Steel-Cage Fighting For Your Liver

Maybe this is another way to raise revenue in a tough economic climate:

The State Liquor Authority recently approved the sale of 192-proof booze — meaning the potent potables are 96% alcohol.

Some shop owners and imbibers are raising a glass to the hooch, believed to be the strongest ever available in the state, particularly folks in Polish and Russian communities who’ve had to travel to New Jersey for the stiff brew.

We’ll Always Have Those Scavenger Hunts

If there were ever such a thing as a pro-development borough historian, I think we found him:

Pledging to connect with the public instead of library shelves, Jack Eichenbaum said he will offer scavenger hunts to help students learn the under appreciated legacy of their neighborhoods.

. . .

Eichenbaum stressed he will embrace an “educator” role rather than becoming an advocate who leads landmarking rallies to save “just every old building.”

Pressed on whether he would seek landmark status to protect historic sites, Eichenbaum replied, “I don’t see myself championing those types of causes.”

Instead, he said, he will refer preservationists who seek advice on landmarking causes to other experts or museums.

At Least They Had The Sense Not To Try To Replicate “The Mystery Of Al Capone’s Vault”

I wonder if this will be the last time the new regime at DEP tries to impress a jaded press corps with new technology:

Mr. Holloway stood near an open sewer manhole off Kent Avenue in Brooklyn beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. The hose from one of the trucks was lowered inside the manhole and soon began sucking. The smell from the open manhole was vaguely, almost sweetly, foul; no one odor was detectable, but the odor was there nonetheless.

The agency has placed machines equipped with sonar technology and video cameras into the darkened sewer system to help identify the clogged areas. About 40 percent of the interceptor lines have been tracked so far.

. . .

On two tables near the trucks was a sampling of sewer detritus, all of it pulled recently from a sewer interceptor in South Ozone Park in Queens. There were bricks, pieces of wood, chunks of concrete, metal spikes, a rusty spoon, a 20-ounce plastic bottle of Pepsi, a deflated football and a can of Zazz Seltzer.

No evidence of alligators could be found among the items on the tables.

It was at another open manhole, about nine miles away on East 123rd Street in Manhattan, that teenagers shoveling snow one February day in 1935 did, in fact, see one in a city sewer, or said they saw one. They pulled up a sickly, 125-pound, 8-foot alligator with some clothesline they borrowed from a nearby stove shop, only to kill it with their shovels after it snapped at one of the boys.

In Hollywood This Would Be The Third Act Of A Rom-Com Script

Sadly, the Port Authority just doesn’t see those possibilities:

A Greyhound bus driver hijacked one of the company’s brand-new $600,000 coaches from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in a desperate bid to visit a gal pal in Mount Vernon, sources said.

. . .

PA police tracked down the bus that day using the vehicle’s GPS system. Snipes was arrested the next day.

Location Scout: Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Most Of The Time Having 51 Councilmembers Is An Unwieldy Mess . . .

. . . and yet sometimes it comes in very handy:

Councilman [Dan Halloran] was on his way to hid district office in Whitestone Monday when he says he saw Officer Daniel Chu zoom by, talking on a cell phone with his lights blazing.

“I know the traffic agents have no emergency they have to run to,” Halloran said. “It immediately set my radar off.”

He said he followed the car as it blasted through two stop signs while weaving in and out of traffic before illegally parking in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts, where the officer went to get coffee.

Halloran says he pulled over and began snapping pictures of the officer’s vehicle parked at the corner of Clintonville St. and 11th Ave.

“[Chu] comes walking out with his iced coffee in his hand,” Halloran said. “He then sees me taking pictures and starts yelling at me.”

Halloran said he told the surly officer that he was a city councilman.

“He said, ‘Oh yeah? You want to take pictures of me? I’m going to give you a ticket,'” Halloran recalled.

Another argument for term limits, by the way . . . more eyes on the street!