The Teddy Bear Was A Nice Touch But It Won’t Fool A Jury

Please secure the power tools:

“He was trying to cut through me and he never stopped!” a terrified straphanger recalled from his hospital bed yesterday after a berserk ex-con — armed with a power saw in each hand — carved him up on an Upper West Side subway platform.

“He looked at me, and before I know it, he was attacking me. The motor kept going on and he was trying to cut through me and he never stopped — for two, three four times, he never stopped,” said critically wounded Michael Steinberg.

The 64-year-old postal worker suffered a deep slice across his abdomen, as well as a punctured lung and broken rib.

The bizarre 3:30 a.m. attack began when suspect Tareyton Williams, 33, of The Bronx, grabbed two cordless saws that had been left unattended on the train platform by private contractors hired by the MTA. He menaced riders and track workers on the southbound platform at Broadway’s 110th Street station.

Williams, who witnesses said had been carrying a teddy bear after the attack, was shadow-boxing with the deadly saws when he took a swipe at a rider standing on the platform, but missed, police said.

The wild-eyed suspect’s next target was Steinberg.

“I saw this guy with a hacksaw, or whatever the hell it was, running towards them [track workers]. They ran away,” Steinberg said.

He had been running late getting to his downtown job, because he’d been tending to his sickly wife, when all hell broke loose as he went onto the platform, he recalled.

“I screamed for help, ‘Please help, please help me,'” Steinberg said. “The Transit Authority people heard me — they just looked. They never stopped to help me, and that disturbs me more than anything else. I begged for someone to call an ambulance and get this guy off me.

“He just kept on stabbing me, and stabbing me and stabbing me, and the transit employees kept on working and working and working.”

Jacob Riis Porn

The Village Voice’s always-enjoyable Ten Worst Landlords feature is back, and it doesn’t disappoint. A sample:

David Melendez owns a swath of dilapidated, vermin-infested, crime-ridden slums hidden on a forgotten block of Jefferson Street in Bushwick.

. . .

Melendez’s four buildings at 253, 255, 258, and 260 Jefferson have a total of 473 pending code violations. He appears to be in no rush to fix them: HPD has recently made 49 emergency repairs to those buildings and charged Melendez $23,029.

. . .

Agustina Cricantos, who has lived at 260 Jefferson for 25 years, says that the only time tenants ever see Melendez is on the first of the month — when he comes to collect the rent. She pays $600 a month for her two-bedroom apartment and complains about a window in her kitchen that doesn’t open, leaks in the kitchen ceiling, and a faucet that drips constantly. The bathroom walls are rotting, and the toilet bowl isn’t mounted to the bathroom floor, causing the bowl to shift when in use. The light fixture in the bathroom dangles from exposed wires, and a large hole in the wall allows rats to scurry through. After her first interview with the Voice, HPD replaced the window in Cricantos’s kitchen, at the taxpayers’ expense.

“I had horrible bedbugs coming from one of the walls in the bedroom into my mattresses,” she says, “so I had to throw them out and buy new ones. I had to buy a new crib mattress for my daughter.” The front door to the apartment, contaminated by lead paint — a serious hazard known to cause brain damage in children — was replaced by the city this year. But other areas of her apartment that also contain lead paint have not been repaired. A three-year-old lives in these dangerous conditions.

Melendez tells the Voice that he “wouldn’t mind getting rid of my Mexican and Ecuadorian tenants,” adding that “in California, they don’t even rent apartments to Mexicans.” (He says he’d prefer Chinese and Indian tenants because they pay higher rents.) The apartments are rent stabilized, so legally he can raise the rent by only $45 to $50. Cricantos claims that one of the tenants was charged $200 for a copy of his lease and that Melendez frequently raises the rent when the city makes repairs.

More Than A Pound Of Beef Plus Cheesecake?

He’s sick. Totally sick:

A day after downing a record-breaking 53 and 3/4 hot dogs and buns, Takeru Kobayashi polished off a 22-oz. steak, salad and slice of cheesecake.

“This is the best steak I have ever eaten,” Kobayashi, 28, told the Daily News through a translator as he tore into the slab of medium-rare New York strip steak yesterday afternoon. “It’s better than Kobe beef.”

In no time flat, the Japanese chowhound was gnawing at the bone.

“He polished it,” said an awestruck Tom Hart, general manager of Smith & Wollensky at E. 49th St. and Third Ave. “It was amazing.”

. . .

Kobayashi’s demure dining experience at Smith & Wollensky was a far cry from his sixth straight prize-winning performance at Coney Island where he elbowed out a table full of sweaty pro eaters.

The 160-pound “tsunami” shared a quiet corner table at the steak house with his translator, a gal pal and former competitor Tim Janus.

Instead of using a paper cup of soda to dunk his buns, he sipped house red wine from a delicate glass.

But Kobayashi got at least one reminder of the previous day’s gluttony when mischievous staffers delivered a single hot dog on a bun in lieu of his real meal.

“They brought out that hot dog, and he was like, ‘What?'” said translator Robert Ikeda, 36.

Kobayashi good-naturedly agreed to take a few bites as the table beside him cheered.

The chomp champ also stomached a mixed green salad with Italian dressing, a thick slice of cheesecake and a couple of cream puffs. There was only one problem — he couldn’t escape the eau du frankfurter.

“My skin smells like hot dogs,” Kobayashi confessed, wrinkling his nose as he took a whiff of his arm. “I’m not kidding.”

Previously: Trying To Convince Your Body To Dance It All Down.

Trying To Convince Your Body To Dance It All Down

Takeru Kobayashi bravely defended his competitive eating title against young upstart Joey Chestnut during yesterday’s hot dog eating contest at Coney Island:

Takeru Kobayashi managed to scarf down 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to remain top dog at the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

The 160-pound Japanese eating machine took his sixth straight crown and even managed to best his own record of 53 1/2 dogs, which he set in 2004.

“I feel great,” Kobayashi said through a translator after the stomach-turning contest.

Kobayashi’s closest competition came from 220-pound Joey Chestnut, who struggled to stuff 52 dogs down his gullet.

The two were neck-and-neck — or rather, throat-and-throat — for much of the contest, but Kobayshi’s well-honed style of dipping the dogs in liquid before letting them slide down his throat was too much for Chestnut to handle.

“I know I can do more,” said Chestnut, 22, whose game plan was to gyrate back and forth. “I’m trying to convince my body to dance it all down,” he said.

Backstory: Let’s Return The Competitive Eating Championship Where It Belongs: The Good ‘Ol Girth-Loving U. S. Of A.

For further study: International Federation of Competitive Eating.

Gerritsen Is The New Howard

Three Brooklyn teens have taken the title of “Most Racist Beach” away from Queens, making decent people forget about Howard Beach for the time being:

Three white Brooklyn teens were charged yesterday with committing a hate crime after they pummeled three black kids riding their bicycles on a Gerritsen Beach street and incited onlookers to join in the attack , police said.

The victims — Joseph Pascall and Deon Davis, both 17, and Aaron Adams, 16 — said they cycled into the neighborhood because they were lost, a police source said.

The thugs allegedly cornered the victims with their car near Florence Avenue and Celest Court on Monday at 9 p.m.

They taunted the teens with racial slurs before knocking them off their bikes with the car, and pinched and kicked them when they tried to get away, the source said.

Cops said an unknown number of people in the neighborhood saw the incident and joined in the taunting and violence.

Alessandro Cerciello, Christopher Rapuzzi and Joseph DeSimone, all 17, were charged yesterday with assault as a hate crime, gang assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment, menacing and unlawful imprisonment, police said.