Best Chinatown Bus Lucky Star Corner of Chrystie St. & Hester St., ...

Bus

Lucky Star

Corner of Chrystie St. & Hester St., 888-881-0887

luckystarbus.com

Girl with a brown ponytail, green eyes and perfect cheekbones, we saw you from the window when you bought your ticket in the friendly little shop on Chrystie Street. And as you loaded your duffle into the carrying compartment, we know you saw us too. When you boarded, the bus was nearly empty, no smell wafting from the restroom, yet you sat in front of us. And as we made our way across the Manhattan Bridge, you reclined your seat, tilted your head backward and smiled at us. That was quite a maneuver.

Now, we're not vain. Maybe you were just smiling because you paid $14.50 online as opposed to $15.75 for Fung Wah. Maybe you were happy about the short walk to the bus from the Grand Street stop. Or maybe you were lost in anticipation of a peaceful ride to Beantown, free from toilet malfunctions, Chinese power ballads or spontaneous combustion. It's a superior class of people on Lucky Star, and they expect a superior standard of cheap-ass transportation.

Maybe something nice happened to you? Had you forgotten your e-ticket printout, and had they looked for your name on their list (not pretending that they don't speak English) and let you on for free? They did that for us once, and surely they would've for a beautiful girl like you. Girl with a brown ponytail, we're sorry for ignoring you. Will you take the Lucky Star Bus with us again?

Best Bike Shop to Get Your Flat Fixed with a smile

Bicycle Station

560 Vanderbilt Ave. (betw. Dean St. & Bergen St.), Brooklyn

718-638-0300

We love our bike. Yet we're clumsy. And have the mechanical competence of a lobotomized monkey. So when we crash into a curb and our bike's gears become as mangled as British orthodontics, we head to our friendly neighborhood bike shop. It's not an oxymoron.

Most bike shops operate on a business model based on the high school senior: We're too cool for you, dweeb. All too often we've rolled our rust-dotted 10-speed into a shop only to be met with a sneer: What are you doing bringing anything less than a titanium fixed-gear in here, you fool?

That's why Prospect Heights' Bicycle Station is such a welcome change. At the cluttered shop, mechanics listen to our problems with a thoughtful ear, even if we've mucked our alignment by running into a parked car. While drunk. Again.

Even better, the prices are fair, with tune-ups running just $35 and the flat-tire fix barely more than the cost of the inner tube. Walk-ins are always welcome, though you may have to grab a seat and watch bike-race reruns. Soon enough, your squeaky wheel will get some grease-and you'll get a welcome grin.

Best Free Clinic

NYC Free Clinic

16 E. 16th St. (betw. 5th Ave. & University Pl.)

917-544-0735

Without a full-time job carrying benefits, the best plan is to stay healthy. Failing that, our "Red City" offers, if not exactly socialized medicine, at least some first-rate free clinics.

NYC Free Clinic is the best of the bunch, which is how it ended up in this issue. The medical students are mostly idealists, and the doctors are informative. When you make an appointment, you can request a social worker to walk you through the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, Family Health Care Plus and other programs.

The clinic specifically asks that you don't undergo STD testing there, since there are countless free services for below-the-belt needs. Nonetheless, doctors will provide gyno and basic primary care. And prescribe cheap pharmaceuticals.

The annoying part: Only one hour per week is available to schedule an appointment by phone: Mondays from 4 pm to 5 pm. But that inconvenience is a small price to pay for paying nothing at all.

Best Hat Store

J.J. Hat Center

310 5th Ave. (betw. W. 31st St. & W. 32nd St.)

212-239-4368

Hats off. There's simply no competition here. Most hat stores-and there are hundreds of them in the city-are crap. Gaudy, cheaply-made hats sold at volume for way too much money. Come the first unexpected rain, they all but dissolve.

Then there's J.J.'s Hat Center, which used to be known for the big red electric Stetson sign out front.

You may not be able to find that viking helmet or propeller beanie you've been pining after, but if you're serious about your headwear, and if you want to go someplace that's staffed with people who are equally serious about headwear, there's no choice but J.J.

The customer service is top-notch-quick, friendly and helpful without being overbearing. The selection (again, if you're looking for quality) is unmatched. And they always steam a hat clean before you walk out the door with it-a tiny touch, sure, but a telling one.

And if you can't get over to the store (which you should-it's a real breath of old New York), you can order from their catalog online at jjhatcenter.com.

Best site to find out how to get rich by investing in shit you've never heard of

FindProfit.com

Even if you're one of those assholes who subscribes to the Wall Street Journal, you probably haven't heard of companies like Sasol, Fast Search, Fording Canadian Coal, Seitel and Cosine Communications. These are all companies in FindProfit.com's Special Opportunity stock portfolio, which was up a whopping 14.5 percent from January to the end of July.

FindProfit.com was founded by Bill Martin, the investing whiz who previously launched now legendary stock-discussion site Ragingbull.com, and contributors include Ben Silverman, the former take-no-prisoners "Dotcomscoop" columnist for the New York Post. These are no-bullshit fellas who consistently find hidden gems that should convince you to invest some of that money that's under your mattress.

Best Place to Buy Offbeat Gifts

Nova Zembla

117 Atlantic Ave. (Henry St.), Brooklyn

718-522-7105

In desperate need of notebooks made out of old LP covers? No? Well, then, how about foam laptop holders, armchairs, coasters decorated with laminated buttons, restaurant diaries? The list goes on at Brooklyn's Nova Zembla, an emporium of the wonderful and slightly strange. The prices are hardly bargain basement, but Nova Zembla (whose Smith Street outpost recently closed, leaving one store on Atlantic Avenue) is pretty much the only place to find this stuff.

If you're like us, you'll find yourself craving all this stuff once you've seen it. We have a personal hankering for the coasters made out of old records, but maybe that's just us. Prices range from $5 for some of the smaller trinkets to more than $1,000 for the couches and chairs for sale and all stops in between. The furniture is classy but absurdly expensive, so we do most of our work among the other stuff, which caters to the Brooklyn-come-lately inside all of us. And yes, extra points to those who spotted the reference to Nabokov's Pale Fire in the store's name. That and $8 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

BEST $1 BOOK RACK

Gryphon Bookshop

2246 Broadway (betw. W. 80th St. & W. 81st St.)

212-362-0706

"A dusty old mystic book land" is how a friend of mine recently described Gryphon Book Shop and I've never heard anything more accurate. It is brilliant-exactly the used bookshop any avid reader dreams about on lonely nights. There's a second floor, a ladder running up the side of one wall and books stacked damn near everywhere. But the best thing about Gryphon Books is outside under the awning.

Right out front, they have the best $1 bookrack we've ever seen. We like to think of any visit to the bookrack as a game with Fate. We figure there will always be something we need to read; it is Fate's job to make sure exactly what we need is on that rack. Once it was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which we never would have picked up had it been more than a buck. But we're glad we did.

Sometimes, it seems Fate wants us to read a trashy romance novel or an equally trashy mystery novel and, like any respectable $1 book rack, Gryphon stocks plenty of this crap. But they also always have books on everything from psychology in the '70s to great literary works that we've been meaning to read our whole life, but never before had the opportunity to buy for a dollar.

Best local clothing company

LOVE NICO

lovenico.com

LOVE NICO, the T-shirt design company created by Miss Corinne Alexis Hall, painter, illustrator, and comic book creator, offers anything but the usual bullshit. She's on a mission "to infiltrate pop culture and provide generic, non-band-name rock n'roll shirts to the masses."

One shows a young man (a fine piece of ass at that) in a baseball cap standing alone in front of a microphone. He is off to the lower left corner of the shirt, with only the microphone cord stretching across the shirt's belly. It's like having an absurdly hot guy live right over your ribs, which would be convenient. Others have beauty-scarred women in the throes of sex-pain.

Several of the designs feature iconic pop symbols-guns, guitars and all the rest. Our personal favorite, though, features a unique set of Corinne's handprints in thick red ink and FUCK LOVE in a modern typeface contrasting with a comic-style illustration of a pair of scissors.

Best Place to Get Flair

Menkes Theatrical Shoes

250 W. 54th St. (betw. 7th Ave. & 8th Ave.)

212-541-8401

Some stores are good if there's something you really need to get (Duane Reade, say). But other stores are made for stuff-looking. Take, for example, Menkes, a store of flamenco apparel and accessories, which is at once a practical store for the New York flamenco artist and a really good time for the average Jose.

Arrays of mile-high hair combs and wide hoop earrings call to you in blue, green, yellow, red, white and black! Silk flowers, some modest and realistic, others flamboyant and polka-dotted, coax you to pin them into your hair or grip them daringly between your teeth. Classic-looking dance shoes in all shades of suede and patent leather coo from the shelves to be put on and paraded about. And flouncey skirts in pure black and white are so dramatic and striking that they call, "Put me on and stamp around!"

By the time you've tried the matador hats at all different angles, you're ready for the embroidered shawls in shades of dusty rose, tying them around your waist or shoulders. Then you flip open some of the patterned fans-just for the effect. If you've gone so far into the trove of a store, you might as well check out the assortment of castanets and ask to hear some of the CDs or watch some of the dancing videos. And if you're lucky, some pro flamenco dancers will waltz in for a last-minute costume addition before taking the stage.

Best Neighborhood Hotel

Avenue Plaza

4624 13th Ave. (betw. 46th St. & 47th St.), Brooklyn

718-552-3200

Trump never slept here. There aren't too many hotels in Brooklyn. This one, the very Jewish Avenue Plaza, situated on the main commercial artery of Borough Park, caused some raised eyebrows when it first went up on the site of an old bank building in 1998.

Miriam Feuer, a receptionist at the front desk since opening day, told us that "People in the neighborhood couldn't see a need? They felt it was going to stay empty all the time. But the minute we opened, the need became so great that everyone is now hoping we're going to expand."

People in town for weddings and bar mitzvahs, sales reps with steady accounts in the neighborhood-these are among the hotel's regulars. Gentile guests are not unknown, but none were in sight when we visited.

We were also charmed to hear from Ms. Feuer that the staff draws entirely from neighborhood residents-a true neighborhood hotel. While inspecting one of the upstairs rooms ("Look how clean," said a proud Ms. Feuer), we ran into one of the local staffers-Stanley, the Polish maintenance and housekeeping manager-who informed us, "I doing everything."

Best Place to Pick Up a Gay Sugar Daddy

Townhouse

206 E. 58th St. (3rd Ave.)

212-826-6241

The days of bathhouse parties may be long gone, but the activities remain. The next generation has discovered their own destinations from saunas to nightclubs, and why shouldn't they? In a country where mainstream media sources accept all gays on the condition they fit the Queer Eye stereotype, it's no wonder men have gone looking for no-frills spots where intentions are blatant and the company is screened.

On an unassuming street in the lower UES a plain jane bar in a typical Manhattan brownstone beckons. Copies of the latest FX and Advocate magazines line the front table where at least one patron lurks, guarding the door to intimidate unwelcome intruders. To the naïve, this Yankee-style, old world bar is just an upscale pub with loveseats, a horrible pianist, and salty nut mix. But to the weathered New Yorker, it's a known hideaway where men of all ages go to parade and pursue.

In between the front and rear rooms, a loveseat provides a place for strangers to acquaint themselves. In the back room, couches provide comfortable seating for long chats, and more. However, in various nooks you'll find guarded doors and pseudo love connections between Mr. Robinson and the boy next-door.

A word to the wise-though this UES bar is an experience every adventurous New Yorker should partake in, know that if you're an outsider they'll make your presence known with loud stares.

Best Place to Get your Six-Year-Old Nephew a Maddox Jolie Fauxhawk

Brooklyn General Barber Emporium

144 Bedford Ave. (N. 9th St.), Brooklyn

718-486-3777

Remember your fun aunt? The one who taught you how to make a dirty martini before you'd even had your first communion and always let you rummage through her purse for mints and lipstick? Sure, she wasn't too pleased when you mistook her diaphragm for a "little Jewish hat," but she only stayed mad for a minute. Auntie Funhaver knew that the best thing about being an aunt is doing all the good stuff and then handing them back to mommy and daddy the second they get a little whiny or poopy.

To obtain your place in the fun auntie or uncle hall of fame, the next time you're stuck babysitting make a play date at Brooklyn General.

Plunk the wee one down on the shiny red airplane seat and let hottie haircutter Joey trim his tresses into a suitably Billyburg coif (i.e., one that'll give mommy heart palpitations) for $18-less for a clipper cut.

As you slide into the big-girl chair for a quick bang trim (six bucks!), you can further cement your status by letting junior pick a toy, most of them priced below ten bucks, from the store's huge retro selection. Since your sister's going to hate your guts anyway, grab a bag of rock candy for the kid and a Goo-Goo Cluster for yourself. Then drop your charge back home just as the sugar starts to kick in.

Best Place to buy Crispin Glover's Birthday Present

Obscura Antiques & Oddities

263 E. 10th St. (betw. 1st Ave. & Ave. A)

212-505-9251

What to get the genius who played Willard and filmed the groundbreakingly twisted What Is It? The boring old gift standbys (potpourri and power tools) won't do. No, siree, you're going to have to think harder (and sicker) than that.

You'll find your answer in a dark, cluttered shop on East 10th Street-push open the door and you're no longer on a trendy block in the East Village. You've been transported in time to a flea market designed by the bastard spawn of Tim Burton and Sweeney Todd. A giant 3-D snake watches over the interior, which is crowded with jars of teeth and glass eyeballs on the shelves. Moose heads hang off the walls. Sensory overload is an understatement.

How else to explain the feeling of shopping for taxidermied two-headed weasels, Masonic fezzes, antique dental charts (from Germany) or vintage notecards illustrated-in vibrant color-with repulsive skin conditions? A gift from here will put a twisted grin on just about any creepy Crispin.

Best Use of Gigantic Arch Commemorating Yet Another Stupid War

The New York Puppet Library

Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn

718-853-7350

At first blush, Brooklyn's Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial arch is just pretty, albeit useless, public art commemorating America's hard-on for war. Bronze horses! Civil War soldiers! Blah. But inside one of the arch's 80-foot columns sits a most unusual library: the New York Puppet Library, a lending institution offering more than 200 multicolored papier-mâchè, cloth and cardboard creations.

Since last May, the Puppeteers' Cooperative has run the four-story repository, which has puppets stacked like firewood. On one floor sits an "aviary." Another alcove contains skull-baring skeletons. Needle-eyed insects huddle in another corner; the next doubles as a pony pen. Renting's free, and you can check out as many puppets as you can carry. As for how to use the puppets, that's up to your overactive imagination.

Best Place for Midnight Groceries

ShopRite

1080 McDonald Ave (Avenue I), Brooklyn

1-800-SHOPRITE

Some prefer yoga, some opt for the nearest barstool; we prefer the 24-hour ShopRite on McDonald Avenue. If you're anything like us, you look at grocery shopping as a fine art-a sensitive, yet highly pleasant task that asks to be fastidiously considered. At the end of a stressful day, nothing quells frayed nerves like a stroll down the frozen foods aisle.

The possibilities are endless: Skinny Cow is featuring a new strawberry shortcake ice cream sandwich, Mrs. T's potato-cheddar pierogies are on sale, and Tyson's Mac 'n' Cheese dinner is buy two, get one free.

If this doesn't excite you, you aren't initiated into the exciting world of after-hours grocery shopping.

Number one, grasshopper: Avoid the throngs of Brooklyn locals by shopping after midnight. Avoid coming during the day, especially Friday afternoons, as you will wrestle with throngs of Orthodox families creating a pre-Shabbat shopping nightmare.

Number two: take your time. This is a time to think about the day's activities, the stresses, quarrels and worries. Take a deep breath as you pass fresh produce, hold it, then exhale it out to the deli section. As you round the corner to baked goods, check out the raisin scones and imagine inner peace in a box of Betty Crocker.

Number three: Enjoy the company of the spirited midnight stock crew, hum along to '80s soft rock. You will only occasionally be interrupted by a testy checkout lady's shrill voice calling for Bobby, a manager who seems to have gone missing whenever we visit. This will pass, and Michael Bolton's soothing baritone will continue through the lonely hours.

BEST BROOKLYN BARBER

Vincent's

1505 Cortelyou Road (E. 15 St.)

718-693-0619

Vincent's, directly across the street from the Cortelyou Q stop in Flatbush, is the holy grail of outer-borough barbers. Vincent bought the space in 1975 but the storefront has housed a barbershop since 1912 and looks like it hasn't much changed over the years. Small and relatively unadorned but for an MTA poster of historic Brooklyn churches, it serves only two at a time with Vincent and his son Vincent Jr. (who just had a third Vincent about a year ago) working the chairs.

It used to be that every so often a recently arrived Italian relative would work there for a while, but it's been years since the last one passed through. Once, in high school, under the nefarious influence of adolescent vanity, we got our hair cut at Astor Place. When our father found out he almost disowned us.

As we recall, he said: "Want to be a stand-up guy instead of some Manhattan schmuck who smells like a woman, then get your hair cut at Vincent's or at the very least by another old Italian guy with an accent as thick as his gold chain." Words to live by.

Getting one's hair cut is a real matter of trust and it used to be that a lot of people would bypass the son and wait for Vincent himself, creating hour-long lines while Jr. patiently waited for a customer. These days, though, Jr. has grown into a master barber in his own right and gets almost as many customers as his father.

Still every now and again, we'll let people cut in front of us and wait for Vincent Sr., who has these really beautiful hands that he keeps in constant motion while he's working. Even when he's not actually cutting your hair, the scissors are always snipping, looming overhead until they close in on an out-of-place strand.

The prize finish is when Vincent draws shaving cream from a heater, and applies the warm lather on the back of your neck and around your ears to clean up the rough edges of his work with a straight razor.

Best Dirt-Cheap Comic Store

The Strand Bookstore

828 Broadway (W. 12th St.)

212-473-1452

So the Fantastic Four movie sucked. Hell, we could have told you that, but you're not giving up, no sir. You know the old-school stuff was worth it, squaring off against Galactus, the Shiva-ish devourer of worlds, or even that goofy mainstay, Mole Man. But maybe you're not ready to revisit them at Forbidden Planet's or St. Marks Comics' rapacious prices.

If you're willing to forgo mint condition, there's hope. Along with significantly enlarging its art section, the Strand's redesign quadrupled the space allotted to comics. Not that you can find whatever you want, but for the intrepid there's a veritable horn o' plenty: Japanese manga by the pound, Vampirella's brand of cheese-cake smut, plus all the mass-market stuff you can eat.

Recent casual perusals turned up a complete trade collection set of fantasy author Neil Gaiman's '90s oeuvre The Sandman, the last issue of Toe Tags (George A. Romero's foray into the land of the zombie comic) and Will Eisner's The Plot. Also, the Strand's goblin of an owner has finally air-conditioned the joint, so you won't drip sweat onto your pulpy little treasures.

Best Sign of Life

7th Ave. Books

202 7th Ave. (betw. 2nd St. & 3rd St.), Brooklyn

718-840-0188

Park Slope Books

200 7th Ave. (betw. 2nd St. & 3rd St.), Brooklyn

718-499-3064

Twenty years ago, Park Slope was a book lover's paradise. Three independent bookstores lined the main stretch of Seventh Avenue, while several other shops had used-book sections. Book dealers set up tables all along Seventh Avenue, most of them dealing in books of surprisingly high quality. And book-heavy stoop sales popped up every weekend. We used to take entire days and just move from one seller to the next.

Then the wave began to wash through the neighborhood. The indie drug stores, weird little shops and small restaurants were replaced with Rite Aids, high-end boutiques and Subways. The B&N made its inevitable appearance, too. It wasn't long before the sidewalk book dealers (the good ones, anyway) vanished, and at least one bookshop closed its doors.

But within the past few years, two used bookstores have opened along Seventh Avenue again-and now, after 7th Ave. Books' recent move, they're all but next door to each other. 7th Ave. Books is brighter and carries a number of both used and new titles, and tends to be a little cheaper. But the narrow, shadowy floor-to-ceiling shelves of Park Slope Books hide countless rare and forgotten treasures. Often if one store doesn't have what you're looking for, the other will.

As every other bit of character in this city seems to be disappearing, it's nice to see that one thing, at least, just might be coming back.

Best New Guilty Pleasure In Union Square

DSW Shoe Warehouse

40 E. 14th St. (betw. University Pl. & Broadway)

212-358-0435

Go in and leave without a pair of shoes. We dare you. You couldn't do it, could you? Since this Temple of Shoes arrived in Union Square, the city's Carrie Bradshaws have found themselves summarily seduced by the corporate maven called DSW.

After getting you in the door, employees sweetly inquire if you have a DSW card, then they innocently secure your information. Now you're in their clutches. They will mail you monthly about all the irresistible deals, and entice you with a $20-off-any-purchase coupon.

Armed with the coupon, we take a cursory peek inside. We peer across endless rows of Enzos, Ugg boots, Tims, leathers, sneaks, slipins and strappies before being drawn to our old friend in the rear: the sale rack.

Replete with red, yellow and blue stickers, offering price reprieves of 20 percent, 30 percent, up to 80 percent, it would almost be a crime not to buy something, would it not? And then we see them: Anne Klein, lime green, not exactly fuck-me, but rather, throw-me-up-against-a-wall-and-love-me-slow heels. Our feet have never felt sexier.

Best Flower Seller

Purple Rose-Man

It was a very rainy night. After dinner, we stopped under Life Cafe's awning with a friend, trying to decide on a bar. Up came the requisite flower seller, cheerful despite the rain that must have been bad for business, a young man tunelessly singing "Purple Rose" to the tune of (what else?) "Purple Rain" as he hawked his purple wares. "Purple rose, purple rose, I only want to see you with a purple rose," he sang down the deserted, rainy street. He walked up to us and started harassing our friend, inquiring why he wouldn't buy us, his beautiful girlfriend, a rose. After enough badgering to break a KGB spy, our friend relented, even though we were not his girlfriend

Then he swore us to secrecy, under pain of death, for fear that his girlfriend would be angry. We offered to return it, suggesting he give it to his girl instead. He took it, and then gave it back to us again. He couldn't give her a rose he'd bought us, he said.

He flagged down the flower seller, who had moseyed about half a block, and bought another rose. Shocked and delighted at our friend's rose-buying spree, the guy changed his song. "Purple rose, purplerose, Ilovethissuckerforbuyingdollarrosesfortendollars," he sang, before disappearing into the dark, wet night.

Best idea for an Online Dating Site

Appledates.com

The problem with dating sites is that everyone claims to read the same few books, listen to the same albums, and so on, and everyone looks clever in a little profile. If you want to find someone who's actually up for the same things you dig, though, head on over to AppleDates.com. By combining the same features offered by every dating site with a database of local events updated weekly, Appledates offers the only Gotham-centric way to make time, and forces you go somewhere more original than the same shitty bar you've already gone to with the last umpteenth shitty dates. And Appledates uses New York Press' listings-why not use the front of the paper for your needs this time?

Best Occult Hangout

Enchantments INC.

341 E. 9th St.

212-228-4394

Since Miss Stacy Rapp took ownership of Enchantments Inc., the spooky little magic shop has become a far more lively and inviting spooky little magic shop.

And where are else are you going to go for classes in witchcraft? Enchantments also has a good bookstore for anyone interested, the contents of which range from spells to herbalist practices to Crowley paraphernalia to Santeria. You can pick up dried herbs, candles, oils and a pair of bikini cut underpants endowed with a goddess or a pentagram.

Skeptics are always welcome and Enchantments' charming staff will never condescend to your beliefs.

Best Bathroom

Circuit City

52 E. 14th St. (betw. Broadway & 4th Ave.)

212-387-0730

New York needs a place where we can all shit, albeit one at a time. Until the blessed day when Elijah returns and the public toilets are installed, though, we'll all have to keep buying coffee to empty our bowels-a vicious cycle indeed.

At 14th Street, Gap-clad tourists and dog adorned yuppies park their strollers outside the two Starbucks, while downtown crunchies flock to Whole Foods. Locals make the trek up the escalator through the Barnes & Nobles, but real hoodies know there's an air-conditioned loo with no line in the Circuit City. Tucked away behind the plasma TVs these restrooms resemble public school bathrooms, but there's always an empty stall, and in NYC, that's priceless.

Best LIC Parking

Behind Citcorp

It's harder to get a parking spot along 23rd Street in Long Island City than it is to get a seat upstairs at the 21 Club. But right outside the 23rd Street/Ely Street station, behind the green glass Citicorp is at least one street with no parking regulations whatsoever. None. The only alternate side you have to worry about is the one you point to when you tell the meter maid to kiss your ass. It's a perfect spot. Less than a block away are the E, F, G and 7 trains. One stop after you park and you're either in midtown or Greenpoint. Put away the map, the quarters and fear of the meter maid. girlfriend.

Worst Retail Demise

Odd Job

For those of us without the twenty-odd bucks to take in MOMA, there was always Odd Job-a fascinating display of ephemera that never made it in the marketplace. Unlike a gallery or even most retail stores, though, you could take the shit home.

Over the years, we'd gone to the Union Square Odd Job and bought a breathtakingly ugly floral patterned umbrella that never broke; a mid-size red plastic tub with large, heart-shaped holes on the sides, which meant nothing could really be stored in it but maybe bulky tube socks; a startling bas-relief rabbit-shaped teapot, and so much more.

"Distributors Loss!" trumpeted the slightly ungrammatical signs on top of these ungainly object d'arts, and we in-debt low-wage shoppers sort of identified with that.

Best Place for Exhibitionistic Yoga

Bikram Studios

208 W. 72nd St. (Broadway)

212-724-7303

If Vrksasana voyeurism is your slice of heaven, boy do we have the New York locale for you! Each day groups of folks display themselves doing The Tree in Speedos in the window of Bikram, a yoga studio on the UWS. The teacher, a man with alert buttocks and (only) black briefs wanders around correcting the angles of his students' limbs.

And if this doesn't seem like show enough, the studio is pumped full of steamy vapor to increase the stickiness of the yoga enthusiasts. Is Lycra a principle of Zen? Does Urban Outfitters (located on the opposite corner) get a rent discount for having to compete with its nearly nude neighbors? You can't take your eyes off of the enthusiast's flesh as it bends, folds, squishes. Way to put the nasty back into namaste!

As luck would have it, the M5-New York's slowest and most unreliable bus-has a stop right across the street, where restless commuters have nothing to watch but the sweaty contorted figures of their fellow citizens a storey above. It is a thing to marvel at; ask yourself whether the practitioners know that they can be seen by squadrons of city dwellers? We think it's a self-selecting group of those who like to do the downward-facing dog where people can see. Check it out!

BEST BROOKLYN RESTAURANT THAT ANCHORED AN INVENTED NEIGHBORHOOD

PICKET FENCE

1310 CORTELYOU RD 718-282-6661

The tree-lined part of Flatbush cut through by the Q line has long had the ingredients for a neighborhood revitalization: a diverse, middle class population full of people from the creative and professional classes, a park nearby, good transportation, even a new old- sounding name-Ditmas Park. The one thing missing, that engine of commerce and reinvention in so many other neighborhoods, was a good restaurant. In May of 2004 Picket Fence opened just a one minute walk from the Cortelyou Q stop and just across the street from the elementary school that houses the new farmers market.

Serving upscale comfort food at modest prices, it is the first real restaurant the street has had in as long as we can remember. We grew up on take out Chinese and slices, two of our favorite things, but for years those were the only two options this side of Midwood's kosher bazaar or Park Slope's yuppie bonanza.

The indoor space is relatively small and usually packed with locals or even people from outside who now have a reason to come south of Prospect Park other than for their annual jaunt to Coney Island-all these years and all it took for our neighborhood to register was a good food review in the Times. The food varies from burgers to gnocchi to pan roasted tuna all of it delicious and well portioned. Outside they have a huge backyard seating section perfect for eating and lounging. Try an omelet with sweet potato fries or one of the daily specials, it's quality food without pretense and a long overdue addition to the neighborhood.

Best marsh

Eibs Pond Park

A bridge over turbid water. For decades, this muddy park in deepest Staten Island acted as a sediment curtain between a poor neighborhood and the advancing suburbanite masses. Then a local church enlisted the TriBeCa architectural firm of Marpillero Pollak to design an outdoor classroom for a nearby high school, and the public breach became a public place. The architects fashioned a simple three-walled site where students can inspect local insects and fish, with a landscape of wetland vegetation and a floating bridge. Old ladies now sit in the newly landscaped park, and the apartment complex parking lot on one end offers clear views to the low-income Fox Hill neighborhood on the other. We're all from the same mud, after all.

Best intentions in the Disney zone

Times Square's edgy effort

Mitigating the mousetrap. Some of you are too young to remember when Times Square really, really bit. Trust us: the flashing-light porno theaters, the delis where roaches roamed the display cases, the stink of human secretions. It's nothing that warrants nostalgia. But the Toys R Us /ESPN/Chevy's patina that replaced it feels like it could be Tokyo. Or Vegas. And darn it, we live here. Luckily, Times Square Inc., successor to the property owners' association that financed the Deuce's cleanup, gets it. The association now sponsors a design competition: now it's trying to figure out how to include Hell's Kitchen theater troupes and neighborhood restaurants in its marketing. Times Square once reflected civic abdication. Now it reveals commercial overdrive. Encourage the creative spirits and Times Square Inc, and the Crossroads of the World may seem like a New York block.

Best outdoor space that's not outdoors

the Staten Island Ferry Terminal

1 Whitehall St. (South St.)

You mean there's a boat? The Whitehall Ferry terminal building's narrowing glass shape suggests a prow. Its grand staircases really earn their title. From the blah Coast Guard Station they sweep up to a second-floor landing with wider sight lines than the boat. Unlike a train station, the building invites noncommercial lingering: a wraparound terrace welcomes the briny-scented air and sounds of clustering traffic. You can plot a day of adventure, survey the winds or just admire the engineers who built and rebuilt the East River bridges. Of course, the city's DOT has closed the esplanade and mounted signs about "security concerns," but never mind. The glazing on the windows reduces glare and enhances light.

Best-smelling four square blocks in Manhattan

Ludlow to Norfolk, between Houston and Rivington

Take a whiff of this, dude. At night, this stretch (perhaps because it houses Max Fish, perhaps because it's easiest to find from the F train) reeks of cigarettes and downtown-slummers' body wash. But in daylight, it's an olfactory paradise. Pickling spices and fat prove that Katz's makes its own pastrami: head south past the potpourri of EarthMatters (and avoid the WhiteStrips-using pretty boys spitting out their wheatgrass juice) and the dueling chipotle/black bean simmer from El Sombrero and El Castillo de Jagua. Pick up the subtle hints of olive oil and Asiago at 'inoteca's open doors, head east past Sugar Sweet Sunshine's you-guessed-it notes, and move northward. Shoot west on Stanton for San Loco's catfish-taco bouquet. Who needs lunch?

Best argument for calling do-over on the South Street Seaport

the South Street Seaport at sunrise on a weekend

The foc'sle of solitude. A friend suggests that the ideal place for a tryst would be the second-floor Pizzeria Uno overlooking the East River at the Seaport, because who would ever find you there? In fact, when the Seaport is empty, rather than just full of hoodwinked tourists, you could have a fine canoodle- or discussion, or game of catch, or run, or anything people do at waterfronts that follow their own logic. The light off the river settles in bars of color, the air smells pleasantly of striped bass and brine, the ships' curves settle on the skyline and the cobblestone streets seem simply old rather than olde. The whole serene scene puts the Seaport in perspective. It was a simple-minded, publicly fattened copycat of a downtown-revival play fit for shakier, more polarized cities. Thank God we don't do that anymore.

Best developer bending the boroughs to his will

Thor Equities

Brooklyn is the new Burbank. Joe Sitt bought the old Red Hook sugar factory, a striking building that rises out of the harbor like a mammoth water tower. He's gotten the city to bless a glitzy Coney Island scheme that includes a hotel and a glassed-in amusement park. While we understand our Boerum Hill comrades getting tetchy about an arena plan that would replace a dead railyard with, um, housing and a source of jobs, Sitt makes us sigh. There are businesses working coherently in Coney Island and there are organizations tending the Red Hook waterfront. When one concern gets to declare a struggling area ripe for reinvention, the city seems doomed to become a little more like a replica of itself.

Best advocate for footbridge-based revitalization

Adolfo Carrion, Jr

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is learning. Not since Howard Roark has a trained planner gotten so involved in the day-to-day business of political thought. Bronx Borough President Carrion saw through a deal between the neighborhood and Bloomy's favorite developer, the Related Companies, to groom a stretch of the borough's waterfront. But that's just how he cleaned up the political mess he inherited. On his own, Carrion spearheaded a rezoning of Port Morris to create more legal loft living in this dense, bridge-strewn section near the river. And he's running programs to plant trees and start parks and open a footbridge to Randalls Island that would make the Bronx a duffers' destination. Borough presidents can't redraw maps, perhaps. But Carrion's eye for parks makes the Bronx's future seem open for unpredictable kinds of growth.

Best "old Manhattan" environment where nobody gives a shit about you

Fulton Fish Market

Swimming upstream. Late-night carousers or early-morning fitness freaks who brave the Fulton Fish Market's three-block stretch get a quick lesson in broken-field juking. Despite what you've read about their imminent move to Hunts Point, the fish vendors here haul several tons each overnight. That means slippery pavement with soapsludge and scales, and beeping forklifts and jutting pallets. The guys here speak a hybrid of Spanish, English and jargon. They've got forklifts and schedules to keep. As for getting out of your way? Hey, buddy, these aren't meatpackers. Until the Bronx site comes through, they have no obligation to act as colorful details.

Best grisly fact to make Brooklyn homesteaders feel, like, weird

the bones under the monument in Fort Greene Park

The revolution was not televised. The colonial rebels came in for a major ass-whupping in the Battle of Brooklyn, all so that today's Fort Greeners could argue over whose dog crapped too close to whose tennis ball. Tough-as-nails British soldiers jailed colonists and their mercenary supporters in ships on Wallabout Bay for days. Thousands died there, and some of those patriots' remains lie under the white hilltop column behind the tennis court and public bathroom. Fort Greene Park's sloping, multiculti park always seems so tailored for scampering tots. It is. Just don't let them loose with plastic shovels.

Best outdoor treatment Best place to work on your masterpiece

Coliseum Books

11 W. 42 St. (betw. 5 Ave and 6 Ave)

212-840-7955

Watching life go by. Freelancers can be a self-flagellating bunch. In Starbucks, they all put up with the whirr of the espresso maker and the shouting of the wage slaves, and they wait obeisant for a one-hole bathroom. At Coliseum, the noise comes from folks saying "mm" while they read books with titles like How to Make It in the Movie Industry or gab on their cellphones about how they're too old to audition for roles as extras, how they really want a permanent position unless the right consulting engagement comes along?. You sit at a Formica counter the color of a speckled egg in the window facing Bryant Park. The eye, leaving the laptop's confines, sees tidal bores of people walking east and west on 42nd Street. You see who's pregnant, who's arguing, who likes what subspecies of Coca-Cola. People with and without beer guts, with and without beards, with and without asspants. Around you, fellow itinerants are trying to force forward stagnant careers, slugging sweet drinks and cramming moist pastries. Outside, though, it's a parade.

Write it down.