It Happened Last Week

Oven Fresh

By Mark Adams
Published Jul 16, 2007

Mother Nature cooked up a heat wave to celebrate last week’s 30th anniversary of the ’77 blackout, but GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani was feeling hot under the collar. The top national firefighters union dubbed the ex-mayor’s 9/11 heroics an “urban legend,” while the name of his southern campaign director, Louisiana U.S. senator David Vitter, turned up in a D.C. madam’s little black book. (“He’s not a freak,” attested a New Orleans brothel owner in Vitter’s defense.) While Eliot Spitzer and Joe Bruno’s feud turned up the heat in Albany, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver stood firm between Mayor Bloomberg (who was hanging with his fellow moguls in Sun Valley) and a half-billion dollars in federal traffic-decongestant funds. The White House claimed Al Qaeda had returned to its 2001 strength. Jersey governor Jon Corzine resisted a subpoena of his e-mails, temporarily sparing someone the task of sorting through thousands of jokes forwarded by his Wall Street pals. Giants QB Eli Manning dismissed backfield legend Tiki Barber as old news. And Barry Bonds announced he will celebrate when A-Rod breaks his home-run record, telling his fellow All-Star, “I’ll be there in a heartbeat. I’ll call you. If you want me there, I’ll be there.” Police deployed to the Poconos and beyond to capture three cop-shooters. Magnolia Bakery was briefly shuttered by the Health Department for not having a sink in the buttercream-icing zone of the kitchen. Claire Danes signed on for a Broadway makeover as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. Trader Joe’s continued its campaign to bring mango chutney to every New Yorker with a beachhead in Cobble Hill. WCBS radio dumped Jack FM to return to its Summer of Sam–era format (Cousin Brucie, however, played hard to get). But as a reminder that things aren’t like those bad old days in other ways, subway crime fell to its lowest level ever. The future, however, is another story entirely. A new global-warming report predicted even longer, hotter summers and scuba diving in Battery Park by 2099.