Nobody likes a private investigation firm that rats out iffy occupants of rent-controlled/rent-stabilized apartments. But at least these hired snoops are good for the occasional false-identity anecdote:

[Investigator Shane] Williams chimed in about a building where the illegal tenant listed his apartment under the name O. B. Juan KNobi.

Could it be that George Lucas is surreptitiously subletting a pad in some pre-war building downtown? Talk about a disturbance in The Force…

It was inevitable that, in the wake of this leap-of-faith gesture in New York not long ago:

[Homeless man Jay Valentine] said he was hungry and low on cash on Monday when he saw [Merrie Harris] standing with friends outside the restaurant.

“I asked her for change and told her I wasn’t working,” he said. “She said she only had a card. She said, ‘Can I trust you?’ I said, ‘I’m honest, yes.’ I went and bought a few things and came back and gave her her credit card back, and everybody was surprised.

“I said thanks for trusting me. I guess she had a good sense of judgment. She knew I was trustworthy.”

Valentine said he bought deodorant, body wash, a pack of Nat Sherman cigarettes and Vitaminwater. It all cost about $25, he said

…Someone would up the ante and test how other homeless people would behave when handed plastic instead of spare change.

Over the past two weeks, I wandered Toronto’s downtown core with five prepaid Visa and MasterCard gift cards, in $50 and $75 denominations, waiting for people to ask for money.

When they did, I asked them what they needed. A meal at a restaurant, groceries, a new pair of pants, they said. I handed out the cards and asked that they give them back when they’d finished shopping. I either waited at a coffee shop while they shopped or — in the case of those who could not buy what they needed nearby or were reticent about leaving their panhandling post — I said I’d return on another day to pick up the card. That’s when I would reveal that I was a journalist.

The results of this experiment were as follows (keep in mind that those are Canadian dollars, although the exchange rate at the time was basically at par):

Card 1: $50, handed to Jason. Spends $8.69 at McDonald’s. Returns card.

Card 2: $50, to Mark. Spends $21.64 at The Corner Place restaurant. Doesn’t return. Later spends $15.50 at the LCBO.

Card 3: $75, to Joanne. Card is stolen. Over two days, $24.95 spent at McDonald’s, $38.35 at the LCBO.

Card 4: $50, to Al. Card unreturned. Balance remains at $50.

Card 5: $75. Laurie buys $74.61 worth of food, phone minutes and cigarettes at a gas station convenience store. Returns card.

Basically, a mixed bag. I’m wondering if this will spark a trend amongst voyeuristic samaritans: Giving out $20 gift cards to panhandlers, just so the donor can check the account online later to confirm/dash suspicions about how such handouts eventually get spent.

There are 16 acres of debris and under-construction land fenced off in lower Manhattan. Is that Ground Zero? It depends on who you ask:

The evolving boundaries of Ground Zero have informed — or misinformed — the debate about its proximity to the planned [Islamic mosque] Park51 community center. The farther away from the place, the bigger it seems.

“It’s constructed as hallowed ground when people don’t actually have a clear boundary for it or a clear sense of what’s within the boundary,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor who studies political rhetoric. “What you have is a classic instance of people responding to a symbol whose meaning is physically divorced from the actual space.”

Ironically, as symbolic of American imperialism as the World Trade Center towers were to al-Qaeda, the site of their remnants has become just as potent a symbol of resistance and remembrance for Americans. And in both cases, perhaps to a greater degree than they ought to be.

Long ago and several States away, I once kept a home aquarium or two. I never went extreme with my tanks, partly because I didn’t want the hobby to become all-consuming, and because I was renting and didn’t see the sense in installing virtual design elements into living spaces that I didn’t own.

Had those two conditions been eliminated, I suppose I would have shot the works, as is on display in some Manhattan luxury dwellings:

But all that movement and fluidity comes at a price. Universally, owners of fantasy fish tanks describe them — usually in the same breath — as very relaxing and very expensive. Aquariums like the [Karin and Alan Wilzigs’ in TriBeCa] tend to cost a minimum of $50,000, plus at least $1,000 a month for maintenance. And that’s before buying a single fish.

In the world of fantasy fish tanks, it is not uncommon to pay $600 for a black tang or $5,000 for a pet shark, or to have service people on call 24/7 in case a fish gets sick or dies, which could contaminate the entire tank.

I think I spent around $300 to set up my largest tank, a 30-gallon freshwater, nearly ten years ago now. Definitely an eyecatcher in my smallish apartment, and not an awful lot of maintenance (especially compared to saltwater or brackish water aquaria, which tend to require more attention). You can definitely get a nice fish-friendly ambience without spending gobs of cash.

But then, you don’t get neat-o effects like this:

As Mr. Wilzig likes to tell visitors, his [tank] lighting system uses the same software as that of a professional rock concert or a Broadway show… One of the best colors is yellow, he said, because the fish really stand out, but he likes others too. “When you hit the button for red, all of a sudden it’s like the surface of Mars — red fish swimming over a red planet. When you hit white, it’s like the fish are swimming over an arctic ice floe.”

It’s stuff like that that makes me wistful, and stirs me to start visiting pet stores. Definitely on a smaller scale, owing to my environment. Maybe start with a desktop 5-gallon…

This afternoon, while walking down 8th Avenue toward 14th Street, I passed by a too-tall, too-obvious drag queen. S/he locked eye contact with me, and slowly drew out these words:

“You look mahhhhvelous!”

I muttered a quick “thank you”. And with that, we went our separate ways.

I don’t know if this complimenting queen was channeling Billy Crystal or Fernando Lamas, or both. Or more likely, neither. Regardless, this vignette gives me a good enough excuse to showcase one of my favorite vintage “Saturday Night Live” skits, Fernando’s Hideaway:

Despite my newly-enshrined marvelousness, I have never been to a Hollywood party where dildo-like bodybuilding objects were offered as hors d’oeuvres. But I do know one thing: That it is better to look good than to feel good. If you know what I am saying to you.

This may be wholly localized to New York, but lately I’ve noticed a lot more people overusing the word “annoying” in their everyday parlance.

It started with my brother. Then it spread to casual acquaintances, then to colleagues. Now, it seems like I can’t escape it: Whenever someone is grappling with a minor problem or kvetching about whatever, they describe the situation as “annoying”. And in a smarmy tone of voice, to boot.

I don’t have to underline the self-fulfilling nature of this annoying trend, do I? I’d love to put a stop to it, but such slang-meme-ry is beyond the scope of any one man to stop. I’ll just cross my fingers that it’ll run out of steam sooner rather than later. And I’ll try to tone down my own annoyance at hearing the term on a daily basis.

As much as I dispute the characterization of my upstate New York hometown as a rural outpost, I invariably come upon reinforcing vignettes like this:

I took my newly-restored Jeep Cherokee out for some drivetime this past Sunday. I was winding through a typical Orange County back road, a secluded-residential stretch, when I had to slow down abruptly.

The reason? A pair of young turkeys. They had chosen that moment to emerge from some lawn-shrubbery to sprint across the pavement, toward a modest patch of woods. (My riding companion told me afterward that there was a third gobbler, who had hung back and crossed after I sped past.)

It’s hard to claim metro-suburban roots when wild poultry is running amok a couple of miles from your childhood haunts.

I will say that I don’t remember these turkey-trotters being around years ago. The usual woodland menagerie included deer, hares, woodchucks (the preferred term for groundhogs), and raccoons. I understand that foxes, coyotes, and even the occasional bear are among the new local beasts. All of which I’ll have to be on the lookout for, on future weekend 4×4 outings…

This sign, adorning a Chelsea storefront, says it in as blunt a manner as possible:

Because summertime is the right time to have a store-wide sale on “most shit”. The rest of the shit inventory gets moved during the winter sale, I’m guessing.

It’s been exactly 15 years since the release of controversial film Kids, which offered up this grit-core imagery of misspent Manhattan youth:

The plot seems inconsequential compared to some of the set pieces: the opening shots of the ‘Virgin Surgeon’ Telly deflowering an impossibly young looking girl; Caspar beating a man twice his age with his skateboard; Harold Hunter slapping his penis between his thighs in a public pool. It was crude, yet compelling — Kids felt authentic and thus gained importance because of its perceived authenticity. The lives these 13-to-17-year-olds lived seemed real. Janet Maslin of the then particularly dreary New York Times called it a “wake up call to the world”—this was then touted in the trailer.

“Seemed real” was key. Even though it was obviously a scripted movie, the mannerisms and body language of many of the young players were enough to lull you into thinking you were catching snippets of a demented documentary. The devouring of doomed children theme was, of course, provocative enough.

And maybe, toward the end of New York City socio-cultural nadir, that realism was too much to bear:

It seems that in many ways the city seems to have forgotten the film, just as many of those involved in the film also seem happy to forget it. Some might expect some sort of celebration of the 15th anniversary of the film, but few seem to be talking. ([Director] Larry Clark’s agent did not respond to inquiries.) [Writer] Harmony Korine has moved away from the realism of that film’s concept and execution, settling most recently on a bizarre faux-realism in his faux-documentary Trash Humpers. “It was not a movie I was dying to tell,” he has said of Kids. And our “Sassy” intern, Chloe Sevigny, has since said that she can’t bear to watch the film, and that she doesn’t like the movie much.

It was a landmark film, but I’m not sure what’s to be gained from a retrospective right now. It works well as a period piece, its shock value intact; in that way, it speaks for itself. The movie itself is teen-aged right now, and that’s enough. Maybe another 15 years of perspective is needed for a substantial look back.

Online dating gains some offline hard-copy tactics in Cheek’d, a service that kicks off connections via hand-delivered notes:

Users receive calling cards to dole out to alluring strangers they encounter in their everyday lives, be it in a club or in a subway on their morning commute. Recipients of the cards can use the identification code printed on them to log onto Cheekd.com and send a message to their admirer. A pack of 50 cards and a month’s subscription to Cheek’d, where users can receive messages and post information about themselves, is $25. There is no fee for those who receive cards to communicate with an admirer through the site.

Each Cheek’d card has a sassy phrase like “I am totally cooler than your date,” or, for those with no regard for subtlety: “I’m hitting on you.” [Site founder Lori] Cheek is dreaming up specialized card sets, too. One for New York City singles will have lines like “I live below 14th Street” and “I hope my five-story walkup won’t be a problem.”

This definitely restores something to the Web-dating dynamic. While the stigma of online dating has largely faded, there’s still something antiseptic and chore-like in scanning through Match.com profiles. At least this way, you get out from in front of the screen and encounter real flesh-and-blood prospects; the awkwardness of face-to-face communication is alleviated by the hand-held written word.

I’m looking forward to some cute brunette slipping me one of these cards while I’m zoning out on the subway, or some other anonymously-crowded venue. Although I’ll point out that the ladies are late to the game with this technique, as guys have been using their business cards as pickup tools for years.

“There’s a whole bowl of granola over there, dude,” he conspiratorially whispered to me.

That’s what I get for going to Deity, a self-styled underground nightclub in Brooklyn, for a meet-and-greet a couple of nights ago. You’d have thought that the crunchy-munchy party favor was manna from some hipster version of heaven. It was mighty tasty, though — and paired surprisingly well with a vodka tonic.

There are fantasy camps, and then there are kid-lit fantasy camps:

Children have always sought to act out elements of their favorite books, becoming part of the worlds that the works create. Now, organized role-playing literary camps, like the weeklong Camp Half-Blood in Brooklyn, are sprouting up around the nation.

Some take their inspiration from the Harry Potter books, like the wizardry camp run by the Brandywine Learning Center in Chester Springs, Pa., which simulates the experience of attending Hogwarts, the school from the novels.

Bookstores have joined in, organizing day camps structured around children’s books, like “The Double-Daring Book for Girls” and the “Ranger’s Apprentice” series. But the biggest buzz has recently been around Camp Half-Blood, based on the popular “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series.

Total immersion in a day-camp setting. Although I have a feeling this is gateway recreation for future Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. fanboys…

There’s something wistful about the above scene, isn’t there? Colorfully-printed wrapping paper, still on the rolls, unceremoniously dumped into a city trashcan, never to conceal any Christmas or birthday gifts. On the other hand, it does brighten up an otherwise filthy public receptacle…

I cameraphoned this sight today, on the corner of 16th Street and 8th Avenue, at the lower edge of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. I liked the juxtaposition and composition, especially with the “Keep New York City Clean” legend emblazoned just below the can’s rim. For once, I think I nailed it photographically. Although you’ll have to see the full-sized Flickr version to get the total effect.

I spent the better part of today getting my Jeep Cherokee repaired, registered, and on the road. I’m not going to go into any detail, because I’m pretty ambivalent to be, once again, a car owner. I’ll just signify the occasion by making note of it in this space.

There is one tidbit of automotive ritual that came up during this process, which I’d never encountered before: Car coining.

In New Jersey and New York, people often practice ‘car coining’, where they toss a few coins onto the floor of a newly-purchased car, as a sign of good luck. This practice originated as a practical one, linked to toll roads. The New York area has many toll roads, and as a result, many drivers would carry change in their cars. The friends and family of the new car owner would throw coins onto the floor of the new car, so if the driver ever ran out of money, they could reach down and find some extra money on the floor!

I did, indeed, have some coinage tossed into my Cherokee today. It certainly felt like a christening of a newborn (ignoring the fact that this 4×4 is over ten years old). I didn’t bother to count it, but I figure there’s a couple of bucks’ worth of spare change in the Cherokee now, just waiting for me to come upon a money-scraping catastrophe.

Like I said, I’d never heard of this odd little practice before, and I grew up in the tri-state area. It has to be kinda old, as loose change generally won’t cut it for the tolls around the metro area nowadays — you need paper currency (or an E-ZPass) to get through the booths. And lemme tell ya, if someone wants to drop a few $5 and $10 bills onto my floormats, my befuddlement over this heretofore-unknown tradition will quickly pass…

It’s not just my imagination that I’m noticing more and more women on the streets of Manhattan back-packing rolled-up yoga mats like they were de rigueur urban accessories. Hard times call for a yogi regimen:

Since the recession went from painful to disastrous in September 2008, yoga studios throughout the country have reported increased traffic. Irene Narissi, a New York City yoga instructor, says her business has jumped 10% to 15% over the past seven months. The feedback from new clients: they are either unemployed and want to maintain their mental health or insecure about their current job status and want to maintain their mental health. “The meditative aspects of yoga,” Narissi says, “satisfy the need to chill out.”

Again, strictly from my perspective, it’s looking like the converts around here are exclusively women; I’ve yet to see a man toting around a $100 personal yoga mat. And, this being New York, a serious stretching session is probably going to come with a walk up and down a flight of stairs.

It’s been two weeks since I overheard this exchange, and I still can’t get the humor of it out of my head:

“I take the Staten Island Ferry.” “Where does that go?”

To be fair, the Ferry does go to two places: Staten Island, and Manhattan. Roundtrip deal, to be most precise.

More esoterically — but no less true to the Wu — you could say that this boat ferries you to the streets of Shao-Lin and back. And for free, even. Way to represent!

Leave it to six-time hot-dog eating champ Takeru Kobayashi to lend some actual drama to this year’s Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. Thanks to his contract dispute with Major League Eating, “The Tsunami” found himself gatecrashing the event:

Kobayashi, wearing a black T-shirt that said “Free Kobi,” mingled with the crowd watching the contest, standing inside a police-barricaded pen just under the stage. When the eating ended, he slipped up the stage stairs.

Then, several security officers appeared and tried to usher him off. He grabbed a metal police barricade with both hands, holding on tightly as the officers pulled at him. Finally, they dragged him down the stairs, with Kobayashi resisting vehemently.

He was under arrest Sunday afternoon, charged with resisting arrest, trespass and obstructing governmental administration.

I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing: Getting arrested for attempting to upstage a celebration of competitive gluttony, or actually participating in a contest that demonstrates what a frankfurter-inhaling pig you are.

Until recently, a “sugary beverage tax” of one-penny-per-ounce seemed destined to become law in New York State. But apparently, counter-lobbying by the American Beverage Association killed the proposed bill, and supposedly more persuasive advocacy by the industry turned the tide:

Next, this TV ad from New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, a name calculated to make the blood boil. A mother unpacks groceries in the kitchen as her son mixes a powdered lemonade, one of the drinks that would be taxed. “Tell Albany to trim their budget fat and leave our groceries alone,” the mother says…

It is too early for a final tally of the money spent on advertising and lobbying by either side in New York. But by most accounts, the beverage industry has outspent the pro-tax side and has succeeded in painting the soda tax as a naked money grab cleverly disguised as a health policy.

I question how convincing the ABA’s advertising was, at least with the general public. I caught their commercials a few times; frankly, I wouldn’t have been aware of the tax if hadn’t. I found the ads — including the one referenced above — to be particularly grating and transparently self-serving. In fact, I came away from them more in favor of the tax, just because the industry opposition was so blunt. I think this is more a case of the state legislators getting swayed by their corporate constituents, prompting the burial of this bill. Democracy at work, right?

I guess that’s just me, though. I don’t froth at the mouth every time a new tax is proposed. Plus, I don’t consume all that many soft drinks. So that makes me the silent minority in this arena.

Seems to me that it’s a bad idea to schedule a fire drill and a blood drive on the same day.

And yet, that’s exactly what I witnessed yesterday, while on-site with a client. The company lobby was strewn with all the medical equipment you’d expect to find for this setup. Right in the middle of this voluntary blood-letting, with about a half-dozen donors laying down and bleeding into tubes, the building’s fire alarm goes off. Then a loudspeaker voice intones that it’s only a drill, but to assume the safety positions anyway.

Obviously a lack of coordination. But what a recipe for disaster: Making several pint-low donors scramble for the escape stairway for a seven-flight descent. The simulated emergency would turn into a real one in no time.

Throwing fire safety to the wind, no one went through the drill. They opted to feel the drain versus feeling the burn.

Budding social researchers need to get out of the classroom and into the high-end nightclub, where bouncers offer an up-close demonstration of the dynamics of power relations:

Through conversations and observations, [sociologist Lauren Rivera] found that bouncers ran through a hierarchical list of qualities to determine in seconds who would enhance the image of the club and encourage high spending. Social networks mattered more than social class, or anything else for that matter. Celebrities and other recognized elites slipped through the door. And people related to or befriended by this “in crowd” often made the cut, too.

Wealth is considered to be one of the strongest indicators of status, yet bouncers frowned upon bribes even though bribes are obvious displays of money. “New Faces,” as the bouncers called unrecognized club-goers, were selected on the basis of gender, dress, race, and nationality. Sometimes the final call boiled down to details as minor as the type of watch that adorned a man’s wrist.

Nothing earth-shattering about these intricacies. You don’t need field research to know that these gatekeepers are charged with maintaining crowd-controlled composition of nightlife enclaves. But who wouldn’t like to run up a bar tab for the sake of advanced people-watching?

I finally got an onboard look at the new, streamlined New York City subway map today. For all the noise about Manhattan getting seemingly super-sized, what stands out more to me is the resultant look of another borough:

This new map makes Queens look downright barren. At least from a public-transport angle, which I guess is the point. I realize the old map filled the terrain with mostly clutter, and that the subway lines haven’t really changed. Still, there’s so much open-space showing on this “new” Queens that, to those of us used to the old look, there’s almost an implication of some service changes.

Maybe the map merely reflects the hopes of a less-congested Queens above-ground. Wishful thinking for creating a topographical reality…