When In Doubt, Make Up Something

Because the press officer hasn’t been around that long anyway and reporters will write whatever you tell them:

It was near freezing outside, but Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe wore swim trunks and sandals yesterday to the opening of the first indoor public pool built in the city in more than 40 years.

At 110,000 square feet, the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Aquatic Center in Queens is the largest recreational center ever built in a city park.

The facility cost $66.3 million and features three Olympic-sized pools, including one diving pool.

And when they say that it’s “the first indoor public pool built in the city in more than 40 years” what they mean is the first indoor pool not counting the one that opened back in 2004.

Now It Smells Like Fish And Roses!

It’s actually more like a matchbook by the toilet than anything “fancy” like Chanel No. 5:

It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of trying to cover up bad body odor with Chanel No. 5.

For more than a year, residents of one Brooklyn neighborhood have been complaining about a stomach-churning smell wafting from the site of a former sewer pipe project.

The city’s response? Tossing nylon socks filled with pine deodorizer into the catch basins.

That hasn’t stanched the stench. In fact, locals say the scent of raw sewage is even more noticeable now.

“I think that adding the pine made the existing smell even more potent,” said Aaron Green, 27, one of the Bay Ridge residents who is sick of the stink.

The stink has been hovering over a stretch of Fort Hamilton Parkway between Marine Ave. and 99th St.

The odor cropped up in the summer of 2006 after the completion of a $6.9 million project to combine the underground sewer pipes there, residents say.

As complaints mounted, the community board notified the city Department of Environmental Protection, which began dumping piney perfume onto the site.

Forget Sarasota — With Its Good Weather, Low Taxes And Leisurely Pace, New York City Is The Retirement Community Of The Future!

Lost in the discussion about the mysterious, still-unexplained one million new residents is that the number includes a previously overlooked army of 300,000 new seniors, making New York City the nation’s top retirement destination:

The city’s elderly population is projected to jump 44 percent by 2030, which means there will be roughly 1.35 million senior citizens comprising 20 percent of the city population. That includes roughly one-third of the projected additional 1 million New Yorkers the Bloomberg administration expects here then. That surge motivated the PlaNYC initiative to address issues such as the environment, energy and the city’s aging infrastructure — but not so much its aging population.

The City Council yesterday announced that the New York Academy of Medicine will receive $125,000 to develop a blueprint to prepare the city for its aging population. It’s expected by April.

“Our focus has been on the cost of care and biomedical research,” said academy president Jo Ivey Boufford. “This deals with prevention — how people can be as healthy as they can be, as long as they can. . . . We’re creating a blueprint for investment over a number of years and policy action over a number of years.”

The Advance makes the situation sound that much more dire:

With New York City’s population expected to boom, adding nearly 1 million more residents by 2030, demographers predict that the number of elderly dwellers will increase by 300,000.

. . .

“There’s been much discussion and planning, appropriately so, about what the future of New York City will look like in 2030,” Ms. Quinn said in respect of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental agenda to combat global warming. “But one of the things we’ve not yet looked at is the reality that by 2030, there will be 300,000 additional senior citizens in New York City.”

Inadvisable . . . Unless You’re Oscar The Grouch

If only they asked, a consultant would have told them how it looked:

City Council members spending thousands in taxpayer dollars to buy new garbage cans bearing their names should think twice about the stink such a move might make, branding and political image consultants say.

Linda Passante, the managing partner of a New York-based brand development agency, the Halo Group, said that if she were advising council members, she’d tell them to steer clear of promoting themselves on waste receptacles.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that any publicity is good publicity,” she said. “If I’m walking by a garbage pail and I’m smelling garbage and seeing a name associated with it,” it wouldn’t leave “a positive impression.”

The CEO and founder of Political Capitol, Kathryn Mahoney, said the idea that politicians would mount their names on garbage cans has “that desperate, sort of used-car sale feel to it, as if they are doing everything they can” to get their name out there.

“It gives you that automatic, negative feeling,” Ms. Mahoney, who said she advises members of Congress, said. “It feels kind of slick. And that’s the last thing you want as a politician.”

The Department of Sanitation said 21 council members, two former members, and President Scott Stringer of Manhattan have spent about $811,914 in public funds to buy 2,025 garbage cans with their names on them.

Well, Would You Just Give The Keys To Your Car To Some Guy Somewhere Down On Lefferts Boulevard?

Yet they claim there is demand for valet parking at JFK:

The Port Authority introduced valet parking last week as part of the agency’s efforts to make the city’s three airports more hospitable.

Customers can drop off their cars on Lefferts Boulevard just south of the Belt Parkway, and hop on the AirTrain.

The fee is $36 a day, a little steeper than the charge at the terminal parking lots and considerably more than the cost of long-term parking.

“We believe there is a demand for this,” said PA spokesman Marc LaVorgna.