The Road To Staten Island Is Paved With The Unthinkable

Families of 9/11 victims worry that roads in Staten Island may be paved with human remains:

Families members of Sept. 11, 2001, victims filed court papers last week charging hundreds of thousands of tons of debris at the Fresh Kills landfill were not sifted for human remains — and have even been used to pave roads and fill potholes on Staten Island.

The claims were part of a lawsuit submitted in Manhattan Federal Court, and include affidavits by the city’s chief medical examiner, a former landfill director and Eric Beck, a city contractor who oversaw the separation of the pulverized debris or “fines.”

“I observed the New York City Department of Sanitation taking these fines from the conveyor belts of our machines, loading it into tractors and using it to pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts,” Beck said.

Beck was a senior supervisor for Taylor Recycling Facility, hired to sift through debris brought to Fresh Kills after the World Trade Center attacks, between October 2001 and July 2002.

The 9/11 family members are suing the city to force them to continue the separation, and to create a worthy burial place for them. Some groups estimate there are about 223,000 tons of debris that were not properly sifted. The city filed to dismiss the lawsuit, and the families filed to counter that motion Friday.

Those documents contained a 2003 letter by chief city medical examiner Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, who wrote it was “virtually certain” that at least some human tissue has been mixed in the dirt at the landfill.

There Is No Truth To The Rumor That Liev Schreiber Has Been Tapped To Play Pony In A Revival Of Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia To Be Set In Great Kills

Staten Island further solidifies its position as the most suburban of the five boroughs:

Teen-agers on Staten Island are abusing alcohol and drugs at a rate substantially higher than their peers in the other boroughs, according to a city Health Department study released yesterday.

In 2005, some 24 percent of Island high school students reported binge drinking, defined as five or more alcoholic drinks on a given occasion, compared with about 14 percent of city teens in general.

While the city’s rate of teen binge-drinking dropped from almost 16 percent in 2003, the Island’s rate stayed flat in the same time span. And Island teens were more likely to smoke marijuana and use cocaine in both 2003 and 2005 than were their other-borough peers.

“The drug use is crazy out here,” said A. K., a 19-year-old from Mariners Harbor who moved to the Island from Brooklyn 12 years ago. “I see more drug dealing and drug use here than in Brooklyn,” he said yesterday, adding that he began selling drugs and smoking pot after arriving in this borough.

. . .

Several young adults blamed the lack of activities for the borough’s high levels of drug and alcohol use.

“There was never anything to do on Staten Island,” said Gary DiBenedetto, 20, of Great Kills. Boredom, he said, led him and his friends to hang out on corners, smoking marijuana and eventually using cocaine.

. . .

John Coleman, [Camelot Counseling Center’s] director of operations, said it’s difficult for young Islanders to get jobs, adding that they face a dearth of constructive, after-hours activities. He also urged the courts to be tougher on youths who abuse substances.

“Boredom is a devil’s playground,” he said. And Island teens “really don’t have much to do.”

But If Dom Tobasco Announces His Write-In Campaign We’ll Be Screwed

So this is what American democracy has come to — alliteration and a single obfuscating vowel:

Were Todd Tabacco to capture the South Shore Assembly seat in the March 27 special election, the 26-year-old hopeful (with the emphasis on hopeful) would be the first write-in candidate in Assembly history to secure a victory.

No matter. The young candidate, sitting in his makeshift campaign headquarters in Eltingville, curled his puppy-dog eyebrows upward last night and said:

“I think I’ve got a good shot.”

Tabacco, who is not related to the Republican nominee, Lou Tobacco, is likely to bring added confusion to any Islander who ever stumbled over the Molinaro/Molinari distinction in local politics. T-A-bacco, who highlights the “A” on all his signage, believes he and Tobacco both could benefit from the name recognition they each are garnering on the campaign trail.

Opponents have suggested the “O” Tobacco could be ineligible to run because he spent part of last year living and working in Arizona — but that aside, Tobacco has the advantages of the Republican nod and a week’s head start in the campaign. Still, Tabacco says he is mobilized for a fast and effective surge.

The Annadale resident and Eltingville native, a registered Republican and a graduate of Monsignor Farrell High School and Villanova University, announced his candidacy on Sunday, a week after he decided to run.

“The light bulb turned on: The opportunity was there and I felt if I didn’t run, I’d regret it,” said Tabacco. “Republicans in this area continue to win, but no real change happens. … [I take a similar stance on the issues, but] I wanted to be the candidate who would bring change.”

. . .

In the space of a week, Tabacco has put together the Web site, enlisted at least 50 volunteers, distributed signs and fliers, phoned and greeted potential constituents, and created headquarters next to DeMonte’s Richmond Avenue pork shop — computers predominate where two days ago a deli slicer and a cheese grater sat at the ready. Using cell phones and Myspace.com to network, he has also in that time started a campaign that is geared especially toward a younger generation of voters — a group often cited for political apathy.

“Our generation wants to be interested, but feel left out of the political process,” said Tabacco. “I want to get them to vote for me and to feel like they can make a difference.”

“Quattro Caviar” Has Such A Nice Ring To It

Staten Islanders are wildly uninterested in $1,000 pizza:

For $1,000, the city’s most prodigal foodies can get a lobster- and caviar-drenched pizza at Nino’s Bellisima on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

That works out to about $25 per bite of the four-slice, 12-inch pie — a price that prompted Staten Islanders interviewed yesterday to respond with “Huh?” then, incredulously, “What did they put on that pizza?” and finally the admission that they would be hard-pressed to swallow such an extravagance.

“I came up with the idea to have something the most spectacular, unique!” said Nino Selimaj, the owner of the joint where pies on the regular menu cost between $14 and $20, as well as five other restaurants in the city. “People didn’t used to think they would ever pay $300 for Asian fusion when they could get Chinese takeout and now they do it all the time.”

In his thick, Albanian accent, Selimaj boasted he had tried hundreds of different recipes before devising the dish, which he said costs about $720 in raw materials.

Served cold and compiled in about 20 minutes, the creation is crowned by creme fraiche, eight ounces of four different kinds of caviar — Petrossian, Beluga, Ossetra and Sevruga — and a two-pound Maine lobster tail sliced so thin that the glean of caviar can be seen through its translucent meat. The pieces are separated by chives and topped with a hint of wasabi and salmon roe.

. . .

Ayanna Phillip of Stapleton waxed poetic on what she would do with $1,000 instead of eating chichi pizza (“I’d pay my bills; I’d go shopping, you could buy, like, 100 outfits”) as she waited to pick up her order at one of the borough’s more economical pie emporiums, My Pizza in Concord — where a large pie goes for $8.

“I wouldn’t buy that pizza even if I was Bill Gates,” she said, scrunching up her face at the thought of a slice topped by caviar.

Meanwhile, Island pizza chefs make a good case for avoiding pretentious pie:

“One thousand is a little crazy; They’d be getting a bargain with our pie,” said Michael Costello, the chef and manager of Pizza on the Plaza, New Dorp, which sells, by all accounts the Island’s most expensive pie.

Pizza on the Plaza’s $100 dish features fontina cheese, arugula pesto, a couple ounces of shaved truffles and lobster meat. Since the item was unveiled last summer, one customer ordered a few of the pizzas for a Halloween Party; otherwise demand has been, to put it kindly, very slow.

Who Do You Think You Are? Lynne Freakin’ Truss?

Oh, give them a break — three words and only one misspelling is still a pretty solid slugging average:

A set of signs placed along the Midland Beach boardwalk promenade is asking bicyclists to “yeild” to pedestrians.

But whoever printed the signs forgot one of the basic rules of spelling — “i” before “e,” except after “c.”

Can you spell E-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-S-E-D?

“Someone had to approve it. Someone had to manufacture it. And someone had to erect it. It got by everyone,” said Dan Weibel, a Grant City resident who spotted three of the misspelled metal signs and contacted the Advance.

The signs, which read “Yeild to Peds,” also bear the moniker of the City Department of Parks and Recreation.

. . .

Weibel, a retired bank vice president who collects license plates from all 50 states, said he’s regularly annoyed by frequent misspellings he finds on signs everywhere.

And he called the “yeild” slip-up a sign of the times.

“Today, people don’t care,” he said, guessing that plenty of people probably didn’t even know the word was misspelled when they saw it.