But despite the grim photos of a jaywalker pinned beneath a double-decker tour bus, New Yorkers’ death-defying habit of darting into traffic against the light is unlikely to ever be broken.

While technically against the law, law-enforcement officials determined long ago that writing tickets does little to stop such a widespread practice. Some veteran cops say they have never issued a single jaywalking ticket.

“Jaywalking is an urban cultural issue. There are certain cities where jaywalking has been accepted for 50 years or more, so to stop it is like trying to stop the tide from coming in,” said one ex-cop familiar with transportation issues. “You can’t address the whole culture through policing.”

“Really? Mormons?” asked 22-year-old Jessica Weinschenk. “I guess it’s not that weird because religious people do stuff like that. And hey, it’s cool if someone wants to clean our park for us. But why Williamsburg?”

. . .

The act of largesse confused Weinschenk, who said she had not volunteered since high school. Urra has never done community service and even chose to go to jail rather than do a court-mandated subway cleanup.

. . .

Ms. Sohn and Mr. Miller moved to Park Slope in 2005, paying around $600,000 for a two-bedroom third-floor walk-up in a co-op on a block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West — prime north Slope territory, though Ms. Sohn prefers not to reveal the exact street.

. . .

The apartment has a graceful layout, and the sort of prewar details sought after by the characters that populate “Prospect Park West,” like a working fireplace and an antique wood radiator cover in the living room. The kitchen was recently renovated because Mr. Miller likes to cook. The walls are covered with his paintings — striking portraits of old-time boxers. A pair of boxing gloves dangles from the fireplace mantel.

It’s a masculine look for a home where a 4-year-old girl is often running the floors. “I like the fact that it doesn’t feel like a day care center,” Ms. Sohn said. It’s difficult to be totally chic with a toddler, however. Asked about the peculiar, low-rise coffee table, Ms. Sohn explained that it has a chalk surface, which is used by the youngest in-house artist.

That Ms. Sohn has such concerns might come as a surprise to people who remember her “Female Trouble” column from the late-’90s in New York Press. In sexually explicit language, she chronicled her escapades as a single woman in New York — dates and dalliances with a litany of pale, wispy, downtown artist-types. One reader, in a letter to the newspaper, likened her writing to Penthouse Forum in that “I can’t believe it’s true, but I can’t stop reading, either.”

Ms. Sohn was a literary girl-about-town, but she said that even then she wanted a family. “When I was 25, I felt like a spinster,” she said. “That was where a lot of the comedy from my column came from — I wanted to marry every guy I met.”

His name is Juan Carlos “J. C.” Villars, and he was sitting on an adjacent couch with his legs kicked up on an oak-colored coffee table, a stubbly faced fellow in a dark blue dress shirt and jeans fiddling alternately with a set of hex head wrenches and a controller for the Nintendo Wii.

Mr. Bronstein, 31, a marketing consultant in dark-rimmed glasses (you might also remember him as a former editor-at-large at FHM magazine, or from Road Rules season four), and Ms. Hoge, 27, a pretty event manager for Lincoln Center who wore her brown hair clipped up, said that they couldn’t imagine ever not living with Mr. Villars, 32, an engineering project manager — even if, one day in the not-so-immediate future, marriage and kids entered the picture.

“We talk about not moving, and we talk about not imagining J. C. leaving,” said Mr. [Jake] Bronstein, who’s been close friends with Mr. Villars for more than three years, longer than he and Ms. [Kristina] Hoge have been dating. “So I think, by transitive property, that all adds up to getting married and still staying with J. C.”

“We’ve joked about it, and none of those things seem like a reason why we’d wanna get rid of him,” Ms. Hoge said with a laugh.