It’s Good To Be King

At least he doesn’t “always” use it to park illegally:

Former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who left public office more than 41/2 years ago, regularly uses an NYPD placard to park in illegal spots outside his private law office, the Daily News has found.

Last Wednesday, in the morning and the afternoon, The News spotted Vallone’s Cadillac DeVille parked in an illegal zone near his Astoria, Queens, office.

The sign read “No Parking 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday,” but an NYPD parking placard — a perk granted to Vallone by the city — protected him from getting a ticket.

“I try to use it [the placard] with discretion, but there possibly are times when I don’t,” said Vallone, who served as the Council’s speaker for more than a decade before term limits forced him from office in 2001.

“I don’t always park illegally,” he added. “I assure you of that.”

Vallone, 71, said he currently serves as an informal adviser to the mayor and the Council, but he acknowledged that he uses the placard for private reasons when parking outside his law office.

When told about complaints from people in the neighborhood who vehemently object to Vallone getting the special placard, the former speaker said, “I can understand that.”

“I do make make mistakes and I’ll try to correct it. I’m sorry,” he said.

But this is actually a time-honored tradition — sort of the way former Presidents get office space and a secret service detail:

Paul Browne, the NYPD’s top spokesman, said it’s the department’s “longstanding practice” to provide special parking placards to former mayors, former police commissioners and former City Council chiefs.

Browne said the placards expire annually, but he said these former officials are entitled to the special perk for life.

“It’s been the custom followed for many years,” he said, adding, “I don’t know the precise history.”

Because It’s Not Like Thousands Of People Carry “A Liquid” With Them . . .

God help subway riders who now may have to endure this every day:

Cops halted a Manhattan subway and examined passengers carrying bottled water and other drinks yesterday after a concerned tipster reported seeing a bottle of suspicious liquid on the No.6 train, police and witnesses said.

The startling spot check was not part of a wider NYPD counterterrorism initiative and had no connection to the thwarted British terror plot to use liquid explosives to blow up passenger jets, authorities said.

It was a routine response to a suspicious package — but several passengers were still alarmed.

“This is a new level of fear, watching for people carrying drinks on the subway,” said Wallis Post, 25, of Manhattan, who was on the train searched by cops at the 51st St. station and again at Grand Central Terminal.

Cops halted the subway about 9 a.m. shortly after a tipster reported seeing a suspicious bottle of liquid on the train at 125th St., police said.

“Is anyone carrying a liquid?” a uniformed cop asked after boarding the train with another officer at 51st St., according to Post and another passenger.

Another cop then said into her hand-held radio: “We’re looking for the high alert,” prompting a few frightened passengers to get off the train, the witnesses said.

As the cops held the train, a woman in a gym outfit held up a Poland Spring water bottle with red juice inside it and told them, “I have this.”

The cops asked if the liquid had spilled on anything and then took it, Post said.

After a five-minute delay, the train was allowed to depart the station, but when it rolled into Grand Central another cop got on and asked: “Has anyone seen a liquid?”

Cops again searched the train before deciding there was no threat, Post said.

The New York Times On Your Side

The good news is that they finally found your car underneath tons of rubble. The bad news is that you have to pay to have it towed away:

Denise Jack got a good news-bad news phone call from an insurance company yesterday regarding her blue 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, which was buried by an avalanche in Upper Manhattan last year and has been sitting beneath the mountain of dirt on Riverside Drive ever since.

The good news was that after more than a year of waiting and frustration, her sport utility vehicle would soon be dug out.

The bad news was that she would have pay to have the S.U.V. — or the presumably flattened hunk of metal, glass and rubber that was once her car — towed away.

“They said they were about to dig out the cars and needed my documents to see if they could settle it,” Ms. Jack said. “That made me hopeful, but then they said it was my responsibility to have the car towed away once it was dug out.”

On the morning of May 12, 2005, Ms. Jack parked the Pathfinder on Riverside Drive next to a 75-foot-high retaining wall beneath the Castle Village apartment complex near 183rd Street.

When the wall gave way that afternoon and collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, it buried the stretch of Riverside Drive where Ms. Jack’s vehicle and several others were parked. There the S.U.V. sat as the seasons rolled by, beneath a two-story mountain of dirt, debris and uprooted trees.

Since her car insurance policy did not cover landslides, Ms. Jack filed a claim with the Greater New York Mutual Insurance Company, which insures Castle Village. Yesterday, she said, that company contacted her to say that the cars would be dug out soon, and asked her to fax some ownership and registration documents to them. And, they said, she should be ready to pay for towing costs.

“I definitely don’t think I should be accountable for removing the car,” Ms. Jack said. “I didn’t know the wall was going to fall when I parked there. It wasn’t even that great of a parking spot.”

Backstory: Retaining Wall to Henry Hudson Parkway: Drop Dead, Rvr Vus.

Yes, But At What Cost?

It’s “free” in the sense that the tickets do not cost actual money. Your time, patience and sanity are another matter:

Friday night’s performance of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” began about 8 p.m. at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. David Suker showed up about 8:45 p.m. He was not late. He was early.

Mr. Suker, 38, was the first person in line for tickets to the next night’s performance. He had a long wait ahead of him — some 16 hours before the theater would hand out the free tickets — but he had his blue air mattress and its battery-powered pump, a bottle of seltzer, a sleeping bag, a lantern and his Army training.

. . .

The lines have become a Shakespeare in the Park tradition and the Delacorte’s unofficial second stage, as lively, improvised and quietly dramatic as the plays for which they form. For “Mother Courage,” the lines are two-act plays. The first line starts in the evening on the cobblestone sidewalk of Central Park West at the edge of the park, at 81st Street. The park closes between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., and when it reopens, people in the first line reassemble outside the theater’s box office.

Time is indeed money in New York City: people were selling tickets to last night’s show on craigslist.com for $45 each and up to $150 for a pair. One ticket holder wrote, “$100 for my time on line or best reasonable offer.” But all of those interviewed said they were waiting for hours only to see the play or to get tickets for friends.

Congress Must Raise Taxes On The Rich . . . The Country’s Social Fabric Depends On It!

There is way too much disposable income out there:

Thousands of New York men are resorting to offering cash and prizes in return for noncommittal relationships.

The men are advertising their offers on sites like suggardaddie.com, under handles like “nice guy, bad boy.” The site describes itself as “the foundations of a great relationship.” It claims the sugar-daddy relationship “can eradicate the issues of financial stress that modern living can bring.”

Single, divorced, married — they’re all trawling for young women to shower with their millions. In return, most want their girl to be at their beck and call.

Logging onto the site using the name Maria Benson, I had some upping their bids within minutes.

Donny (all names have been changed) was looking for a “sexy woman who can go from jeans to stilettos in a flash.”

The self-employed, attached 35-year-old said he would give me $2,000 a month for dates in his first e-mail.

John, a divorced 43-year-old looking for love and claiming his yearly income is “more than you can spend!” said, “I’m tall, rich and enjoy the role of sugar dad. You have to be willing, attentive, and appreciative of me . . . I get off on being generous.”

Jay, whose picture revealed six-pack abs, said his yearly income was more than $1 million but moaned, “I am stuck in a boring, lifeless, and otherwise unrewarding marriage.”

Within 24 hours, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Upper West Side meeting Scott, a boyish-looking 47-year-old who owns his own financial-consulting firm in Manhattan.

He said he was “in search of a discreet relationship with the right woman.” And he was ready to pay to make it happen.

Dressed in a suit and tie on what must have been his lunch hour, he said: “I’ve never done this before. I’ve been married 23 years, and we’re just going through a rough patch right now. I’ve gotten close but never went through with it. I’m ready to now.”

Fifteen minutes later, he agreed to pay the $1,500-a-month rent on my apartment, fund shopping sprees and take me on world-class vacations. The apartment, he said, would be for trysts.

“I just don’t want to deal with the checking in and out of hotels,” he said. “But I’d also give you the money that I would have spent on a room.”

“I don’t want to drag a hooker around town,” he told me. “I like that you seem normal, what are you looking for?”

Then he interrupted, “Just so we’re clear, I’m not leaving my wife, and I don’t plan to . . . I have to be home at night and on the weekends. I have to coach my son’s Little League games.”