Then Again, They Also Could Have Just Asked Us . . .

According to detailed analysis of the Hudson River, residents in the Hudson River watershed consume more cocaine than anywhere else in the world:

Researchers for the Nuremberg’s Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research scoured the Hudson River for benzoylecgonine — a substance produced by the human body while processing cocaine — and found byproducts equivalent to a total of 16.4 tons of cocaine per year.

An estimated 3.4 million people ages 15 to 65 live in the Hudson’s watershed. Nearly three percent of Americans in this age group use cocaine at least once a year, according to the United Nations “World Drug Report.” That equates to about 95,000 people who are consuming the 16.4 tons of pure coke annually.

The researchers also discovered more pure coke in our river than anywhere else — including Washington’s Potomac River and San Francisco Bay.

Kenyan Finds Diplomatic Immunity Less Robust Than Expected

Apparently there are some limits to diplomatic immunity:

An international custody battle is brewing over the children of a Kenyan diplomat who was arrested for allegedly beating his 9-year-old son at their Queens home.

Fred Matwanga’s diplomatic immunity has saved him from any criminal charges in the abuse case so far — but it didn’t stop officials from the city’s child-welfare agency from taking custody of his children over the weekend.

Sources yesterday said agents from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services put the injured boy and his little sister in a protective home while officials sort out abuse issues involving their father.

And ACS officials are set to meet with the New York City Office of the United Nations this morning to plot their next move — asking Kenya to waive immunity for Matwanga, the second secretary of its mission to the world body, a well-placed source said last night.

If the African country agrees, local authorities would then proceed with prosecuting Matwanga.

But if Kenya refuses to waive immunity for Matwanga, city officials will ask the U.S. State Department to boot him from the country, the source said.

. . .

Matwanga was busted Saturday night after allegedly beating his son on the head with a wooden stick in their home in South Ozone Park. Cops said the diplomat, 38, was also chasing the boy through the house with a knife.

The frightened child fled his home with a bloodied head shortly after 6 p.m. and tried to take refuge with a neighbor.

“My father’s trying to kill us,” the boy said, according to the neighbor, Cindy Raghu, 23.

Despite his desperate pleas, Raghu’s mother was so frightened that she shut the door, leaving the boy to fend for himself, Cindy Raghu said. The child then ran and hid behind some recycling bins in an alley next to the Raghus’ house.

It’s That Time Of Year Again

October is high season for tourists and . . . drag queens:

At a busy wigmaking studio in Hell’s Kitchen on Tuesday, half a dozen craftspeople could be found hunched over synthetic mesh scalps, tying individual human hairs into them as fast as they could. Hair was everywhere: draped across tabletops in horsetail lengths, clinging to the fabric of chairs, scattered across the floor in unruly clumps.

The artisans had seen and even built wigs of all descriptions, from flowing brown manes for classical operas to buoyant white up-dos for fantastical Broadway musicals. But even the veterans looked up from their needles when Maurice Neuhaus, a 28-year-old German-born wigmaker, actor and sometime drag queen, pulled out a neon-blue extravaganza that looked at first glance like an otherworldly wild animal being released from its cage.

. . .

During Halloween season, the demand for professional drag performers rises, so Mr. Neuhaus has been busy doing performances booked by a talent agency called Screaming Queens Entertainment. Yesterday, Mr. Neuhaus expected to wear a black, Asian-style wig with bangs while entertaining guests at a bar mitzvah reception in Midtown. On Friday, he planned to wear his over-the-top blue wig for a Halloween gig at a game arcade in Englewood, N.J.

For all its high camp and artifice, his wig possesses an exceptional degree of realism — when he wears it, it looks as if “real” blue hair is growing from his head.

Such artistry is much admired by those in the know.

“Only certain very meticulous and experienced drag performers have custom-made wigs,” said Alex Heimberg, chief executive officer of Screaming Queens, who performs as Miss Understood, a character for whom Mr. Neuhaus built oversize wigs in both bright pink and bright green. “You have to reach the point where you know you’re serious about what you’re doing.”

Who has a drag queen at a bar mitzvah?

But No One Is Cooler Than That One-Man Tango Couple . . . No One

The Sun explains the pecking order for subway musicians:

While performing in subway stations and on train platforms is legal even without an MTA-issued pass, freelancers are often forced to surrender lucrative, high-traffic spots to musicians licensed by the [Music Under New York] program, part of the MTA Arts For Transit initiative.

Competition for the good spots can get heated.

“We used to have a problem with acrobats and dancers,” Mr. [Lester] Schultz said. “There’d be 10 of them, one of us, and they could do somersaults, and they didn’t care if we had a pass. They just wouldn’t leave.”

Spats between musicians also arise when freelancers do not speak English and fail to understand why they are being forced to move along, according to other MUNY musicians.

Among subway musicians, there exists a social hierarchy underground that is invisible to daily commuters and tourists. It could be compared with a high school cafeteria, where the cool clique can scare away outsiders from a designated table with a practiced eye roll (in this case, the flash of a MUNY pass).

Subway musician Natalia Paruz, who plays the musical saw, performed as a freelancer for years until she became fed up with countless tickets from the transit police and too much time and money lost while searching for a free spot. “Sometimes I’d get to my spot and someone would already be there. I’d lose an hour just trying to find another place to play,” Ms. Paruz said. Eight years ago, she joined MUNY.

Now, Ms. Paruz performs on the high-traffic mezzanine at the Times Square station. Her lips parted slightly, it is difficult to tell whether it is she or her saw producing the eerie sound (it is, in fact, the saw that is singing).

The Stippler

Did you know that the Wall Street Journal actually employs artists to do the unique stipple portraits of subjects who appear in the paper? Metro New York interviews WSJ stipple specialist Noli Novak:

The stipple that we use at the Journal is not a regular pointillism. The dots are larger than regular pointillism and it looks kind of grainy. It’s meant to resemble fashion engravings. It’s not something you can learn in school. It was something that we had to learn at the Journal because the Journal really wants the style to stay the same. They don’t want big differences between different artists’ styles. It takes months [to learn] because it’s a very unique style.

. . .

I got a letter from a guy once whom I noticed in the picture was cross-eyed. In the drawing sometimes, if you do a cross-eyed person, it looks like you made a mistake. This guy was really cross-eyed. He said, “All the operations I’ve had on my eyes, nothing could get rid of it but you did it perfectly!” I didn’t completely move his eye but I had to do something just to make it not look like a mistake and he was very grateful for that.