Even Daily News Reporters Can Walk 3.4 Miles An Hour

Traffic in Midtown was so bad yesterday even Daily News reporters could outpace a city bus:

Roads were a mess from the West Side Highway to the FDR Drive and from the Battery all the way up to 72nd St., but no thoroughfare was as bad as Third Ave.

To measure the congestion, two Daily News reporters — one on foot, the other riding the M102 bus — raced from 34th to 60th Sts. on the clogged boulevard, starting at 12:04 p.m.

As the reporter on foot headed north at a brisk pace, the bus merely crawled ahead. Riders were not amused.

“Let the UN move to Alaska!” raged Stephanie Boren, 62, of Tudor City, as the vehicle neared 48th St. “Every time the President comes to New York, he shuts it down. This is an unfair and unnecessary inconvenience.”

Although the traffic eased after 50th St., the bus never pulled even. The pedestrian reporter reached 60th St. at 12:27 p.m. — a full five minutes before his bus-riding colleague arrived. And he saved the fare.

As terrible as yesterday’s traffic was, forecasters don’t expect the roads to ease up anytime soon.

“People at times sat for an hour before things cleared up,” Daily News traffic columnist “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz said. “We’re . . . expecting tomorrow to be just as bad.”

“It’s very bad,” moaned Said Bud, 39, a livery cab driver who got stuck on Third Ave. yesterday afternoon. “I came from Brooklyn. I want to get out of here.”

At 20 blocks to a mile, that means the bus was traveling 2.8 miles an hour.

Follow The Money!

If we learned anything from that broken-windows repair scheme on Staten Island, it’s that we shouldn’t be too quick to rule out the bike stores:

Someone’s been taking out the bikes in Riverside Park. The weapon: carpet tacks, sprinkled on the path with malicious, tire-bursting intent. Most reports of tack trouble come from the section of the greenway between 137th and 145th Streets, behind Riverbank State Park, but cyclists have reported tacks as far north as the George Washington Bridge at 181st. But it’s not clear that the attacks were limited to uptown — one victim told Ravin he didn’t notice his flat until he returned to Christopher Street from a ride up to Inwood.

. . .

In the meantime, bike shops and cyclists alike are facing a quandary. “I hate it!” says Ozzie Perez, owner of Tread Bike Shop in Inwood. “Financially, it’s been great for us — we fixed more than 100 flats — but now people don’t want to go on the greenway uptown.”

The World Is Tense . . . And There Is Much Shopping To Do

The Daily News’ “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz develops a novel indicator by which to measure geopolitical events:

New Yorkers should brace for especially thick and thorny gridlock this week as President Bush and scores of international bigwigs jet into town for the UN General Assembly meeting.

Starting today, the NYPD will close streets throughout the city, particularly around midtown on the East Side, where jams are almost guaranteed.

. . .

The city is accustomed to the annual traffic nightmare that accompanies the start of UN General Assembly each September.

But Daily News traffic columnist “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz predicts this year will be worse than usual because the President is in town for three full days. Leaders from Iraq and Iran also will be on hand, and security is sure to be tighter than ever.

. . .

“It’s an extraordinary confluence of world leaders at a very tense time,” Schwartz said. “And the tenser the world is, the worse the gridlock is in New York.”

But then there’s also this, which should remind you of that great SNL skit from 2003*:

Scads of security details and motorcades accompanying the visiting officials — who are known to enjoy double-parking while shopping on Fifth Ave. — are also expected to add to the week’s traffic woes.

*An excerpt:

Translator’s Voice for Chinese Delegate: My government has a proposal. Instead of going in other delegates’ stretch limosines, I suggest that each of us, and each of our guests, go in his own stretch limosine. It will waste more money, and will enable us to tie up midtown traffic more effectively. I yield to the delegate from the Russian federation.

[ cut to Russian Delegate ]

Translator’s Voice for Russian Delegate: I propose that, when we’re inside having lunch, we double-park our stretch limosines outside. Also, that we leave the engines running, since the U.N. is paying for the gas.

[ cut to German Delegate ]

Translator’s Voice for German Delegate: Does the delegate from Chile wish to comment?

Translator’s Voice for Chilian Delegate: But if we double-park our limosines outside the restaurant, won’t our stretch limosines be ticketed?

[ cut to German Delegate ]

Translator’s Voice for German Delegate: Is the delegate from Chile joking?

Translator’s Voice for Chilian Delegate: Of course I’m joking!

“Sports Bars,” He Sneers, “I Hate Those Guys”

Hizzoner hosts Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl in an effort to get illegal guns off the streets (“The new mayor of Pittsburgh came to City Hall yesterday to sign on to Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition of mayors against illegal guns. . . . ‘While the scale might be a little bit different, we do certainly face the same challenges and illegal guns are definitely one of those,’ Ravenstahl said.”).

What’s not clear, however, is whether the two mayors discussed Lower Manhattan’s latest liquor-related imbroglio:

Buster’s Garage might have been the bar of choice for local Steelers fans, but Tribeca residents have a different opinion of the recently defunct watering hole — and may stop it from ever returning to their neighborhood.

“This is the wrong, wrong business for this neighborhood,” said an angry Tribeca resident at a recent Community Board 1 committee meeting to consider a liquor license for Buster’s Garage, which hopes to move around the corner from its previous home at 180 W. Broadway to 24 Leonard St. Scores of residents turned out to oppose the application, squeezing into the small meeting room and pouring out into the hallway.

When the sports bar opened in 2003, it quickly became a favorite of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. In a neighborhood known more for celebrity eateries like Nobu and Montrachet, Buster’s Garage was beloved for its cheap beer and burgers. In 2005, the Village Voice rated it the “best place to fix your NASCAR jones” and in 2004, the New York Daily News listed it as one of the best sports bars in the city.

“We do so much business with the Tribeca blue collar community,” Buster’s general manager Eric Ness told Downtown Express after the meeting. “The reason we opened was because there’s nowhere around here where you can get a cheap beer and a burger — not everyone can afford Nobu every night.”

. . .

But after two failed attempts to move to a new location — including a plan to move to Carmine St. that was blocked by residents there — the owners opted to stay in North Tribeca. Construction recently began in the ground floor of a four-story parking garage on Leonard St., directly behind the old Buster’s site. The Provenzano family owns Buster’s and the garage the bar plans to move to, Louis Provenzano, Inc. The family also owns the 180 W. Broadway property, which it leased to developer Gregg Rechler of R Squared to build the 13-story condo.

. . .

The meeting was at times strident and heated as residents shouted at Provenzano representatives.

“I want you to make money — that’s the American way — but I don’t want it to be a sports bar,” Kristopher Brown, president of the Juilliard Building condo board at 18 Leonard St., told Buster’s representatives. Brown, the father of two small children, moved to the neighborhood in 2000 and worries the noise and crowds will keep his children awake.

Which is when shit got crazy:

Tensions reached a fevered pitched the following morning when Brown’s wife went to the Provenzano garage to retrieve her car and was told she was no longer welcome there. Word quickly spread through the Juilliard building that all residents would lose their coveted parking spaces as retribution.

. . .

“That would be crazy! We try to get customers, not lose customers.” Robert Pharaoh, manager of the garage told Downtown Express last week. Several monthly parkers had rushed down to the garage that morning fearing they too had lost their spots. Pharaoh eventually told the doorman at Julliard that no other residents had been evicted. “It was a personal dispute between the owner and one person,” he said.

Manhattan’s Celebrity Cemetery

Père Lachaise, Hollywood Forever and . . . a tree planter on East 67th Street:

For the past six years, Transit Authority dispatcher Vinnie Lepani has been marking the passing of the famous and infamous with miniature headstones fashioned from tongue depressors in a smidgen of soil within a tree planter.

The makeshift cemetery has become an attraction in the upper East Side neighborhood. Tourists stop to take photos and neighborhood hospital workers occasionally add their favorite dearly departed to the display.

“We try to keep it as current as possible — depending on the weather,” Lepani said in a thick Brooklyn accent as he penciled movie star Glenn Ford’s name on a stick last week. “It makes conversation, and conversation is what makes me go.”

Lepani started the cemetery as a lark, with a trio of tombstones for three rock ‘n’ roll stars who died in a 1959 plane crash, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.

The next day he noticed that someone had added a fourth marker — he can’t remember the name — so he answered with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. It grew from there, and now includes anyone Lepani considers boldface material.

Comedian Red Buttons, civil rights pioneer Coretta Scott King, talk-show host Mike Douglas, actor Pat Morita and musician Billy Preston are some of the recent additions.

“Tupac is in there. We don’t discriminate,” he said. “We had a big one for the King, Elvis Presley, but it’s gone. People steal them.”

. . .

Lepani has only one rule for the graveyard — anyone who wants to get in it better be famous.

Sometimes, the relatives of patients who died at Sloan-Kettering or New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell across the street ask to commemorate their loved ones. But unless they are marquee names, Lepani usually lets them down gently.