It Happened Last Week

It Burns

By Mark Adams
Published Jun 8, 2008

As the price of a pack of smokes in the city shot through the $10 barrier last week, even nonsmokers were fired up. Nicorette aficionado Barack Obama gave a triumphant speech after finally clinching the Democratic nomination, while Hillary Clinton at first dragged her feet about conceding after officially losing the primary race. Bill Clinton exploded over a Vanity Fair piece alleging, in part, that he couldn’t control his temper. Mayor Bloomberg quietly polled voters to see if they’d like him to stick around. (Unofficial results: As mayor? Nope. As governor? Maybe.) Al and Tipper Gore visited the Central Park Zoo to raise dough for Indian tigers. Cecil “Katie” Suwal, the 23-year-old madam who allegedly booked Eliot Spitzer’s February Mayflower Hotel meeting, pleaded guilty to running a prostitution ring. Investigators seized records and computers from the company that owned the crane that crashed on East 91st Street. Ballsy book publisher Jane Friedman unexpectedly exited HarperCollins. St. Vincent’s Hospital announced it would have to close if it couldn’t do its massive condo redevelopment in the Village. A lucky Harlem toddler suffered nary a scratch when she tumbled from her second-story apartment onto a cushy rubber garbage-can lid. NYPD water cops rescued a Brooklyn Bridge jumper from the East River. The city ratcheted up its tourism projections—50 million visitors are now expected in 2012, 49 million of whom plan to take the Sex and the City tour. Uma Thurman’s stalker was sentenced to probation. Yoko Ono’s objections to the use of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in the intelligent-design movie Expelled were overruled. The State Court of Appeals ruled that an East Village couple could evict its rent-controlled tenants to rehab an apartment building into a gigantic single-family home. MTV confirmed that its next crop of Real World twentysomethings will reside in downtown Brooklyn. A pipe-toting Tatum O’Neal was busted allegedly buying crack on the Lower East Side. And while Yankee fireballer Joba Chamberlain was shelled in his debut as a starter, Mets pitching godfather Pedro Martinez returned from injury in top form, beating the Giants.