Any week in which scalpers can demand five figures to hear The Police play “Every Breath You Take” at the Garden and the pollen count goes through the roof is bound to leave the city gasping for air. The world’s most dangerous tuberculosis patient stopped into town for three days of quarantine at Bellevue. Mayor Bloomberg opened a gigantic walk-in asthma clinic in East Harlem. Pretend Manhattan district attorney Fred Thompson moved closer to joining the presidential race, leaving real-life Big Apple crime-buster Rudy Giuliani no time to catch his breath.

The Brooklyn woman who ran over the bike-riding father of her unborn child with her SUV, then backed over him, was charged with murder. (“Their relationship was horrible,” explained the man’s older sister.) Long Island’s most intensively caring (and warring) parents, Michael and Dina Lohan, considered a rapprochement to help their Lindsay, who returned to rehab. Local Druids and those suffering from OCD awaited the twice-yearly arrival of Manhattanhenge, when the sundown lines up with the city’s street grid. Iran arrested a former New School professor on charges of espionage, while Stuy Town tenants accused landlord Tishman Speyer of watching every move they made.

The S&P 500 finally regained its full-throttle dot-com bubble-era robustness. The Mets dominated the early All-Star balloting, while the Yankees wheezed into last place, as A-Rod was spotted escorting a blonde into a Toronto strip club. (“I certainly don’t think this will be a distraction to our team,” he said.) Part-time conspiracy theorist Rosie O’Donnell beat a hasty exit from The View just before a suspicious fire torched the ABC TV studios. And well-bred dogs (including Vanessa Williams’s Yorkie, Enzo) began mysteriously disappearing in Westchester — coincidentally, just at the moment Yoko Ono chose to protest British fox hunting by snacking on a Corgi. —Mark Adams