Oy Vey, What A Pickle

The museum dedicated to helping visitors understand the trials and tribulations of the overworked, underpaid and unappreciated turn-of-the-century tenement dweller is playing hardball with its own employees:

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s tour guides, educators and costumed interpreters — those who don early 20th century garb to tell the stories of the immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard St. — demanded yesterday their employer recognize their union, Local 2110 UAW.

Workers said that the museum’s operations and budget have increased in recent years, but most of them have received little or no pay increases, according to the union’s recording secretary Eden Schulz. Most workers are hired on a per diem basis, receiving no benefits or guaranteed schedule of hours. More than a majority of the 40 workers signed membership cards, Schulz said, and a group of them met with the museum’s executive vice president Barry Roseman, handing him a letter asking the museum to agree to a membership card count — which is when a neutral third party certifies the majority status.

Alanis Morissette Irony Or Real Irony?

Yup, I think it’s an example of real irony! And the Post eats up this kind of story like cancer:

One of the city’s biggest homeless-advocacy groups is on the verge of kicking a sickly woman out of the Manhattan apartment where she has lived for more than 20 years, court papers charge.

Under any other circumstances, Luz Bonano, a cancer survivor, could appeal to the nonprofit, Manhattan-based Coalition for the Homeless for help if she ended up on the street.

But it’s the coalition itself that owns her building on West 77th Street — and it’s gone to court to try to get her out.

“They’re supposed to be housing the homeless,” said Bonano, who has lived in her apartment for 22 years. “So what are they doing evicting people?”

. . .

The coalition claims Bonano owes more than $30,000 in back rent — money it says could help other people in need.

Bonano has been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for nearly five years and lives off a $710 monthly disability stipend.

Speak For Yourself, Haggard Perv Who Thinks OK To Hit On The Help

Among New York Magazine’s Reasons to Love New York (in 2006, at least), the hot waitstaff:

If New York is the flame to which scores of the world’s most beautiful, multiracial, multiethnic youth are drawn, then the city’s waiter and waitress ranks are its red-hot center. Where else in the world can you look up from your fatty-toro sashimi or cheeseburger and find yourself staring into the eyes of a ruby-lipped Botticelli Venus? Or a porcelain-skinned John Currin? Or a Mapplethorpe subject? Brunch and a gallery crawl? Why bother. It’s redundant.

And one reason we can’t stand dining out is because of the totally incompetent waitstaff who, although sometimes “hot,” are dumb as shit . . .

And What Better Way To Make Him Seem More Human And Less Ego-Driven Than A Photo Exhibit At Grand Central Station?

He won by a landslide, so what more can he want? Why not immortalize the campaign in a photo exhibition for posterity:

Eliot Spitzer will take over Grand Central Terminal next month with a photo exhibition of images from his campaign.

“The Making of a Governor” will chronicle the stump speeches, handshakes, autographs and exhaustion of running for office — in a series of large black-and-white photos intended to evoke the iconic images of the Kennedy years.

The exhibit is to run Jan. 7-23 at Vanderbilt Hall and may then tour the state.

Photographer Marius Muresanu said he approached Spitzer with the idea after seeing one of Jacques Lowe’s famous images of President Kennedy campaigning.

. . .

He said he spent eight months on the campaign trail and was granted full access — even though the governor-elect has been “known not to love photographers.”

Muresanu is still scouring through thousands of negatives to decide which prints make the cut.

MTA officials said the Spitzer campaign paid $37,500 to rent the space.

The Son Of God Is The Son Of Sam And Dave*

Sometimes it seems like the world needs electroshock therapy. First the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, now Son of Sam as a religious figure:

At first, MaryAnn explains, David was not a person for her but a number. “The Lord had given me, shot into my spirit and I could never shake it, the number 44,” she explains. Years before she met David, she’d even named her dog 44. “Periodically I would get the number 444, which was like the perfection of the number.” MaryAnn didn’t understand at first, but later the meaning became crystal clear. She says, “It was the identification of David Berkowitz.” Initially, the press called him the “.44-Caliber Killer,” because his six murders were committed with a .44-caliber pistol. Then two years ago, she ran into a guy she knew at the local Shop Rite, a Christian like her. They started talking, and soon he invited her to visit David in prison.

“When David walked in [to the visitors’ room], I knew,” she tells me. . . . “There’s nobody bigger than this guy. Oh, my God, this guy is an apostle of the Lord.”

. . .

Son of Sam was sentenced to 365 years in prison, which should have kept him out of the public consciousness for several lifetimes. But in prison, an amazing thing happened. The infamous serial killer became a holy man, holier because of his evil past. He’s now at the center of a growing Christian mission. His humility, his piety, his charitable, Christlike heart inspire Christians around the world — one African is even named after Son of Sam. (He’s Kwaku Berkowitz.) Fellow Christians overwhelm him with letters. They pray for him and crave his advice, his spiritual insight, his fatherly guidance. He produces videotapes and journals, gives interviews to Christian radio shows. David — he hates the words “Son of Sam” — works as a pastor, walking the prison halls with a Gideons Bible and a calling from God. He’s battling Satan, he says, his old friend. And David is sure Satan’s afraid of him, because David knows all his tricks. The monster who terrorized New York is now apparently on the road to redemption. “I’m heaven-bound and shouting victory,” he tells Christian audiences.

*And the soundtrack plays “Hold On, I’m Comin'”. Ba-dum dum.