Less “Thought Provoking” Than Just “Provoking”

People need to learn that art that resembles improvised explosives is never cool, and not only because of recent events:

Barely 24 hours after the Times Square terror scare, firefighters used a crowbar to break into a Flatiron District storefront after a passerby reported what looked like bombs set to explode.

But the Sunday evening fuss was over an art display that included a fog machine, a fake time bomb, and some vials of stinky perfume in containers that looked like little pipe bombs.

The NYPD bomb squad was called in to make sure the display at 1133 Broadway was safe, and firefighters turned off the fog machine to make sure no more passersby would think the artwork was about to explode.

Less Extension Than People Mover To Nowhere (Yet!)

The Daily News’ Adam Lisberg (who has taken an interest in this story) reminds us that while yes, the $2.1 billion one-stop 7 train extension will be “on budget,” it’s only because the project has been stripped down to its barest essentials:

Does Bloomberg want to land a $2.1 billion project on budget no matter what? Does he not want to get behind a crusade unlikely to succeed? Does he truly believe $500 million would be better spent elsewhere?

Don’t answer that last question . . .

The 7 train extension was always about making real estate more valuable, not about helping straphangers. That’s why the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is putting its scarce cash into the Second Ave. subway, not the 7 train.

Already, people are moving into new apartment buildings on 10th Ave. without a subway station. Related is building one directly above the phantom station, and leaving empty spaces for stairwells just in case.

The message is clear: The real estate industry will build on 10th Ave. without a subway, but not on 11th.

So that’s what the developers will get. Everyone else will have to live with it.

We Are All Wesley Autrey Now

One day this won’t turn out so well and some family member will be pissed that their daughter or son went down there to save someone:

A brave Brooklyn adman looked more like Superman when he jumped in front of an oncoming subway train to rescue an 18-year-old fashion student who fainted and fell unconscious onto the tracks.

Also, people please, please, please eat breakfast before you get on the subway.

Imagine Just How Much Worse This Could Have Been If The Mayor Had Had His Way About Traffic

The bad news is that the accelerating Toyota scare has apparently reached the five boroughs. The good news is that you can’t really get that far in New York City:

A Queens World War II veteran said he and his wife became the latest victims of Toyota accelerator woes when his 2009 Camry’s gas pedal jammed — sending the car careening into a synagogue.

And They Say The Office Of Borough President Is A Vestigial Remnant After 1989’s Board Of Estimate Of City Of New York V. Morris Decision

If Marty Markowitz didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him:

His State of the Borough address at the Park Slope Armory Wednesday night featured singing, dancing, lights and sirens — and even Markowitz’s head photoshopped onto newly-elected Sen. Scott Brown’s naked body from a 1982 Cosmo photo spread projected onto a big screen.

A judiciously placed file folder inscribed with “Fuhgeddaboutit” left a little something to the imagination.

“I don’t need Howard Wolfson, I’ve got my strategy all figured out,” said Markowitz, suggesting the beefcake photos could help him get elected mayor in 2013.

“I have four years to get in shape,” he told the crowd of about 1,600.

. . .

There was as much singing, dancing, and noshing as there was speechifying — though there was plenty of that — Markowitz’s speech clocked in at just under an hour and 15 minutes, more than triple Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s 20-minute address.

The Venuto Brothers belted out Italian opera; the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang hymns; the Brooklyn Ballet put on a modernist dance, and six-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator Ikim Whitley of East Flatbush in a top hat and pleather jacket came up on stage mid-speech to do the moonwalk.

Markowitz himself briefly got into the act, swaying hand in hand with feathered bikini and headdress-clad performers from the award-winning Sesame Flyers dance troupe, famous for their performances at the West Indian Labor Day Parade. “I’m not staring, Jamie, I’m not staring,” he promised his wife.

The borough president even whipped out a police light and jokingly pledged never again to break out the lights and sirens that got him in hot water when he was caught using them to speed in his official car to a press conference last month.