What Are City Republicans Good For?

. . . quipping about taxpayer bailouts:

In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year, $400 million contract to name the Mets’ new stadium in Queens Citi Field. As recently as last week, the troubled financial-services conglomerate said it had no intention of backing out of the deal for the new stadium — the replacement for Shea Stadium, which is being demolished.

Well now, with Citigroup getting a second multi-billion-dollar rescue from the federal government, two City Council members would like to see Uncle Sam get some credit.

The two councilman, Vincent M. Ignizio and James S. Oddo, both of Staten Island, called on Tuesday for the stadium to be renamed Citi/Taxpayer Field. The two men will soon be the only Republicans on the 51-member Council; the only other Republican, Anthony Como of Queens, was recently defeated in a special election.

“Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself,” Mr. Ignizio said. “The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess.”

Mr. Oddo quipped: “Not naming the field after Jackie Robinson in the first place: mindless. Tom Seaver stepping onto the new mound for the first time: timeless. Actually acknowledging the contributions of the hardworking taxpayer: priceless.”

Cute.

Location Scout: Citi Field.

Somebody’s Running For Mayor!

And he has a wicked sense of humor to boot:

The MTA should sell its plush Madison Avenue office building and use the proceeds to offset another fare hike, a city official said yesterday.

City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) said the building, located on Madison Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, is worth at least $200 million. That money, he said, could fill in a significant portion of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget shortfall.

“It’s a little too easy to pass on costs to taxpayers and riders rather than looking at their own operations and cutting the fat,” Gioia said of the MTA.

The agency is expecting a 2009 deficit of $216 million and faces a $15 million to $20 million hole in its five-year capital-improvement plan.

At The Bar, The Wrong Kind Of Lock In

But the man gets big props for trying to Google his way out of the bar:

The night in question started innocuously enough for [Kyle] Hausmann, 24, a Harvard graduate who lives with a roommate in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was May 20, a Tuesday, and Mr. Hausmann’s roommate was the D.J. at Trophy Bar in Williamsburg.

Mr. Hausmann got to the bar at 8 p.m. It was a spirited night. There was dancing. There was drinking. Mr. Hausmann downed a few more drinks than he normally would.

“Really sweet guy,” Mandy Misagal, one of the bar’s three owners, who was bartending that night, said of Mr. Hausmann. “Really wasted but super nice.”

The hours melted away. Four a.m. approached, closing time, so Ms. Misagal tallied the night’s receipts as a worker cleaned up. Mr. Hausmann was milling about with the last stragglers. Then, around 4:30, he went into a bathroom. And for reasons that are unclear even to him, he stayed in there for quite a while.

The bar emptied. Ms. Misagal flipped off the light in one of the bar’s two bathrooms, reached for the doorknob of the second bathroom and found it locked. “Curious,” she thought. Seeing no light coming from the bathroom, and hearing not a peep, she figured that the other bar worker had accidentally locked it behind him. Then her car service showed up and honked. Ms. Misagal went outside. The other worker pulled down the security gate and padlocked it from the outside.

They both left.

A few moments later, Mr. Hausmann opened the bathroom door. That is when he realized he was locked in the bar.

. . .

He wandered around the bar, trying to figure out what to do. Then he happened on a laptop on the bottom shelf of the D.J. booth.

“I checked my e-mail,” he said, “which was completely not helpful. My friends were planning a get-together. And I wrote back, ‘Yes, this will work. If only I could figure out how to escape from the bar I’m trapped in.'”

Next he did a Google search for “what to do if you get locked in a bar.” “But Google did not have any good answers,” he said.

Some Barnyard Humor . . .

Yeah, you will:

A pyrotechnics display last week spelled out the name of the family that anted up $15 million for Barnard College’s new student center: Vagelos. Diana Vagelos, ’55, and her husband, Roy, will get to pick a final name for the building, but students at the all-women’s school have already started joking online: “I’ll meet you at the Vag.” “I lost my pen in the Vag.” “There’ll be a Kant library in the Vag.”

Bass, How Low Can You Go?

Lance Bass has only been here like a matter of days but he’s complaining like he’s been here for years:

Lance Bass is here for a few months to star as Corny Collins in Hairspray. He’s not sure he likes New York so much.

. . .

He’s not hanging out at fellow ‘N Sync alum Justin Timberlake’s barbecue joint. “I’ve been a few times,” he says. “But it’s really up there. The Upper East Side? I’m not in college anymore.”