Courtesy Getty Images

Over the summer, Steve Stoute, the CEO of the brand-marketing firm Translation, went to Wimbledon with his friend and business partner, the rapper Jay-Z, to cheer on Rafael Nadal during the Spaniard’s fourth-round battle with Juan Martín Del Potro. With the match tied in the third set, BBC cameras spotted them. “The man is still here,” said BBC tennis analyst Boris Becker in his heavy German accent. “The Jigga Man, that’s what they call him—Shawn Carter.”

Where most viewers saw a star-sighting. Mr. Stoute saw a “tanning moment.”

Mr. Stoute, in his recent book The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy (2011, Gotham Books), defined “tanning” as “the catalytic force majeure that went beyond musical boundaries and into the psyche of young America.” That’s a pretty thick slice of marketing-speak, but the gist of it is simple: hip-hop has radically changed culture and corporate America.

And Mr. Stoute has had a central role in the transformation.

“That wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago,” Mr. Stoute said of Becker’s acknowledgment of Jay-Z. “Prince William was there that day, and for Jay-Z to get recognized at that setting, yeah, it’s a tanning moment.”

Around the turn of the millennium, Mr. Stoute, then a successful record company executive, made a gutsy career change. He left his lofty position as president of urban music at Interscope/Geffen/A&M Records and dove into advertising and marketing. He is now the go-to guy for Fortune 500 companies chasing the youth and urban markets. Mr. Stoute paired Allen Iverson with the gritty rapper Jadakiss for a beloved Reebok commercial; he got Justin Timberlake to record a McDonald’s jingle; and he tapped Jay-Z for a Hewlett-Packard campaign. (Before Mr. Stoute’s involvement, HP had been circling Robert Redford and Drew Barrymore.)

Translation’s specialty is “collaborative strategic consulting,” but Mr. Stoute sees his role in somewhat simpler terms.

“I just try to tell the consumer truth,” he told The Observer.

It should be noted, however, that consumer truth isn’t always the same as gospel truth. That Justin Timberlake jingle, for instance, was originally released as a song. Only after the world was humming “I’m Lovin’ It” did McDonald’s introduce its new tagline, with JT as its spokesman.

It’s been an effective strategy. In November 2008, Mr. Stoute was inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement. And according to Ad Age, Translation, which operates under its parent company Interpublic, pulled in $9 million in revenue in 2010.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Stoute was sitting on a couch in his Times Square corner office. Although he known as a bit of a dandy, on this occasion he was clad in gym clothes—a black V-neck T layered over a white V-neck, gray athletic shorts, black ankle socks and no shoes. The wall was plastered with photographs of Mr. Stoute with his many famous friends, and framed photos of icons such as Sidney Poitier and Muhammad Ali.

Mr. Stoute began the conversation with one of his favorite “tanning moments”: The story of how Jimmy Iovine landed a Rolling Stone cover for Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg in 1993. “That was Jimmy Iovine walking in and saying, ‘Jann, these guys are rock stars. They are Mick and Keith,’” Mr. Stoute said. “It takes a guy like Jimmy Iovine—he had so much rock ’n’ roll credibility from U2 and producing Patti Smith. Who else is gonna do that? Russell Simmons? They weren’t going to listen to him.”

Mr. Stoute would like to see more magazines adapt the way Rolling Stone did. “All those magazines are fucked up like that. Vogue is the same way. It’s all those people that come from the old school and believe that [hip-hop] wasn’t sustainable, so therefore they don’t want to buy into it and they push back on it. Vogue did the exact same thing. Anna Wintour now hangs out at Kanye’s shows and hangs out with Pharrell and hangs out with Puffy. She does all that shit now. Meanwhile, there is a lack of African-Americans who have graced that cover. Now, all of a sudden, it’s Beyoncé, it’s Rihanna. Now, she’s sitting with Nicki Minaj [at the Carolina Herrera Spring 2012 show].

“She’s tanning because she has to,” he continued. “She has to. She’s gonna put Blake Lively on the cover again?”

Mr. Stoute, 41, was born in Queens Village, the son of Trinidadian immigrants. His father was a marine engineer; mom was a nurse. He spent his formative years grinding away at after-school jobs—he shoveled snow, erected tents at flea markets, delivered the New York Daily News and Newsday, sung Christmas carols and hawked fire extinguishers—but dreamed of being a professional football player. He was a starting running back at Holy Cross High School in Brooklyn, but began hunting for a backup plan after separating his shoulder. His father suggested becoming an auto mechanic. Mr. Stoute remembers his father’s reasoning: “It’s a craft that they can’t take away from you,” he said.

Instead, he bounced around five colleges and began working in real estate, signing homeowners up for mortgages—this was back in the early 1990s, well before the boom and eventual bust. He then left the mortgage market after realizing he could earn more in the music industry. It wasn’t about his love for the music, he said, unabashedly. “No, it was opportunity,” he said. “[Hip-hop] was blowing up. In ’91, ’92, the arrow was pointing in one direction.”

Through mutual acquaintances, Mr. Stoute hooked up with comedy rappers Kid N’ Play and quickly became the duo’s road manager. But his big break occurred in the mid-1990s, when he started managing the rapper Nas. Under Mr. Stoute’s guidance, the Queensbridge emcee adapted a more commercial, radio-friendly sound. The strategy worked. His 1996 album It Was Written was certified double-platinum, but finding the right balance between art and commerce proved challenging. “Managing Nas taught me a lot about respecting artists,” Mr. Stoute said. “You got a crash course in that because you were dealing with a guy who, money didn’t matter to him. Nor did success. He could have been in The Cider House Rules—he didn’t want to do it.” Mr. Stoute shook his head. “Brands were calling—he didn’t show up for some shoots. Nas wrote songs on the Men in Black soundtrack. He could have wrote the whole album for Will Smith but he didn’t want to show up to the studio to write records for Will Smith.”

Men in Black was a huge hit. The movie grossed $587 million worldwide and the soundtrack, which Mr. Stoute executive produced, was certified triple platinum. He was more impressed, however, by the success of a product placement—sales of Ray-Ban sunglasses shot up 500 percent after being promoted in the film.

By the late 1990s, with the advent of file-sharing and mp3s about to turn the music industry on its head, Mr. Stoute decided to change careers. In 1999, he partnered with renowned adman Peter Arnell—best known for the iconic DKNY campaign—to form the marketing company PASS. (The company couldn’t obtain certification as a minority-owned business and in 2002 was sold to a Hispanic agency, Cultura; Mr. Stoute remained chairman until 2003.)

Mr. Stoute was a quickly adapted to this new world. “Steve Stoute has the best instincts creatively and strategically on pop culture, marketing and youth of anybody I’ve ever met,” Mr. Arnell told Adage.com. (Mr. Arnell’s own instincts were more questionable; he was the force behind the disastrous 2009 Tropicana redesign.)

“Steve is an open person,” former Reebok CEO Paul Fireman told The Observer. “He sees himself on a long journey on which he keeps meeting people and building strategic pieces along the way.”

“He’s curious about everything,” added Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter, a friend who wrote the foreword to Mr. Stoute’s book. “He’d ask about your clothes. He’d ask about what you’re doing. He set about making himself into something and, God knows, he did it.”

Steve Stoute has strong opinions on branding. He was offended, for example, by what he considered the ham-handedness of Kodak’s recent campaign featuring Rihanna and a slew of other musicians.

“Marketing? You call that marketing?” Mr. Stoute asked. “You’re trying to skip the entire process and just hire some celebrities to save your ass. That’s the epitome of ridiculous. Marketing? Kodak?” He was nearly shouting. The commercials, he said, didn’t convey the function of the product. “Can you imagine how stupid that is? What am I gonna do with a Kodak? It’s not a smart phone. If I don’t tell you why you need it, why would you buy it? Because Rihanna and Pitbull said so? Yeah, congratulations.”

The Kodak campaign was “of limited duration,” according to a company spokesperson and was only for the So Kodak line. “Our data showed that it was effective in raising brand and product awareness among the target audience.” It also won an Addy Award, "so obviously some difference of opinion out there," the spokesperson added.

He can be just as brutal with potential clients. Back when he first partnered with Reebok, he told Paul Fireman flatly that the company couldn’t compete with Nike by marketing their shoes as superior for athletes.

“I think most people, especially when they are interviewing, tend to not be as forthright as I would like,” Mr. Fireman said. “Most of them think that by telling you what you’re doing wrong they’re going to insult you. Steve pointed out our disconnect from the consumer. He is very blunt but not rude. You’re either going to accept it or you’re not. I thought it was refreshing.”

Mr. Stoute is most proud of having pioneered the practice of surreptitiously embedding marketing messages into the pop cultural products. He followed up the successful McDonald’s-Timberlake switcheroo with a similar deal involving Wrigley’s and Chris Brown. After Mr. Brown’s song “Forever” became a hit, it was revealed that the familiar lyric “Double your pleasure” was no coincidence—the song was a gum jingle. Before radio stations, deejays or average listeners knew they were all offering free advertising time—and mindspace—to a major corporation, the song was embedded in the culture.

Mr. Stoute was a bit perplexed by the anger the stunt engendered. “If you got upset because it was really a brand message intertwined with the song you loved, if that bothered you, shame on you for getting that emotional about something you loved anyway,” he said. “I didn’t understand that. Gawker and all those guys were writing stuff about me. Say anything you want, but its brilliant, it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s stunning. It’s so smart. You actually made a song and in the song, it said, ‘Double your pleasure/double your fun.’ And that worked. And then we came back with a commercial behind it and when it was revealed, it was a home run.”

Mr. Stoute then looked at his phone. It was almost 6 p.m. “I gotta get ready to get out of here,” he said. He had tickets that night for The Mountaintop with Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett.

“If you thought the song was sponsored by a brand,” he added, “you would not have been open-minded about how the song made you feel. All I did was remove that filter.”

To wit: earlier this year, CNBC produced an original primetime special called Big Mac: Inside the McDonald’s Empire, which premiered on July 25, 2007, and was CNBC's best ever documentary premiere in both total viewers and adults 25-54.

According to CNBC, the Big Mac doc was the channel's highest performance of any CNBC original program in total viewers in prime time since November 2004. 

The numbers (as provided by CNBC): 

A25-54
9PM: 218,000
12AM: 181,000

Total Viewers
9PM: 514,000
12AM: 307,000

To wit: today through Friday, Fox Business Network's Alexis Glick will be conducting a three part interview with Joe Skinner, McDonald's Vice Chairman and CEO.

The interview, according to the press release, was filmed in one of McDonald’s "flagship" restaurants in Oak Brook, Illinois, and promises to touch upon a range of issues facing McDonald's, including branding, global expansion and the fast-food chain's "entry in the coffee wars."

This thinning of the agent ranks gels with a wider, national trend.

Also in the Data Book: McDonalds is the largest retailer in the city, with 284 stores. Yikes!

[Full disclosure: The Real Estate's editor was an associate editor at The Real Deal.]

- Tom Acitelli

After the jump, the rundown.

-Matthew Grace

Two Stars

139 Duane Street

(at West Broadway)

212-571-8880

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Soft

Noise Level: High, but not unreasonable

Wine List: Short, international, good Austrian vintages, plus beers on tap

Credit Cards: All major

Price Range: Main courses, $18 to $24

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to midnight

“Don’t eat any more!” a young woman next to me on the banquette told the man sitting across from her.

“I can’t help it.” He took another mouthful from a silver bowl on his table.

He looked over at me. “Chocolate-covered almonds,” he said. “You’d better take these before I finish the whole lot.”

I was sitting at a corner table in Blaue Gans (the name means “blue goose”), a new Austro-German bistro that has opened in Tribeca in the premises that used to be Le Zinc. It’s the latest venture of Kurt Gutenbrunner, the Austrian chef whose empire includes Wallsé in the West Village, Café Sabarsky and Café Fledermaus in the Neue Galerie and the popular Thor at the Hotel on Rivington on the Lower East Side.

Blaue Gans is as gemütlich and unpretentious a place as you could wish for, with an eclectic clientele that runs the gamut from Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to babies in high chairs. Mr. Gutenbrunner has left Le Zinc’s décor virtually as is, with its polished zinc bar, curved white ceiling, and walls covered with unframed posters by artists such as Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith and Brice Marden. Why change what’s already just about perfect? The long, softly lit room is lined with comfortable red banquettes and black wooden tables (including a long communal one in the center).

Sunday night, it seems, is family night. As we sat down in the corner, a small child came crawling towards us before being whisked away by its mother. At the next table, a couple of children were quietly playing video games and another briefly played ball with my husband, using a scrunched-up piece of paper.

It’s not surprising that kids like it here. Blaue Gans offers four kinds of sausage, a couple of schnitzels and a fried chicken served with potato salad and lingonberries—a menu that’s a sure-fire deterrent for any youngster ever wishing to darken the doors of McDonald’s again. The wursts, supplied by a German sausage-maker upstate, are terrific. Weisswurst, bratwurst and burenwurst (pork and beef sausage laced with cheese) come with the most delicate sauerkraut this side of Canal Street, tasting as though it had been braised in champagne. The blutwurstgröstl (blood sausage) is wonderful, crumbled with roasted fingerling potatoes, sprinkled with fresh, grated horseradish and served on a circle of that wonderful sauerkraut.

If you’re lucky, when you sit down you’ll be served a chunk of dark rye bread with Liptauer cheese, a creamy farmer’s cheese laced with herbs, onion and paprika. On my first visit, the bread never came. Service here is a little scattered: dishes that you haven’t ordered brought to your table by a person who’s not your server, and, of course, the inevitable “Are you still working on that?” (which invites the response: “Yes, it’s more labor-intensive than I’d thought”).

The food, under the direction of chef de cuisine Martin Pirker, who was formerly at Wallsé, isn’t labor-intensive, though. It’s graceful and refined, and the plates are gorgeous. The food here is not a reinterpretation of Austrian and German cuisines; the dishes are classic. Some, like the pork belly with crackling, red cabbage and brioche dumplings, are pretty hefty, while others, such as the smoked trout, are very light. The trout is layered with horseradish crème fraîche on crêpes, cut like a wedge of cake and served with baby red and golden beets and frisée. Paper-thin slices of duck breast are garnished with huckleberry compote and chestnuts. The thick, peppery goulash soup is superb, but the beef consommé, floating with semolina dumplings shaped like small zeppelins in a parsley-laden broth, is a revelation.

The schnitzels are not for wimps. The pork schnitzel nearly fills the plate. It’s like its Italian cousin, veal Milanese, with a crisp, greaseless breadcrumb crust, and is served with an excellent potato salad. Jäger schnitzel, with mushrooms, bacon and spätzle in a cream sauce, is also good and seriously filling. The boiled beef shoulder arrives with the best creamed spinach I’ve ever tasted, a smooth, unctuous pool served on the side. The only disappointment was the sautéed brook trout, which was salty and dry.

The short, international wine list has a good selection of Austrian wines at reasonable prices. Zweigelt is like a Beaujolais, light and agreeable, and there are several selections of the redoubtable Grüner Veltliner, which has replaced sauvignon blanc these days as the vin du jour.

Apart from a leaden Sachertorte, desserts (mit schlag) by pastry chef Pierre Reboul, who was previously at Wallsé and Café Sabarsky, are not to be missed. When you put your fork into the Salzburger nockerl, three heavenly clouds of egg-white soufflé, you find a compote of tart huckleberries. The apple strudel, the palatschinken with caramel sauce, and the airy quark dumplings with orange salad are all wonderful. One evening, the dessert special was kaiserschmarm. “In Austria, it’s a popular dish to eat after a light lunch,” said our waitress.

A very light lunch. Several small bread puddings arrived in a bowl, served with a ramekin of stewed apples garnished with a cinnamon stick. We had also ordered quark dumplings. But tonight I’d been recognized, and two more desserts were brought to the table.

As my son made his way through the better part of four desserts, he remembered the Monty Python sketch in which the fattest man in the world is finishing his meal in a restaurant. “And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint,” says John Cleese as the maître d’. “Nah,” replies the man. But the maître d’ persists until the man eats the mint—and bursts like a popped balloon.

Wisely, no one brought us chocolate-covered almonds with the bill. Blaue Gans is a delightful restaurant. I just wish it took reservations. Be prepared to wait for a table. It’s worth it.

That's according to The Village Voice's Paul Moses who harshly criticizes The New York Times this week over lease stipulations in the Renzo Piano-designed tower that the Gray Lady will soon call home.

Thankfully, soy latte-addicted reporters can relax, because Starbucks is permitted to set up shop downstairs. Huzzah!

Our personal favorite exclusion is any government office where you can show up "without appointment." It's a well-known fact that the huddled masses never call ahead (or have their names on a list).

Surely, David Brooks is already mining this article for column-worthy cultural signifiers.

His colleagues on the editorial page have already weighed in on the principle: "The Supreme Court's ruling yesterday that the economically troubled city of New London, Conn., can use its power of eminent domain to spur development was a welcome vindication of cities' ability to act in the public interest. It also is a setback to the 'property rights' movement, which is trying to block government from imposing reasonable zoning and environmental regulations. Still, the dissenters provided a useful reminder that eminent domain must not be used for purely private gain."

"The 'property rights' movement!" How charmingly Marxist. Ahem.

In the mean time, The Real Estate is reminded of The Times' three-week series on class in America that began last May.

The introductory piece posed the challenging question: "Why does it appear that class is fading as a force in American life?"

So coy!

"Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared."

We say the difference between Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks coffee ain't the coffee.

- Michael Calderone

Mr. Hirsch made a brief appearance in Super Size Me, due to his involvement in the headline-grabbing obesity liability case first brought against McDonald's in 2002. He represents the two Bronx youths who allege that the burger chain made them fat.

Ostensibly, this would make Mr. Hirsch a prime ally in Mr. Spurlock's quest to edify the nation as to the adverse affects of eating junk food. The film, however, was not flattering to Mr. Hirsch in his brief cameo. In his only appearance on camera, Mr. Spurlock asks Mr. Hirsch about his motivation for being involved in the McDonald's litigation. Mr. Hirsch's reply? "You mean, motive besides monetary compensation?" He then added, "You want to hear a noble cause?"

Super Size Me featured Mr. Spurlock, whose wife is a vegetarian, eating nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. In that span of time, his health declined drastically. The film was recently nominated for an Academy Award and has earned over $28 million worldwide, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. It was reportedly made for $65,000.

Mr. Hirsch alleges that his portrayal in the popular documentary was tantamount to "Negligence, Unauthorized Use of Likeness, Disparagement to Reputation, and Defamation of Character, Fraudulent Inducement, False Misrepresentation, Damage to Business Reputation." Mr. Hirsch is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, along with a "disgorgement of profits." Co-defendants Mr. Spurlock and Samuel Goldwyn Films have been given 20 days to respond.

Neither Mr. Hirsch nor representatives of Samuel Goldwyn Films returned calls for comment. Mr. Spurlock was in transit, returning to New York from the Academy Awards.

As for McDonald's, the company's lawyers will still be seeing plenty of Mr. Hirsch. Although the obesity liability case has been thrown out twice before, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned the previous decision. It appears that Mr. Hirsch intends on spending a lot of time in court.

Oscar Odds

Ho-hum was the pervasive reaction to this year's Academy Awards. Why? Because it was so predictable. At least that's what the Monday-morning critics claim. A quick tally of the plethora of Oscar predictions-and some of the laborious formulas that produced them-in major media outlets, however, proves that, well, nothing, not even the Oscars, is a sure bet.

According to a front-page feature in the Friday, Feb. 25, Wall Street Journal by Conor Dougherty, Million Dollar Baby's win over The Aviator for Best Picture was "the biggest upset … of the past 20 years." That is if you plug the two films into their "Oscar Formula," which was 90 percent accurate in predicting best pictures over the last 20 years. It is now 86 percent accurate. "Looks like our model was outgunned by Dirty Harry. Congratulations, Mr. Eastwood," said Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

But do not fret, Mr. Dougherty, your formula was not the only one to fail. USA Today's "Oscar Oracle," based on a weighted point scale which takes into account previous awards and nominations for all nominees, gave Sideways and The Aviator a better chance of winning Best Picture than the actual winner, Million Dollar Baby. A humble Monday article in USA Today reported, "It was the first time in five years that the Oracle did not accurately predict best picture." This is what it sounds like when hard-bitten journalists eat crow.

It was also a tough night for Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, who left themselves open to even more than the standard ridicule due to their supposed integrity-saving, patented "Will Win"/"Should Win"/"Should've Been a Contender" format. Mr. Scott fared only slightly better-with two correct picks-than Ms. Dargis, who was one for six. You could say that they just got off on the wrong foot. For Best Picture, Mr. Scott put his money on Ray, Ms. Dargis on The Aviator. Both, however, chose Million Dollar Baby as their "Should Win." A little defeatist, aren't we?

To be sure, there were the victors of this year's tacit National Oscar pool, none of whom use a highfalutin formula. (See? We're not all about schadenfreude here.) Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger and US Weekly's Thelma Adams scored a perfect eight out of eight, in the major categories-Picture, Director, Actors and Screenplays. Anne Thompson of the Hollywood Reporter ditched the screenplays, plugged in an easy one with The Incredibles for Best Animated feature, and came up with a tidy seven out of seven, while CNN's Oscar poobah Paul Clinton managed a perfect six out of six.

For the spate of Web sites that dedicated themselves to everything Oscar, it was a mixed bag. Tom O'Neill, who contributed to Goldderby.com and is a senior editor at InTouch Weekly, escaped Sunday night with only one wrong out of eight. David Poland, the head of MovieCityNews.com, got a healthy 73 percent correct-he ventured far more guesses than your average prognosticator. (Full disclosure: Mr. Poland's Oscar prediction chart proved immensely helpful in researching this article.) In the lead-up to the Academy Awards, Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells was happy to remind everyone that he called the Best Picture race over in early December, when he proclaimed Million Dollar Baby an unstoppable force. And for Sasha Stone at Oscarwatch.com, well, she put all her money on The Aviator-and lost. She escaped with a mediocre 62.5 percent correct in the top eight categories.

In the end, some of the more clueless critics didn't seem to mind their losing record. "Who gives a shit that I'm wrong?" Ms. Dargis said over the phone, laughing. She then defended herself by invoking the William Goldman truism that "nobody knows nothing" in Hollywood. "I just thought it was going to be a pity fuck for Marty." Touché!

Summers aren't what they used to be when I was growing up. Back then, when I got out of school in early June, summer stretched before me like an endless Serengeti-a vast space to be whittled away one day at a time; if you were truly ambitious, you'd make a dent in your summer reading list.

But these days you have to accomplish something, or invent something, or cure something at least, to stand a rat's chance of getting into your first-choice college. "Summer is 12 weeks typically," observed Katherine Cohen, a private-college admissions advisor who thinks teenagers ought to spend at least eight of those weeks saving the world; to her way of thinking, my ninth grader's marine-biology program was too short by half.

"The idea is to enhance your strengths or spend that time in the summer working on your weaknesses," she added. "My recommendation is take a two-week vacation with your family and spend the rest of the summer being productive. If you spend every summer working on your tan, you're not going to get into college. You can be working, but not on your tan.

"I have one student who is a vegetarian," Kat went on. "She ended up working for this online vegetarian publication. She wrote articles for the Web site. In her spare time, she worked on a project called Alternatives to Dissection. Not only did she prove it was harmful to animals to dissect them, she proved it was cost-prohibitive to the schools-it's actually a lot less expensive to use computerized dissection. She got into U. Penn. She also cut off all her hair to donate to this place that makes wigs."

Ah! But Kat's definition of productivity may be different than mine. Academic and psychological development aren't necessarily the same thing. The most productive summer of my life was spent on a Greyhound bus when I'd just turned 16. For those who are unfamiliar with the institution of the "teen tour," it involves taking about 40 adolescents and hitting every tourist trap in America over the next eight weeks-from the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., to the Grand Canyon, to Universal Studios in Hollywood.

"I'm not a big fan of teen tours," Kat Cohen sniffed. "You tend to go with your friends-'We toured every McDonald's in the country.'"

Let me tell you about my teen tour. The year was 1969, two summers after the Summer of Love. Music was in the air and people were growing their hair. Everyone except me, that is. I was a sheltered, 6-foot-2, 135-pound, crewcut geek-utterly under my mother's thumb.

To make matters worse, I was fabulously insecure, especially around girls, having spent most of my life at an all-boys school with little if any exposure to the opposite sex. Shortly, minutes after the bus departed, the theme from the movie Zorba the Greek came over the bus radio. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I jumped into the aisle and started dancing the Sirtaki, the popular Greek dance that I'd learned the previous summer in Athens.

By the time we hit the new Baltimore rest stop on the New York State Thruway, I'd been ostracized, excommunicated, banished to the back of the bus. Even my cousin, who was also on the trip, disowned me. For most of the next month, from the Black Hills through the Grand Tetons, almost all the way to the Pacific Ocean, no one was willing to room with me except for a few other losers who couldn't find anyone to room with them, either.

There was Mark, who had lots of moles and carried a whip in his luggage; Marty, who played the horses; and Mike, who had a strange fixation with the surrealist painter Yves Tanguy.

But something miraculous happened halfway through the trip: The coolest guy on the bus, a long-haired rock musician named Paul (and who remains my friend to this day), decided I had some amusement value and wanted to be my roommate. How well I remember sitting on the lawn at sunset of the Tip Top Inn in Rapid City, S.D.-or was it the dorms at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor?-all of us listening to Paul play the Beatles' "Blackbird" beautifully on his guitar. It was the first time I'd heard it-my musical development as delayed as my social development.

By virtue of him discovering me, by the time we returned to New York I may have been the second-coolest dude on the bus. Besides, after eight weeks cross-country, even my hair was starting to grow. And while I didn't get a girlfriend during the trip-O.K., so maybe I wasn't that cool-I managed to insinuate myself into the affections of several of them over the next couple of years.

All in all, it was an incredible education. Perhaps my trajectory wasn't as stark as Bill Clinton's from Southern fat boy to President of the United States, but it gave one reason for perpetual hope. It suggested, if nothing else that, that life might just as easily break for you as against you.

Perhaps that's not the same thing as acquiring a skill, but might it not serve you better in the long run? "Future success in life has nothing to do with where you went to college," Kat Cohen acknowledged. "People come to me because they want to get into a selective university."

American Trails West, the company that ran my teen tour, is still around, though Howie Fox, one of its directors, says they've had to tailor their program to the pressures of this generation. Trips are usually far shorter than my eight weeks, for example. "There is a tremendous trend today to enhance one's college résumé, to do something that is helpful to the universe," Howie admitted. "And yeah, tours are not seen as such."

He defended them nonetheless. "These kids work very hard and are under a lot of stress for 10 months of the year," he said. "To just continue it for another two months and then go back to school …. There is so much learning that goes on from a teen tour, in terms of interpersonal skills."

I recounted my story. "I remember you," he said. "You were very thin and tall."

And odd-looking, I added. Howie admitted as much, though gently. He's still selling teen tours, after all, and probably hopes I'll consider sending my teen next year.

As much I loved it, I'm not sure I would. She has far more going for her than I did. And, of course, I want her to get into her first-choice college.

Leaves Scene in a McFlurry

There are distinct advantages to robbing your place of work. These include knowing where the security cameras are located and whether they're working; you may even have been entrusted with the keys to the safe. But there are also disadvantages, as an employee of the McDonald's at 969 First Avenue (at 51st Street) discovered on July 9 when he made like the Hamburglar and tried to rip off the fast-food franchise. One of the most obvious drawbacks is that your co-workers are bound to recognize you and may even turn you in to the cops.

The incident unfolded at 5:30 a.m., when the perp, a 23-year-old male, arrived at Mickey D's as two of his fellow employees were opening for business. He told them he needed to retrieve something from his locker-so, being a colleague, they let him in.

But once inside, the suspect's behavior was anything but collegial. Brandishing a knife, he tied up one of his victims and tossed the other in the freezer, locking it. He wasn't utterly heartless however. As he proceeded to help himself to $2,200 in Big Mac and Happy Meal money, he apologized to the tied-up employee, explaining that he needed the money because he was leaving the country that day.

Worried that he might be identified, he took the security camera, and the VCR as well, before departing. There was only one thing he hadn't considered: He'd already been identified. Humans, for all their shortcomings, sometimes function even more smoothly than security cameras, particularly since they're interactive. After the victims had freed themselves, they called the cops and shared with them not only their assailant's name, but also his travel plans.

Detectives from the 17th Precinct, the Port Authority and United States Customs convened at J.F.K., the perp's point of embarkation, and apprehended him as he was boarding a plane to Ecuador. The defendant was charged with armed robbery.

Can I Get a Little

Extra Cheese

With That?

There are some people you just can't make happy. On June 14, a gentleman carrying an old slice of pizza visited East Side Pan Pizza (a.k.a. Mama's Original Pan Pizza), at 1603 Second Avenue, and asked a worker to warm it up for him. The pizzaman performed the courtesy, but then he asked the slice's owner-who seemed, perhaps needless to say, down on his luck-to leave.

This didn't sit well with the customer-if, in any case, he could be called a customer. He turned violent, breaking the pizzeria's glass counter with his fist and then punching his host in the head before fleeing the scene on foot. He was apprehended by the police at 87th Street and Lexington Avenue. His victim, brought to the scene, positively identified the perp, who was charged with criminal mischief. No word on what became of the slice.

Minimum Security

The thought has probably occurred to all of us at one time or another as we're about to go through a metal detector and have been ordered to place our keys, change, cell phones, etc., into one of those plastic boxes provided for our valuables: Will our possessions still be there when we reach the other side?

According to a visitor to the Jewish Museum, located at the corner of 92nd Street and Fifth Avenue, the answer is an unequivocal no. The victim, a 75-year-old Pittsburgh resident, told the police that when he visited the institution on July 10 at 6 p.m., he was instructed to place his personal items in a plastic box before proceeding through the museum's security equipment.

However, when he reached the other side and retrieved his belongings, he discovered that his Sprint cell phone was missing. Sprint later informed him that numerous calls were made to locations in the Caribbean using the phone, which was valued at $100.

-additional reporting by Nicholas Graham

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.

There are an almost infinite number of ways in which crooks give themselves up.

But the gaggle of ladies who visited Oilily, a boutique at 820 Madison Avenue, on July 12 did so in a manner that might be considered naïve, almost charming-though not, of course, to their victim, a store employee.

The worker had placed her pocketbook behind the store counter near some unattended cash registers when, unbeknownst to her, an unknown perp or perps absconded with it. She only learned of the theft when she received a call from an officer at the 19th Precinct about 20 minutes later informing her that a good Samaritan had found the pocketbook and turned it in.

It was at this point that the employee realized that the customers in question, who had mysteriously left the shop only to return minutes later, had paid for their purchases with three $50 bills eerily similar to the three $50's that had been in her purse when it was stolen.

And if that wasn't proof enough, when the call from the cops came in, the suspects (whom the shopkeeper described as one 25-year-old woman, a second in her 50's with long black hair and a third, 5-foot-4 and pregnant)-who apparently had been shopping with their victim's stolen money-were heard to exclaim "Oh, shoot!" before they fled in an unknown direction.

-additional reporting by Nicholas Graham

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.