It’s a turf war out there.
Forget about the 1 percent. The stinking rich — call them the one-tenth of 1percenters — are flexing slim muscles and fat checkbooks in skirmishes designed to get this city’s freeloaders out of sight.
On the Upper East Side, well-heeled denizens are booting interlopers from tables to be installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
On the West Side, residents of an exclusive building want to evict folks with lowly blood lines and meager bank accounts.
And in Brooklyn Heights, entitled dwellers of the historic ’hood have sicced cops on a guy struggling to earn a living selling . . . hot dogs. In Park Slope, macrobiotic mommies almost got rid of the ice-cream man.
Is there room in this town for the obscenely wealthy, the moderately entitled and ordinary Joes?
Maybe not.
The latest battle to split the best ZIP codes is being waged in the piazza fronting the annoyingly snooty Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its fabulous art openings draw socialites, celebs, the well-connected and the overdressed to a playground that sits on city-owned land.
Now the museum wants to attract new visitors.
The filthy rich of Fifth Avenue do not.
Nine Fifth Avenue co-ops — home to financier George Soros and Daphne Guinness — ran roughshod over the poors. In a hush-hush deal, The Post’s Kate Briquelet reported, the wealthy bullied the Met into scaling back plans to build a people’s plaza.
“The notion is, there will be a never-ending cycle of eating all day,’’ Pat Nicholson, 65, who lives across Fifth from the museum, told me. Nicholson wants an environmental study that will mire the plaza in red tape.
“We have a guy who plays the saxophone all day,’’ she huffed. “You can’t hear yourself think.
“Then again, minstrels can’t put a basket down if people are sitting at tables.’’ Minstrels?
“Would I rather not have it at all? The answer is yes.’’
The Met’s public space, set to start construction next month, was to seat 400 tired souls at 100 tables. It included a kiosk selling food and drink. But co-op boards hired a lawyer and, fearing blue bloodshed, the Met caved.
Now there will be just 120 chairs and 30 tables on the gigantic plaza. The food kiosk was removed. Still, some will continue fighting against any tables and chairs.
A wealthy socialite on the museum’s board of directors told me the Met will “get like a sidewalk cafe.’’
“It brings to the area a lot of . . . well, it brings more people to the area,’’ she sniffed.
The $60 million plaza revamp is being paid for by billionaire David Koch. Not if residents can prevent it.
“Some behave like it’s private property. That’s what’s so annoying here,’’ said preservationist Theodore Grunewald.
“They want to control that public space by rigidly divided seating areas,’’ he said. “So where are the hot-dog guys going to go?’’
Not to Brooklyn Heights. In June, residents snobbishly ran a red-hot vendor out of a nabe boasting million-dollar Manhattan views.
“Ours is a quiet residential neighborhood,” a Heights dweller wrote on a local blog. “This is not the place . . . for people looking for ‘street life.’ ”
On the Upper West Side, folks who rent flats for up to $7,000 a month were confronted with an urban reality: Neighbors in “affordable housing’’ who pay a lot less. In a creepy pretext meant to kick out low-income folks, the high-renters claimed they smelled pot in the hallways.
“We feel that it’s unfair that we have people living in the same building on the same floor and they pay a fraction of what we do,’’ a high-end resident snorted to The Post. “If you need special housing, there are so many places other than a block away from Central Park.’’ He never mentioned smelling pot.
In tony Park Slope, parents went nuts . . . over the ice-cream truck.
“I should not have to fight with my children every warm day on the playground just so someone can make a living!” a snooty mommy wrote on Park Slope Parents online message board.
Class warfare in this city shows no sign of letting up.
Times’ selective outrage
What free speech? The New York Times says a museum is “obliged’’ to insult Christians. But trashing Muslims is an outrage.
The Times lauded the Brooklyn Museum’s display of Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting of the Madonna splattered with elephant dung.
“A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts,’’ the paper wrote in 1999.
But this month, the Times condemned “Innocence of Muslims,’’ the trashy movie that’s sparked anti-America riots throughout the Middle East.
“Whoever made the film did true damage to the interests of the United States and its core principle of respecting all faiths,’’ reads an editorial.
Thanks to Jihad Watch for calling attention to this hypocrisy.
Kate one of the boobs
Prince William’s wife, Kate, has a right to privacy, at least in France. Still, the Duchess of Cambridge should learn to keep her shirt on while outside.
The British royal palace is in an uproar over topless pics of Kate snapped as she sunbathed at a private home in France. A French court ordered the magazine Closer to hand over the risqué images to the royal couple, and halt publishing them. But the damage is done. Irish, Italian and Swedish gossip sheets have printed the snaps as well.
Does a Windsor wife have a greater right to be left alone than an ordinary celeb? Perhaps. That didn’t stop the publication of pictures of Sarah, Duchess of York, getting her toes sucked by a lover. It didn’t stop a recording from being leaked in which Prince Charles confesses a desire to transform into now-wife Camilla’s feminine hygiene product.
On a trip to the Solomon Islands this week, bare-chested women greeted a palpably embarrassed Kate. No one could control that.
Lindsay’s ‘Mean’ streets
Vehicular vixen Lindsay Lohan has taken her act from LA to Manhattan. Be afraid.
La Linz was busted yesterday after her Porsche Cayenne SUV allegedly clipped the leg of cook José Rodriguez as he left work. Lindsay says he just wants her money.
Still, cops picked up the “Mean Girls” star as she left the Dream Downtown hotel at 2:30 a.m. and charged her with leaving the scene of an accident and causing injury. For some reason, she was not given a Breathalyzer test.
Don’t take chances, New Yorkers. When Lindsay drives by — run!
Let’s hope the ban shuts down fat city
Drop that soda! Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on supersized sugary drinks was approved last week by the Board of Health. By March, the sale of soft drinks over 16 ounces will be as taboo as lighting up in bars.
And with rising rates of obesity-related diabetes and heart disease in this city, something must be done. I give the initiative a cautious thumbs-up.