Damn You Craig’s List, How You Get My Hopes Up

First the literal hole in the wall ($35 a month), now a tree house for $150 a month:

Williamsburg sculptor Adam Dougherty put his South Fifth St. backyard tree house up for rent as a gag — but learned that in Brooklyn’s sky-high real estate market, it was no joke.

Since last Saturday, the Craigslist.com posting has drawn more than 30 prospective buyers, renters and vacationers — even though Dougherty never had any intention of branching out into property transactions.

“I thought people would immediately take this as a joke, that it would get flagged,” said Dougherty, 29. “But the sincerity of some of these people!”

“I can’t blame ’em,” he added. “I mean, $150 for a place to stay in New York? That sounds like a dream.”

It was no dream to Gabriel, a “young artist currently sleeping in my van.”

“I’d be up for a summer of sleeping outdoors,” he e-mailed Dougherty.

Then there was Ryan, who figured out there probably wasn’t any running water in the tree house and typed this question: “If I need to, can I shower at your house?”

Although the ad said only “$150 – Tree House,” most who responded assumed the dollar figure was either for a weekend stay or the actual sale price, Dougherty said.

The year-old pinewood triangular house hovers 23 feet over Brooklyn, and fits up to 17 people at once, he said.

The 12-by-12-by-10-foot shelter is empty, except for a light hooked up to a 23-foot extension cord that runs down to his apartment.

No, You’re Right — Tip Pools Are Pretty Mafia-Like

Famed mafia steakhouse Sparks has been served with a $5 million lawsuit alleging a very mafia-like tip scheme:

Sparks Steak House got whacked with a lawsuit accusing the famed Manhattan eatery of shorting waiters out of a sizzling $5 million in tips.

The class-action suit claims Sparks over at least the past six years has illegally deducted money from the “tip pool” — which is supposed to be shared only among about 60 waiters — to pay other workers not entitled to that money.

Workers who were allegedly paid illegally out of the waiters’ tip pool by Sparks include bartenders, the wine-cellar master and banquet manager.

“Sparks has taken a prime cut out of the waiters’ tips for years,” said Louis Pechman, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the Manhattan federal court suit, which alleges labor-law violations.

The suit’s only named plaintiff is Gerald Duchene, a 14-year Sparks waiter who left the restaurant’s employ last November. But court documents indicate that about 100 current and past Sparks waiters affected by the “unlawful scheme” in the past three years also are plaintiffs.

Rough Crowd 1984, Rough Crowd 2006

Long ago, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood succeeded in permanently closing a pool facility that had become a dilapidated magnet for a rough crowd. This summer that same pool will be used for rock concerts in order to raise awareness and money for its hopeful reopening:

A run-down public swimming pool that’s been empty for more than 20 years is making a splash again this summer — as a concert venue to help spur interest in its renovation.

The McCarren Pool opened in Greenpoint in 1936 and was closed in 1984 after the community board complained it had become a nuisance.

Over the next two decades, it became a target for graffiti vandals.

Last September, the Parks Department allowed the outdoor pool to reopen as a dance-performance space in an effort to call attention to the venue — and this summer, several concerts produced by Live Nation will hopefully do the same, said Parks Department spokesman Philip Abramson.

There’s no budget money for the pool’s renovation, estimated at more than $40 million, and having popular bands play there is a good way to raise funds, Abramson said.

But Phyllis Yampolsky, head of a group looking to revamp the pool and its grounds into a “multi-use, all-year-round facility,” doesn’t think so.

She said the community does not need giant rock concerts.

See also: McCarren Pool.

The Kind Of Story That Gets Bob Costas’ Juices Flowing . . . Eww!

Jeffrey Maier, who as a 12-year-old basically helped the Yankees defeat the Orioles in a critical World Series game and is now a college ball player himself, may be drafted by the Orioles in a stunning turn of events:

Once upon an unforgettable, improbable playoff moment at Yankee Stadium, a precocious angel in the outfield bedeviled the visiting team from Baltimore.

Now that same team is thinking of drafting said angel — all grown up and fresh off setting his college’s single-season hit record.

Jeffrey Maier an Oriole? The very thought makes furious “Bawlmer” fans fulminate.

But not Peter Angelos.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to drafting Maier,” the Orioles’ unpredictable owner said yesterday on the eve of Major League Baseball’s annual first-year player draft.

“Sure we’d take him. In fact, I like the idea more and more the more I think about it.”

Meier is saying little.

“I’m waiting anxiously for the draft next week,” he told The Post.

Maybe We Can Catch UBL In A NYPD Sting Operation!

There’s a peculiar circular logic in the notion that you “stopped the worst from happening” when “the worst” was your idea in the first place . . . unless I’m missing something here:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ruffled feathers in federal law enforcement when he decided to make the NYPD Intelligence Division a force in counterterrorism.

Kelly put former CIA official David Cohen in charge and poured detectives and resources into the division with a mandate to protect the city from another terror attack.

Now the conviction of Shahawar Matin Siraj on charges of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station stands as the showcase example of how the NYPD, using its own informants and investigative powers, could, in Kelly’s words, “stop the worst from happening.”

“The police operate proactively rather than reactively,” said Thomas Reppetto, the author of “NYPD: A City and its Police.”

“They stopped the bomb from being planted rather than wait to investigate afterward.”

But is this guy such a big catch? You decide:

A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted a Pakistani immigrant yesterday in the plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004. The jurors rejected his defense that a paid police informer had entrapped him by stoking his rage with images of Muslims abused at the hands of Americans.

The man, Shahawar Matin Siraj, who will turn 24 tomorrow, appeared pallid and downcast as the jury forewoman delivered the verdict. . . .

The most serious charge, plotting to bomb a public transportation system, can carry a life sentence, although lawyers and prosecutors said Mr. Siraj would most likely face a term of 20 to 30 years under federal guidelines. He turned down a plea deal that would have given him a 10-year sentence.

. . .

The United States attorney in Brooklyn, Roslynn R. Mauskopf, whose office prosecuted the case, said: “Siraj conspired to plant a bomb in one of the most active transportation hubs in America. Thanks to the diligent work of law enforcement, the plot never developed beyond the planning stage, and the public was never at risk.”

The defense in the case argued that Mr. Siraj had been entrapped by the paid informer, Osama Eldawoody, a 50-year-old Egyptian-born nuclear engineer who, Mr. Siraj’s lawyers contended, sought to draw their client into the plot for the money. Evidence showed he was paid about $100,000 over two years and nine months — $25,000 during the 13 months he worked as an informer and the rest in relocation and living expenses over the 20 months between the arrests and the trial. [Emph. added to underscore a deliciously backhanded compliment]

At some point someone will figure out that the NYPD might not be the best place to look to for counter-terrorism operations.