A Freckle On The Face Of The World

Come on, you know Staten Islanders get upset about this kind of stuff*:

Just about everyone on Belmar’s beaches is there for the same purpose: To lounge on the sand in a swimsuit and soak up some sun.

Until, that is, the mayor of the Jersey Shore town says something offensive to pit them against each other.

In this case, it’s the Jerseyans against the Staten Islanders, the natives against the allegedly noisome summer renters.

In the July 4 issue of his weekly newsletter, Mayor Ken Pringle talks about an “SI girl behaving badly” after she got into a fight with a peer at a club.

“As the Staten Island girl was pummeling the Boonton girl’s face, she used the hand she was still holding her drink glass in,” the newsletter reads. “Now, we’re not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand cause of all the hair spray or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies, but we are thankful she left her brass knuckles and straight razor in her other purse.”

The slurs occasioned a furor among Island residents who frequent the shore, even inspiring one councilman to tell people to “avoid (Pringle’s) town like the plague.”

And the newsletter didn’t only single out Staten Island girls. It also talked about “guidos” from just about anywhere — they’re “as welcome as, oh, Canada Geese” — and “blondes” who apparently told a code enforcement officer they had a mountain of garbage in the backyard because they didn’t know how to take out the trash.

. . .

Pringle said he started the newsletter last year to remind renters about the rules after people who bought houses in the area started complaining about noise from summer renters. He said the newsletter goes out to 300 or so summer tenants from the tri-state area and addresses issues such as noise, maintaining clean properties and other quality-of-life laws.

“It was designed to be funny but at the same time give them information and keep them out of harm’s way,” Pringle said. “Mainly, I try to make it enjoyable and interesting to read.”

He said the snarky newsletters have been effective and that the number of noise summonses has drastically decreased, but he added that it’s not worth the commotion he has stirred up and that this week’s newsletter will be his last. It will include an apology to anyone he offended.

Full text here:

In our never-ending quest to keep our summer renters informed and our wider readership amused, we have culled the Belmar police blotter for items of potential educational value to our readers. Which brought us to a reported incident earlier this summer in which two women had a spat in (you’ll never guess) D’Jais. Now, if that isn’t shocking enough, hold on to your seat: One of the women was from Staten Island!! (Unbelievable, right? Only one of the women? We thought all of the women in D’Jais are from Staten Island.). The other woman was from, of all places, Boonton, NJ, which according to Google maps appears to be a suburb of either Towaco or Hibernia. (We’re guessing the Boonton girl was either in D’Jais on some kind of sick bet, or was practicing for an audition on Survivor.

Then again, maybe she just happened by, saw the people on the line out front, and thought, “Cool, a costumeparty!”). Anyway, the spat ended the way most fights with SI girls do. The SI woman grabbed the Boonton woman by the hair (we’re told that in Staten Island, this is the female equivalent of a guy kicking another guy in the groin — only without the warm and friendly connotations) — and began punching her face in. We realize, so far, this is not exactly newsworthy. Journalistically speaking, “SI woman punches other woman” is right up there with “Dog bites man.” But here’s the twist: As the Staten Island girl was pummeling the Boonton girl’s face, she used the hand she was still holding her drink glass in. Now, we’re not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand cause of all the hair spray or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies, but we are thankful she left her brass knuckles and straight razor in her other purse.

*They can be sensitive, you know.

Had You Just Shared The Wealth, You Could Have Easily Avoided All This

When you deny the public sweet locavore hooch, be prepared to risk the consequences:

Although the city faces a fiscal crunch, Staten Island’s borough president is spending $2 million in public money on a winery run by a businessman who sold him property he flipped for a profit, a Daily News probe shows.

Beep James Molinaro committed the cash from his budget to re-create a Tuscan winemaking farm on public property in Staten Island’s Snug Harbor.

The winery will be run by five local businessmen who have made thousands of dollars in donations to his campaigns, records show.

One of those businessmen is Randy Lee, a prominent local real estate lawyer and developer. In January 1991, a brokerage Lee controls sold a small vacant lot on Carteret St. to Molinaro, then deputy borough president, and a co-buyer for about $10,000, documents show.

Molinaro and Janice Errichiello sold the property for about $20,000 within a year, records show. The property then went back and forth between Molinaro and other buyers through 2004 when Molinaro sold it for $400,000, records show.

In February, Molinaro announced his plans to sponsor $1.5 million from his so-called “discretionary” capital funds for the Staten Island vineyard project dreamed up by Lee and his fellow businessmen. He has since raised it to $2 million.

Merely Show Me You Have Money!

OK, it’s there:

It wasn’t the most cerebral bank robbery scheme ever hatched — a homeless man with a knapsack in his hands walked into a Richmond County Savings Bank branch in Eltingville Tuesday morning and shouted, “Give me the money!”

And when the bank employees wouldn’t give him anything, cops say he left.

Police caught up with the suspect, 35-year-old Yamil Almedina-Torres, minutes later, just down the block from the 4523 Amboy Rd. branch.

And yes, that counts as attempted robbery:

When they searched him, he had a small baggie of pot on his person, cops allege.

Almedina-Torres, who gave Project Hospitality’s Homeless Drop In Center on Central Avenue in St. George as his address, was charged with third-degree attempted robbery and unlawful possession of marijuana.

Who Is A Staten Islander?

Martin Sheen is a Staten Islander:

“West Wing” star Martin Sheen went to the state Capitol yesterday to lobby for the “dead celebrities” bill, which would protect deceased stars from unauthorized, commercial use of their image, but he ended up reminiscing with a delegation of Staten Island lawmakers about the time he lived in this borough.

Sheen recalled watching movies at the St. George Theatre, playing golf at the Silver Lake course and delivering his second son, Ramon Estevez, in 1963 in the living room of his apartment at 30 Daniel Low Terr. Sheen and his wife, Janet, are also the parents of actors Emilio (“The Mighty Ducks”) Estevez, Charlie (“Two and a Half Men”) Sheen and Renee Estevez.

“We talked about how (Silver Lake) is still the same course and how he loved Staten Island and how he’d like to come back at some point — so we extended the invitation,” said Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-Mid-Island), who lives next door to the city golf course.

According to an article on Sheen’s Web site, the actor, one of 10 children, lost his mother when he was 11 and spent much of his youth working as a caddie in Ohio. He said the experience forced him to see the differences between the “haves and the have-nots.” He has refused to join a private club ever since, opting instead to golf at public courses and carry his own bag.

“I let him know that he has to come back to see the renovated St. George Theatre,” added Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-North Shore), who also met with Sheen.

Kids . . .

. . . are so thin-skinned these days:

A Staten Island public-school teacher was properly canned for making childish comments to his students, a state appeals court has ruled.

Douglas Lackow told one of his biology students to take a good look at the model of female reproductive organs he was holding because he “would never see one, so enjoy it.”

When a female student as Susan Wagner HS in Manor Heights yelled “Lackow sucks,” he responded, “No, you suck. Well that’s what it says in the boys’ bathroom,” court papers say.