I Don’t Care If You’re Zeppole, You’re In My Goddamn Way!

Community Board 2, reacting to years of uniformly lame street fairs in Lower Manhattan especially, will institute a new permitting process that will hopefully discourage the vendor cabal responsible for heartburn across the city:

Citing a proliferation of fairs managed by professional promoters, Community Board 2 in Manhattan passed a resolution making those seeking to put on street fairs subject to public hearings.

According to the mayor’s office, the community board, which covers Greenwich Village, Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and Hudson Square, hosts the highest number of street fairs of any community board in the city. Last year, 52 of the city’s 357 street fairs were held in the neighborhoods.

The board is also creating a subcommittee to oversee the permit application process. This marks a change from the past procedure, whereby the district manager of the board would simply work out the schedule with individual street fair applicants.

The Ancient Art Of Metrogami

Until the MTA implants chips in our bodies, there will likely be Metrogami:

Sitting in a token booth all day can be dull and draining, but station agent Luis Torres has found artistic inspiration on the job.

This MetroCard Michelangelo makes sculptures out of the used plastic cards straphangers toss on the ground near the turnstiles each day.

He bends, folds, cuts and assembles the yellow rectangles into mock city skyscrapers, dancing figurines and even religious icons.

“The possibilities are endless, and so is the supply of MetroCards to recycle,” Torres said. “A homeless guy brings me 50 to 100 cards a week. He says, ‘I know if I bring them to you, you’ll make more sculptures.’ ”

Although he insists he does not hone his craft on NYC Transit time, Torres has turned his booth at West 110th Street on the A, B and C lines into a gallery.

. . .

The MTA does not sanction Torres’ gallery. Last week, one of his supervisors came into the booth and said, “These are great, but you have to take them down.”

But at the insistence of his customers and fans, Torres later put the work back on display.

Torres, 36, has constructed the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Twin Towers and a Crucifixion. He cuts the magnetic stripe into narrow strips to make hair.

Not all MetroCards are well-suited to what Torres calls “Metrogami.”

“Most people don’t realize this, but there are actually four different types of cards, and the darker-yellow ones are much thicker — too thick to take the folds and bends as well,” he said.

New York Elections Officials Can’t Get Act Together; Cool Old School Lever Voting Machines Get Reprieve

The satisfying chunk-chunk of democracy is saved for at least one and probably a couple more elections:

New York officials have given up on replacing the state’s aging voting machines by the fall elections, and some would like to put off buying new electronic voting systems until after the 2008 presidential election, state officials said yesterday.

New York is the last state to update its machines, and the latest delay comes amid growing questions about the work of a laboratory that was hired to help test the machines being offered by five bidders.

Based in part on the problems with the testing lab, the New York State Board of Elections has pushed back its deadline for certifying which machines would be acceptable until at least May.

Given the months it would take for counties to acquire the machines and train poll workers, “that would make it impossible to replace anything more than a few isolated machines for the 2007 elections,” said Douglas A. Kellner, a board co-chairman.

Mr. Kellner said it might be possible to have the new system ready for the presidential primary in March 2008. An association of county election officials passed a resolution last week urging the state to wait until 2009, and Mr. Kellner said most board members agreed that it would be better if the state did not have to make such sweeping changes amid the high turnout of a presidential election.

But because the electronic systems are easier for the disabled to use than the old lever machines, the state was required by Congress and a federal court order to make the changes more quickly. Mr. Kellner said those orders would need to be amended to allow for further delays and to let New York hold on to at least $50 million in federal funds to help pay for the machines.

The State Of The Union Is Strong

That was fast! Man of the year Wesley Autrey makes it into President Bush’s State of the Union address:

One thing everyone at the State of the Union address could agree on applauding was President Bush’s introduction of Wesley Autrey, the New Yorker who saved the life of a stranger in a Harlem subway station.

Autrey was commended in Bush’s speech yesterday for jumping onto the tracks when he saw the man fall into the path of a train, pulling him out of harm’s way and holding him until the train passed above their heads.

Bush said: There is something wonderful about a country that produces a brave and humble man like Wesley Autrey, who attended the speech with his daughters.

And speaking of which:

The chamber erupted most unanimously and loudly for Wesley Autrey, the man who leapt into the tracks of a New York subway to save a fellow passenger. (The only ones not clapping, it appeared, were Mr. Autrey’s two young daughters, who napped beside him in their bubblegum-colored dresses.)

Definitely, Definitely — Jolly Good Fellow And All That

Wesley Autrey, the man who proved once and for all just how chicken you actually are, was feted by the Mayor on Friday and celebrated on television:

Subway superman Wesley Autrey collected a medal from Mayor Bloomberg yesterday as the courageous construction worker rode an express train from hometown hero to national icon.

At City Hall, the Harlem man was awarded the Bronze Medal, the city’s top honor for civic achievement, for diving onto the subway tracks to save a stranger.

Past medal recipients have included Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali and Willie Mays.

Autrey, 50, “is a great man — a man who makes us all proud to be New Yorkers,” the mayor said.

. . .

Elliot “Lee” Sander, the new executive director of the MTA, gave him a year’s worth of unlimited MetroCards, lauding his “death-defying act of bravery.”

And a Disney representative gave him and his family an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World.

It was another whirlwind day for the newly minted celeb, who appeared on CBS’s “Early Show,” David Letterman’s “Late Show,” and accepted a $10,000 check from Donald Trump.

“I’m going to enjoy my little 15 minutes of fame,” he remarked after the “Late Show” taping.