The Customer Is Always Right, Provided He Or She Parks In The Right Spaces

Now this is how you make your customers feel at home:

Bloumie Papalazalou initially believed that her car was stolen from the parking lot at Whitestone Shopping Center when, several months ago, she returned from Key Foods to find it missing.

“I go to buy some oil and then I come out and I said, ‘Where’s my car?'” she said.

As it turned out, Papalazalou’s car wasn’t stolen — it was towed for being illegally parked in one of the lot’s reserved spaces for employees.

Papalazalou said she was unaware that the section she parked in along the lot’s fence is for employees only. Following her mistake, she paid a fee of $162 to get her car back.

Now Papalazalou said she fears coming to the lot because of the tow trucks looming around the corner waiting to tow illegally parked cars, many of whose owners don’t know that they’re occupying reserved spots.

“I’m scared because I never know,” Papalazalou said.

More Problems At The Village Voice

Here’s how you go about building the myth:

Echoing the wanderlust of the author who spent 11 years in Queens, a group of historians and aficionados held a private tour of Jack Kerouac’s old stomping grounds Saturday on the 50th anniversary of the publication of “On the Road.”

Organized by the Central Queens Historical Association, it highlighted the group’s efforts to convince the borough to install a series of plaques at the sites.

Jeff Gottlieb, president of the historical association, and Patrick Fenton, a writer and Kerouac enthusiast, are calling for a “literary trail” of plaques commemorating these spots. A small plaque already hangs outside the former Kerouac apartment on Crossbay Boulevard.

But Gottlieb believes getting the rest of the plaques will be an uphill battle. Queens is a conservative borough, he said, and Kerouac’s legacy might be too racy. Though there has been talk about renaming Smokey Oval Park for Kerouac, he said it will probably be named for late Yankees legend Phil Rizzuto instead.

The tour Gottlieb outlines is not for the casual walker. Logistics, half a century of changes to the area and Kerouac’s tendency to wander long distances on foot make seeing the sights difficult without a car.

The second floor of the building at 133-01 Crossbay Boulevard, the first apartment shared by the Kerouac family in Queens, is no longer a residence. The Queens Ambulance Service now staffs an office where Kerouac once played show tunes on the family’s old box piano, Fenton said.

The children’s library at 95-16 101st Ave. where Kerouac mapped out “On The Road” has long since closed. The building has been gutted and turned into a church, Fenton said.

The Richmond Hill house on 134th Street which Kerouac and his mother inhabited for six years is still standing. Fenton said Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a frequent visitor there. But, he added, the current owner of the home, located on a cramped block of single-family houses, does not welcome Kerouac devotees. The tour group was small, but it was a dedicated bunch. Two of six participants had written plays about the renowned Beat author.

. . .

Fenton, a retired court officer who has been writing about Kerouac since 1989, may be indirectly responsible for adding one more Queens location to the maps of hard-core Kerouac followers.

A speculative short story he wrote, “Drinking with John Kerouac in a Rockaway Bar,” places the writer in a tavern that Fenton said did not exist during Kerouac’s lifetime. He said the story may have been what caused the Village Voice to list the bar in its NYC Guide as a “Rockaway dive” that has been “canonized (mildly) as the one-time hangout of Jack Kerouac at the depths of his depression.”

Pay To Rezone

Something “interesting” in the way that campaign contributions often can be “interesting”:

Among the 2006 and 2007 campaign contributors to the two city councilmen whose districts cover most of the territory to be rezoned under the city’s so-called Jamaica Plan, two groups stand out in their donations: real estate developers and trade unions.

Between $9,850 from unions and roughly $15,000 from real estate and developer interests, City Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) received almost $25,000 in 2006, a year in which he disclosed $60,050 in corporate campaign contributions, according to campaign finance disclosures from the state Board of Elections.

In 2006, City Councilmen Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) declared $16,200 in donations from individuals and partnerships, of which $2,500 came from interests associated with real estate development, according to campaign finance disclosures from the state Board of Elections. His campaign’s corporate contributors that year gave a total of $17,250, of which $2,750 came from real estate groups and developers.

. . .

The Jamaica Plan would alter the permitted height, usage and density of new buildings across the 368 blocks to be rezoned under the proposal, stretching from Highland and Hillcrest avenues in the north to 110th and Sayres avenues in the south, west to the Van Wyck Expressway and east to 191st Street. In many cases, the changes allow much taller buildings along major roads and near the transit hub at Jamaica Center than exist there now.

Helicopter . . . Nice Touch

Maybe you were wondering whether there are ever sharks at city beaches. The answer is of course there are sharks at city beaches:

Rockaway Beach looked like Amity Island yesterday as hundreds of screaming swimmers scrambled out of the surf after a 6-foot shark — and its ominous dorsal fin — was spotted close to the shore.

“It was scary,” said Julio Lento, 15, of Brooklyn.

“I didn’t want to get eaten.”

Experts believe it was a relatively harmless thresher shark — but during the mad dash for land, the killer great white “Jaws” was on everyone’s mind.

Sunbathers shouted, “Shark!” and “Get out of the water!” while lifeguards frantically blew their whistles to warn people.

Those who dared look behind could see a fin circling about 20 feet from the shoreline.

The beach was shut down immediately from Beach 107th Street to Beach 121st Street, said a Parks Department spokesman.

It reopened some five hours later.

Emergency responders from the FDNY and NYPD rushed to the scene, and a helicopter hovered over the water searching for the menacing-looking creature.

The shark was first spotted around 10:30 a.m. near Beach 109th Street by a couple of eagle-eyed beachgoers about 15 feet off the shore.

“They were saying, ‘What’s that?’ And I looked up and I said, ‘What is that?'” said the lifeguard on duty, who only gave his first name, Justin.

At the time, few people were in the water.

They watched incredulously as the tail flapped in and out of the ocean.

Moments later, the big fish — alive but clearly suffering — washed up on shore near Beach 109th Street.

“This thing was sick or lost its mother,” said Justin.

“It was flipping around. He had a big, floppy tail like an eel.”

Three do-gooders took matters into their own hands and dragged it by its tail into the water, he said.

Once back in the surf, the shark seemed to swim away. He was spotted going out about 50 feet.

But an hour later, when the water was full of swimmers, the shark returned — scaring the daylights out of people and prompting officials to keep swimmers out of the water until about 3:30 p.m.

The fright put a serious damper on the holiday weekend.

. . .

Keith DiLorenzo was so thrilled to see the rare sea dweller that he didn’t want to leave the water when the frenzied mob came rushing out.

While his relatives yelled to him — “Get out! Get out!” — the 12-year-old marine buff tried to get closer to the action.

“I wanted the shark to get close to the shore, so I found a sharp clam and I cut my finger and put drops of blood in the water,” said DiLorenzo, of Floral Park, L.I.

His grandmother, Pat DiLorenzo, said afterward, “When he got on the shore, all I thought was, ‘Thank God summer’s over.'”

And not to let a great story get in the way of the truth, but this was a downer, thanks a lot:

After looking at a photo of the shark that was beached, [Hans Walters, the New York Aquarium’s animal department supervisor and resident shark expert] said it was a thresher shark.

“These are deep-water fish,” he said. “It makes me believe someone caught him and released him.”

“I’m just surprised he’s this close.”

Telltale signs of thresher sharks include a tail that’s about half as long as their body, as well as weak teeth and jaws.

“These shark are not dangerous,” said Walters.

“The fact that he kept swimming toward shore leads me to believe that he’s dying.”

The shark later died.

Location Scout: Rockaway Beach.

Things You Don’t Really Need A Think Tank To Study Include . . .

. . . the lameness of art trolleys:

A think tank cited the Queens Culture Trolley, which was shut down in October 2005 due to poor ridership, in a recent study as an example of how the city’s cultural trolleys hold great promise but need to better address conceptual and operational issues.

. . .

The Queens trolley, which carried passengers for free on weekends around a 90-minute loop of arts and culture stops in and around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, was discontinued after it drew a mere 2,144 riders during its 17 months of existence, a study by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future found.

The trolley, which was owned by the Parks Department, made stops at the Queens Museum of Art, New York Hall of Science, Queens Zoo, Queens Theatre in the Park, Queens Botanical Garden, Louis Armstrong House, parts of Jackson Heights and hotels near LaGuardia Airport.

“It had wonderful potential, but the practicalities were problematic,” Queens Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz said. “It was a great innovation, but as a practical matter you can’t do that with one trolley given the size of the park.”

The study found that when the trolley was launched in May 2004, it “debuted to high hopes and a slew of press coverage, but the sponsors realized that very few people were actually riding it and most of the institutions felt the trolley had no impact on their attendance.”

The capacity for the trolley was 40 passengers per trip, giving it the potential to transport 240 people during its six weekend trips. But the average weekend ridership was a mere 32 people, the study found.

(What’s the civil service title for “art trolley operator”?)