Now That Was Easy

No, it really wasn’t worth noting because apparently it was never going to happen in the first place:

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow pulled the emergency brake yesterday on proposals to raise bus and subway fares and cut back on service next year.

Predicting deficits upward of $1 billion starting in 2008, the agency said in July that a 5 percent fare hike would likely have to kick in next September, along with reductions in the number of subway trains and buses that run during midday, nights and weekends.

But yesterday, amid complaints from transit advocates and union leaders, Kalikow switched tracks.

Noting that ridership had soared to levels not seen in decades, he said straphangers deserved a little slack — and there will be no fare hikes or service cuts through 2007.

. . .

The announcement infuriated some transit officials, who contend the proposed cuts were included in the preliminary budget over their objections — and now Kalikow is making himself out to be the hero, sources said.

Though MTA sources say the cuts never really had a chance of remaining in the final November budget, transit advocates fumed that the agency would even think of hurting riders to save $20 million annually — a measly sum compared to the agency’s $10 billion budget.

And this the kind of win-win-win scenario that allows everybody to grandstand:

Balking at the proposed cuts, which could also cost hundreds of transit jobs, Transport Workers Union boss Roger Toussaint said the MTA should “cut suits instead of service.”

And that looming deficit? Take it out of LIRR’s budget!

Hey Hipsters, Ed Levine — Unironically! — Will Show You What’s Real

Ed Levine is becoming a big pain in the ass (.pdf) (EL = “Ed Levine” to EB = “Edible Brooklyn”):

EL: Let’s hit Coney Island. That’s a place hipsters haven’t discovered it yet. It’s a little far from Manhattan, but I mean hello! It’s oceanfront! And it’s totally accessible by public transportation.

. . .

EL: . . . Brooklyn is fascinating because it’s NOT homogenous but works anyway. It’s so varied and that variety is in the food in the best possible way. Smith Street is fine and I’m happy that young chefs can open their own places. But people need to get out of those hipster enclaves and see what this borough is about. People need to get outside themselves.

EB: Get outside themselves?

EL: People go to a Thai restaurant and think they’re exploring. This place is becoming insular. It’s not all about Franny’s and Planet Thailand and Marlow & Sons, though I love those places. It’s a class thing. [Totonno’s Pizza owner] Cookie’s not your sorority sister but that’s precisely why your life will be richer if you meet her. Andrew (the chef and owner of Franny’s) has cooked in fine restaurants, but didn’t even visit Totonno’s before opening Franny’s. He’s in this place, but he’s not of this place.

EB: What do you mean, “it’s a class thing?”

EL: You know, there’s Brooklyn (he drops his voice two octaves and throatily pronounces the word as if his name is Vinny) and there’s Brooklyn (he enunciates politely like a charm school graduate). People who live in the latter don’t want to venture into the former, they see it as somehow beneath them. But food is our common ground. It’s an easy path to get outside yourself. You’re probably not going to buy the potency elixir in a Carribean neighborhood, but you might buy the jerk chicken. That’s what’s so exhilarating about Brooklyn. Go for a day to Dyker Heights or East Flatbush or Bensonhurst. You don’t have to change your whole life — just experience something real for an afternoon.

EB: You keep referring to what’s real. What does that word mean to you?

EL: It’s probably not the right term, but by real food, I mean food from previous generations with nothing faux about it.

. . .

EB: So what’s your message to the people you call Brooklyn’s hipsters?

EL: Experience something new, whether jerk chicken or Italian Bensonhurst, foods good enough to make you cry. You’ll see very different kinds of dive bars, that are much less affected. You’ll learn that great food can come out of a completely different aesthetic and cultural milieu from what you know. You’ll expand your universe.

This from the man who thinks that the best pizza in the country is in Phoenix, Arizona . . .

What Would Randy Cohen Do?

I wonder if he’d consider the practice of ripping off brokers a form of civil disobedience:

For some renters, the temptation is just too great.

With a broker’s help, they have found a perfectly suitable apartment. Then, depending on their moral compass, tolerance for risk and financial standing, they may be tempted to double back and try to close the deal alone — thereby saving 15 percent of a year’s rent, the fee typically charged by rental brokers in Manhattan.

With the median rent for a one-bedroom in a doorman building now at $2,450 a month, according to Citi Habitats, that $4,410 fee could buy a fine flat-screen television set.

An informal survey of Manhattan rental agencies confirms that while backdoor maneuvers remain rare, they are growing in what is the tightest rental market in more than a decade. Vacancy rates stand at a microcosmic 0.56 percent, and the number of apartments for which the owner pays the broker’s fee has dwindled. Surging rents are commensurately swelling the dollars-and-cents translation of 15 percent and the incentive to avoid paying a fee.

The risk of cheating the broker — who I suppose is not entirely a parasitic drain on the economy — can be severe if you’re dealing with one of the thuggier ones:

So if you are a renter with the stomach of a street fighter and the situational ethics of a reality-show contestant, what, exactly, are the risks of cheating on your broker?

They run the gamut from tribal to litigious.

“A broker can make a person’s life very miserable if they want to,” said David Francis Calderazzo, the director of leasing for William B. May Real Estate. “All you have to do is spread the word that these people are no good in the building, that they’re deadbeats. No one likes the cold shoulder.”

“A couple of years back,” said Mr. Calderazzo, a former actor, bartender and bouncer, “I showed an apartment to someone who was from one of my corporate accounts but had to pay his own fee. It was a $3,800 one-bedroom on the Upper West Side for him and his dog.”

The client dropped out of sight after looking at the apartment. But two months later, during a routine 411 check on vanished clients, Mr. Calderazzo discovered he had been double-crossed.

“I confronted him, and he basically hung up on me,” Mr. Calderazzo recalled. “Then, he calls me up two or three weeks later. He said he had to get his locks changed three times because someone put Krazy Glue in them. That the super and the doorman paid him no mind.

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. I believe in karma. But I know people in the building. He figured out maybe it’s because he didn’t pay me my fee. He mailed me a check for 15 percent ASAP.”

Who Is More Brazen Than A Bank Robber? He Who Turns Around And Robs Him!

It seems that by “good Samaritans” they mean “guys who mug bank robbers”:

Sometimes even bank robbers aren’t safe on the streets.

One of them was mugged in Brooklyn by a thief who got away with his loot.

The bizarre chain of events started when Kareem Sims, 31, witnessed a robbery at the Independence Bank on Avenue U in Gravesend July 3.

Several good Samaritans chased and caught alleged thief James Boccanfusso a few blocks away. In the ensuing confusion, Sims sneaked up and grabbed money bags containing $3,000, police said.

The Samaritans were able to provide cops who busted Boccanfusso with a description of Sims, who was spotted near the bank yesterday. He was charged with robbery and possession of stolen property.

Mother Rapers, Father Stabbers, Father Rapers And . . . Sparkler Lighters?

Staten Island Fourth of July revelers unhappily find that the city was serious about that “zero tolerance” thing after all when SWAT teams stormed backyards to confiscate fireworks and cart offenders off to the pokey:

Walking out of Stapleton Criminal Court yesterday afternoon, 29-year-old Anthony Padovano of New Dorp was quick to point to the cuts and scrapes he said he sustained when eight police officers stormed into his backyard, threw him to the ground, and cuffed and arrested him for illegal possession of fireworks.

“It’s ridiculous. They have all these criminals in my neighborhood, and they bring in a SWAT team for me when I am trying to light sparklers,” Padovano said of his arrest on the Fourth of July.

His comments pretty much summed up the feelings of the nearly two dozen Staten Islanders who packed the holding cell at the borough’s Criminal Court waiting arraignment on the same charges.

Angry, indignant and bone-weary after spending a night in cramped jail cells with “real criminals,” they expressed no regret for what they deem their right to celebrate America’s independence with a few fireworks of their own.

“They took away my whole Fourth of July,” Padovano added.

. . .

. . . 19-year-old Daniel Savino . . . was charged not only with handling illegal fireworks but also resisting arrest after a scuffle with police outside his Annadale home.

After his mother, Josephine Savino, paid his $500 bail at Criminal Court, Savino showed marks on his arm, legs and back, which he said resulted from officers shoving him against a cement wall, forcing him to the ground, then kicking him.

“They were brutal,” Savino said.

He was one of at least a half dozen residents who complained the cops were too heavy-handed in their enforcement efforts. Savino said he’ll lodge a complaint with the city, but he’ll still have to return to Criminal Court next month, facing fines of up to $750 and possible jail time.

As will Dongan Hills residents Mirvet Cioku, 43, and his 17-year-old son, Atdhe. After arraignment before Judge Alan Meyer yesterday afternoon, they walked out of the courtroom clearly irritated.

“I don’t understand. They make fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July, but they don’t expect me to use them?” asked Mirvet, who emigrated from Albania 20 years ago.

“Forget it. I just want to pay the fine and get out of here so I don’t have to see their faces anymore.”