I Came, I Saw, I Got My Bike Back

A crime victim’s fantasy scenario:

A man who had his bike stolen six weeks ago thought he was seeing things when he spotted it yesterday attached to a pole around the corner from his Upper West Side apartment.

But there it was, chained up at the corner of West 98th Street and Broadway, said 26-year-old financial worker Michael Davis.

“Lo and behold, there’s my bike chained to a pole. It still had all the reflective stickers I had put on it,” he said.

“I never thought I’d see it ever again. The only difference is that someone added one of those milk cartons to make it into a delivery bike.”

Davis lost the bike six weeks earlier when he went to visit his in-laws and decided not to drive.

Davis, an observant Jew, said he chained the bike in front of their home at West End Avenue near 90th Street, but when he left it was gone. He reported it stolen, but was told it was unlikely it would ever be found.

“Fast forward six weeks, and right before the Sabbath I had to run down to the corner store to buy some groceries, and there it was,” he said.

He flagged down a passing cop car and the officers said they should wait for the deliveryman to return. When he didn’t, they figured he had bolted and cut Davis’ bike loose and returned it to him.

No Way, José!

Fuckin’ A, beavers are back! And at $15 million, Representative José E. Serrano gets naming rights:

A crudely fashioned lodge perched along the snow-covered banks of the Bronx River — no more than a mound of twigs and mud strewn together in the shadow of the Bronx Zoo — sits steps away from an empty parking lot and a busy intersection.

Scientists say that the discovery of this cone-shaped dwelling signifies something remarkable: For the first time in two centuries, the North American beaver, forced out of town by agricultural development and overeager fur traders, has returned to New York City.

The discovery of a beaver setting up camp in the Bronx is a testament to both the animal’s versatility and to an increasingly healthy Bronx River.

A few years ago the river was a dumping ground for abandoned cars and rubber tires, but it has been brought back to life recently through a big cleanup effort.

The biologists who discovered the beaver say they have nicknamed it José, after United States Representative José E. Serrano of the Bronx, who has directed $15 million in federal funds toward the river’s rebirth.

In an interview, Mr. Serrano said he had always envisioned the river getting cleaner, “but I don’t know to what extent I imagined things living in it again.”

A number of people reported seeing the beaver last fall, but biologists figured that the sightings were much more likely to have been of muskrats, which are somewhat common in the area.

But the biologists were intrigued enough to investigate, and after trudging the riverbanks, they spotted gnawed tree stumps and the 12-foot-wide lodge — evidence that pointed to beavers, which are rarely seen in the wild because they tend to work at night and avoid people.

Then on Wednesday, the biologists were able to videotape the animal on film, swimming up the river looking for more material to insulate its home. The animal is several feet long, two or three years old, and appeared to be a male in search of a mate, said one of the biologists, Patrick Thomas, the curator of mammals at the Bronx Zoo, which is run by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

How Long Will It Take For Sad Sack Sentimentalists To Mourn Not Having To Lean Over The Platform To Search For Headlights On Faraway Tracks, Noting The Telltale Scurrying Of Rats Or Straining To Hear The Plaintive Click Of A 100-Year-Old Switch?

Amazingly — considering the time, effort and heartache for L riders — the electronic thingamabobs that tell you how long it will take for a train to arrive actually work:

Subways future and subways past seemed to collide on a recent morning at the Jefferson Street station on the L line in Bushwick, Brooklyn. New electronic signs on the platforms showed how many minutes a person would have to wait until the next train: at this moment it was eight minutes for a Canarsie-bound train and four minutes for a Manhattan-bound train.

But the recorded female voice on the public address system that was supposed to work in tandem with the signs was showing signs of a breakdown: “Ladies and gentlemen, the next L, the next L —,” it said over and over, like a scratchy recording.

The signs and the recording are part of a new system being tested on the L line that will, for the first time, give riders accurate information about the arrival time of trains, coupled with clear announcements — both things that seem as foreign to the subway as a man offering a woman a seat on a crowded train.

On this day, however, the signs worked like a charm. A stopwatch revealed that the trains came and went as predicted. It was almost unnerving.

Thank Pelou You’re Back

Vado Diomande shows that the danger from anthrax exposure is probably overstated:

The African dancer whose rare bout with anthrax spooked the city a year ago is on the mend — and planning a thank-you concert tomorrow to celebrate.

“I was very bad last year,” said Vado Diomande, who lost at least 45 pounds during his ordeal.

. . .

His was the first case of naturally occurring inhalation anthrax in the United States since 1976 — and the first since five people died from anthrax-tainted envelopes in 2001.

Officials quickly assured New Yorkers that they were not in any danger, and Mayor Bloomberg went on television asking New Yorkers to pray for Diomande.

Doctors told Diomande that if he lived, he might never be able to perform again, he said.

His doctors said the 45-year-old’s impressive physical fitness played a key role in his survival, but Diomande believes it was something else.

“I have Pelou with me,” he said.

Diamande’s tribe believes that Gue Pelou is a mediator between the land of the ancestors and the land of the living. The spirit expresses itself through the acrobatic feats he performs on stilts during shows like the one he will do tomorrow at the Helen Mills Theater in Chelsea.

Backstory: Terrorists Aren’t Drummers, Are They?

Don’t Walk On The Bronx!

The New York City Panorama at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park has officially reopened after a $750,000 renovation:

The Panorama, commissioned by [Robert] Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, was constructed by the architectural firm of Lester and Associates. A team of 200 architects worked for three years to complete the Panorama and place it on view in the room that was home to the General Assembly of the United Nations from 1946 to 1950 while the permanent headquarters of the United Nations was under construction in Manhattan. The 9,335- square-foot model shows all five boroughs of New York City on a scale of one inch to 100 feet. It was last updated in 1992 and includes the bridges, roadways, parks and 895,000 buildings that comprised the city at that time. The World Trade Center still stands where it did in 1992. Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, envisions future updates to include many new structures and roadways as well as the new buildings to be constructed on the site of the World Trade Center. Raising funds for such a project would be daunting and such updates would be a monumental undertaking, requiring input from many architectural firms currently involved in designing actual buildings in the city.

The Panorama has been closed to the public since September while David Lackey and a team from Whirlwind Design worked on a massive lighting and media effect upgrade at a cost of $750,000. This upgrade was funded by the City Council, the Mayor’s Office, the Office of the Queens Borough President and the state Assembly. Every hour on the hour, a 12-minute tour of the model city that includes lighting effects and informational films projected on screens throughout the room where the Panorama is housed can be seen.

“The thing I love about the Panorama is that you don’t have to know anything about contemporary art. You don’t even have to speak English to enjoy the experience. One thing we all have in common is that we love the city,” Finkelpearl said.

The Panorama can also be used as a “memory map”. Visitors can look at the model and remember when they lived in a particular neighborhood or worked on a certain block. But while several visitors to the museum have expressed an urge to reach out and touch the model, touching it or walking on it is out of the question. For example, one misstep could wipe out The Bronx.

Location Scout: Panorama of the City of New York.