Unsafe At Any Speed

NASCAR is deadly — very, very deadly:

NASCAR speedways like the one proposed for Staten Island are races to the death, a top FDNY official has told stunned borough leaders.

Staten Island Fire Chief Thomas Haring spoke to community board leaders Thursday and reportedly said the FDNY had discovered an average of six people die on race weekends from a variety of causes at or near a track like this one.

The stunning statistic came as the department conducted a review of similar-sized speedways across the country as part of an interagency group looking at the proposed $600-million speedway in preparation for a public review.

“We were taken aback when they said six fatalities at the smaller facilities that are comparable to [the one proposed for] Staten Island,” said Marie Bodnar, district manager of Community Board 3. “We were all surprised.”

They apparently weren’t the only ones.

Top FDNY sources seemed equally surprised by the statement and were unsure about how the figures were obtained.

. . .

Bodnar said fire officials told them the causes were not simply in the races themselves but were attributed to heart attacks, traffic accidents to and from the track, or any other mishap during several days of race weekend events.

Well, If He Didn’t Come Up With It, Who Did?

De Tocqueville and political scientists young and old will have a field day with this — the Death Cheese Laws seem to be part of a natural order of things:

Charges have been dismissed against a Staten Island school bus driver accused of encouraging older students to bully younger ones to keep order.

The rap against Michael Cianci of Parlin, N.J., was dropped Friday after Staten Island Assistant District Attorney Quentin Smith read a 10-page dismissal recommendation to Judge Alan Meyer.

Cianci was arrested Jan. 31 and accused of creating a “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere on his bus.

Authorities said he encouraged students in his so-called Death Cheese Club — supposedly named for the yellow school bus — to use headlocks on other students and push them around.

But Smith said the district attorney’s investigation found that “Cianci was not the originator of the game based on the ‘Death Cheese Laws.'”

The prosecutor said that Cianci admonished unruly students but “never physically touched any student.”

“Although the district attorney’s investigation has revealed that [Cianci] may have at times exercised poor judgment in failing to maintain an orderly environment for the children riding his bus . . . not every instance of poor judgment gives rise to criminal liability warranting a criminal prosecution,” Smith said.

Backstory: Working Slob’s Death Cheese Bus Stopped.

Staten Island Stalker, Screech Edition

Seen on Staten Island — Dustin “Screech” Diamond:

From 5 a.m. until after sunset last night, 100-plus ABC crew members descended on the Hilton Garden Inn, Bloomfield, and a nearby office building to film parts of episode 4 of the Knights of Prosperity.

The show, due to premiere Oct. 17, mixes sitcom fare with celebrity voyeurism by following a pack of goofy characters as they plot to rob the home of Mick Jagger.

The plum-lipped, wire-thin rock icon, around whom the show has been built, makes an appearance as himself in the first episode, the production company divulged yesterday.

Otherwise, the TV people on scene at the Hilton Garden Inn yesterday guarded the set with passion equal to that of a Betty Crocker Bake-off contestant protecting a secret recipe.

They couldn’t quite hide Dustin Diamond, however. The actor, who played the uber-nerd Screech in the early-1990s sitcom Saved by the Bell, has a cameo, although a spokeswoman for the production company was characteristically mum.

He’s a little heavier and has a little more facial hair — other than that, he’s Screech, said hotel owner Richard Nicotra.

It’s amazing how much time and effort is spent on seven minutes of airtime, marveled Nicotra, as he watched the crew line up for a buffet lunch during a break in the 14-hour-plus day. We’re friendly to them. We enjoy doing this. It’s certainly good business.

With some Hollywood set-designer magic, the hotel can be transformed into Anywhere, USA, and it receives frequent visits from scouts looking for locations to shoot.

Knights of Prosperity, starring Donal Logue and a band of other actors who have yet to become household names, joins the ranks of such shows as Law and Order and The Sopranos in using the hotel as a set.

What does Donal Logue have to do to become a household name on the Island? Screech-struck ingrates . . .

The Traffic Puts Them In A Fowl Mood

Traffic is so bad on Staten Island that motorists use cemeteries as short cuts, leaving a trail of blood in their wake:

Sunrise at Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp is usually announced by the crowing of Rodney the rooster, who is ever accompanied by his companion, Henrietta the hen.

But yesterday, for the first time in years, dawn was missing its “cock-a-doodle-doo” after a speeding car struck and killed Rodney Friday afternoon, leaving Henrietta and Moravian staffers forlorn.

“People treat Moravian Cemetery like it’s Hylan Boulevard,” said Richard L. Simpson, the cemetery’s historian. “Accidents happen, but if you go slow, birds move. You know they were speeding, the way Rodney was splayed on the ground, with feathers everywhere.”

This is the third bird killed by drivers in the cemetery this summer, Simpson said. The cemetery’s two freshwater lakes draw many migrating birds, including ducks, egrets and Canada geese, he added. Earlier this year, a favorite cemetery goose, Squiggles, also was killed by a car.

. . .

Around 2 p.m. on Friday, when the feathered pair would normally be pecking on the office window, ready for their lunch, a worker found Rodney dead in the road.

Cemetery workers stayed late after work to give Rodney a proper burial in a shady spot behind the office building, overlooking the lake. Henrietta was nowhere to be found. But later, when staffers went to pay their respects, they found her standing over her friend’s grave. She laid an egg there, which staffers placed on the cross-post of Rodney’s grave.

“She had to know he was there. They were so close,” Simpson said.

Moravian has posted numerous stop signs and speed-limit signs, as well as adding speed bumps to discourage lead-footed drivers who cut across the cemetery from Richmond Road to Todt Hill Road, but to no avail.

Two fire hydrants and many signs have been knocked down by speeders, Simpson says, adding that road rage and aggressive drivers on nearby Hylan Boulevard probably don’t help matters.

“Most people are very respectful here, but every now and then, you get somebody in a hurry, like in any other place,” said Rev. Duane Ullrich, from nearby New Dorp Moravian Church, noting that the birds are fed in front of the office building, in the area of the cemetery with the highest traffic.

Staten Island Pride

The Staten Island home of Frederick Law Olmsted has passed into the control of the City, which is planning to convert it to a museum:

Preserving a piece of Staten Island history, the Poillon House in Eltingville will become a city-owned park and museum, known as the Olmsted-Beil House Park.

“The family is glad to keep it out of the hands of developers and have the land preserved,” said Mark DeFillo, the 31-year-old grandson of Carlton B. Beil, a naturalist who was instrumental in the design of the Greenbelt and whose family lived in the house.

The house also was home to famed landscape architect Frederic Law Olmsted, who designed both Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Several of the trees on the property are believed to have been planted by Olmsted.

Built around 1720, the house was landmarked by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967.

. . .

Acquisition of the property was made possible by $600,000 in City Council money, secured by Councilman Andrew Lanza (R-South Shore).

“This is an important addition to Staten Island’s beautiful parks system,” said Lanza. “The Olmsted-Beil House is an intricate part of Staten Island’s rich architectural and historic heritage.”

Located at 4515 Hylan Blvd., the house is set back from the road and surrounded by trees.

The first owner of the property was Dominic Petrus Tesschenmaker. He acquired a patent on the property from Gov. Thomas Dongan on Nov. 3, 1685, according to a study done by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

In 1696, Jacques Poillon, road commissioner under Governor Slaughter, acquired the property and erected a Flemish-style farmhouse, according to the study.

The house was remodeled in 1837 by Dr. Samuel Akerley, a renowned agricultural reformer, and again in 1848 by Olmsted, who added one and a half stories by raising and extending the existing roofline. He also relandscaped the site before moving to Manhattan in 1853, according to the study.

Somebody add Olmsted to the Wiki!

See also: Other famous Islanders.