Give Them The Tories Of Queens County While You’re At It — After All, JFK Is There

On account of a single tea shop and one lousy chipper Community Board 2 is being pressured into giving the British their own Little:

In an effort to join the city’s pantheon of ethnic neighbourhoods such as Chinatown and Little Brazil, the Campaign for Little Britain — a coalition of Virgin Airways and local businesses such as Tea and Sympathy and A Salt and Battery — announced its plans yesterday to officially rename the area between West 13th Street and Greenwich Avenue “Little Britain” to honour one of America’s closest and politest allies.

“Officially recognising cultural communities throughout the borough has been a constant throughout the decades,” said Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, who with his wife Nicky Perry, owner of Tea and Sympathy, created the campaign more than a year ago. “But despite the number of British residents in New York City, and the large number of travellers between here and the U.K., there is no Little Britain.

. . .

With slogans such as “Sir Michael Bloomberg. Know What We Mean, Bloomie?” and “What’s One More Queen in the Village?” the campaign will rely on a very British sense of humour to make its argument heard.

The initial stages of the plan include an online petition and viral advertising campaign. Then, it’s off to Community Board 2 and, if approved, City Hall.

Leave Your Kiddies, Leave Your Wife, Guaranteed To Be A Waste Of Your Time . . .

Let’s say you leave your wife and kids and job and camp out an entire week so that you can be first in line to buy Mets tickets. What game do you get tickets for? Home opener? Interleague action against the Yankees in May?

Nope, not you. Instead, you use that opportunity to get one ticket for what will likely be a totally meaningless late-season game against the Florida Freakin’ Marlins:

Bayside native Eddie Sanchez moved to the Poconos in Pennsylvania three years ago, but that didn’t stop him from vying for the title of “Most Determined Mets Fan”. For 14 years he was number two on line when Mets ticket windows opened on the second Sunday in March, and for the past two years he’s been the first person to buy tickets. This March was no exception.

When the New York Mets opened their ticket windows on Sunday, March 11 to sell single game tickets for the 2007 regular season, Sanchez snatched up the first ticket sold.

Sanchez had waited on line during a week that saw temperatures dip to near record levels, demonstrating his devotion to the National League East Champions. (The Mets missed the 2006 National League Playoff title by one game.) A contractor, Sanchez took a vacation from his wife, three children and his job to trek to Shea Stadium on Sunday, March 4 to secure his place at the head of the singlegame ticket line. On Sunday, March 11 he bought one ticket, for the last game the Mets will play at home during the 2007 regular season on Sunday, September 30, a 1:10 p.m. match up against the Florida Marlins.

. . .

According to Sanchez being the number one Mets ticket-buying fan is easy:

“My secret; take a vacation from your wife, family and job, and be prepared with food to last you for a week. Yes! You must also love the Mets.”

Years Later, Historians And Novelists Pointed To That Precise Point Of His Tenure In Office And Noted, “If Only, If Only”

Expect this to be signed later, far away from television cameras and hysterical pedicab drivers:

For the first time during his administration, Mayor Bloomberg put the brakes on a proposed law yesterday — one that would place tough restrictions on pedicabs — just moments before he was about to sign it into law.

At a bill-signing ceremony at City Hall yesterday, Bloomberg listened intently as angry pedicab drivers pleaded with him to change his mind.

One after one, they told the mayor they thought the bill went against Bloomberg’s plan to make New York more environmentally friendly because they don’t pollute.

“It’s hypocrisy,” said George Bliss, president of the city’s Pedicab Owners Association.

Another pedicab operator told the mayor that signing this bill would “ruin your legacy.”

As the bill sat on a table with several official City of New York pens laying next to them waiting to be signed, Bloomberg then stepped to the podium and said he would hold off signing the bill.

“I want to think about it,” he declared.

“We were screaming at the mayor and he actually listened,” said pedicab driver Melissa von Ludwig.

Wouldn’t it be great if this bill actually did ruin Bloomberg’s legacy? It would read like a Pynchon novel! That said, it’s going to be a tough slog for pedicab drivers to make a dent in Hizzoner’s 73 percent approval rating:

Call him Mayor Teflon, because even when New Yorkers are furious at Mike Bloomberg, they still think he’s doing a good job.

That was the remarkable finding yesterday of the latest Quinnipiac University poll, which showed Bloomberg enjoying a near-record 73 percent approval rating among registered voters.

The strong voter approval — just two points off his previous 75 percent high — came despite the city’s disastrous mishandling of school-bus schedule changes and widespread dissatisfaction with a blitz of alternate-side parking tickets following the Feb. 14 snowstorm.

The poll, which surveyed 1,261 voters between March 6 and 12, found Bloomberg, who lives on the Upper East Side, receiving his strongest approval rating from Manhattan voters, 80 percent of whom gave him thumbs-up.

Empire State Building: 1 Year, 45 Days; Rockefeller Center: Seven Years; Mount Freaking Rushmore: 14 Years

So if the Atlantic Yards project is going to take 15 years, it must be the most awesome development ever:

Forest City Ratner claims it will take 10 years to construct its Atlantic Yards development, with an arena opening for the 2009-10 basketball season.

But earlier this week Chuck Ratner, cousin of Bruce and CEO of FCR’s parent company Forest City Enterprises, stated that it would take longer.

“This is going to be a 15-year buildout,” Chuck Ratner said at the Citigroup 2007 Property CEO Conference in Naples, Fla. The arena would open by the 2010 season, he added.

The comments, which were first reported yesterday by Atlantic Yards watchdog blogger Norman Oder, come on the heels of landscape architect Laurie Olin telling The New York Observer he believed the project would take 20 years.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Mormons Movin’ On Up . . . (And This Isn’t Even A Mitt Romney Update, Although He Is Mentioned In The Article)

Mormons on the Upper East Side — no kidding:

In suburban communities, missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints go door-to-door in pairs, preaching their gospel to prospective converts. While doormen on the Upper East Side make it more difficult to save souls, the organization informally known as the Mormon church is making inroads in the neighborhood — recently opening a five-story, 39,000-square-foot building on East 87th Street.

The multimillion-dollar, Gothic-style structure, which opened to worshippers in October, houses two wards, or congregations: One is composed largely of young families, and the other is made up of singles ages 18 to 30. The brick church was built with ambitious expansion plans in mind — it could easily accommodate at least two more wards, each made up of 300 or more people.

The Upper East Side family ward, which serves residents living between 50th and 110th streets, met across town until last fall. Since moving into the new building, attendance at the group’s Sunday service has grown by about 25%, to about 150 people, its spiritual leader, Bishop Joseph Jensen, said. The bishop said the Upper East Side is home to a growing number of young Mormon families. He attributed the growth to good schools and some reasonably priced housing stock — relative to other Manhattan neighborhoods. He predicted that at least one other ward would open at the East 87th Street church within five years.

Church doctrine emphasizes proselytizing, and neighborhood missionaries hoping to convert new members have their work cut out for them. “This area is tough, because missionaries just can’t get access to so many buildings,” Bishop Jensen said.

. . .

The two missionaries assigned to the Upper East Side, Trey Reed, 19, and Gabriel Ferreira, 21, rely heavily on old-fashioned pavement-pounding. Each week, the cleancut, suit-clad Messrs. Reed and Ferreira approach about 200 people on the streets and on the subway.

While most of those people reject their efforts out-of-hand, Mr. Ferreira, who grew up in Brazil and Orem, Utah, said some New Yorkers can be surprisingly open-minded. “Sometimes I find someone and think, ‘He would never talk to me,’ and then he’ll sit down and listen and talk,” he said, noting that in the past month he and Mr. Reed have convinced one person to convert.