it happened this week

On the Town

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Photo: AFP/Getty Images


The arrival of Fleet Week’s giddy sailors on shore leave marked a summery spate of punch-drunk recklessness, with five intoxicated Long Islanders starting a brawl at Space Mountain at Disney World and Jets cornerback Justin Miller hitting a female Barack Obama staffer in the face at a Chelsea nightclub. And it just got odder from there: A coyote bit a kindergartner on the head in the Jersey suburbs. A 60-year-old woman delivered twins, to the displeasure of her adult children. (“It’s my life and it makes me happy,” explained the new mom.)

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz booted nine community-board members who’d voted against the Atlantic Yards megaproject he championed. A waitress at Jay- Z’s 40/40 Club said the rap mogul’s crew grabbed from the tip jar. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly hinted that trouble might be brewing if rookie cops didn’t get some serious raises, soon. Someone paid $56 million for a penthouse triplex at the former Plaza Hotel. Yankees savior-for-hire Roger Clemens sleepwalked through his minor-league debut, and Jason Giambi again admitted poking around in the medicine cabinet. An atheist multimillionaire blessed the New York archdiocese with $22 million for education, explaining that he lacked faith in the city’s public schools. Porn star Jenna Jameson endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton.

But not all sense was lost: Jurors in the Peter Braunstein trial quickly decided his heartbreak-insanity defense was nuts and convicted him on all charges but arson. Mayor Bloomberg vowed to make city cab riders forget their Checkered past, mandating 25-mile-per-gallon hybrid taxis by 2012. And Staten Island resident Felicia Dunn-Jones’s death from 9/11 dust was reclassified a homicide, raising the official total of Twin Towers victims to 2,750. —Mark Adams

On the Town