OK, Yankees. You held up your end of the deal, and it’s time for me to do my part. Now that you’ve shown those obnoxious Phillies how it feels to come up short at the end, and now that you’ve shown those obnoxious Phillies that REAL world champs don’t spend time at their celebration being sore winners who mock the teams that didn’t get there, I will officially bury the hatchet I’ve been carrying since that time you hurt me in 2000, and we can be friends again. Not BFF, but, you know, we can say Hi when we see each other at parties. I’ll even stop criticizing you for buying championships and admit that I wish my high-payroll team were as good at buying championships as you are.

But don’t get too cocky. I may not be mad anymore but if you start blathering about the Yankee Way and the Yankee tradition of excellence, I will have no choice but to remind you of the Bronx Zoo ’70s, the fruitless ’80s, and all the other times that your precious history wasn’t so pristine.

Congratulations, guys.

For a New Yorker who was working in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, I don’t have a harrowing or even very interesting story. I was not near the Towers; I was not near death. I did not see the planes. My life was not saved by a delayed train or by bringing my child to school or by voting in the mayoral primary or by stopping for coffee or by a heroic act by a fellow New Yorker.

I was at my desk in Midtown when the planes hit. As word spread, I gathered with coworkers to watch, horrified, on the news as the Towers burned and then fell, as the Pentagon smoldered. With thousands of others, I walked to Queens over the 59th Street Bridge, and then I got a ride home from a coworker. It was a sad, even terrifying day for me, but not a particularly dangerous one.

Eight years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, I find myself still in awe of the brave passengers who crashed their plane in Pennsylvania. Still in awe of the firefighters who climbed the Towers to rescue my friends, relatives and neighbors despite the obvious dangers in doing so. Still in awe of the ordinary citizens who, simply by being employed in New York’s two tallest office buildings, became unwitting soldiers in our constant battle against hatred and destruction. Still in awe of the scores of volunteers who sifted through the rubble while I watched on TV from the safety and comfort of my home and my family.

Methinks Wang’s luck has run out.

It’s not easy to read thanks to my lousy camera and lack of photography skill, but the store in the middle, found in Midtown Manhattan, is called Hippo Shoes.

Sounds like the perfect place to find accessories to match the new outfit I bought at Manatee Clothiers.

Sitting behind me on the LIRR, a clearly appalled girl in her 20s exclaims to her friend:

“She advertised it as a dining room set, but it’s a dinette set at best!”

Now, I get as infuriated by classified-ad exaggerations as the next guy, but judging by this girl’s obnoxiouly loud voice and completely-void-of-irony indignation, I’m guessing she doesn’t have enough friends to require the extra leaf and two chairs she’d been expecting.

My score, as if you care: 83. Here’s the diagnosis that came with the score:
DO YOU BELONG IN NYC?
Yes, but sometimes you wish there were a better option.
You do love New York, and you fit in here better than you have anywhere else. You’re committed to the city, and you take advantage of all of its amazing food, culture, nightlife and arts. But you have nagging doubts about this relationship. Spend your whole life here? Not sure about that. Sometimes you wonder about that farm in your fantasies or even just a smaller city. But in reality, you know there’s nowhere better.

Sounds about right.

According to findingDulcinea, private beekeeping has been illegal in NYC since 1999, but may be on its way back thanks to a new bill, and maybe to the Obamas.

Apparently many New Yorkers had been ignoring the ban, and “It was the already-present beekeeping community that encouraged councilman David Yassky to introduce a bill that would allow beekeepers to keep bees if they are licensed.”

I guess, in an election year, Yassky figures he’ll catch more flies with honey. (Thank you, I’m here all week.) I do like his idea of licensing them, though. I mean, you don’t want your neighbor to suddenly fill his apartment with hives without anybody knowing about it. Plus it’s almost worth joining the NYPD just for the off chance that I’ll get to respond to a complaint about bees and ask the proprieter if I can see his bee license.

Of course, allowing bees as pets isn’t all roses. (Sorry, I just can’t help myself.) I mean, if you think the DMV is bad, try spending a day at the BBL (Bureau of Bee Licensing, natch).

The most interesting part of the article, though, comes a bit further down, when it mentions that the same 1999 ordinance that banned bees also banned poisonous snakes, ferrets, and elephants. Elephants! Was this a problem prior to 1999? I can’t imagine that pet elephants were very widespread even when they were legal. I mean, just the mental image of the pooper scooper you’d need should be enough to dissuade you from the elephant section at Petco.

It’s Fleet Week in New York and, like most New Yorkers, I love seeing scores of sailors in bright white exploring the city, and not just because this blog takes its name from “On the Town,” the underrated musical about three U.S. Navy sailors who find love and excitement while on the loose in New York.

My favorite staples of Fleet Week, in no particular order:

• The requisite photos in the local papers of sailors in full uniform with Times Square mainstays like the Naked Cowboy (yesterday The New York Times had some guys with the Naked Cowgirl on their front page).
• The Fleet Week sailors on the morning shows. (Friday morning they were on pretty much every channel, and on Saturday The Today Show will feature Navy vs. Marines tug of war.)
• The large group of uniformed sailors at the Mets game (or Yankees game). I love the big applause they always get from the rest of crowd almost as much as I love the chants and cheers they do when one of their own throws out the first pitch, or gets shown on the big screen. It’s too bad they can’t do it this year, because the Mets were out of town and the Yankees are just too damned expensive.
• The jokes about Fleet Week on late night television. Highlights of Letterman’s “Top Ten Things I’ve Learned During Fleet Week In New York City” last night include “Katz’s Deli has knishes that’ll make you plotz” and “I spent a month’s pay on Yankee tickets.”

Part of living or working in New York is being occasionally inconvenienced by the street you need to use having been shut down for the filming of some movie or episode of Law & Order. And part of being a New Yorker is sneaking a peek at the actors at work. Both happened to me today, but just outside of New York City.

Jerry Seinfeld has spent the past couple of days filming a TV commercial right around the corner from my house. And with all the news the past couple of weeks about mishaps during the filming of a movie in Times Square, I figured this was close enough to mention here. The photo above is from today’s shoot, as is this one of Seinfeld chatting between takes:

Sadly the project was approved by the City Planning Commission this week and now head to the City Council for final approval.

On the Newsweek Web site is a counter-essay, written partly by Kurt Soller and mostly by the development company, that argues in favor of the project. Their argument aside from pointing out that the development will include some affordable housing units and a public school in addition to the luxury condos, essentially amounts to a claim that everyone (including the Community Board and the Borough President) wants the condo except for a handful of neighborhood kooks who have “hoodwinked” McCullough, a New England resident.

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the very few New York institutions that has not been surrounded by T-shirt shops and other tourist-trap BS. In fact, a walk across the bridge is something I always recommend to out-of-towners or new transplants, because it’s so landmarky without being touristy. Living nowhere near the bridge, I don’t really have any skin in the game but I’d hate to see the view of the truly inspiring American landmark marred so that some rich developers can get richer.