Poor Lamar Odom . . .

This just in — the Meatpacking District is full of yabbos:

The bearded man wore a baseball cap and an NBA jersey — Odom, No. 7. He stood casually on Ninth Ave., conducting late-night business as usual: drug dealing to club denizens.

As last call approached, so did a customer in a pinstriped shirt. Money changed hands. The dealer slipped something into the man’s pocket as oblivious revelers strolled past.

It’s a common sight in the club-heavy Meatpacking District, which has replaced Chelsea as the epicenter of the Manhattan party scene — and home to all the woes that follow.

The venerable neighborhood, long-ago habitat of butchers in bloodstained aprons, hosts an assortment of less savory sorts each weekend: Drunks. Cokeheads. Dealers.

. . .

The no-holds-barred party, as witnessed by Daily News reporters, knows few boundaries. One reporter was solicited by three dealers within two hours on a Saturday night.

Reporters watched a pair of twentysomething club girls vomit in tandem; a man urinate as he weaved along Washington St.; another man so blitzed he appeared paralyzed on W. 13th St.

China Could Extend The N Train To LaGuardia!

So bascially Thomas Friedman is holding Peter Vallone, Sr. responsible for the United States’ alarming lack of transportation infrastructure:

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

Buried Lede: Authoritarian regimes can do a lot of cool shit, can’t they?

Right Guard Will Not Help You Here

Boy, someone is sure sensitive about that whole Tibet thing:

Days without potable water, hours of interrogation, sleep deprivation, and the theft of more than $20,000 in cash and equipment are among the hardships two New Yorkers say they endured as prisoners of the Chinese government during the Beijing Olympics.

“They threatened our lives, threatened the lives of people we know, of our family members, and they told us that they could get us, even outside of China,” a 32-year-old artist from Williamsburg, James Powderly, said yesterday.

He and Thomas Grant, a 39-year-old videographer from the East Village, arrived in New York yesterday morning, having been deported from Beijing on Sunday — the day of the closing ceremonies for the 2008 Games.

. . .

Mr. Grant said he had been in Beijing to give independent journalists and artists technical assistance in getting their work past Chinese authorities. One such artist was Mr. Powderly, who said he was at the games to highlight human rights abuses through public art installations.

The two said they and four other Americans were apprehended outside a restaurant August 19, held for questioning, and then taken to a detention facility on the outskirts of Beijing.

“We were interrogated for periods of six to 10 hours a day in holding pens,” Mr. Grant recalled. “Two days into the detention, we were shown a piece of paper written in Chinese, which none of us could read, and told that we had a sentence of 10 days given to us for a violation of Chinese law. Vague as it was, that was all we were told.”

Bottom Line: Juries Just Don’t Like Hippies

Maybe keep that in mind during the next voir dire:

A former member of what is believed to be New York City’s only commune was found not guilty on Monday in the shooting of a co-founder of the commune.

The former member, Rebekah Johnson, 45, was acquitted by a jury in State Supreme Court on Staten Island of second-degree attempted murder in the shooting of the co-founder, Jeffrey Gross, 53. He had identified Ms. Johnson as the person who aimed a handgun at him as he returned from a movie on May 29, 2006, and shot him repeatedly. He also said she stepped over him after he fell to the ground.

The jury took less than five hours to clear Ms. Johnson, who had also been charged with assault and attempted grand larceny.

. . .

The Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., issued a one-sentence statement that said, “While we respect the verdict of the jury, it is my belief that we presented a clear and compelling case which satisfied each element of the crimes for which Rebekah Johnson was indicted.”

Mr. Gross summarized his reaction in three words: “Stunned. Disbelief. Shock.”

“The evidence is overwhelming,” he said. “I was the eyewitness. She was 10 feet from me.”

He was shot on the stairway leading to his home, one of 10 buildings owned by the Ganas commune, a group that sanctions wife-swapping among its 100 members but moved to evict Ms. Johnson in 1996. He said she ambushed him.

“I said to the court, ‘I said to the jury, I immediately recognized it was Rebekah Johnson,'” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, after the verdict. “She had a gun pointed at me, I said, ‘Please don’t shoot,'” and he watched her pull the trigger. “I knew exactly who it was and I knew who it was as she climbed over me.”

Earlier: You Win Some, You Lose Some; Rebekah, Stop The Madness!; From Deranged Hippie Fugitive To Deranged Hippie Reject.

Can’t Anyone Keep Any Kind Of Perspective Anymore After Falling Into An Assload Of Cash . . . Wait, What Am I Saying?

The doorman who decided to keep his job even after winning $5 million in the lottery is now reconsidering his decision:

Richie Randazzo had vowed to hold on to his $40,000-a-year job, even after becoming an overnight millionaire and in the face of what he called increasingly hostile threats from his “jealous” bosses to fire him for infractions.

. . .

Although quitting would kill his chances of collecting unemployment insurance, Randazzo isn’t exactly hurting for cash.

On Monday, when he was supposed to be at work, the doorman hit the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City with his new gal pal, Swedish model Sabina Mari Johansson, 23.

. . .

Randazzo missed another day at work yesterday while taping a segment for TV’s “Inside Edition” and squiring Johansson around his native Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, the building’s superintendent, George Skintej, was left holding the door.

“There are problems that are going to be big problems,” Skintej said. “He’s a millionaire now. He should stay a millionaire. He’s a jerk. He’s the biggest jerk.”

Randazzo said it was his regular day off. He said he is not scheduled for a shift until Friday.