Leading Economic Indicators: Inappropriate Thievery

Pensioners steal the Salvation Army’s red kettle from a Staten Island cafe:

Workers at the Corporate Grind Cafe in Bloomfield kept the Salvation Army’s red kettle campaign going long after the holidays, with staff agreeing to direct any tips from customers into the familiar collection bucket on the counter.

Every few weeks, just as the kettle fills to capacity, store owner Darren Smith delivers its contents to the Christian charity he’s had a relationship with for several years. Smith’s father, Realtor J. Delbert Smith, is on the board of directors for the Staten Island chapter of the Salvation Army.

The bucket was almost full Tuesday when a couple — a man and woman who look more like grandparents than thieves — ordered a salad and a sandwich wrap and ate before walking out the door with the bucket and an estimated $200 in donations.

If You Seek Amy

New York is another character in another book:

One recent afternoon, the writer Amy Sohn sat at the Third Street Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a few blocks from her apartment, and explained the central paradox of her neighborhood. “Every mother knows what a Park Slope Mother is, but no one thinks she is one,” she said.

. . .

Ms. Sohn and Mr. Miller moved to Park Slope in 2005, paying around $600,000 for a two-bedroom third-floor walk-up in a co-op on a block between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West — prime north Slope territory, though Ms. Sohn prefers not to reveal the exact street.

. . .

The apartment has a graceful layout, and the sort of prewar details sought after by the characters that populate “Prospect Park West,” like a working fireplace and an antique wood radiator cover in the living room. The kitchen was recently renovated because Mr. Miller likes to cook. The walls are covered with his paintings — striking portraits of old-time boxers. A pair of boxing gloves dangles from the fireplace mantel.

It’s a masculine look for a home where a 4-year-old girl is often running the floors. “I like the fact that it doesn’t feel like a day care center,” Ms. Sohn said. It’s difficult to be totally chic with a toddler, however. Asked about the peculiar, low-rise coffee table, Ms. Sohn explained that it has a chalk surface, which is used by the youngest in-house artist.

That Ms. Sohn has such concerns might come as a surprise to people who remember her “Female Trouble” column from the late-’90s in New York Press. In sexually explicit language, she chronicled her escapades as a single woman in New York — dates and dalliances with a litany of pale, wispy, downtown artist-types. One reader, in a letter to the newspaper, likened her writing to Penthouse Forum in that “I can’t believe it’s true, but I can’t stop reading, either.”

Ms. Sohn was a literary girl-about-town, but she said that even then she wanted a family. “When I was 25, I felt like a spinster,” she said. “That was where a lot of the comedy from my column came from — I wanted to marry every guy I met.”

In the span of two dizzying years, Ms. Sohn met and married Mr. Miller and became pregnant. Asked if she misses her old life, she said: “I don’t miss the anxiety. My joke is that the conversations around infant sleep are like the conversations around when-should-I-call. It’s like, ‘Last night he slept from 9 to 12, and then he woke up at 12.’ It’s the same as: ‘He said he’d call on Thursday. Then Friday came. By Saturday I called him.’ It’s ultimately very boring.”

That’s The Way The Biscotti Crumbles Into Nothing, And Leaves 150 People Jobless

After threatening to close the cookie factory where an extended strike took place, Stella d’Oro announces it is moving operations to Ohio:

The owners of Stella D’oro, the longtime Bronx Italian cookie and breadstick baker, said Wednesday they have sold the company — and its operations will be moving to Ohio by the end of the month.

Some 150 union and other plant workers will be out on the street.

How About The Eyeball Of The Clamshell?

It didn’t take long for the Brooklyn Paper to figure out a new nickname for the latest version of the basketball arena at Atlantic Yards:

From “The Hanger” to . . . “The Clamshell”?

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner unveiled stunning new designs for the proposed basketball arena at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues this morning, renderings that strive to silence the outrage created in May when Ratner dumped Frank Gehry in favor of a Midwest architecture firm whose first effort, a hanger-like design, fell flat.

. . .

Of course, not everyone cheered the latest incarnation of the basketball arena. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the principal opposition group to the full Atlantic Yards mega-project, described the design as a “big eye ball at Atlantic and Flatbush.”

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Countless Hovers Under Cover Of The Street, Or, The Gift Down Below

Amid all the endorsements, the mayor’s real strategy to bring the city back revolves around sneaky-as-shit ticket agents:

Law enforcement sources told the Gazette the traffic agents hide behind the pillars to catch motorists who get trapped at red lights in the busy intersection.

“It’s crazy,” the sources said. “The agents curl up behind the pillars and wait until a car gets jammed up. Then they pounce, scan the registration and toss the summons at the motorist before they skulk back behind the pillars.”

Sources acknowledge that it is illegal to block the intersection, where signs clearly indicate, “Don’t Block The Box”. The signs also warn that motorists who get caught blocking the intersection face a fine and points on their driver’s license.

“It’s the way they’re doing it,” the sources said. “Instead of directing traffic at the intersection or standing as a deterrent, they’re jumping from behind the pillars and scaring everybody.”

. . .

High-ranking police sources said the NYPD is looking into the actions of traffic agents who “jump and scan” vehicles at Hoyt Avenue. “Drivers know they have to be careful when they see traffic agents at a location,” the sources said. “The agents on Hoyt aren’t concerned with traffic control or enforcing the law. It’s clear, by their actions, that they have only one thing in mind — to write as many summonses as possible.”

NB: I think they’ve started using unmarked cars, too . . .