpoint’s Concept Of Vintage Is A Black Hole That Collapses Into Itself

The game of Hipster Or Fresh Off The Boat? just got a lot harder:

I just got my bangs trimmed today,” a woman told her friend as they waited to enter Studio B, a new club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. “How do they look? Kind of like Jean Shrimpton, maybe? Just tell me that.”

Formerly a Polish dance hall, Studio B is now home to people who want to look Shrimptonesque — or at the very least, retro. A week and a half ago, the opening-night crowd was decked out in Members Only jackets, mod dresses and blouses with foofy neck bows — just like the crowd at every other neighborhood club. But Studio B has a lot of features that are local rarities, among them a brightly illuminated sign, large bathrooms, and a V.I.P. room with leather couches. Nice, clean leather couches.

And unlike its neighbors, Studio B comes with a night life pedigree: the D.J. Justine D. is the creative director, and Todd P., a well-regarded indie music promoter, will book some acts. The proprietors also own the Delancey on the Lower East Side and Studio A, a hipster rock nightclub in downtown Miami.

. . .

The owners have left many of the previous occupant’s fixtures intact; there’s a smoke machine and automated swirling lights that make the dance floor glow (O.K., it is a little Miami). Several patrons said it reminded them of the early rave scene — not always in a good way.

“It’s like the worst imitation of the 80’s,” said Bert Kietzerow, 39, a hairstylist who lives in Williamsburg.

Mostly, though, the retro vibe fits.

“It’s not slick or fancy, it’s cheesy,” said Leslie Hermelin, 27, a music publicist. It’s also enormous (9,500 square feet). At 1 a.m., when the Belgian D.J.’s Soulwax took the stage, the club was jammed, the dance floor a sea of pumping fists and flashing camera phones. Even Mr. Kietzerow succumbed to the beat and the fog.

“That smoke machine is so lame,” Ms. Hermelin said, “it’s cool.”

On Quitting While You’re Ahead, Or, This Guy Has Balls The Size Of . . . Well, You Know

After abandoning the piece at Bowling Green and using the site as his private showroom, Charging Bull sculptor Arturo DiModica now wants to sue businesses who use the image for advertising:

Arturo Di Modica is seeing red, accusing Wal-Mart, North Fork Bank and seven smaller concerns of horning in on the popularity of the 7,000-pound, bronze “Charging Bull,” which stands in Bowling Green Park.

In a suit filed in Manhattan federal court, Di Modica said Wal-Mart was selling photos of “Charging Bull” without his permission.

And North Fork Bank, based in Melville, L.I., is using the sculpture in a national advertising campaign — also without his permission, he says.

“It must stop,” an angry Di Modica told The Post yesterday.

“I’m tired of seeing all this work done. It’s bad for my career. What they’re selling is not a good representation of my work. It’s destroying my image.

“If they want to sell it, they must buy it from me. I see people making money off my work.”

Di Modica, who spent two years and $350,000 of his own money creating the 16-foot-long bull, trucked it to the entrance of the New York Stock Exchange in December 1989.

He said it was a Christmas gift to the people of New York, but the cops said it was illegal.

They seized it, but after a public outcry, the Parks Department installed it in Bowling Green Park.

. . .

Di Modica said he was inspired to create the larger-than-life bull as a symbol of hope after the 1987 stock market collapse. The artist, who copyrighted the bull in 1998, makes money from the authorized use of the sculpture’s image in movies and advertising.

If Wal-Mart had a sense of humor, they would buy the sculpture and have DiModica put their name on the plaque the artist once proposed.

Location Scout: Bowling Green.

Ducci-D’oh!

An art history professor is claiming that “one of the great single acquisitions of the last half century” — the one the Met just acquired for like $50 bazillion — is actually a nineteenth-century fraud:

A painting the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought for more than $45 million and hailed as a 14th century masterpiece is a fake, according to a leading New York authority.

The “Madonna and Child” the museum attributes to Renaissance artist Duccio di Buoninsegna was really painted in the 19th century, said James Beck, an art history professor at Columbia University.

The 8-inch-by-11-inch tempera and gold on wood panel was the most expensive single object The Met ever bought when it acquired it in November 2004.

“If I’m right, this is $50 million in . . . money down the tube,” Beck told The Post. “And I’m right. It’s incontestable.”

He ridiculed its “low quality” and said it wasn’t “even a good forgery.”

There are no documents proving its ownership before around 1904, and Beck believes it was painted “in about the 1880s.”

Beck said he began to have doubts about the work six months ago and when he approached The Met, where officials expressed confidence the work is genuine.

There was no immediate response yesterday from the museum or Christie’s, which handled the sale for a Belgian family.

But Met curator Keith Christiansen told The Times of London, “There is no reason to doubt the period and the authenticity of the picture.”

Beck said the best proof that it’s a fake is the way it shows the Madonna and child behind a parapet, an artistic use of space and planes that only came later in the Renaissance. He rejected Christiansen’s claim that the work is “the first illusionistic parapet in European art.”

Refresher course: The Missing Madonna: The story behind the Met’s most expensive acquisition (New Yorker, July 11, 2005).

Read: This Is Sure To Give Us At Least Several Solid Hits In The Times Arts Pages And — God Willing — The Editorial Pages Of The Post

The controversial play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” has found a new theater:

After an Off Broadway production was derailed, resulting in a theatrical uproar, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” the solo show about an American demonstrator for Palestinian rights who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, has found another New York theater.

Pam Pariseau and Dena Hammerstein, partners in James Hammerstein Productions, are bringing the play, critically acclaimed in London, to the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Previews are to begin on Oct. 5, with an opening scheduled for Oct. 15. The play is to run for 48 performances, closing on Nov. 19.

“We both saw the play and both responded to it very strongly,” Ms. Hammerstein said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We identified with the material in terms of being mothers and were struck by the production and the theatricality.”

Ms. Hammerstein, a daughter-in-law of Oscar Hammerstein II, is a longtime friend of the actor Alan Rickman, who created the play with Katharine Viner, an editor for The Guardian, the London newspaper. They put the play together from Ms. Corrie’s journal entries and e-mail messages before her death in March 2003. It ran for two seasons at the Royal Court Theater in London.

“I’m just really looking forward to engaging people on it, an engagement which can only happen, obviously, if the play is on,” Ms. Viner said.