Katrina Victims To Be Given Knockoff Duds

Katrina victims will receive counterfeit items impounded by the New York Police Department:

Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday that, following a two-year crackdown on counterfeit apparel manufacturers, thousands of knockoffs bearing the trademarks of Rocawear, Phat Farm and Nike will be headed to New Orleans.

“We’ve been holding them, waiting for the right opportunity to put them to good use,” the mayor said.

The T-shirts, pants and sweatshirts, which are being donated with the companies’ permission, were all seized along “Counterfeit Alley” — a stretch of Broadway in the 20s and 30s in Manhattan known for its counterfeit warehouses.

Only seized clothes will be making the trip south. Handbags and other fashion accessories will be destroyed.

Don’t You Know Who I Am?

Why of course we know who you are, sir! Please, let me show you to your table:

If you think there’s no such thing as a free lunch, then meet Mac Montandon.

The 34-year-old free-lance writer from Brooklyn lived high on the hog in the Big Apple for five days, scoring not only free lunches, but breakfasts, dinners, lodging, theater tickets, booze — even an appointment for a complimentary colonic.

“I didn’t do it to be malicious, it was more of a curiosity — just how far could I push it?” Montandon, who chronicled the adventure for his Web log www.blacktable.com, told The Post.

To see just how far p.r. reps would go to get publicity for their clients, Montandon printed up business cards for seven fictitious magazines with ridiculous premises. Next, he hit the phones, schmoozing publicists about featuring their products in his mags.

The freebies and invitations rolled in, including a costume party thrown by the Hearst family in an Upper East Side mansion, where he hobnobbed with Ivana Trump; meals at the Gramercy Tavern and Tavern on the Green; “Sweeney Todd” tickets on Broadway; and lodging in Brooklyn B&Bs.

“If this was my full-time job, I could have gotten a lot more,” he said.

“I’m fairly certain I could have acquired a Smith & Wesson pistol, a karaoke machine, hockey equipment, Trojan condoms, a night at a sleep-therapy lab, Canadian bird-flu vaccine, and nights at the Hilton and Trump International Hotel.”

See also: The Best Things In Life Are Given To You By Publicists: How To Score Loads Of Free Shit.

Backwater No More, Two-Buck Chuck Is On The Way!

New York City may have eight Vermeers but it had no Trader Joe’s . . . until now:

The specialty grocer Trader Joe’s will open a store near Union Square in about three months, a spokeswoman said yesterday, confirming a year’s worth of reports that the national chain would join a growing list of food stores along 14th Street.

Trader Joe’s, based in Monrovia, Calif., is best known for low-priced groceries and prepared and frozen foods. About 80 percent of what it sells carries the Trader Joe’s label. A little more than a third of its merchandise is fresh, but also packaged.

It is also known for selling cheap Charles Shaw wine, known as Two-Buck Chuck because it sold for $2 a bottle when it was first offered.

The company, which has 250 stores in 19 states, will open at 142 East 14th Street, with a separate wine shop next door at 138 East 14th Street. It has 19 stores in the New York area, but none in New York City.

The Best Spitzerism Yet?

Eliot Spitzer, in the deftest rhetorical move of this young year, may have composed the best aphoristic defense of alpha-bureaucrat behavoir since Robert Moses’ “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”:

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer yesterday stepped up his defense against charges that he has sought to intimidate his political foes, contending, “You will not change the world by whispering.”

But Spitzer, who has come in for some withering criticism as he seeks the Democratic nomination for governor, also conceded he would say some things differently if he had a chance to say them over again.

“Just as journalists, I think, would look back at a story six years later and say, ‘I’d change one or two words,’ of course, you look back on statements and conversations and, yes, you could have changed a word here or there,” Spitzer declared at a press conference. [Emph. added]

If it’s original, get his Bartlett’s entry ready!

I Declare The Strike Is Over

The Transport Workers Union has allowed its membership to return to work while negotiations continue between the union and the MTA:

Spelling enormous relief for the city’s 7 million commuters, the executive board of the Transport Workers Union has voted 36-5-2 to end the transit strike that has crippled the city over the last three days.

Although a contract agreement has not yet been reached between the Transport Workers Union and the MTA, the union — bowing to pressure — voted to return to work Thursday afternoon.

Transit workers have been asked to return to their jobs immediately, although it’s estimated that it take at least until late Thursday for the transit system to start resuming normal operation.

The first sign of significant progress toward ending the three-day-old transit strike came late Thursday morning as mediators who met separately with the transit union and the MTA all morning announced that both sides have agreed to resume talks while the union takes steps to return its members to work.

Representatives from the union and the MTA unexpectedly returned to the Midtown Grand Hyatt early Thursday morning, where they met separately with mediators from the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).