Governor Spitzer, You Have Blood On Your Hands

Did TBS stop showing reruns of Larry Clark’s 1995 masterpiece, “Kids” or something? Ew, ew, ew, ew:

It was after 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning last month when Sophie and Jeff drunkenly stumbled upstairs to his East Village walk-up. They had met a week earlier at an art gallery opening, and now, after a few drinks at Gallery Bar, followed by a nightcap and a joint at Jeff’s apartment, they were having sex when the condom broke.

“We pinky-sweared we were both clean, and continued having sex,” recalls Sophie, 24, a painter who lives on Avenue A and who is not on birth-­control pills. “In the morning, we got Plan B [an over-the-counter emergency contraception pill] and split the cost. It was kind of romantic. I’m sure he was sleeping with other people, but the condom had been his idea, so I wasn’t worried about STDs because I figured he was a regular condom user.”

. . .

Among the single New Yorkers in their twenties and early thirties interviewed for this story (all of whom have slept with at least three people in the past three months), it’s usually when they sleep with people they know that they forego protection, or rely on Plan B as their Plan A. Nadia, 25, a writer who lives in Carroll Gardens, says she’s taken the morning-after pill “probably 15 times in the past three years. I got pregnant for the first time recently having sex with an ex and we didn’t use a condom. But the abortion didn’t make me scared of sex, and my behavior hasn’t changed because of it,” she admits.

. . .

For some, it is simply about getting off. “I’ve had sex with two people since breaking up with my girlfriend four months ago, and I haven’t used a condom,” says Rob, 27, who works in finance and lives in Brooklyn Heights. “It’s not the smartest thing, but I’ve never gotten off with a condom on.”

The Problem With Sky Trams . . .

If they get stuck — and they do — there’s nowhere to go but down:

Dozens of people on the Bronx Zoo’s Skyfari ride were stranded more than 100 feet in the air for about five hours last night when the tram broke down.

“My son was really, really frightened,” said Olga Perez, of New City, who was on the ride.

“I said, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’

“One of my nephews got scared. He was screaming, ‘I can’t take this anymore!’ ”

The nephews and son were in another car, and Perez had to talk to them by cellphone.

The cars, which glide along cables 112 feet in the air, ground to a halt at 5:27 p.m., with 30 adults and seven children on board, police said.

The last passengers got off at 10:20 p.m. There were no injuries, but a pregnant woman was taken to Jacobi Hospital for observation.

What Part Of 85 Activists Murdered, The Opposition Pulling Out Of A Runoff, Toddlers Having Their Legs Shattered And Elderly People Seeing Their Arms Broken Do You Not Understand?*

Clyde Haberman can’t say it so I will — Charles Barron is totally fucking disgusting for apologizing for Robert Mugabe in 2008. Wow:

Foreign leaders aren’t routinely honored with receptions at New York’s City Hall. In the last two decades, as best as we can tell, only two Africans have received this red-carpet treatment.

One was the revered Nelson Mandela. That was in 1990, when David N. Dinkins was mayor. Mr. Mandela had been released four months earlier from his 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

The other leader was President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Not many people put his name and “revered” together.

Perhaps they once did, when he led the liberation of his country, then called Rhodesia, from oppressive rule by its white minority. But by 2002, when he was ushered into New York’s seat of democracy, he was a certified human rights disaster.

Rights groups condemned him for jailing and torturing political opponents, for repressing independent-minded judges and journalists, for starving many of his people by denying government food aid to opposition-dominated districts.

His signature program, the seizure of white-owned farms, was blamed for contributing to mass hunger and for amounting to a land grab that benefited only his loyalists.

This was the man warmly welcomed at City Hall under the aegis of the City Council’s Black, Hispanic and Asian Caucus. His main host was Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, a former Black Panther who has lost none of his zest for revolutionary oratory, 1960s-style.

Only a dozen of the Council’s 51 members attended the event. But the many who stayed away, fearing the third-rail potential of a racially sensitive issue, acquiesced with their silence. Gifford Miller, then the Council speaker, issued a statement calling the reception a matter of free speech.

Six years later, the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe has hardly improved. A runoff presidential election set for Friday has been marked by violence, with dozens of opposition supporters reported to have been killed. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, though he won the first election round, withdrew from the race and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. On Wednesday, no less than Mr. Mandela registered strong disapproval, condemning the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe.

Given all that, might Mr. Barron harbor second thoughts about having brought Mr. Mugabe into City Hall?

“Absolutely not,” the councilman said.

“Does he do things that I disagree with? Yes,” Mr. Barron said. But he clearly still regards Mr. Mugabe as a liberator more than an oppressor. “You didn’t care about black Africans when whites were killing them in Rhodesia,” he said. As he sees it, the real reason that Mr. Mugabe has come under strong attack from the West is the confiscation of white-owned farms.

Echoing Mr. Mugabe’s party line, he suggested that Mr. Tsvangirai is a tool of “British imperialism and the United States as well.” As for political violence, “I don’t think we can deny people are dying,” Mr. Barron said. “Who’s responsible and how many — we need to really get reports other than from the opposition.”

*Or do you not read the paper, moron?

New York Aquarium Staff Must Come To Grips With Sudden Death Of Masturbating Walrus

Ayveq the masturbating walrus has died suddenly at age 14:

Ayveq, the walrus whose bizarre, though oddly compelling, masturbation rituals made him an international sensation at the New York Aquarium, has died. He was 14.

Though well-liked long before he discovered the habit that would make him a star, Ayveq’s frequent public self-gratification made him the Coney Island institution’s singular attraction.

“We are all still in shock about it,” Aquarium Director Jon Forrest Dohlin said. “He was an absolute delight. He had a magnetism and a charm that was totally his own. He loved people and he knew how to work a crowd and entertain guests.

“And himself,” Dohlin added. “He did have a raffish charm, no doubt about it.”

Ayveq The Masturbating Walrus, New York Aquarium, Coney Island, Brooklyn, October 20, 2007:

Location Scout: New York Aquarium.

Shooting Ranges Don’t Kill People, People Do

Way to spoil a nice evening at the shooting range:

The 20-year-old college-student son of a globetrotting UN staffer fatally shot himself in the head at a popular Chelsea rifle range that had sold him ammunition, rented him a high-powered rifle — and left him on his own, The Post has learned.

The bizarre suicide of Patrick Karorero happened June 3 inside the West Side Pistol Range on West 20th Street, which caters to Wall Street types, law-enforcement officials and shooting hobbyists.

It’s where Robert De Niro, playing cabby Travis Bickle in the 1976 movie “Taxi Driver,” was filmed staring down a barrel of a gun.

The range’s owner, Robert Derrig, did not return calls for comment, and the NYPD said only the tragedy was “under investigation.”

The mayor’s office, which has waged a highly publicized campaign against gun violence, also declined to comment.

Sources familiar with the case provided the following account:

Karorero, who had first visited the range on May 20, paid a $25 range fee and purchased three boxes, or 150 rounds, of 9mm ammunition for an additional $45.

He was then rented a Hi-Point 9mm carbine rifle for another $40 and left alone to practice.

The Hi-Point is the same type of rifle wielded by one of the gunmen in the Columbine HS massacre.

At about 9 p.m., some two hours after showing up, a jittery Karorero waited for several other target shooters near him to leave the area.

Then, after looking distractedly to either side, he fired a rifle shot into his head.

The bullet tore a hole in the ceiling of the range, which is in the basement of an office building.