Tap Directly Into Her Hopes, Her Wants, Her Fears, Her Desires, And Her Sweet Little Panties (And Magnolia Bakery!)

As if losing Hiram Monserrate wasn’t bad enough, now there’s this:

Rumors have been going around lately that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are making a big move to New York. We heard it for the first time from Nat Hentoff, who told us a few weeks ago that he’d heard it from doormen on his block of west 12th Street in the Village.

. . .

During another visit we talked to a doorman in the neighborhood who said: “Can’t tell you who lives there. I would lose my job. But you know, we doormen know everything that goes on around here. I can tell you the owner won’t be there much because he’ll be filming in LA a lot, and I can tell you he bought the house for his wife, who was in a Broadway show.” The doorman smiled, “But I can’t tell you who it is. I could lose my job.”

Greenmarkets Are Great!

And then you remember where you are:

Organizers say the Greenmarket, held every Thursday, will further chip away at the terminal’s dingy, dirty reputation from yesteryear.

“This market is the next chapter in the terminal’s evolution,” said Susan Bass Levin, deputy director of the Port Authority, acknowledging it was once “a place you would hesitate to go.”

While signs posted on brick pillars still warn that “no person shall spit, urinate or defecate” on terminal property, some of the 210,000 people who pass through every day were delighted to see produce from upstate farms in midtown.

. . .

“I personally wouldn’t eat there,” said Ronald Goodie, 63, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “With all the dirt coming in and out of this place, no way, not for me. Why would they pick this place of all places to do that?”

Al Jean-Babziste, 38, also of Brooklyn, agreed, saying, “You touch the door handles and the booths, and it’s all so dirty, and then you sell fruit? I don’t know about that.”

Location Scout: Port Authority.

At Least No One Said That It Looked Like A Movie

Because that’s what I would have assumed, being that the last “pimp” I saw in Times Square was probably Terrence Howard at the AMC Empire 25:

In a shooting that recalled the grittier days of Times Square, one pimp murdered another Tuesday just outside a swanky hotel filled with tourists, police said.

The two pimps got into a “business dispute” on W. 43rd St. in front of the glitzy Westin Hotel just before 5:30 a.m., police said.

“That’s what people on the street are telling us — that what they did for a living, and the dispute, had something to do with that business,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Location Scout: Times Square.

First Thought Was, Wow, What’s A Washington Mutual Doing Here? Then He Proceeded To Set His Own Underpants On Fire

Just checking out the old ‘hood:

The escaped Wild Man of 96th St. has been caught — where else? — on 96th St.

Larry Hogue, a drug-addicted wacko who terrorized Upper West Siders in the 1990s, strolled away from the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens on Thursday.

The notorious hell-raiser was arrested “without incident” in his old stomping grounds Saturday morning after being spotted on 96th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam, cops said.

Before he was put away, Hogue, now 65, menaced the neighborhood around 96th St. He was big and he was bad, regularly mugging people to support his drug habit.

He set fires under cars, heaved rocks through stained glass church windows, masturbated in front of kids, stalked seniors and threatened children with nail-studded clubs.

Cops would arrest him and take him to the psychiatric ward, where he would be cut off from his crack supply.

After a few weeks his demons would disappear and he’d be back to his old tricks on W. 96th St.

The Great Triumphs Of The Bloomberg Tenure: Flower Pots Full Of Cigarette Butts, Menus Littered With Odd Four-Digit Numbers And Lawn Furniture On Broadway

You can decide if that counts as a “sweeping vision” or just a series of small-bore Clinton-esque tweaks. As for the lawn furniture, the big so-called traffic-reducing Broadway pedestrian mall initiative apparently has met at least one of its goals:

While tourists and others enjoyed moseying around the traffic-free oasis on its first business day as a pedestrian mall, anyone making a delivery around Times Square fumed.

Drivers said streets surrounding the blocked-off areas were clogged with traffic — and pulling in front of a business to unload heavy boxes became a thing of the past.

“This is making my job more challenging,” said Steven McFadden, 48, a deliveryman for Citi Storage. “Longer walks to loading entrances, more competition for parking, more time for fewer deliveries and more parking tickets.”

John Gannon, 55, a mail carrier, predicted a long summer with traffic blocked off.

“For anybody who has to make a curbside delivery, it will be a problem. You’d have to park and walk a block or two,” he said. “If [Mayor] Bloomberg wants it to last, though, it’ll last.”

And you can amend the post title to include “Naked Cowboys” in the mayor’s sweeping vision:

Times Square and Herald Square vendors are cashing in on the car-free Broadway.

Everyone from food and souvenir hawkers to street performers said they were rolling in the dough yesterday thanks to the flood of pedestrians on the Great White Way.

“It is the coolest thing in the world. My business has quadrupled. It is like New Year’s Eve every day,” crowed the “Naked Cowboy,” Robert Burck.