Only The Best

It’s good to see the mayor — especially after all that hyperventilating! — make another empty threat to lay off employees:

The Senate stalemate will cost New York at least $60 million a month, Mayor Bloomberg warned Wednesday — and the sudden budget hole may cost some city workers their jobs.

“Make no mistake about it, any less revenues mean fewer employees, because the city’s budget is basically hiring 300,000 of the best people that anybody’s ever put together and paying them,” Bloomberg said.

“If we don’t have that money, it’s going to hurt everybody.”

But seriously — “300,000 of the best people that anybody’s ever put together”? What’s with the sarcasm? Has the mayor beaten himself down, too?

Dirty (Water) Dogs!

Because croissants and cupcakes are exactly like hot dogs and soft-serve ice cream:

Monday was a routine day for Grant Di Mille and Samira Mahboubian, the owners of the Street Sweets food truck, a mobile trove of croissants, cupcakes and cookies that got rolling last month.

The couple loaded the truck by 6 a.m., parked in front of the Museum of Modern Art at 7, traded hostilities with other vendors from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and were surrounded by police officers by 2.

“The police told these guys that nobody owns the streets. But it sure doesn’t feel that way,” said Mr. Di Mille, who called the Midtown North precinct — not for the first time — when a jewelry vendor set up shop directly in front of his sales window.

In four weeks of business, the couple has been threatened at the depot where they park the truck; cursed by a gyro vendor who said that he would set their truck on fire; told to stay off every corner in Midtown by ice cream truck drivers; and approached by countless others with advice — both friendly and menacing — on how to get along on the streets.

“I want to be a good neighbor,” Mr. Di Mille said. “But I am nobody’s fool, and nobody’s pushover, and I should not have to carry a baseball bat on my truck in order to sell cupcakes.”

In the last two years, upscale food trucks have swarmed the streets, entrancing New Yorkers with everything from artisanal Earl Grey ice cream to vegan tacos. These highly visible trucks, their outspoken owners and their followers on Twitter, Facebook and food blogs, have broken the code of the streets that has long kept a relative peace among food vendors.

Turf wars are nothing new for carts selling kebabs and cheap coffee. But the makers of thumbprint cookies, chicken-Thai basil dumplings, and crème anglaise are not happy about the sharp elbows that are part of the city’s sidewalk economy, or the murky bureaucracy that oversees the issuing of permits.

Are Nazi Comparisons Inevitable, Too?

I almost want John Sampson to win this battle:

Mayor Bloomberg accused the deadlocked Senate of trying to “destroy” the city’s school system — and said weakening mayoral control would be like reviving the Soviet Union.

Bloomberg, whose control over city schools will expire next week if Albany doesn’t act, warned of pending chaos.

“You want to talk about what would happen; just take a look at what happens when no one is in charge,” said Bloomberg, calling for the Senate to pass the bill the Assembly has approved.

“If the Senate passes something that differs by one word or more it is saying to the city: We want to resurrect the Soviet Union, we want to bring back chaos.” Bloomberg fumed.

“What [the senators] are doing is just saying to the parents, the students and the future of our city — ‘We’re going to destroy you.’ That’s the only possible explanation.”

Leading Economic Indicators: Unorthodox Event Spaces

Why stop at Bryant Park, the West 4th Street Courts or Central Park? Every city property should be rented out for events large and small:

A wealthy inmate was allowed to host a lavish bar mitzvah behind bars for his son at the downtown lockup known as the Tombs, The Post has learned.

The proud papa, Tuvia Stern, is a financial-scam artist who jumped bail and spent nearly 20 years on the lam.

City Correction Department officials permitted him to use his own caterer, who supplied kosher food, china, forks — and knives — for about 60 guests who partied and danced the hora for six hours in the jailhouse gym.

Stern’s family and friends were allowed to keep their cellphones — normally a huge security no-no. And Stern was given the OK to dress in clothing appropriate for the occasion.

The guest list at the jail included several prominent rabbis as well as Yaakov Shwekey, a popular Orthodox singer, and a band.

The city threw in its own present — overtime pay for the correction officers staffing the soiree.

The Dec. 30 bash was so successful that jailbird Stern chose the same venue four months later for his daughter Breindy’s engagement party for 10 family members, sources said.

Shame-faced Correction officials yesterday quietly disciplined five top employees, including a rabbi and an imam, for signing off on the bar mitzvah.

“I’ve never seen, in my career, anything as stupid as this,” said a Department of Correction insider about the bar mitzvah, which was permitted over the objections of at least one jail official. “It’s outrageous what transpired.”

At Least No One Said That It Looked Like A Movie

Because that’s what I would have assumed, being that the last “pimp” I saw in Times Square was probably Terrence Howard at the AMC Empire 25:

In a shooting that recalled the grittier days of Times Square, one pimp murdered another Tuesday just outside a swanky hotel filled with tourists, police said.

The two pimps got into a “business dispute” on W. 43rd St. in front of the glitzy Westin Hotel just before 5:30 a.m., police said.

“That’s what people on the street are telling us — that what they did for a living, and the dispute, had something to do with that business,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Location Scout: Times Square.