Senators Like Mike
• When Bloomberg speaks, Washington listens? The mayor is praising senators for killing an amendment — it would have forbidden the feds to share gun data with local police — he recently ripped to shreds. [NYDN]
• It looks like we have a mob war on our hands, with a second Mafia-related hit in three days. First a Gambino capo’s son was attacked; now an alleged Genovese mobster is found executed. Or is it all just an HBO promo? [NYP]
• Remember Wall Street West, a Pennsylvania developer’s plan to sell NYC financial firms a kind of giant, high-tech office park as a backup facility? There’s one snag: Nobody’s biting. [NYT]
• The city’s slowly getting used to those spindly, War Of the Worlds–like “Sky Watch” surveillance towers. The next question is whether they actually reduce crime. [amNY]
• And a Long Island gym teacher was arrested for endangering the welfare of a minor after he duct taped the legs of a student, presumably to teach him some sort of lesson. If we’d known this kind of stuff was actionable, our gym teacher would probably still be in jail. [Newsday]
in other news
What to Do When ‘The Sopranos’ EndsThe end of The Sopranos got you yearning for more mob drama? Look no further than the Post, which gleefully reports today that mobsters such as the Gambino brothers are returning to the family after a decade or two in prison. Can life get anymore like season five? Will Rosario Gambino try to go straight like Tony B, only to brutally murder his business partner for poor enunciation? Will Joseph Gambino wax rhapsodic for the old days like Feech La Manna, only to find himself on a bus back to the big house? Or will the Pizza Connection get back to business, moving heroin and pot through pizza parlors across this great nation? Next week, on The Gambinos
‘Godfather’ Part 2 in Apple [NYP]
the morning line
Mike, Trumps, Rudy
• No particular surprise here, but it’s still pleasant to report: Despite not actually running, Bloomberg handily topped Giuliani in a Daily News presidential poll. Some 46 percent of New Yorkers pick Mike over Rudy, who gets 29 percent. [NYDN]
• Not fans of Bloomberg: the Virginia Citizens Defense League. It’s planning to hold a gun giveaway — in a government building — to raise money for two dealers sued by Bloomie. [WNBC]
• New York may start collecting DNA from just about all convicts in all crimes: Eliot Spitzer’s proposing mandatory sampling of all prisoners, parolees, registered sex offenders, and future cons. The program’s also supposed to make exonerating the wrongly jailed a snap. [NYT]
• The Post trumpets the “return of the Mafia.” An exclusive story claims that Sicilian mobsters are making a major comeback across the organized-crime landscape, especially with the Gambino brothers out of jail. About 28 Godfather references follow. [NYP]
• And, more Trumps! Donald Jr. and his wife Vanessa had a baby girl over the weekend, Kai “It’s Danish” Madison Trump; the Donald, who may not even be done siring his own progeny, thus becomes a grandfather. That is all. [amNY]
the morning line
One Day, Everything Will Be Named for the ‘Daily Show’ Host
• The Post has “Mob scion” Chris Colombo on tape waxing nostalgic about the days of former New York A.G. Dennis Vacco: “Spitzer is the worst. Vacco was the best. He didn’t care about anything. I had a hook in him.” Oh, the election ad that would have made. [NYP]
• So there’s JFK, La Guardia, Newark and … Stewart? With the Spitz’s blessing, the Port Authority is about to buy an underused airport 60 miles north of the city and turn it into the region’s fourth international hub. Pataki, apparently, hated the idea. [NYT]
• We suppose it was inevitable: The issue of how to list the names of WTC victims on the 9/11 memorial — alphabetically, at random, in weird associative clusters — is now fodder for hysterical TV ads running on NY1. [amNY]
• So there’s this $140 million police-radio system the MTA had been installing in the subways for ten years. It’s done, but the cops won’t use it: Everything sounds “as if you’re talking through a glass of water.” A $140 million glass of water. [NYT]
• And the Daily News somehow “learned,” unprompted by any recent developments, that Thor Equities is planning to redevelop Coney Island as a “glitzy playground” — a plan in the works for years. Let’s not tell the paper about the whole WTC memorial thing; it might upset them. [NYDN]
the morning line
Questionable Links
• The city’s comptroller has red-flagged a $10 million contract between the Parks Department and Dominick Logozzo, a Brooklynite with serious mob ties; the deal entrusts Logozzo with the management of a city-owned golf course. Best part: Logozzo is also an investor in the Zone Diet, which the Feds claim is a front to hide Mafia profits. [NYP]
• Governor Spitzer unveiled his initiatives for New York in his first State of the State speech yesterday, and it left half of Albany slack-jawed. Among other things, the Spitz wants to guarantee health insurance for all children, reduce the cost of worker’s comp to boost business, and spend billions on school aid — all that while cutting taxes. Sounds, uh, good. [NYT]
• According to a suit filed by “several disgusted janitors,” there is hanky-panky afoot in New York’s Equinox fitness clubs — as the Daily News puts it, “sleazy gay sex.” Gay sex in gyms?! Say it ain’t so. [NYDN]
• Busta Rhymes turned himself in to the cops on a misdemeanor assault charge, having allegedly roughed up an associate in a money dispute. Not too exciting, but an upgrade over Rhymes’s previous brush with the law: a ticket for talking on a cell while driving. [amNY]
• And a metallic, gold-colored lump of rock, most likely a meteorite, crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home and embedded itself in the floor, delighting scientists. Okay, progressive politics or not, Jersey is still freaking weird. [NYDN]
cultural capital
Mrs. Gotti Wants to See Bill Clinton Naked
“In Praise of Older Women,” an exhibition of paintings by Victoria Gotti Sr. — that would be Growing Up Gotti Victoria’s mom, the late Dapper Don’s widow — opened last night at MW Gallery in Chelsea. Many of the paintings, as it turns out, are her impressions of famous faces, from Bill Clinton to Johnny Depp. “I only paint pictures of people that I like, and I love Bill Clinton,” Gotti told us at the reception. “I voted for him twice. I don’t think this country would be in the mess that it’s in now with Iraq if he was still president.”
We asked if celebrities sit for her. “No, I wish,” she said. “Can you put in a good word? I’d paint Bill Clinton nude.” She paused for a second. “Don’t print that,” she said. Sorry, Mrs. G.
— Fiona Byrne
