Here I Sit, SoBroken Hearted, Tried To Fit But Only Arted

Carpetbagging hedonists are disappointed to find that the South Bronx doesn’t really offer the libertine atmosphere they expected:

Some creative types streaming across the Harlem River in search of the city’s “next” neighborhood are starting to find their new home to still be more South Bronx than “SoBro.”

At least that’s artist Emily Stedman’s conclusion after her show, “Erotic Watercolors,” was pulled off a neighborhood gallery’s walls when patrons at adjacent restaurant deemed it offensive.

“I expected it to be an anything goes, sky’s-the-limit, open kind of place,” said Stedman, 59, who left her loft in TriBeCa for Mott Haven in December after tiring of hearing people at gallery openings talk more about real estate prices than art on the walls.

“I’ve been in New York a long time and there’s always a neighborhood where people move to — a Williamsburg or a Long Island City, and it seemed like Mott Haven was going to be the next place. I don’t know if that is still going to happen.”

Her show features soft watercolors of couples or threesomes in various states of embrace. The opening earlier this month at the Bruckner Gallery attracted dozens of art patrons.

But the owner of the Bruckner Bar and Grill, a hip new dining spot which owns the gallery, ordered the show to come down after some of the neighborhood old guard — who rented out the space for golden wedding anniversaries and the like — considered the paintings pornographic.

“A lot of young people have moved here, but you still have a lot of old timers coming in for parties or what not,” said Alex Abeles, the bar’s owner. “We didn’t want to take it down but you could see that it collided with the ideas of people.”

Stedman, who has shown at the Brooklyn Museum and at galleries in Chelsea, said she was shocked that the show was closed, and added that it was hard to imagine something like it happening in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

Machines Don’t Just Serve To Justify Annoying Alternate-Side Parking Rules

Apparently they actually do suck stuff up there:

A Boston terrier was sucked into a fast-moving street sweeper and killed in a heartrending accident in the Bronx.

“It happened so fast,” said the dog’s owner, Robert Machin, who was holding Ginger’s leash when she disappeared. “It spun me around, and as it spun me around, I caught a last glimpse of her.”

Machin, who had been walking the dogs in the Soundview neighborhood Thursday morning, had the door to his Honda Civic open and was about to get inside with Ginger and his other terrier, Buster, when the sweeper struck the dog.

Witnesses said the Department of Sanitation vehicle was speeding.

“I was devastated,” Machin said. “I was completely dumbfounded and shocked. I mean, I just witnessed my dog sucked up into a street sweeper.”

He said he chased the sweeper for about 2 1/2 blocks, shouting for the operator to stop. The driver eventually went back to the scene, but refused to turn off the whirring brushes that had crushed the pooch until he arrived.

The Department of Sanitation called the death “a rare and unfortunate accident.”

Please, No $5 Footlong Jokes

A slackening economy leads to some creative remedies:

While Cousin Vinny’s Way, a so-called dining delight, at 2726 East Tremont Avenue, is dishing out what owner Anthony Agnello calls the “highest quality meats,” it’s what he identifies as his “high quality females” that have community members on edge.

In an attempt to ambiguously advertise his newest venture, Agnello, 48, stated in a highly publicized flyer that in the evenings his “seemingly harmless sub shop becomes the wildly, erotic and explicit, all nude private club, Cousin Vinny’s Little Secret.”

The “secret” club, which he describes to be located in the rear, private entrance of the restaurant, boldly offers unlimited access to “live action from some of the most beautiful young ladies.”

. . .

Agnello previously owned a Subway restaurant up the block before the corporate office pulled his franchise in May.

Local merchants, who wish to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the franchise cancellation came after Agnello refused to remove mobster-type décor from the establishment.

The unique decorations, including a gun on the store’s awning, are a fixture of his newest establishment and though he claims he was “disenfranchised due to politics and differences of opinion as far as marketing is concerned,” he still maintains Subway’s official advertisements, slightly obstructed by personal stickers for originality.

Subway’s corporate office was unavailable for comment.

The unexpected promise to “please” local residents comes not so conveniently during Westchester Square’s diligent revitalization efforts, an action a local official said is inexcusable.

“At a time when the local merchant community is finally coming together to spruce up the square, the last thing in the world that we need is an adult nightclub in our midst,” Councilman Jimmy Vacca said.

My Son Desecrated Your Son’s 9/11 Mural

Not a nice thing to have to admit, and you have to like the aggrieved family’s ultimate advice — go tag the handball court instead:

Two fathers — one who lost his son on 9/11 and the other whose son spray-painted over a mural in the slain man’s memory — came together Wednesday to try to make sense of the senseless.

The phone conversation between Ernest Bielfeld, father of Firefighter Peter Bielfeld, and Curtis Rushing, father of Avery Prince, the 17-year-old who scrawled his tag “SIPS” over Bielfeld’s face on the mural, lasted five minutes — but will stay with them for a long time.

“Does it make it feel better that he called? Yes,” Bielfeld said. “Does it take away that he did it? No.”

Rushing, 38, called Bielfeld, 74, to apologize for his son and his family and to let the Bielfelds know the graffiti was not aimed at the memory of their son, who rushed into the World Trade Center to try to save lives.

“I told him we apologize. We have a lot of respect for everyone who lost their life in 9/11. We all cried that day,” Rushing said. “I think I eased his heart to know it wasn’t intentional.”

“I said it’s something that bothered a lot of people, my wife and our children,” Bielfeld said. “For us, the mural meant something. It’s like graffiti on a tombstone, as far as we’re concerned.”

In a brief interview, Prince, who was arrested Tuesday, apologized and maintained he painted over the mural only because there was a lot of graffiti on it.

Bielfeld told Rushing his son should do graffiti on a “handball court,” not on a wall he considers his son’s tombstone.

Earlier: We Need A New 9/11.

We Need A New 9/11

To all graffiti vandals still swimming in their daddies’ balls when the first 9/11 happened, show some respect, assholes:

Recovering the remains of Firefighter Peter Bielfeld in the ruins of the World Trade Center took nearly a year. Desecrating his memory took only a callous vandal and a can of spray paint.

The Daily News revealed the disgusting act of disrespect Tuesday — and is adding $5,000 to the NYPD’s reward for the arrest and conviction of the graffiti vandal who defaced the memorial mural to the FDNY hero.

The 9/11 victim’s outraged father Tuesday compared the aerosol assault in the Bronx to desecrating his son’s tombstone.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Ernest Bielfeld, who worked as a Daily News paper handler for 40 years. “There’s no reason to do something like that.”

The News’ contribution boosts the NYPD reward to $5,750 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the hoodlum. Bronx artist Eddie Rodriguez spent two weeks creating the mural, which featured Peter Bielfeld, an American flag and the twin towers.

The vandal’s tag — “SIPS” — was sprayed directly over Bielfeld’s face.

“I was really hurt that somebody would desecrate something sacred like that,” Rodriguez said yesterday. “Someone had no regard for someone else’s life and what they pursued.”

The mural was painted outside a bodega where the 19-year FDNY veteran regularly bought cigars. Bielfeld had an unlit cigar in his mouth on the morning of 9/11 when he wrote a goodbye note to his family and headed to the World Trade Center.

Although he was assigned to a firehouse in his native Bronx, he was in the FDNY’s medical office in Brooklyn on the morning of the attacks. He borrowed a colleague’s gear at Ladder 10 in Manhattan and went to his death.