Tomorrow, the Lexington Democratic Club host Jessica Lappin and Scott Stringer at their monthly meeting at Brown Gardens.

The Women's National Republican Club hosts a summer BBQ.

A benefit to save Washington Square Park will be held at St. Mark's Church.

A peace rally will take place at the U.N.

—Nicole Brydson

Or maybe it was just a concession to the polls.

(I'm going with the latter.)

But last night, the executive committee of the Lexington Democratic Club - the oldest and largest club in the heart Mark Green's home base on the East Side of Manhattan -- voted to endorse Andrew Cuomo.

Following the lead of Jonathan Bing, a club member who was the first elected official on the East Side to endorse Cuomo, the Lexington Democrats went for him by a vote 20-13, despite the fact that nearly all of the Club's six District Leaders and two State Committee members recommended supporting Green.

Needless to say, this is not helpful to Green's efforts to build support heading into the Democratic State Convention in Buffalo on Memorial Day weekend.

The club's general membership votes on June 1.

Something like that happened on Jan. 30, shortly after 3 p.m., on 65th Street between Lexington and Third avenues. A 54-year-old male was observed by a police officer driving a blue 1991 Volvo with a defective headlight.

It happens to the best of us. But must we have a can of beer in our lap, or an entire six-pack—or, in this guy’s case, a ziplock bag containing pot? And how did the cop discover that his suspect was a pothead? It wasn’t because the inside of his vehicle was obscured by cumulus clouds of dope, or because it suffered the unmistakable scent of cannabis.

It’s because the fool tried to throw his stash out the window. And lest you think I’m being too hard on the guy, he admitted so himself. Rather than playing dumb—“Marijuana? What marijuana? That’s incense”—he told the cop, “I should have eaten the marijuana instead of throwing it out the window.”

A computer check pursuant to his arrest for criminal possession of marijuana revealed an outstanding warrant of an undisclosed nature.

Hey, Cop, Over Here!

In a similar but more serious case of being your own worst enemy, a police officer observed two males illegally parked in front of 187 East 80th Street on Jan. 23 at 8:45 p.m. It was a rather boneheaded thing to do, because the men were wanted for several recent armed robberies, including two in the 19th Precinct and three in the 20th Precinct on the West Side.

And in one of those cases of trying too hard to look innocent, thus attracting additional suspicion, the driver got out of the car, approached the cop and asked him whether it was legal to park there. When the officer looked at the car before offering his opinion, he spotted the second male sitting in the passenger seat and engaged in what the police described as “furtive movements.” Which is usually the way it is when you’re trying to hide a firearm from a cop.

In any case, the officer may have been more attuned to suspicious behavior than usual because the 4-to-midnight tour had been dispatched from the stationhouse with instructions to be on the lookout for these exact robbers.

So the officer asked the passenger to get out of the car. He refused—numerous times—undoubtedly confirming the cop’s suspicions that these two weren’t garden-variety scofflaws, and making the decision to remove him forcibly from the vehicle and handcuff his hands behind his back a relatively easy one.

The officer discovered the loaded firearm that the suspect, 19, was trying to hide, in the immediate vicinity of where he’d been sitting. And wouldn’t you know it, the other guy’s New York State driver’s license had been suspended. He also happened to be carrying a knife, and probably not for peeling fruit; when the police searched the car’s trunk, they found a black 9-millimeter Makarov pistol with seven live rounds, a black magazine (apparently of the ballistics rather than the literary sort), a .22-caliber revolver and four live .22 cartridges.

The suspects were arrested for criminal possession of a weapon, though not for illegal parking, and line-ups with some of their robbery victims were in the works. “The investigation is ongoing,” said a police official who expects the suspects to be connected to additional crimes.

Something like that happened on Jan. 30, shortly after 3 p.m., on 65th Street between Lexington and Third avenues. A 54-year-old male was observed by a police officer driving a blue 1991 Volvo with a defective headlight.

It happens to the best of us. But must we have a can of beer in our lap, or an entire six-pack—or, in this guy’s case, a ziplock bag containing pot? And how did the cop discover that his suspect was a pothead? It wasn’t because the inside of his vehicle was obscured by cumulus clouds of dope, or because it suffered the unmistakable scent of cannabis.

It’s because the fool tried to throw his stash out the window. And lest you think I’m being too hard on the guy, he admitted so himself. Rather than playing dumb—“Marijuana? What marijuana? That’s incense”—he told the cop, “I should have eaten the marijuana instead of throwing it out the window.”

A computer check pursuant to his arrest for criminal possession of marijuana revealed an outstanding warrant of an undisclosed nature.

Hey, Cop, Over Here!

In a similar but more serious case of being your own worst enemy, a police officer observed two males illegally parked in front of 187 East 80th Street on Jan. 23 at 8:45 p.m. It was a rather boneheaded thing to do, because the men were wanted for several recent armed robberies, including two in the 19th Precinct and three in the 20th Precinct on the West Side.

And in one of those cases of trying too hard to look innocent, thus attracting additional suspicion, the driver got out of the car, approached the cop and asked him whether it was legal to park there. When the officer looked at the car before offering his opinion, he spotted the second male sitting in the passenger seat and engaged in what the police described as “furtive movements.” Which is usually the way it is when you’re trying to hide a firearm from a cop.

In any case, the officer may have been more attuned to suspicious behavior than usual because the 4-to-midnight tour had been dispatched from the stationhouse with instructions to be on the lookout for these exact robbers.

So the officer asked the passenger to get out of the car. He refused—numerous times—undoubtedly confirming the cop’s suspicions that these two weren’t garden-variety scofflaws, and making the decision to remove him forcibly from the vehicle and handcuff his hands behind his back a relatively easy one.

The officer discovered the loaded firearm that the suspect, 19, was trying to hide, in the immediate vicinity of where he’d been sitting. And wouldn’t you know it, the other guy’s New York State driver’s license had been suspended. He also happened to be carrying a knife, and probably not for peeling fruit; when the police searched the car’s trunk, they found a black 9-millimeter Makarov pistol with seven live rounds, a black magazine (apparently of the ballistics rather than the literary sort), a .22-caliber revolver and four live .22 cartridges.

The suspects were arrested for criminal possession of a weapon, though not for illegal parking, and line-ups with some of their robbery victims were in the works. “The investigation is ongoing,” said a police official who expects the suspects to be connected to additional crimes.

The substance in question wasn’t formaldehyde that leaked from some Damien Hirst shark tank after competing buyers came to blows in an effort to take it home. Rather, the workers were exposed to mercury after a grandfather clock they were unpacking at the 1334 York Avenue location at 10:20 a.m. was discovered to be leaking.

The area was sealed off, and the workers—three males age 35, 38 and 44—were decontaminated, along with E.M.S. workers who responded to the scene. Then the Sotheby’s employees, complaining of headaches, were removed to New York Presbyterian–Weill Cornell Hospital.

The contaminated area was scrubbed by Sotheby’s HazMat team (who knew Sotheby’s had a HazMat team?) in conjunction with an FDNY HazMat team, and the area was deemed safe.

In a separate incident at Sotheby’s that occurred on Oct. 11 but wasn’t reported to the police until Dec. 2, $50,000 worth of various wines consigned to the auction house went missing from a storage area. A security video of the space revealed no suspicious activity.

Mug Shots

Fists, or rather mugs, were flying on Fifth Avenue and 81st Street, according to cross complaints filed at the 19th Precinct on Dec. 5. The victim in the first report, the employer, told the police that her housekeeper grabbed a coffee mug out of her hand and threatened to strike her with it. Fearing for her safety, the boss tried to grab it back, struggling with her coffee-cup-brandishing assailant. In the process of doing so, she says, she fell to the floor and injured her neck. However, her injury didn’t prevent her from getting to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was treated and released.

Her employee, unsurprisingly, has a drastically different take on the incident. She says that her boss was the one wielding the mug with deadly precision. She claims that her boss hit her over the head with the crockery, then threw hot tea in her face, causing a minor abrasion—and that she has a bump on her head to prove it.

She was also removed to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she apparently didn’t run into her boss. The employer was said to have fled the apartment in a taxicab. The worker, a 44-year-old Queens resident, had high blood pressure and was suffering from chest pains as a result of the incident. However, she might also have the last word: In her complaint, the employer put her age as 37; her housekeeper, who ought to know, says she’s actually 40.

Brown-Bagging It

Perhaps it’s no surprise that anyone who decides to take his bike for a ride at 4 a.m., as one East 94th Street resident did on Nov. 13, has a surfeit of courage—either that, or he doesn’t mind getting mugged. The victim was standing at the corner of 94th Street and Madison Avenue at that desolate hour when a male approached him and stated, “Give me your money. I have a gun.”

And to prove it, he produced a brown paper bag. “No,” his unimpressed victim observed, “you have a paper bag.”

The perp admitted that, yes, he was indeed carrying a paper bag, but the gun was inside the bag.

The bicyclist either didn’t believe him or felt physical activity was the answer to his insomnia, because he grabbed the lock off his bike and struck his assailant on the left side of the head with it. That took the fight out of the attacker, who was last seen fleeing toward Fifth Avenue.

Dangerous Urges

Before starting to take incriminating photographs of crooks trying to disable MetroCard machines, as one token-booth clerk did at the 77th Street and Lexington Avenue subway stop on Nov. 23, you probably ought to ask yourself whether you’ll need to leave the bullet-proof safety of your booth to go to the bathroom before either the crooks disperse or the cops arrive.

That’s the mistake a 56-year-old transit employee made at 4:17 p.m. after she snapped pictures of a couple of perps messing with the machines so that they could sell passengers turnstile “swipes.”

“I’m going to fuck you up when you come out of there,” one of the suspects threatened.

And come out she did—because she apparently couldn’t hold it any longer. One of the bad guys grabbed her while the other punched her and pushed her against the booth. The municipal employee also suffered a bruise when she hit her head against a step. And one of the thieves threw a bottle at her, the vessel hitting her in the leg and breaking into pieces.

The good thing about attacks at busy subway stations at the start of the afternoon rush hour is that there tend to be cops in the vicinity, as there were in this case. The officers arrived promptly and arrested the crooks, one 16, the other 18, for assault.

Section 74-79 allows developers to transfer air rights from landmarked buildings as long as the upkeep of the landmarked property is guaranteed. RFR, which owns both the Seagram Building and 610 Lexington--it's an old YWCA, for now--has agreed to maintain the property for perpetuity (which means, if it sells the building, its maintenance will be written into the deed).

The new 257,000-square-foot, 62-story building, if and when it's built, will be residential condos and a hotel.

-Matthew Grace