If You Still Believed Abercrombie & Fitch Was Somehow Classy . . .

I suppose it was inevitable we’d eventually have to apply Broken Windows to shopping:

A gunshot fired on one of the most exclusive blocks of Fifth Avenue sent well-heeled passersby scrambling for cover last night after a fight between workers at Abercrombie & Fitch’s flagship store got out of control, witnesses and cops said.

One of the workers, a man who was not identified, was hospitalized last night after a female employee with whom he had been arguing sent two friends to get revenge on him.

The thugs pistol whipped the worker outside the store at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street.

The gun accidentally went off during the brutal beating, shattering the window of the exclusive Beverly Feldman women’s clothing store about 8:45 p.m.

He Was Likely On His Way To The Met

The coyote on the loose in Central Park has been caught:

A coyote’s romp in Central Park ended yesterday with a tranquilizer dart and a nap, but only after a messy breakfast (hold the feathers), a dip in a chilly pond and a sprint past a skating rink-turned-movie set.

There was also a final chase that had all the elements of a Road Runner cartoon, with the added spectacle of television news helicopters hovering overhead, trailing the coyote and the out-of-breath posse of police officers, park officials and reporters trailing it.

. . .

Where Hal came from remained a mystery. [Parks commissioner Adrian] Benepe said that he had probably been driven out of Westchester County. Older coyotes do that to young males at this time of the year, wildlife specialists said.

He speculated that Hal had made it down to the Bronx and trotted into Manhattan across a railroad bridge at Spuyten Duyvil — “the narrowest, safest crossing,” he said.

But Mr. Benepe said it was also possible that Hal had dog paddled his way through the water beneath the railroad bridge. From there, he said, Hal probably meandered down the West Side to 72nd Street, where Riverside Park ends. And then, Mr. Benepe said, he turned left.

That was news to people in the neighborhood. “I see a lot of things pass this way,” said Ralph Mascolo, a doorman at an apartment building on 72nd Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, “but never a coyote.”

The coyote then interrupted a Robin Williams film shoot at Wollman Rink:

The search was called off Tuesday night. When it resumed early yesterday, a crew working on a movie called “August Rush” was busy at the Wollman Rink, just across a path from the Hallett sanctuary. Suzanne Kelly, from the film’s wardrobe crew, saw Hal “going after this lady’s dog.” A small dog, a Westie, she said.

Hal “looked hungry, I thought,” she said. “That’s what I was worried about.”

The posse chasing Hal cornered him by the Heckscher Ballfields, but he got away again. Hal retreated to the sanctuary, where a pile of feathers suggested that he had made a meal of a bird, probably a pigeon, Mr. Benepe said. After a quick swim across the sanctuary’s duck pond, he sprinted past the rink, where an actress in a wig was doing figure eights.

After catching the coyote, the plan is to return him to a more suitable environment:

Mr. Benepe said the plan was for a wildlife rehabilitator to take Hal out of the city and, after some rest and relaxation, release him in a more coyote-friendly habitat.

That’s “a more coyote-friendly habitat” as in “Fairfield County, Connecticut suburbs” where they are used to such sightings . . . suckas!

Don’t Believe Their Lies!

Columbia Spectator writer Grace Chan goes deep undercover as a prospective student to determine how truthful the Ivy League university’s student tours are:

New York papers have found that some 70-80 percent of facts reported on New York bus tours are patently false, which led Spectator to wonder: what about Columbia tours? To investigate, I went undercover as a high school junior for two Barnard tours and two Columbia tours to see for myself.

As it turns out, royalties from Ghostbusters are not, in fact, used to resod Columbia’s South Lawn, George Bush has no plans to visit the campus and, unless Princeton and Dartmouth are lying, Columbia is probably not the safest Ivy League school. (Chan notes that Yale also claims to be the safest Ivy, but they are obviously lying.)

We Are All Exurban Now

Helicopters are flying overhead this morning searching for a coyote on the loose in Central Park:

An “adventurous” coyote that has roamed Central Park for four days shook off pursuers with dart guns and eluded capture last night.

Park officers and cops cornered the coyote — only the second spotted in the park in seven years — in the 4-acre Hallett Nature Center about 5 p.m. But it leaped over a fence and vanished.

“The wily coyote escaped,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe.

As NYPD aviation units flew overhead, park enforcement control officers hunted the tawny creature, which left a pile of feathers from its last meal in the preserve.

Benepe believes the coyote, which weighs about 60 pounds and resembles a lean German shepherd, came from Westchester County or the Bronx, either swimming across the Spuyten Duyvil Creek or crossing a bridge.

“It’s very unusual to have them in Manhattan. They have to be particularly adventurous,” he said.

Central Park hasn’t seen a coyote since April 1, 1999, when one was nabbed near The Pierre hotel on Fifth Ave.

Hatred Of Hydrangeas Leads Man To Maim

An arborcidal maniac terrorizing Union Square Park finally is brought to justice:

An East Village vandal was nabbed red-handed yesterday after rampaging through the roses — and the redwoods and the magnolias — and running up $24,000 worth of damage in Union Square Park, authorities said.

Parks Department officials said David Sasson, 34, of East 14th Street, spent the past three weeks committing horticultural homicide before he was arrested in the park at 1:30 a.m.

Officials said Sasson thrashed 23 hydrangea bushes, 12 red-stemmed dogwoods, 10 holly bushes, seven roses of Sharon, three butterfly bushes, a Chinese dogwood, a magnolia tree and 20 ornamental trees during his three weeks of arboreal abuse.

They had no explanation of why Sasson went on his strange rampage.

Sasson was captured after two officers from the Parks Enforcement Patrol staked out the park and lay in wait for several nights.

“He was in the process of ripping branches off trees,” said Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston, who added that the arrest went down “very smoothly.”

Sasson used no ax, choosing to take matters into his own hands.

“He was doing this with his bare hands,” said Johnston. “He reached up into the tree branches and pulled off the limbs.”

Sasson faces second-degree criminal mischief charges and something called “destruction or abuse of trees,” said district attorney spokeswoman Barbara Thompson. He could get up to seven years for the bush whacking.

See also: Arborcide — Don’t Do It.