9114EVA

Fulfilling motorists’ desire to honor the memory of those who perished on Sept. 11, the state DMV will begin issuing 9/11 commemorative license plates:

4-GET ordering vanity plates that read 911WTC, 9FDNY11 or WTC4EVA.

The state still doesn’t issue custom license plates linked to 9/11, but those wishing to honor Sept. 11 victims on their cars could soon do so — thanks to New York lawmakers.

The state Senate passed a bill last week allowing for the sale of a “distinctive” Sept. 11 commemorative plate, said state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans), who co-sponsored the bill.

The Department of Motor Vehicles in 2001 placed a moratorium on Sept. 11-themed plates “because of the pain and suffering, and out of respect of all of the family and rescue workers,” explained DMV spokesman Ken Brown.

There had been an immediate rush for such plates after the terror attacks. One person requested WTC911 “before noon” on Sept. 11, DMV officials told The Associated Press in 2001.

Several states already sell Sept. 11 commemorative plates.

Junius Street In February!

First someone walks every street in Manhattan, now a man sets out to jog every street in Brooklyn:

Brand new Brooklynite Gary Jarvis plans to jog all 1,599 miles of Kings County in the next two years — and document it on his Web site, Runsbrooklyn.blogspot.com.

“It’s an absolutely fantastic way to get to know the place,” said Jarvis, a former New Jersey telephone repairman who runs about 30 miles a week.

Jarvis’ mission began June 20 when he moved into his girlfriend’s Park Slope pad after 10 years in Iowa City, where he studied history at the University of Iowa.

While in Iowa, the avid marathon runner made a pact to jog the college town’s 230 miles but neglected to chronicle the undertaking and the landmarks he discovered along the way.

That won’t happen again, he said.

Each jog will culminate with Jarvis heading home and mapping his route, which he said will be chosen on a whim each morning when he heads out the door. He’ll post the routes and his observations on the Web later in the day.

“Most people just kind of stick to their own neighborhoods,” said Jarvis, who is moving into a new apartment in Greenpoint next month. “It may sound naive to New Yorkers but to me it just sounded like a great idea.”

Jarvis has already clocked about 45 miles in parts of Crown Heights, Flatbush, Greenwood Heights, Kensington, Midwood, Park Slope, and Sunset Park. He has also seen some of the borough’s best-known landmarks, such as the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, Green-Wood Cemetery and St. Michael’s Catholic Church.

As for Brooklyn’s 4,440 acres of parkland, Jarvis has already circled the perimeter of Prospect Park and plans to duck inside the borough’s other pastures along the way.

“As long as pedestrians are allowed, I’m going to do it,” said Jarvis, who tends to jog alone. “Obviously, I won’t be jogging the BQE, the Gowanus or the Belt, but everything else is fair game.”

7/8 update: Hey, he’s already been to Junius Street! Props to the running guy!

Scratch That Method Off Your List

This answers once and for all whether it’s possible to blast your way into an ATM:

A man set off a small explosive device last night in a failed attempt to rob an automated teller machine in the West Village, police said.

No one was hurt in the 11:40 p.m. blast outside New York City Bagels on Sixth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets.

Cops said the small blast didn’t even dent the cash machine, which is attached to a wall outside the store, facing the street.

But What Does The Kabbalah Say About Running The AC All Day?

I’m gonna say it and you can’t stop me — only in New York, Kids, only in New York:

If one hangs around Lower Manhattan long enough, one may see a white Ford van with its exterior adorned with Hebrew lettering and diagrams about the Kabbalah, the ancient mystical movement often studied by Hasidic Jews that deals with the nature of divinity and creation of the soul.

The van is not filled with Jewish missionaries, but rather with a greasy jumble of valves, fan motors, blowtorches and other equipment and tools. On the door, in English, is the company name: Aleph Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Service. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

. . .

So what is with these mystical messages on a gritty construction van parked with other banged-up service vehicles on busy Manhattan streets?

Its owner, Nelson Cabezas, 58, is just waiting for you to ask, and if you catch him when he is not fixing a walk-in freezer, air-conditioning unit, sushi refrigerator or ice machine, he will offer as much explanation as you want.

Mr. Cabezas is not like most Kabbalah scholars. He is not a rabbi — he is not even Jewish. His parents came from Nicaragua, and he was raised on tough Bronx streets in the 1950’s and 60’s.

He is a refrigerator and air-conditioner mechanic with a theology degree. He is an ordained interfaith minister with a refrigeration engineer’s license, who has spent the past few decades of his life studying refrigeration and the Kabbalah in tandem.

Mr. Cabezas draws a direct parallel between divine energy and the raw electricity created in power plants and sent through the heavy-duty power grids in and around New York City. Like God’s energy, he says, the raw electricity is so powerful that it must be “stepped down” many times with transformers, from thousands of volts to the 115-volt level that powers household appliances.

“For example, Con Edison produces thousands of volts of energy that is way too powerful for us to use, the same way God must reduce his energy through the 10 universes described in the Kabbalah, so that our material universe can comprehend it,” Mr. Cabezas said.

He explained this while he examined the cooling system of a walk-in freezer in the busy basement kitchen of Chef and Company, a catering business on West 18th Street.

Father’s Day Cookout . . . On The FDR!

New Yorkers do the darndest things:

About 40 old friends stopped in at the annual Father’s Day cookout outside the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, but many thousands more people passed through. You did, too, if you were northbound on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive during daylight hours yesterday, and if you used the exit for the Willis Avenue Bridge, you could have reached out and snatched a hot dog off a grill.

The cooks leaned against the concrete barrier separating them from speedy highway traffic a few feet away. Cars passed in a constant, droning blur. A bedraggled homeless man slept beneath a tree nearby, and another shuffled through the party collecting empty cans. A black fence blocked a section of the East River waterfront where the sidewalk had collapsed.

Only a New Yorker, and only an optimistic one at that, would look at the spot and think “cookout,” but Raymond Bryant, 34, an aspiring rapper whose stage name is Buck Smooth, pushed hot dogs around the grill and seemed amazed at his fortune.

“This is a good spot,” he said, dousing the coals — and if a breeze had just kicked up, probably a car or two — with lighter fluid. “It’s the best kept secret in Harlem.”

. . .

The legality of the celebration, and of others nearby, was unclear yesterday. Inquiries to the Parks Department Web site and calls to transportation and police officials were inconclusive, in part, perhaps, because of a deliberate vagueness in the description of the locations visited for this article, so as to not risk spoiling the parties. Suffice it to say that drinking cognac and beer in a public area violates open container laws, and the rest seems open to interpretation.