The Real Worldization Of New York City

If you can’t moneymake a waterfront site into a money-making commercial property, try building dorms instead:

Developer Joe Sitt sent shockwaves through a monthly gathering of real estate executives on Tuesday by sharing news that he hoped to convert his waterfront land between the Ikea superstore and the Fairway supermarket into a student housing complex.

“Ask any university, they’re starving for student housing,” Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, told the development big wigs at the Real Estate Roundtable at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

“[It could be] quasi-residential student housing if we can tempt a nearby university.”

Location Scout: Revere Sugar Refinery.

So This Means A Soda Tax Will Be Less Useful, Right?

Interesting theory, not sure if I buy it though:

Manhattan shops are less likely to have candies, chips, sodas and other munchies at the checkout than stores elsewhere in the country, according to researchers at the Tulane University School of Public Health.

Nationwide, 41 percent of non-food stores stock the treats, but in Manhattan, just 32 percent do.

The upside is that Manhattan’s obesity rate is 16 percent, compared with 33 percent in the rest of the country.

The Tail-Wagging-Dog Theory Of City Governance

See how Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro defends the usefulness of his position:

Staffers with civil service-protected jobs would also have to be retained on the city payroll, even if they were transferred to other agencies or boroughs. The Borough Hall building, he said, would remain open, meaning that the city would still have to pay for heat, electricity and phone service.

Oh wait, they do blood drives, too:

Borough Hall also gets local businesses to sponsor concerts and other activities that don’t cost the city any money but improve the quality of life for Islanders. His office also sponsors blood drives, and food and coat giveaways that benefit the needy.

Before Mom And Dad Book Their New York Hotel . . .

Somehow the Hotel Carter avoided the list this year. No worries, there’s another NYC-area contender:

The Times Square inn — voted the nation’s sixth-filthiest hotel and worst in the Big Apple last week by travelers on Tripadvisor.com — is a throwback to the dirty old days of the 1970s, when hotels like this one rented rooms by the hour, not the week.

. . .

In Room 307, The Post found orange mold in the shower, a chipped toilet seat, ill-fitting ceiling tiles stained with water and piles of dust behind the headboard.

. . .

The front-desk clerk told The Post the that Tripadvisor is always asking the New York Inn for money for better placement on its site — which the hotel has refused to pay.

Just One More Way We All Seem Pathetically Small And Lonely

People being creative with their SSID handle:

The signs say 82nd and Broadway, but a quick look on the Web reveals it’s the heart of a wireless Internet network dubbed “dontstalkus.”

Keep walking north on Broadway and that network gives way to another named “Turndownyourmusic” which, at 110th St., becomes the “wehaveroaches” network.

Welcome to the wild wild world of Wi-Fi.

. . .

The names of the networks pop up on the user’s computer. Sometimes they have generic handles — like 05B7754 — but others are more clever.

Some Wi-Fi users on the East Side display their political stripes by dubbing their networks “killhealthcare,” “betterthanbush” and “Palinsux.”

Up in the Bronx, Wi-Fi users with a religious — or anti-religious — bent have taken to giving their networks names like “jesussaves,” “godisfake” and “endofdays.”

In the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the networks take a more carnal direction with monikers like “singleandluvinit,” “needaman” and “nudist.”

“Welcome to the wild wild world of Wi-Fi” — what is this, 1999?