Best of Manhattan 2001: Manhattan Living

No, Not Jennifer Capriati. Early March, the spring thaw and we’re walking east on 11th St. when the boogedy old salt pushes over his shopping cart and starts throwing wild jabs at an imaginary foe. We pass at a safe distance, noticing that his temples have gone gray. He has fewer teeth. His ankles, once scaly and swollen, are now thick as Hillarystumps. There again at the ATM on Houston and Broadway. Befouling the air with anus reek and "Mutherfuckingcocksuckerbitch gon kee you!"

Older? Yeah. Mellowed? Hell no! In fact, he’s as menacing as ever. Throwing off static. Stinking of gut decay. Raging along that same frenzied shark-in-bloody-chum axis of tempestuousness that we recall from back in his early 90s heyday. Yes, Cracky’s come off the bench. Returned from sabbatical just in time to greet the careening economy and do a squeegee wave buh-bye to his old foe, da Mayor. How really like clockwork it all is, we think as we scratch our heads wondering who let the dawgs out? And what’d he do to himself while he was away? It seems the old rancor’s been transmuted; in his dotage, he’s even more deranged. The circuitry’s more fouled, more volatile. New Cracky is, as often as not it seems, Cracky without the crack. More ion-charged, boog-eyed and dusty. Cracky, juiced on his own fermented bad chemicals.

Monsieur le Craque on perma-crack flashback back with a vengeance and no gentle renaissance, this: E. 80th St., he makes toward a young mother pushing a stroller. She peels off the sidewalk and through heavy traffic, narrowly escaping to the opposite side of the street. Who dat pissing into the subway entrance down in Tribeca? Yeah, the Crack is back! West Village, Midtown, Upper West Side–barking at stop signs and terrorizing parked cars. Accusing the pavement. Working the intersections for change. Central Park, yuppie lovebirds observe gapemouthed as he strips to practically nothing and makes his douche in a nearby water fountain. Girl, dumbstruck, rubs her temple as if, "So familiar, but can’t…quite…place it." Guy, voice laden with dread, moans, "Just wait till winter." And he’s right. The season of interiors–that’s when the loathing and avoidance will register like so much irritating deja vu; that’s when the new mayor, spurred on by the mounting clamor of irate straphangers and the like, will weigh in with pronouncements on the citizen’s "right to be left alone."

Welcome back Cracky, you’re a pungent reminder that things’d been good for a while. Perhaps a little too good.

Best Foreign Description of a New York Neighborhood "Little Italy," from AMERIKA, a Website for Dutch Tourists www.amerika.nl

This Just Geliquideers Us. Een Godfather-filmset, dat is het. Al is Mulberry Street eigenlijk het laatste karige restant van wat eens een enorme Italiaanse wijk was, alle requisieten staan er nog. Op warme avonden nemen de restaurants–Il Cortile, Benito’s I en II, Casa Bella, Vincent’s Clam Bar en co.–de smalle trottoirs over. Dan dwarrelen Caruso’s hoge C’s als duiven boven de norse, met brandtrappen omlijste gebouwen, als honderden mensen afkomen op pasta, parmezaanse kaas en ontelbare varianten van rode sauzen, hopend een glimp op te vangen van Correleone-achtig gedrag, of, wie weet, een festijn zoals dat in 1972, toen maffioso Joey Gallo werd geliquideerd in Umberto’s Clamhouse.

Best Perverted Tourism Site "Ground Zero"

Party Time. It’d been building for some 48 hours, but we’d mark Saturday, Sept. 22, as the day the WTC disaster became amusement park fodder for shameless gawkers, whether they were New Yorkers or out-of-towners.

At 4 that morning, awakened once again by the overpowering stench that envelops Tribeca, we went downstairs to get a cup of coffee and quart of orange juice. A new barricade–Checkpoint Charlie to those of us who’ve been living with well-meaning cops since 9/11–was set up at Duane and Hudson Sts., cutting off access to King’s Pharmacy, Morgan’s Deli and the nearby ATM. We asked a policeman what gives, whether another building had collapsed, and he was churlish in response: "That’s just the way it is now!" We didn’t really blame the guy; he’d probably been working for 36 hours and was sick of the constant harassment from increasingly persistent pedestrians.

Later in the day, it was carnival-like in the neighborhood, with thousands of people packed at Greenwich and Duane Sts., half with disposable cameras, trying to "experience" the thrill of "Ground Zero," gazing into the distance where the Trade Center once stood. It was a boon for recession-battered local businesses in the area–the only benefit we could think of–but one more setback for the neighborhood. Remember how ghoulish the crowds were after JFK Jr. died two summers ago, with thrill-seekers slurping ice cream cones while they snuck a peek at his N. Moore residence? This was the same sick phenomenon, only 100 times worse.

Meanwhile, unfortunate residents of Battery Park City were trying to get back into their homes; recovery workers were still on the job; and people who live in Tribeca attempted to buy groceries, newspapers and toilet paper amidst this disgraceful stream of thrill-seekers. Rudy Giuliani was certainly correct in his request that New Yorkers go out, spend money and pump up the economy, but we don’t think he meant that this battered area of Lower Manhattan should become the equivalent of a human zoo.

Best Letter from a Film Crew Publicist

You Really Like Us. They were shooting an O-Town video on Ludlow St.–which is a weird and beautiful thing to see, that video, with the supercoiffed, soft-focused O-Townies slow-motion running past the Hat and Ludlow Guitars–and we guess they thought they might have an easier time of it if they flattered the local population. So photocopied letters on J Records stationery were scotch-taped to the street signs and parking meters, with a J Records publicist congratulating our neighborhood on its "tremendous color and energy." Ah yes, thank you, J Records publicist, for noticing our neighborhood’s extremely groovy "color and energy." We’re sure glad all those years of struggle for survival by immigrants and artists alike have finally found their fruition in an O-Town video.

Best Impression of the Mob by NYC Government Cabaret License Law Enforcement

Wetting Their Beaks. What is this, that town in Footloose? Does Kevin Bacon have to come along and arrange for a party across the county border to show John Lithgow how wholesome dancing is? Enforcing the "No Dancing" clause of the 75-year-old Cabaret License Law in 2001 New York is–as John Wayne once said about something else–ri-goddamn-diculous.

The old rationale behind the law was that mobster-esque big club owners used it as leverage against small club owners, so they wouldn’t have to compete. But now that some of those characters have themselves been harassed out of business, other explanations as to who fuels the city’s crusade against rhythmic motion are surfacing. Leading the pack of suspects are major property owners, who supposedly worry about the negative effect nightlife crowds have on real estate values. But even landlords aren’t asinine enough to fail to realize that if the problem is that the few bars that allow dancing draw big crowds, the solution is to let every bar allow dancing.

No, the way official Building Inspectors repeatedly entered bars with flashlights during busy hours to check permits and count routes of emergency egress suggests something simpler: the motherfuckers enjoy the power. It’s just like when they used to bust up gay bars. Straight-up bullying with a touch of titillation and the possibility of a payoff, and a brute demonstration of muscle by meatheads who don’t like to see other people have a good time. If the new mayor doesn’t change the law, a Stonewall of dancers will be necessary.

Best Overused Summer DIY Fashion for Women The Cut-Up T-Shirt

Overexposed Overexposure. Most things in life are only appealing to a point. This includes fashion, especially summer wearables. A few years back it was the black slip-on shoes that every woman seemed to own. Then it was Chelsea ladies in their slim-fitting Capri pants. Equally overused were men’s cargo pants, which pushed the limits of acceptable fashion when they became abundant in the workplace. Last summer, and this, it was flipflops.

The item of clothing that beats any in the "overused" department, though, is the cut-up women’s t-shirt. Levi’s cords and jeans, altered into skirts, come close, but they aren’t as obnoxious.

We understand that t-shirts tend to be boxy, oversized and just unflattering on women, so for saying "Fuck you" to t-shirt-makers, ladies, we salute you. And at first it was cool to see 80s-styled shirts resurface as hot little numbers. But it wasn’t cool anymore when we’d walk into a bar and notice half the girls inside had tried their hands at homemade shirts. We saw shirts from Hooters and Florida vacation spots. Some new shirts tie on the shoulders or in the middle of the back, while others appear to be shoulderless–like the one on the girl rocking out in front of the stage at the White Stripes show. The funniest cut, though, has to be the slit down the front of the shirt, often made into a "v" to promote viewable cleavage. We knew this trend had gone too far when we saw the subway posters with Madonna flaunting a torn-up shirt. Armani shirts safety-pinned up the sides reinforced our belief that 2001’s summer trend had become way too commercialized and no longer cool.

Best Romantic Trend May-December Liaisons

Forever Young. Younger women and older men want the same thing: love. Older women and younger men want the same thing: sex. This axiom does a good job of describing the neat balance of the May-December ball, where the caretakers and the plain old takers get to waltz until the ghost is given up.

As a May in the May-December equation (well, maybe we’re more like a June and Rory is more like a November), we believe this axiom is true. We really want this axiom to be as clean-shaven as it sounds. Only, when we unearthed Rory, who is 22 years our senior, we unearthed a man who wanted love and sex, like we did. Never mind that love and sex mix about as well as booze and pills.

Forever, or close to it, when we think of men, of Man, we will think of Rory, who barged in during a dry spell and became the stoutly priapic Viking lord of our thighs.

We think it is important that you know that we met Rory many, many years ago, when we were about six or seven years old. He was, until we started fucking him last winter, a friend of our father’s. Back when we first knew Rory, he was a blond ape in low-slung white jeans, who could somehow drain a can of Miller and simultaneously dock start on one ski off our float, naturally being pulled by a Boston Whaler that he had "borrowed" from a rich friend who was in love with him. The boat would be piloted by my father, who was also tripping. Rory’s wife was the slim, pretty and wee-voiced Stevie, who kept to the patio and had reason to believe that Rory was humping everything that was slender and female in Berkshire County.

We hated Rory and believed Rory hated us. We hated his big laugh and the fact that he took over every scene he walked into. We hated how our father was in awe of him. We stopped hating him and started beating off to a virginal fantasy of him when we were 16. When our father went to take a leak one late night, Rory slipped us some good-night tongue, beery and wiggly. We didn’t see him for the next 18 years. In that time, our brother died, our parents divorced, Stevie and Rory divorced, we moved around. We heard, through our father, that Rory was seeing some younger girl and was living on a boat. He was in Poland on business. In DC. In San Francisco. Dealing with his dead brother’s estate. We guess that’s what older people do. They deal with estates. They deal with stuff.

And then, this past winter, Rory was in Amherst. He looked us up, and we went out for an embarrassing dinner (with our mother, who left in a panic after Rory ate fries off an adjacent table’s serving tray) and that night before he dropped us off we made out in his huge rented SUV, and there still wasn’t enough room for the thrashing.

So, Rory spirited us away to his house, where we had the "talk" with his 18-year-old daughter. ("Oh no, oh no, I like you, don’t worry, it’s just the last one was a psycho.") We stayed in the pool during those cruel days in mid-August. Then, the other night in Sag Harbor at this awful Jap restaurant called Sen, Rory tells the hostess, this blonde, blinky whippet, to fuck herself. We lead him outside. Rory had been drinking all day and was splendidly dressed in a white linen suit. We, on the other hand, had not been drinking all day and looked like the rent girl with a vicious tan and flipflops.

We veered toward the relative cool of the American Hotel down the street. Rory was limping and muttering, and we studied him as we ate the raw almonds at the bar. He looked like a baggy old man. Rory had become a baggy old drunk man who still blasted old Dylan and new Stones in his old open Jeep in a feeble attempt to be the young ape again, and we hated him.

We’ve been trying to break up with him lately, but it’s difficult. Rory has a great dick and he’ll do anything to please us. Rory has money. Not cash. He flies us down to see him. This impresses us. We’re not above that.

We saw a picture of us taken earlier in the summer and we make a great couple. Rory is old and fat and, as a result, we look young and sexy. We imagine this is why Catherine Zeta-Jones looks so good. It’s because of her baggy better half.

Best Way to Cry Flying in on a Clear Night

Sniff... It gets us every time. We’re out of New York for family or business (never for very long, since 48 hours away from the city causes everything to go haywire in our lives) and we manage, by poor planning or delay, to take a late-night flight in. There aren’t any clouds; we have a window seat, and right as the pilot tells us to buckle our safety belts and prepare for landing, the grid of Manhattan jumps out at us. Like a Hagstrom Five Borough Atlas at 1:1 scale, it shows us the big streets in pale yellow, and we’ve been here so long we recognize it all. There’s the West Side Hwy. picking up around 59th St. and slinking over that patch of land that Trump is always threatening to develop. There’s Riverside Park, where our friends got busted smoking pot but we escaped. There’s Macy’s, where our first real girlfriend walked out on us. There’s that horrific rubble heap that’s the focus of everything now–but it’ll be fixed soon, restored to the order of the grid. There’s the rehearsal studio where we used to party. There’s one, two, three places we used to work; that’s the block where we used to have to walk in the street to avoid rats. That’s the first house we lived in away from our parents; there’s our parents’ house; there’s the house we’re going to now (in Brooklyn). And just as a look at the clear night sky (not the New York night sky, obviously–maybe the one in Ohio, which we left two hours before) shows us how small we are but somehow comforts us, the New York grid says: "Fuck ya," but we smile. Because we don’t need to care for it. We print up "I Heart NY" shirts for ourselves–the town couldn’t care less. It’s got a mean harbor; it’s been making money for 350 years, and it’s going to keep on growing like a pile of black snow.

Best Mullet Haiku

This...THING. It’s Clamped to My...HEAD! Must...Free Myself! But It...Won’t...Let...Go! This little chestnut of hipster irony has sadly reached the "over" stage, its death knell tolled by an abundance of crappy websites crappily copping to the original mulletsgalore.com, repeated mentions on the Tonight show and a dreadfully unfunny "Mullet Madness" exposé that popped up on our AOL welcome window the other day. Oh well, it’s sure been a fun ride. As parting homage to the Canadian Passport, the Achy Breaky Bad Mistakey, the Short-Long and so on, we offer the following pick for "Best Mullet Haiku" along with first, second and third runners-up. And then never more to be mentioned:

Short like my schooling,

Long like my prison sentence.

Buzz it penal, please.

O! Squirrel brother,

Your tail, my hair. We are one.

Yet I must eat you.

Dogs urinate where

they so choose. And so do I.

Red and blue lights flash.

Short for dad. Long for

the daughter mom always wanted.

Everyone’s happy.

Best Subway Musician Who Only Knows the Chorus of One Song The "Who’ll Stop the Rain" Guy

But Who’ll Stop This Guy? We must admit straightaway that in recent days, we’ve received eyewitness accounts of this guy playing at least one other song. But for a while there, he was a real fixture around Astor Place with his guitar and his practice amp and his song fragment. You could always tell him apart from the slew of other half-talented musicians playing out in the neighborhood, because this guy only knew the chorus of "Who’ll Stop the Rain?" And he’d play it over and over and over again, in a seamless, endless loop.

"Who’ll stop the rain? danadanadana Who’ll stop the rain?..."

It was especially maddening if you happened to find yourself on a subway platform with him, and you knew you had a while to wait before the next train.

We’ve seen people shout out requests to him, and people shout other lines from the song, but all their efforts were in vain. Funnier still, we’ve seen people–obviously hearing him for the first time–bobbing their heads and smiling in time with what was clearly one of their favorite songs. Inevitably, a few minutes later, we’d see these same happy faces turn confused and lost, watch as the shadows crossed over them and he swung around to start the chorus a fifth time.

It would’ve been one thing had we seen him doing this once–street musicians often use their impromptu "stages" as rehearsal spaces, where they can work out new material without worrying about bothering the neighbors. The crowd out there is mobile, so few people hear more than one song or a few bars of one song before moving on.

But this guy, Jesus Christ! We saw him five or six times, and every goddamn time it was the same fucking chorus to "Who’ll Stop the Rain?"! It wasn’t bad or anything–he obviously had some talent, but still–you just wanted to smack him.

Then we got to thinking. Maybe he taught himself the song by listening to an old Creedence record that was very badly scratched.

Best Outdoor Vomit Spot (Uptown) Scores 333 E. 60th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.) 421-3600

The Sickness Unto Death. Scores is so very many "bests"–"Best Place to Chat Up Strippers on Their Way to Work," "Best Place to Sell Overpriced Weed at 3 a.m."–but it’s most notable for the particular brand of homestyle applesauce that can be found outside its doors on Monday mornings without fail. Scores must be serving up some questionable seafood, because the samples are always pink, with chunks of shrimp. Guess we should stay away from the surf & turf once we finally ditch our self-respect and go there, but we know we’ll probably end up vomiting anyway. How else to react, really, when presented with heavenly bodies we’ll never have, celebrities we’ll never be and drinks we can’t really afford?

Best Swiss-Cheese Memory Mike Gentile

So Where’s The Onion? The Brooklyn-based New York Metropolis, a weekly that debuted in August, is an evolving publication. We suspect that a few months along, the paper will stop wasting space printing tv listings and clean up the silly writing. For example, the fine print on page 3 reads: "New York Metropolis is published every Thursday by tiny little house elves who live in the shiny part of the Chrysler Building. All contents...cannot be reprinted without the expressed, written consent of Major League Baseball." Given that collegiate yuk, next thing you know the Metropolis will be protesting on behalf of a living wage for PETA employees.

We’re sure the New York Press/Stranger hybrid will improve. That may require the removal of the editor, publisher and managing editor, but someone’s financing the operation.

In the "Last Week" section of the Aug. 30 issue, a recap of an Ironminds wake, a writer recalled some of the guests, including this newspaper’s founding art director Mike Gentile. "[Gentile] congratulated us on our new paper and pointed out that New York Press’ first edition was only 24 pages."

Actually, it was more modest: 20 pages.

Best Place to Sleep in the Met Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 5Ave (82ndSt.) 879-5500

Not Far from the Velazquezzzzzzz. You thought it would be relaxing to spend a quiet Sunday in the Met, hermetically ensconced in old masterpieces, pondering impasto lace collars and grisaille portraits. Little did you know there would be classes of children cavorting about, Gucci-laden European women clicking their heels and the inevitable father screaming at his equally disruptive child. Not to mention the ever-intimidating guards.

Here’s what you do. Make your way to the Robert Lehman Collection. From the Great Hall, approach the large central steps, but just before you reach them turn right through a rectangular doorway. Gaze at the large-eyed Byzantine mosaic. Turn left and continue down this hall, past sarcophagi and ancient gold girdle coins, into Medieval Art. Walk past backlit stained glass and regal tapestry, through the far door flanked with freestanding columns. Continue, straight, swerving around Claux de Werve’s Virgin and Child, and go through the wrought-iron choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid (you might have to skirt this as well, at least while the Christmas tree is up). Go through the rear passage (an archway), past Venetian glass. You should now see a plexiglas sign with gold lettering, announcing the Lehman collection. Enter.

Now comes the tricky part. Veer toward the left of this diamond-shaped atrium. Past the window, a bit down the wall, you’ll see that there’s a painting slightly inset. For now, it’s a Renoir that almost seems to draw on Cassatt for its soft and vibrant portrayal of two girls. Face this wall, then go to the right, through the passageway and into the next room. There you are. The only couch in the Met you’re allowed to sit on. Ignore the grit deposited by the thousands of tired souls who’ve made this journey, and plop down. Look at the El Grecos and Rembrandts, sigh relief. Tilt your head back, pretend to look at the chandelier or the velvet wall paper and, finally, relax.

Best Waylaid Social Trend Sexual Openness

And It’s Often Healthier. We’ll say it if no one else will: good riddance to fuck-me feminism. Because for the past five years or so, you couldn’t utter a sexual platitude without being rewarded with your own column. (Only the great Candace Bushnell knows how to work a fade-away, and she’s elevated sex writing to social satire on the level of Tom Wolfe.) But the rest of you, please–no more! No more book deals! No more Salon articles! No more PhDs in contemporary American culture! We’ve congratulated your self-congratulations for long enough. You’ve explained to us the difference between lotion and saliva, you’ve scheduled, and written about, "self-pleasuring sessions" with sexperts, and you’ve knowingly juggled such shorthand as doms and trannies with admirable ease. And while we’re not against any of these things per se, we’d prefer a little literary panache with our blowjobs and our G-spots. Even Bataille knew about plot and pacing.

Because, the thing is, we’re all doing these things. We liked hearing about it when it sounded like you were trying to figure it out, before you got coy. We love Annie Sprinkle because she’s sweet and perverted, and writes about things we’d never ever do, and because she believes that writing about sex is a public service. But that’s the thing about actually being transgressive. Transgression is not talking about something we all do; it’s about doing something we can’t even bring ourselves to talk about. Sexual coyness and sexual quirkiness, of the kind that are being written, are just another way to get boys to like you. Quirky isn’t sexy; it’s bragging. It makes sex generic. It’s closer to The Rules than to the dark and interesting aggro-pathologies of testosterone around which it’s modeled. Why are California and Sweden bland? Why are nude beaches unsexual? Why is imagination better than literalism? Why is Andrea Dworkin more erotic than the Nerve personals? The kind of San Francisco-tested pro-sex writing we’ve been exposed to these past years just shuts off that psychological stuff that makes us want to have sex in the first place. At that point, when it’s just physical, you might as well go jogging.

Best End of an Era The Hamptons

Pushed Out By Not-Our-Kind. Rather than the Place to Be that it has become, the Hamptons used to be simply a place to go when it got too hot or empty anyplace else. After grandfather died, nearly 15 years ago, and certainly after all of Granny’s friends died–those stately summertime acquaintances who lolled in the rough surf with her–after our nick of heaven on the South Fork was overrun with leadfoot Jews and other pawns of the New Rich (who were so unrefined that hiding their wealth meant shopping at J. Crew), after they kept flooding in unchecked, more and more every year, our family decided to sell and get out.

The recent sale of the "cottage" (that’s what Granny quaintly calls the house, which is really a seven-bedroom giantess hunkered down on Georgica Pond) officially put an end, at generation number six, to our family’s ramshackle but steady rule on a dead-end gravel road.

We imagined that if we knew exactly when the Hamptons became "The Hamptons" it would lessen the sadness somehow. In true half-Jew fashion, we developed an Aryan-friendly theory that would make even Goebbels dance a jig.

So this is what happened: Somewhere in the maw of the 1980s, Georgica’s Masters of the Universe discovered that the pool of good, marriageable women had drained down to either their mothers or their sisters. The Hamptons started to curdle when the Masters of the Universe discovered that there weren’t any Mistresses of the Universe. They wondered if this strain of femaleness even existed in the first place. So they married Dominatrices of Reality instead. Grannies rolled in their plain coffins and saw the fall from grace long before we did.

These Dominatrices of Reality were loudmouths in Lilly Pulitzer halters who hated the sun, or loved it too much; who designed hats; who ran galleries; who were whores in the bedroom; who ordered takeout; who bore them lookalike thuggish offspring. These women did not use nannies. These women cut off their husbands’ balls with platinum nail scissors. And worst of all, these women did not respect the matriarchs of Georgica.

The final blow came when these women invited their friends: the celebrities, the climbers, the toothy, the hirsute. And they, in turn, fell in love with the fragile beauty of our avalon.

Our family is fragile, too. We are a pale ecosystem, and with the death of our brother, we don’t have an heir to carry on the name. So there’s a lot we don’t care for. We don’t care for conspicuous wealth, exotic food, beautiful people or the burgeoning hysteria on Rte. 27. We just don’t care for the New Breed. Two years ago, after having to excuse ourselves from cocktail hour because our father bitterly used the term "million-dollar view" for the umpteenth time (in reference to the expanse of lawn, pond and ocean spread out before us), the whisperings of getting out started to leak in. Granny wasn’t getting any younger. Operating expenses on the cottage weren’t getting any cheaper. We didn’t pay heed to this kind of talk, it had been rambling on since our grandfather (who was the dry-eyed linchpin in the whole family scene) first started catching whiffs of the weirdness way back in the 1970s.

But as this past winter and spring progressed, after we saw the cottage referred to as a "property" in a color brochure, we knew the end was coming soon. Our father sent us a list of items in the cottage that were up for grabs. We only chose what we could carry, as if we were salvaging from a house on fire–the 150-year-old framed sewing sampler, a lithograph from our favorite bedroom, the wooden clogs, forever empty by the hearth, from Granny’s early life in Holland.

The cottage now belongs to, and these are our father’s hurt, typically platitudinous words: "a happy young couple who will hopefully love the cottage like we did." Our mind draws a blank on who or what these "happy" people could be, except for more of the New Breed. Sleek and wide-eyed. Unhappy people. Not like us. It will always be difficult to imagine anything but our kind puttering around out there.

Best Reason Not to Live in Astoria

A Rhinestone in the Rough. Never mind that it’s become hideously overpriced. The real reason: pure hype, whether it’s trumped-up newspaper and magazine articles declaiming its subtle virtues, or that untrustworthy word-of-mouth regarding "cool" 718 neighborhoods. Astoria’s only saving graces are its proximity to Manhattan, no-nonsense local bars and a few good restaurants. Even with the mass influx of nonindigenous, college-educated white folk, it remains a relatively dull, family-oriented neighborhood, albeit one with skyrocketing rents.

As for the feel of Astoria, "standoffish" is the word that comes to mind. The Greeks and Indians keep to themselves, the middle-class Latinos cling a little too farcically to their ghetto roots and the Italians are firmly convinced everyone but them is for shit. Wiggers abound. Throw in a smattering of white bohos suffering from working-class envy and Manhattan wannabes living in forced financial exile, and you have a strange, surly mix of unsatisfied people who try to ignore how much they resent one another for legitimate reasons.

A hidden gem? One stop at any realtor’s office will put an end to the word "hidden." As for "gem," rhinestone would be more fitting.

Best Pilgrimage to a Fallen Heroine

Body and Soul. If you are in a morbid frame of mind, why not make a trip to Billie Holiday’s grave? She is buried in the new St. Raymond’s (Patron Saint of the Falsely Accused) Cemetery in the Bronx. Take the 5 train to East Tremont, then the 42 bus to 1201 Balcolm Ave. The first cemetery you see is prettier, being the older one, but you still have to hike about 10 blocks until you reach the second one, on Lafayette Ave. Then you need to locate Row 56 in the St. Paul Division. Bring some pencils and paper if you want to make a rubbing of the rosary that decorates her rather plain tombstone, and ask yourself why one of the greatest blues singers of all time died pretty much alone, arrested on her death bed, with 70 cents in her bank account and 15 $50 bills strapped to her leg. And remember a white flower for Lady Day.

Best Local Summer Story Lizzie Grubman

Lizzie Grubman Took a Clutch... When the world’s most charming p.r. flack, Lizzie Grubman, threw her black Mercedes SUV into reverse outside the Conscience Point Inn, mowing down 16 bystanders before fleeing in a friend’s car, she accomplished several very important things. First of all, she came this close to starting a real, honest-to-goodness class war out in the Hamptons. Now that would’ve been something to see!

Funny thing is, while news reports made repeated references to her "white trash" slur, few of them noted that most of the people she hit were people Just Like Her. Which would’ve made a knock-down, drag-out class war even funnier.

The most important thing she did, however, was help reveal which local news outlets were under the thumb of the Rich and Famous–and to what degree. Why is it that the Times and the Daily News let the story slide under the radar, even when it was the main topic of conversation amongst New Yorkers? Simple. Grubman is a high-powered publicist who works for one of the country’s most powerful p.r. firms. You go after Lizzie, you can kiss that J-Lo interview goodbye.

That’s why we should all thank our lucky stars for the Post, which gave Grubman’s firm a big, fat "Fuck you" and tore her to shreds at every available opportunity, going so far as to hold a shockingly cruel contest in which they raffled off a "LizzieMobile," which they paraded around the Hamptons. They just didn’t care. They know who their readership is, and they gave them what they wanted.

No J-Lo interview? So what? Who cares? Give us more Lizzie coverage and we’ll be happy.

What’s more, the Grubman story contained more fascinating twists and turns than the Kimes case. It was a story with everything–drugs, violence, money, celebrity cameos, blackmail and deep, inherent social symbolism. Nationally, we haven’t seen anything like this since the OJ Simpson case.

At this point, the only thing that could make this story better is if Lizzie were to take it on the lam on the eve of her trial. And who knows?

Best Place to Watch Fireworks Waterside Plaza 25th St. (FDR Dr.)

American Eagle-Eye View. Living a block from the East River usually isn’t so bad. You can watch garbage barges drift lazily downstream and see the faint glimmer of the Circle Line at night. But once a year, this otherwise idyllic urban stretch becomes more riotous than Chelsea on the night of a Madonna concert. Ah, the Fourth of July. Fireworks.

Usually, as the police, barricades and men selling phosphorescent necklaces move in, we move out. This year, though, rather than finding solace in the outer boroughs, we entered the fray. Our destination? Waterside Plaza. Sure, these towers may be slowly sinking into the current, but in the meantime, they afford a wonderful view. John Gotti’s daughter lives there for a reason. In order to visit on the 4th, plan on making friends with someone who lives there, or skulking around well beforehand, looking for extra guest passes. Think of them as front-row tickets. Once inside, you could very easily find yourself in the same paradise we did. Flanked by fine wine, small roast sandwiches and someone’s Emmy award, we waited for the show to begin. And did it. Rai