Nitwit, Now You’ve Got Us Feeling Bad For Developers!

As a renter, you know your landlord-tenant dispute is flimsy when even the Village Voice makes you seem unsympathetic:

Two years ago, his landlord, Larry Tauber — by accounts, neither a sleazy slumlord nor a chummy pushover — offered Peckham $75,000 to leave his $1,007-a-month West 21st Street one-bedroom, so that he could begin a gut renovation of the building to convert it to swanky rentals. Peckham’s refusals led Tauber to up the offer; by this summer, he’d tried to tempt the tenant with an $800-a-month lease governed by rent-stabilized guidelines on a renovated one-bedroom on West 69th Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway, a five-minute walk away from the apartments of Steven Spielberg and Bruce Willis.

. . .

“It’s your business,” one of Peckham’s West 20th Street neighbors in a Tauber-owned building told him when they ran into each other the other day, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t be holding out for any southern exposure. If you can get an apartment at a decent rent in a decent building, take it.” Had the neighbor known of the apartment Peckham has refused to take — at a rent less than half what its previous tenant paid — he surely would have shared his shock at Peckham’s seeming greed.

Dude, for the benefit of every other renter in this city, take the fucking deal!

For $2.1 Billion, We Better Get Expos Up The Ying Yang

One station, $2.1 billion, to be funded by the city:

The city will pay $2.1 billion to build a single subway stop on the No. 7 train extension as part of its deal with the MTA to share a role in developing the West Side rail yards.

MTA board members yesterday unanimously approved a plan to auction the prime Manhattan real estate to the highest bidder that meets a set of yet-to-be-determined criteria set by the agency and the city.

Should the cost of extending the No. 7 train from Times Square west to 11th Avenue and down to 34th Street end up costing more than $2.1 billion, the MTA will be on the line for any overruns, officials said.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said that despite arguing with the city over the particulars, the offer was hard to refuse.

“This is one of the few times we’re getting a project where we don’t borrow or use our own resources,” he said. “Our riders get an extension of their line at no cost to them.”

Under the current plan, the city will pay only for building the terminal station at 34th Street, not the second one originally planned for 41st Street and 10th Avenue.

Instead, a “shell” of a station will be built at 41st Street, in case the agency later decides the extra stop is necessary. Building that station would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

But Kalikow said the MTA decided the station isn’t needed now.

“This is a lot of money for one stop,” said Beverly Dolinksy, director the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “The MTA and the riders are still going to be left hanging.”

And is it just me or does the Javits calendar look pretty busy already?

If Crisco Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Use Crisco

Hizznanny wants to ban trans fats — not at schools, not in public facilities, but everywhere:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing.

As you might assume, the restaurant industry was skeptical:

E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 3,500 restaurants in New York City, said the proposal before the city’s Board of Health would most likely lead to litigation. The group plans to fight the proposal at an Oct. 30 public hearing.

“They’re going way beyond the scope of an appointed agency,” Mr. Hunt said of the health department. He added that such an action “could be considered in restraint of interstate commerce” even if it was enacted by the mayor and City Council and that there could be grounds for a lawsuit.

. . .

And Mr. Hunt wondered how small restaurants would adapt. “For a health inspector to walk into a mom and pop restaurant in Queens, where they barely speak English, and find a can of Crisco shortening on the shelf and then fine them $1,000,” he said, “well, that’s unreasonable.”

But at least one local restauranteur went off message, reasoning that since his establishment didn’t use trans fats, he didn’t feel the need to speak out:

Some restaurant owners support the plan. Mark Maynard-Parisi, 39, managing partner at Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in Gramercy Park, said the plan was “wonderful.”

Blue Smoke uses a blend of canola and vegetable oils for frying that was recently certified as trans fat free by the health department, Mr. Maynard-Parisi said. “I’m not trying to pass us off as a healthy restaurant,” he said. But, he said, he and his partners “wanted it to be real and, to us, margarine,” which is rich in trans fats, “isn’t real.”

First they came for the trans fats . . .

Then again, why worry? After all, in large swaths of the city, even the smoking ban is largely unenforced.

Or alternatively, let the Health Department inspect places like Blue Smoke in Manhattan all they want — everyone grandstands, no one is punished, everyone wins.

It Was For The Birds

Sure, spin it as a way to save the birds:

They spent $1.7 million to re-light the Parachute Jump earlier this summer — but the landmark will soon go dark to save birds.

Last week, the Parachute Jump became the first Brooklyn building to join the “Lights Out New York” program, which encourages tall buildings to douse their lights to protect migratory birds.

“On a foggy night, when the birds don’t have the moon or the stars as a navigational guide, they [can] start circling lighted towers,” said Yigal Gelb, of New York City Audubon.

Once the birds begin circling, they get disoriented, and crash into each other or the tower. And sometimes they get so tired flying around that they drop simply from exhaustion.

. . .

The Parachute Jump is the program’s only Brooklyn member, and one of only six members citywide, a group that includes the Chrysler and Citicorp buildings.

Parachute Jump lightning designer Leni Schwendinger said she was more than happy to re-program the tower’s lighting scheme during the fall and spring migratory seasons.

“I’m happy to be a poster child” for the “Lights Out” program, Schwendinger said.

But careful readers may remember that the lights weren’t all that bright to begin with:

The reviews from those assembled were muted. Phyllis Carbo, 70, who rode on the Parachute Jump as a girl, hesitated when asked for her opinion. “I’m running for Assembly on the Republican line, so I have to be very careful,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Even the evening’s master of ceremonies, Dick Zigun, one of Coney Island’s leading boosters, pronounced the light show “very subtle.”

Others were less restrained.

“Did they light it already? Is this it?” asked Joe Joya, 63.

His wife, Jane, 61, said, “I thought it was going to be a lot brighter. I thought that the lights were going to be more of a Vegas type of thing.”

It’s Obviously The Pointer

Those who know me certainly understand that I am not one to talk, but what the hell is wrong with kids today? White socks and penny loafers should never be considered “hot,” no matter who your teacher is:

A ccording to the rankings published on ratemyprofessors.com, college students rate Andrew Beran, adjunct math professor at NYU, Pace University, and Marymount Manhattan, the tenth-hottest professor, male or female, in all of America—and the No. 1 in New York.

Beran explains what this all means:

I certainly get a lot of attention. Students tell me I look like Kirk Cameron, which is nice, because he’s a teen heartthrob, you know? So when one student said to me, “Professor Beran, you are so cute!” I said, “I am so cute . . . damn cute!” Just like Mike Seaver on Growing Pains used to say.

. . .

Once in a while, it’s hard to control the girls. One time I took out my pointer to show something on the blackboard, and a girl called out, “Professor Beran, you have a very large pointer!” I had to keep a straight face, but it was hard! And I put the pointer away, and another girl called out, “You might as well whip it out, we already saw it!” I never took out my pointer again.