Yes, it’s still 11 months away, and the mayor has only just finished announcing his intention to overturn term limits, but the prospect of Mr. Bloomberg — and his billions of dollars — running again may have ended the contest before it even took shape.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Bloomberg ally who was the favorite of much of the city’s business establishment, reacted immediately by announcing that she would abandon a planned run if the mayor went for reelection.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the only minority candidate in the prospective Democratic field, says that he’s running, but doesn’t sound incredibly convincing. For now, his game plan consists entirely of trying to block the mayor from running by casting public doubt on the idea of changing term limits without a referendum.

. . .

“No one believes Thompson stays in,” said George Arzt, a Democratic consultant. (Mr. Arzt, a former City Hall bureau chief for the New York Post and aide to Mayor Ed Koch, said that he had “spoken with” more than one potential mayoral campaign, but that he won’t work for any of them against Mr. Bloomberg if the mayor runs.)

. . .

“People do believe that, at least initially, Weiner will be in there, but if he sees he’s going to get crushed that he would back out, rather than suffer two different losses in two different elections,” said Mr. Arzt, referring to Mr. Weiner’s run for mayor in 2005 in which he narrowly missed making a runoff against the eventual Democratic nominee, Fernando Ferrer.

Consultant Jerry Skurnik was more hopeful about the chances of having some sort of primary contest, but only slightly: “The odds are two of the three will run, and that we’ll have a primary,” said Mr. Skurnik, referring to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Weiner and Mr. Avella. “But it’s possible that we won’t have a primary — that only one of them will run. I don’t know.”

Of course, there’s one more scenario — perhaps the least appealing of all for the Democrats: that Bloomberg, instead of destroying their primary, joins it.

No, New York state judges have not suddenly gotten the cost-of-living pay raise they’ve been deprived of for the past decade — the reason Straniere decided to grow his beard in protest over a year ago.

Nor does it look like they will any time soon. While the state Senate has in the past OK’d a pay hike for members of the judiciary, the Assembly has always blocked it because the measure hasn’t included upping legislators’ salaries as well.

“And in this economic climate it doesn’t seem likely,” reasoned Straniere, as he sat in barber Tahir Taravari’s chair.

Besides, he said, “I was getting tired of my protest beard. It didn’t work.”

Add to that the fact that voters traditionally prefer clean-shaven candidates — although Straniere opted to keep his mustache, which he has had for 40 years — meaning they’re more electable.

Beginning Oct. 1, the buses and boats will cruise between downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope and Ikea later in the day and less frequently, officials said.

“After Labor Day, it [use of the service] kind of tapered off in the morning,” said spokesman Joseph Roth.

“We’re trying to make sure the service can be provided when needed, but we may find the winter is different than fall so we could adjust it again.”

The service, which began when Ikea opened in June, has drawn gaggles of commuters eager to take advantage of a free ride — many with no intention of visiting the store.

. . .

The slashed hours didn’t go over well with commuters or shoppers.

“I [am] . . . angry . . . they cut the hours for the bus,” said Nicky Jackson, 20, who uses the Ikea service to commute from her Red Hook home.

“It’s way better than the city bus.”

For Marquice Jenkins, the abbreviated bus schedule isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a threat to his punctuality.

“You’ll probably be late to wherever you have to go,” said Jenkins, 20, a student who lives in Red Hook and rides the bus twice a week.

Norman Ephron, longtime owner of Imperial Linoleum and Carpet Co. Inc., said within 30 days of the lane instillation, seven stores along E. Fordham Road were forced to close due to lack of business. He said the Select Bus Service is to blame.

“Why should customers come to Fordham Road if they can’t park,” the storeowner questioned, referencing the lane that eliminated 40 parking spaces from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare, including a handful in front of his 361 E. Fordham Road establishment.

. . .

After 40 years operating at the same site, he said he’s never once experienced the enormous decrease in business that’s occurred since the Bx12 express bus went into operation at the end of June.

“A lot of my business came from people picking up their carpet and taking it home. Now they can’t pick it up anymore.” His loading area now services the Bx 12.

Ephron said that also for the first time in four decades, nearly 90% of his 35-employee staff is working half days, down from their previous full-time hours.

What sounds like a Lower East Side tenement is actually a $53.5 million pair of Plaza penthouses bought by Russian hedge-fund manager Andrei Vavilov, who says the developer promised him the epitome of luxury and then handed over an “attic-like space.”

In a $31 million suit, Vavilov says the purchase — which would have represented the second-highest amount for a residential sale in New York City history — was the result of a bait-and-switch scam. Unlike The Plaza hotel of the children’s story “Eloise,” where rooms “embodied the height of elegance and sophistication, the same cannot be said of the penthouses,” said lawyer Y. David Scharf, who filed the suit Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“The disparity between what they were supposed to get and what [developer] El-Ad was planning to deliver to them is outrageous.”