Russian Bookstores Zhirinovskied

Some Russian bookstores around town are caught selling anti-semitic literature. How charming:

Maybe it was all the rabbis gathered out front, but Vladimir Trainin looked downright panicked yesterday morning as he ran out of his Russian bookstore on Brighton Beach Avenue and worked his way toward the trash can by the street. The crowd of people outside his store, which sells imported Russian books and movies to local immigrants, had shown up to protest the anti-Semitic Russian literature in Mr. Trainin’s history section — literature Mr. Trainin swore he did not know his store had been carrying as he demonstratively placed a copy of “The Jewish Question in Russia” by Oleg Platonov into the garbage.

Platonov’s book, which claims “Jews do everything in their power to undermine Orthodox Russia and destroy the Russian church,”according to a translation, is just one of many anti-Semitic books that Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who organized yesterday’s event in Brighton Beach, has asked Russian stores to stop selling.

“These books poison the minds of people,” Mr. Hikind said at yesterday’s gathering, which attracted a priest, a number of local rabbis, Councilman Michael Nelson, and a camerawoman from the Russian Television Network. But it was no joke — the books Mr. Hikind had on display were unambiguously anti-Semitic and readily available for only $5 or $6.

In addition to “The Jewish Question,” titles included “What We Don’t Like About Them,” “Why America is Dying,” “The Myths and Truths of Jewish Pogroms,” and “Jewish Society Coup.” “Why America Is Dying,” according to a statement from Mr. Hikind’s office, “declares that at the very base of American psychology lies the Talmudic principles of greed, with the right to rob and kill all others to acquire land and possessions.”

In an interview, Mr. Hikind said he sent letters to a number of bookstores in Brooklyn and Queens asking owners to remove the books from their shelves. Although none of them has responded, at least two — Mr. Trainin’s store, Mosvideofilm, and the nearby RBC — have already gotten rid of the offending material.

“Everything is put into garbage,” Mr. Trainin said.”I am a Jew! I am upset by these books.”

Mr. Trainin said all his books are shipped to him by a Russian distributor, and he had no idea they were anti-Semitic until the group of critics arrived at his door yesterday morning (he said he had not received Mr. Hikind’s letter). Mr. Trainin said he would throw away all the anti-Semitic books he could find in his store — Mr. Hikind said there were more than 20 — starting with Platonov’s. After initially throwing the book into the trash himself, Mr.Trainin noticed a photographer and decided to let a nearby elderly Russian woman do the honors.

Then again, the purge generated a slight problem — now there is no more Russian history:

Mr. Hikind went into Mosvideofilm after Mr. Trainin made his announcement to make sure the books were gone. “There is nothing left!” he confirmed, pointing towards a large gap in the history section.

(Now that’s ironic . . .)

Get Shaved!

With a heat wave approaching, the hipster beard’s days are numbered:

On the streets of the city’s hipster-heavy neighborhoods, trends usually have a shelf life similar to that of sushi. But one fad has lingered for months. That would be the beard, which began sprouting on the faces of many an indie rocker and indie rock fan toward the end of last year. The trend reached a tipping point in the spring, at which time Urbandictionary.com defined a “Riker” (named for a character on “Star Trek”) as “a Williamsburg or Lower East Side hipster with a beard.”

Now the hipster beard is experiencing its first summer, and thus the first hot and sweaty challenge to its survival. As a sticky July is poised to give way to a scorching August, the elements may separate the truly committed from the simply trendy.

Matt Westfall, 27, the chief executive officer of Adbattles, an Internet advertising firm, may fall into the second category. “I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and then I’ll probably shave it,” Mr. Westfall said the other day as he strolled along Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side with two similarly bearded friends.

Then he reconsidered. “Actually, what I’ll probably do,” he said, “is shave everything and grow a Fu Manchu.”

Other newly bearded New Yorkers had devised other coping strategies. “I’m going to keep mine, but keep it thin,” said Corby Hawks, a 29-year-old freelance writer and an associate publicist at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “At night, with no A.C., it gets itchy.”

Bjorn Brandt, also 27, who describes himself as an aspiring pianist, has worn a close-cropped beard for years and has no plans to change. “My girlfriend loves it,” said Mr. Brandt, touching on perhaps the biggest reason the trend remains alive.

That sentiment was echoed two blocks down Ludlow at the upstairs bar of Pianos, a hipster haunt at where five of five males in attendance possessed beards, of varying lengths.

Nate Campany, a singer-songwriter who was preparing to perform a set, was wearing something he referred to as his “summer beard.” It was short and well tended, and is to be replaced in the colder months by a billowy dark mass that he described as his Civil War beard.

I Told You So! I Told You So!

The only thing worse than losing three fingers in an ill-advised fireworks experiment and having to lie about it later is having high-and-mighty Hizzoner cluck-cluck about it afterwards:

An injured city firefighter was held up by Mayor Bloomberg yesterday as an example of the dangers of illegal fireworks.

“You saw in the paper today there was a firefighter who lost part of his hand,” he told a crowd gathered at a Fourth of July Parade in Staten Island. “Fireworks can blind kids, they can maim them.”

Fight To The Death Or Escape . . . Then Fuck Shit Up In City Parks By Picking Fights With Snooty Manhattan Lapdogs

A hardened cockfighting veteran has escaped and is now terrorizing dogs:

Canine’s beware: A runaway rooster is on the loose in Upper Manhattan — and he’s ready for all comers.

He’s been seen fighting with a dog — and even park workers couldn’t lay a hand on him as he strutted into Frederick Johnson Park yesterday to peck at berries.

They tried to lure him with bread, but the cocky rooster grabbed the bait and flapped off.

The fearsome fowl seems to be roosting at West 150th Street. He is believed to be an escaped cock fighter, according to the Web site AnimalNewYork.com.

No large-scale effort is planned to catch the cock, if he behaves himself.

On The Waterfront

It should come as no surprise that many of the city’s biggest restauranteurs have suspicious connections. Why, for example, did Giuseppe Cipriani back out of a $300 million project to develop Manhattan’s Pier 57? New York Magazine speculates:

Earlier this year, after submitting the forms, Cipriani received notice that before his application could be approved, city investigators wanted to take a sworn deposition about $120,000 he allegedly gave to a Gambino turncoat in 1999 to settle a labor dispute at Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, which he operates. Cipriani has denied making the mob payment. In addition, the city informed him that DOI investigators would be joined by an agent from the FBI and NYPD detectives, also seeking to ask him about alleged payments made to the crime family, among other matters. Cipriani decided to bail.