That Made In New York Film Production Tax Credit Is At Least Partially To Blame . . .

After making inroads with 9/11 first responders and the City Council, The Church of Scientology spreads its influence up to 125th Street:

Harlem, beware! The neighborhood long weary of gentrification may soon have to deal with the likes of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley.

The Church of Scientology, known for its celebrity devotees, is making a big push to expand its empire along 125th Street, purchasing three properties there last week, and planning a major recruitment drive in the neighborhood.

The Rev. John Carmichael, president of the church in New York, declined to give details about the purchase, but reports put the total sales price at $10.2 million.

Carmichael said the three buildings — 228 through 232 E. 125th St. — will house a main Scientology complex and a community center that will offer literacy programs and drug counseling.

Two of the properties were formerly owned by St. Samuel Church of God in Christ, which moved a block away.

The church will be exempt from property tax in New York City, Carmichael said, and added that the church has no plans to buy any more property on that block or in the neighborhood.

“It’s 50,000 square feet in all,” Carmichael said. “It’s a pretty generous space.”

It’d Be A Long Walk To The Subway . . .

. . . but there’s something about those views:

Meanwhile, rumors are circulating that [Richard] Goldring and his associates might be looking to unload the sprawling 10,000-square-foot stripper-plex on West 28th Street, which last sold for $10 million in 2004 and now could go for four times that sum.

“At the right price, it’s available,” said Manhattan nightclub broker Alex Picken of Picken Real Estate, who’s been marketing several other nightclub properties in a rapidly changing West Chelsea.

A converted parking garage, the Scores West building on West 28th Street sits along a former industrial strip that was recently rezoned to allow for new residential development.

Could condos soon replace the beleaguered pole-dancing palace? Would each condo come equipped with its own stripper pole?

It’s Nothing A Little Whirlpooling Won’t Fix . . .

Oh lord — it really is over. Gentrification hits the city pools:

As the August heat settles over the city, more and more cash-poor young creative professionals have been visiting the Olympic-sized public pool in Red Hook, walking the long desolate industrial blocks from the F train or using a friend’s car to change into their string bikinis. At the door, a long list of prohibited items includes cellphones and iPods — meaning pool-goers actually have to (gasp) socialize with their fellow New Yorkers.

These hipsters tend to congregate in the southwest corner of the pool courtyard, isolating themselves from the splashing local families. They read trashy magazines and Atlas Shrugged. They take a dip — some even swimming a few laps. They have found their summertime Mecca.

Kit Giordano, 26, who works at development at Miramax Films, was there on a recent warm Saturday wearing a navy blue bikini top from J. Crew and light-blue board shorts, looking through one script, another at her feet. Next to her rested a bottle of SPF 30 sunblock, a Nalgene beverage container that read “Lefties Do It Right” and a Princeton classmate, Erin Culbertson, now a law student, who was paging through Entertainment Weekly. “We’re thinking about doing some handstands,” Ms. Culbertson said.

Further along rested Amy Donaldson, a 37-year-old graphic designer generously slathered in SPF 45 who had shlepped from the Upper West Side to meet some friends. “We were just talking about the elasticity of our bathing suits,” she said. Ms. Donaldson praised the comparatively “mellow” atmosphere of the Red Hook retreat. “There are a greater variety of people at this pool, as opposed to Lasker Pool, where there are more people from Harlem,” she said.

. . .

Julee Resendez, 36, was prone, stomach-down, on a white blanket with pink roses, wearing huge oval sunglasses, bright red fingernails and a black sparkly bikini and reading The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Underneath her arm was concealed a verboten cellphone. “I’m very clever,” she said. Ms. Resendez, originally from Seattle, now lives in Bed-Stuy. “The hood,” she said.

As The Residents Living On Avenue Q Will Tell You, It’s All Downhill Once The Music Meets The Book

It’s been the subject of Craig’s List performance art and a television show. Now, there’s the musical:

With its residents already sporting multicolored neckties, cowboy boots and top hats, Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhood already resembles a costume drama. Now Billyburg is about to hit the stage for real, in a musical, no less, featuring songs such as “Craigslist Hookup” and ode-to-the-L-Train “One Stop [To Excitement].”

See also: Williamsburg! The Musical.

Can I Just Have One A More Moondance With You, My Love

New York City extends the brand into Wyoming as remnants of its cultural heritage go west, young man:

If you want to enjoy the unmistakable ambience of a real New York diner, head to Wyoming. The Moondance Diner, whose iconic, crescent-shaped sign has long beckoned hungry pedestrians on the western edge of SoHo, is heading to the small town of La Barge, Wyo.

A couple, Vincent and Cheryl Pierce, recently bought the diner and are working out the details — including permits to close off Sixth Avenue and Grand Street — to move the building west, as in the Wild West, not “West Side Story.” According to the Star-Tribune of Casper, Wyo., which broke the news yesterday, Ms. Pierce’s husband and father plan to drive a semi-tractor-trailer to New York City in order to relocate the Moondance to a rural town surrounded by oil and gas fields about five miles north of the Oregon Trail from near the West Side Highway.

. . .

The Pierces bought the diner from a Rhode Island-based nonprofit, American Diner Museum, to which it was donated by Extell Development, the company that is developing the diner’s former site on Sixth Avenue into luxury residences.

. . .

“I’m excited,” a teacher at La Barge Elementary, Eileen Stewart, said. “We are in desperate need of a restaurant.” Currently, there are only two gas stations and convenience stores that serve hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried chicken. A restaurant called Timberline, which served American cuisine, was once part of the landscape, and the Moondance may also get a competitor, to be called the Hideaway Café.

Previously, hungry La Barge residents have gone 20 miles north to Big Piney, Wyo., to eat Mexican cuisine at Los Cabos or American cuisine at Annie’s Place, which is in a log building that has been an American Legion Hall, a clothing store, and a schoolhouse where Cub Scouts once met. Annie Phillips, who started Annie’s Place after taking over Gatzke’s Grubhouse, serves a 12-ounce New York steak for $17.95.

Ms. Phillips said New Yorkers who travel to La Barge and Big Piney will find a “friendly atmosphere and good people.”

The executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, called the move a “disconcerting trend.” He said: “It’s an indication that the real estate market in New York, and particularly in Manhattan, is so superheated that anything that doesn’t dedicate itself to the super luxury market does not seem to be able to survive.”

The Moondance is not the first rural rescue of a diner. A real estate developer, Jeremy Gorelick, was one of 15 people who banded together to save the 1940s-era Munson Diner on 49th Street and haul it to Liberty, N.Y., in 2005. “A diner can do well anywhere,” he said, adding that it was terrific that so many people have the vision to save diners, which are pieces of Americana.

The director of the SoHo Alliance, Sean Sweeney said, “I’m thinking — SoHo is getting Starbucks and Wyoming is getting the Moondance Diner. Is this a fair trade?”