No more splendor. (Getty)

Does anybody want to run Tavern on the Green anymore?

Once the most profitable (if also mocked) restaurant on the planet, Tavern on the Green cannot seem to get any love anymore. Not even Donald Trump wants anything to do with it, nor do most of the two dozen restaurateurs who first checked in on the space. According to  Crain’s, there are six firms vying for control of the once-hallowed haunt, none of whom are especially distinguished.

People familiar with the selection process say about a half-dozen operators are being considered. According to news reports, Legends Hospitality management, a catering venture that specializes in sports arenas, and Beau Monde, a Philadelphia-based restaurant, submitted proposals.

Michael Dorf, CEO of City Winery, said he is on the "short list" of candidates as well. "We are in the running, giving them lots of answers to many questions," he said.

Parks officials, for their part, say only that "the selection process is still ongoing."

City Winery's a great place, but it's not exactly a fount of culinary excellence. As for the other two, it might as well be Yankee Stadium. Actually, the food may well be better there.

It looks like the hope that Tavern would become something worthwhile has been dashed. We’d sooner visit the new Maoz in the park.

Madonna (Getty Images)

Madonna's first U.S. tour dates since 2008 will include a stop at Yankee Stadium, it was announced today. The star, most recently seen at Lucas Oil Stadium doing her best Roman-goddess routine, is hitting the road to promote her upcoming album MDNA. She'll be at Yankee Stadium on September 6, with additional tour dates to include Philadelphia, Boston, Atlantic City, and an extensive European jaunt. Presumably, M.I.A. shan't be invited.

I grew up thinking that the natural order of things dictated that the Yankees belonged in the World Series. But Derek Jeter and I have both learned the hard way that other teams get to play and win in the Series too. Still, watching the Yankees in this year’s World Series feels to me like the planet has been restored to its proper orbit. What is there about baseball and New York that puts them in sync? I suppose some of it is that baseball is a 19th century sport, with plenty of time for contemplation and beer between plays. In the rest of the country, if people want to see smashing, crashing and fast-moving action, they check out football games or NASCAR. In New York, we just walk down Broadway.

For many, but especially for New Yorkers, the search for calm and a sense of connection to the past leads to baseball. That’s why some of us were so moved when Derek Jeter broke Lou Gehrig’s Yankee base hit record this summer. It was wonderful to see that someone whom we admire so much can somehow be connected to the guy who made the famous “luckiest man in the world” speech, way back when the world was filmed in black and white. The importance of baseball has never been better expressed than by the “Terrance Mann” character in the great baseball movie Field of Dreams:

“The one constant through all the years… has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past… It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again….”

Baseball appears again and again in our culture as a unifying symbol and set of images. Baseball is Jackie Robinson and the fight against Jim Crow. Baseball is the growth of the global economy and players from Latin America and Asia sharing a field of dreams with guys from Kansas. And baseball is the Yankees and New York City—from the “Bronx is burning” Reggie Jackson images of 1977 to the post-9-11 World Series against Arizona that was emblematic of the tenacity and toughness of New York.

This year, the cultural touchstone for the World Series may very well end up being the rap star Jay-Z. I admit that most rap songs don’t move me, but ever since I heard Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sing “Empire State of Mind” a few weeks ago.  I have not been able to get those lyrics or melodies out of my head.  As with all great art, the song has captured the sound and feel of this place perfectly. Jay-Z has created an indelible image of New York City in 2009.  Watching his performance at Yankee Stadium before the second game of the World Series the other night, with the Yankees looking on, was simply amazing.

New York City has a reputation for being a cold and unforgiving place, but those of us who have been here a long time know that is simply not true. This place gives and receives great loyalty and heart, and one sign of that spirit is the number of Yankee caps and A-Rod t-shirts you see all over town these days. Jay-Z may be able to “make the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” but all he’s really pointing out is that the cap and the team are just a part of this place. The “streets that can make you feel brand new” are bigger than the Yankees and bigger than rap music. They are what David Dinkins once called a “gorgeous mosaic.” Each community in the city is distinct and identifiable, but when you step back and look at the whole, it provides an image of great beauty. This is a unique place where the entire world gathers to meet, learn, have fun, make a living and, of course, watch the game.

In keeping with the thing that brought them all there, the event, planned by 'City' essayists Saara Dutton and Tommy Pryor, was a small and slightly eccentric affair.

Mr. Pryor, 55, grew up in the city and only started writing five or six years ago. In February 2008, he contributed an essay about putting his mother in a headlock as a kid and another one about infiltrating the Yankees bullpen with his father.

Ms. Dutton said she was inspired to move to New York in equal parts by the city she saw depicted on Sesame Street and in SPY Magazine as a kid growing up in Honolulu and Seattle. She moved to New York three weeks after 9/11 and went on to write a piece for 'City' about Duane Reade's shopping bags headlined Sacks and the City and a few other pieces over the years.

"Truly, as a person who always wanted to move here, it's like our section," Ms. Dutton enthused.

Of the section's ending, she said, "I think it's incredibly sad."

Mr. Pryor explained that the event was originally planned as a wake—a loving, boozy, Irish-style wake—but that "out of respect" for the section's editors, it was reframed as a toast.

(While this party wasn't organized by the paper of record, Connie Rosenblum, the editor of 'City' since 1999, told The Observer by telephone earlier in the day that she wished she could be there. "I'm sure it's gonna be wonderful," she said.)

Part of the wonderfulness involved the hiring of a bagpipe player, who kicked things off with his rendition of "Amazing Grace" and made a pretty picture in a modified NYPD uniform including kilt and spats; the small group of attendees hushed up and the rest of the room, full of after-work drinkers, didn't seem to mind the pipes or the half- dozen digital cameras whirring away.

Before he started, The Observer asked the bagpiper—who wouldn't give his name—what he thought of the event he'd been hired to perform at. "A buddy of mine was supposed to do this but he called me at noon and asked me to do this for him," he said.

Did he know what the event was all about? "No, not really," he said with the sort of thick outer borough accent Tom Wolfe once examined in his New York essay Honks and Wonks.

When a reporter explained to him that it was a tribute to a section of The New York Times that had been discontinued, the piper admitted he didn't really read the paper much. "I'm an online kinda guy," he said.

New York Post: The first great big summer blockbuster is here! And though this morning is a little springy for it, Lou Lumenick was getting pretty hot yesterday as he wrote his review. The Post gives the movie a banner over the top of its front page this morning heralding its review. There's a strange choice here, one that is special to tabloids: The font they've chosen for the headline mimics the font used on posters advertising the movie. It isn't nefarious—but we wonder whether the designers ever debate whether there is anything compromising about abandoning the newspaper's own traditional fonts for a font that might make the banner look like an actual advertisement for the movie. The headline reads: "WOLVERINE HOWLS," and then a red box directs readers to the review in the Pulse section. Wait a minute: "howls?" I mean, we get it: It's the cry of a dog or wolf. But it is also, according to the Random House dictionary, "a loud, scornful laugh or yell," or even "something that causes a laugh or a scornful yell, as a joke or funny or embarrassing situation." As in a howler. Perhaps it's a sign of how powerful the use of the movie-promotion font that one does not question that Mr. Lumenick's review is a good one: After all, only really good or really bad reviews for big, big movies get front-page treatment.

One of the great things about the Post is their willingness to turn the letter "S" into a dollar sign, to convey that a story is about pricing without having to waste words on the concept in the main headline. But it takes work! The slabby font the Post uses normally is so bold that a line through the "S" would actually fill all of the interior space of the letter, making it an illegible blob; you can actually see a slight color differentiation where the designers added little squares to the top and bottom of the letter to convey the dollar symbol without messing it up, if you look at the digital image they send over to the fantastic "Today's Front Pages" compendium over at newseum.org (on which Wood War depends every morning!). Sorry, nerddom! The text says "YANKEE CLIPPER$" (we still can't help reading these dollar signs with a lisp for some reason, somewhat reducing the effectiveness, but I think we're alone in that). "Bombers slash ticket prices" is the subhead, and out of the lower left-hand corner a pair of hands is holding out four fanned-out Yankee Stadium tickets. What is the story they're selling here? Actually they picked it up from the Associated Press newswire: "Team officials acknowledged they struck out by charging astronomical prices for the best seats in the brand-new Stadium -- so yesterday, they slashed those prices in half, and offered discounts and extra tickets to fans who had already bought the field-level seats." In other words, it's not the cheap seats that are getting cheaper, but those astronomically priced field-level seats that most of you weren't buying anyway. It's a big story as news, since these kinds of insane ticket prices are the economic motors of the New Stadium Philosophy, in which your seat up in the nosebleed sections is subsidized by heavies plunking down thousands of dollars to sit right on top of the playing field. But the story sticks to the facts, and besides an acknowledgement that the pricing of some of the best seats had been too aggressive, there isn't too much analysis of whether this means the stadium is going to be a flop.

Sarah Jessica Parker has birthed twins! There's a cute picture of her with husband Matthew Broderick, who is looking a bit Edwin Droodish these days (for a role), but their kids are probably going to be pretty well taken care of. "Twins for Sarah Jessica." No difficulty here.

New York Daily News: The Swine Flu! The Swine Flu! "DREAD OF THE CLASS," reads the main headline on today's News, and in fact it does seem like schools are the focus of the initial scare over swine flu. Because schools are germ festivals! Two bullet points support the main hed: "Flu spreading like wildfire through the city, " and "Officials stress it's so far just a mild illness." Hmm. Does the second point somewhat vitiate the seriousness of the first? But while the swine-flu story dominates the page typographically, the Yankees get the top of the page. "STADIUM ON SALE" reads the print. For some reason, the News decided to be tricksy with type treatment at the top of the page today, too! We can't tell why. It's yellow faux-stencil, military style, with a line-box around it that is probably supposed to make it look like a stamp. So, like, did the military decide to sell Yankee Stadium? Subhead to the rescue! "Now it'll only cost you $1,250 to sit in top seats!" By which they don't mean the seats highest up in the stadium but the best seats in the stadium. So the copy is meant to be incredulous that even after a price chop, ticket prices for premium seats at the stadium are still out of reach to YOU, OUR READER. They are statistically probably correct. But here's another one of those moments where the News brand of populism, which is almost always about money, trumps the Post brand of populism, which almost always contrasts middle-class mores to those of the decadent upper classes.

Speaking of populism! The News runs a little banner at the bottom of the page advertising "FREE CITIZENSHIP ADVICE." Those Zoni Language School–type advertisers must be getting aggressive! No, seriously, thanks News, sometimes it's good to be good on the front page.

General observations: The News is usually inclined to gloat a little more over difficulties at Yankee Stadium; we're wary of corporate conspiracy theories and Rupert Murdoch's friendship with George Steinbrenner was hardly likely to become an explicit factor in the Post newsroom's handling of the front-page Yankees story. But still, the newspaper is always a reflection of its ownership on some level, and the care with which Post headlines are written about the Yankees, the Yankees' business situation in particular, is at least notable. There is neither outrage at the astronomical prices, nor schadenfreude about the Yankees having had to slash them, nor continued outrage at the fact that the prices for the best seats remain outlandish. But that must be partly because it's a part of the Post's appeal that it has this ambiguous relationship with its readers' finances. You are interested in rich people, and you don't need to constantly be target-marketed for your middle-classdom! On the other hand, that might normally seem like a reason for the Post to play up the real financial angle on the front page. "Rich Crazies Get a Break!" is the sentiment on this theory. Anyway, "YANKEE CLIPPER$" is a decent headline, though it's not clear why cutting prices makes you like a boat. Still, "STADIUM ON SALE" is just boring. On the other hand, actually printing a dollar amount on the front page is good work: Numbers, like names, make news! This is a tough one. Let's move on to Swine Flu versus Howl. We hate everything about the Wolverine promotion at the top of the page, and also Hugh Jackman in this picture kind of looks like he's jumping out of the pool because he realized the water was full of slimy stuff and he is trying to get out of there as quick as he can. It's a little absurd. Also, Hugh Jackman in costume may get them a relatable figure on the top of the page, but not as relatable as the Derek Jeter that is fronting the News this morning. "DREAD OF THE CLASS" is sort of a nonstarter, except that everybody wants to read about swine flu every day. They could have written "GET YOUR DAILY SWINE FLU UPDATE HERE" and it would get readers. We just wish the Post had done a swine flu story this morning so that we'd have gotten a nice pun to talk about. And, good work for the immigrants, Daily News, but ... huh? We guess the SJP news beats that, but we're getting bored with celebrity children and don't have the energy to think about them anymore.

Winner: Daily News.

Tonight begins a three-game series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, and the News flags Mike Lupica's column as "The big preview." It's a narrative about narrative! "The Red Sox vs. the Yankees is never bad. It wasn't last year even though the Rays beat both of them and the Yankees finally produced a $200 million team that wasn't good enough to make the playoffs. But maybe this season the rivalry goes back to being great again, and the narrative we always want has both of them back at the top of the AL East." But one of the big villains in the piece is the new Yankee Stadium, which he thankfully observes is not where the two teams are facing off tonight: The fact that this is all starting at Fenway guarantees the old story line we all want. What happens when the action moves here? According to Lupica, it means fans catching more fly balls than fielders do.

As long as we've got some Yankees action to flag, the News gives a little box to its reporting on the Mets: "[Jerry] Manuel suggested changes to the rotation could be in the offing after each pitcher is given one more opportunity. A team insider later elaborated that no one, aside from Johan Santana, has immunity."

New York Post: In thi$ economy, even the animal$ are $uffering! Wow, that never gets old. We'll explain in a bit. O.K.! So the Bronx Zoo yesterday informed a committee of the City Council that a budget shortfall was going to force them to close some exhibits and move some animals to other zoos where more people like them. Shakeup in the captive-animal kingdom! The Post decides to characterize these as layoffs: See, that means they can drag a business-reporting conceit all the way through the article! "Economy's so beastly ... BRONX ZOO FIRES ANIMALS!" Of course if everyone getting fired these days were placed in other jobs automatically, where people had money to pay them, instead of being dumped on the street and stripped of the company car lease, then unemployment would not be such a big deal. But these animals (which include deer, bats, porcupines, foxes, lemurs, caimans and antelopes) will all be given new homes where the zoo won't have to come up with $15 million this year to keep them. O.K., besides "beastly" in the headline, there is the lead: "Situation wanted: will work for hay." Oh boy. More: "Wild-fired from the zoo." Huh? Perhaps not the ideal headline as actual wildfires threaten actual human lives in South Carolina. And also! A handy little series of "cover letters" from some of the animals getting the boot. The Arabian Oryx is "the perfect mammal for these terrorist times because it speaks" both Arabic and Hebrew. Chuckle? No, us either. For what it's worth, on Morning Joe this morning, the piece was a big hit with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, who gamely played along with the Post's "pink slip" conceit.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz. And the front page is where the sports stories is! A doubleheader (sorry!) at the top of the page flags the section in general: We've got an NFL Draft preview from Steve Serby and a teaser for  pre-game coverage of this weekend's series between the Yanks and the Red Sox. No mention of the Mets' blues. Wait a minute, what's the headline? "Yanks vs. Red Sox: Analysis of this weekend's series." Are we still reading the News? Here's what Mike Vaccaro wrote inside: "Tonight is as good a time as any for Joba Chamberlain to remind everyone who he is, what he is, how important he is to the Yankees and how vital he will be to the next generation of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry." So why not "JOBA JUICE" for the headline, then "Makes his case in weekend series" or "Yanks vs. Red Sox" or something? It's like somebody hadn't gotten a smoke break in too long and despaired of actually writing the display for this refer.

We're awfully busy at the Post today, because we've talked about three stories and there is still one more left! "State Dems' junket $hock," reads the headline, and the article begins with a jump to the inside explaining a junket that the evil overlord of the Democrat-controlled State Senate is planning even as the local economy tanks. (We always read that "$" substituted for "S," a favorite Post ploy, with a li$p.) The tin-eared majority leader, Malcolm Smith, seemed not to catch a "Rome is burning" reference to his fiddling, and what's worse, he suggested that taxpayer money would fund the trips to Puerto Rico, China and India before backing off and saying attending senators would be paying for themselves. (In which case, we suspect, no junket anymore!)

General observations: Wow, did the Daily News oversell. We're struggling. When what's inside is this far from what's advertised, is there a penalty? We are going to make an argument for "yes." O.K., you've got me to pick up the Daily News  because I think I am going to see pictures of a murderer doing Jell-O shots, and then they are not there. What happens the next time you advertise a GIANT COLLECTION OF SHOCKING PHOTOS INSIDE? All wood is overwritten, all of it is oversell. But it has to be the right level of oversell. If we put this up against the BRONX ZOO story in the Post? Well. Taking a story like this, one of the more mundane effects of the present recessionary economy, and turning it into a conversation piece is one of the great magical powers of the Post. To us, this one fell flat. Do you believe anyone will be standing around saying, "Can you believe the recession has gotten SO BAD that the Bronx Zoo is firing its animals?" Actually, never mind. This morning, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski did just that when they held this cover up. So let's give the Post this one. But we are handing out a disciplinary notice on the Yankees headline; not that the News did any better.

Also, dear reader, apologies for the lateness this morning.

Winner: New York Post

Hometown tabloids are passionate about hometown teams. When the team does well, the apoplexy of joy is a thing to behold. The metaphors get positively Homeric; tears stain the cheap paper. When the team bombs, there is no metaphor too base to circulate. Last night, the Bombers bombed. So inside the paper you have the game dubbed a desecration, the stadium turned into a "commode," the fans accused of having been slipped mickeys.

So a funny game is needed for this double-truck cover: The front, that you see face-up on the newsstand, has to communicate the overall excitement at the christening of the new Yankee Stadium, but the back sports page must not pull punches. So what do we get? On the cover, next to Derek Jeter's heroic form, the words "PRIDE OF THE YANKEES," with a little bar of text underneath that reads, "HISTORIC OPENING DAY AT THE NEW STADIUM." Flip the paper over and, in smaller display text across the bottom, the page reads, "Beautiful day—pity about the ballgame."

Daily News: The News also goes with a double-truck this morning, but somehow it feels completely different from the Post's. It's very pretty in the way baseball pictures are supposed to be, with their vivid greens and blues. With a sort-of aerial view (perhaps just taken from a high seat?) you get the whole diamond, along with the opening-ceremony unfurling of a giant flag in the outfield. It is very pretty: it captures the stadium the way an architectural rendering aspires, and usually fails to do. And, it fails. Last night's game was about a new stadium, but once the people are in the stadium, it's not about the architecture, the field, anymore. It's about the players and the fans. This very pretty picture of the stadium, minus the flag, could have been taken when no game was on at all; the Post chose the first photo where Derek Jeter could be seen against the backdrop of his fans in the new stadium that was built for their team. But, hey, it is very pretty in its own way.

Like the Post, the News has a conundrum about how to play the jinxy first performance of the Bombers in their new stadium. The coverline reads, "WHOLE NEW BALLGAME!" and beneath, "HISTORIC OPENING OF YANKEE STADIUM." Sure! Can't really go wrong there, can you? In fact, all of this copy could have been written in time for the editors to make the 5:15 express back to Montclair, regardless of the game's outcome. So surely the back sports page was held open for a result? Nope. No sign of any copy on the back—unless you count the strip ad sold against this poster-wrap cover, advertising New York's Mega Millions jackpot.

General observations: My family never traveled anywhere growing up. But one thing my mother always said was, she didn't see the point of taking pictures of monuments, streets, scenes you encountered in big famous places without people in them, unless you yourself were a real photographer. Why not just buy the postcards? Because when you stick these photos in a shoebox and open it up again years later, there's no connection to the places you're looking at in the photos. No matter what your friends and family look like, the picture is more attractive with them in it.

These wraps were planned as keepsakes. There are and will be plenty of gorgeous photos of green baseball diamonds and of Yankee Stadium packed to capacity with fans—for instance, the first time a game that actually matters as a game takes place there. Babe Ruth's three-run homer was not the first at-bat at the old Yankee Stadium, and in retrospect this terrible game will also become unimportant. The editors of the tabloids of course couldn't have known that, and they both did the right thing in making their covers into commemorative posters. But if there was anything worth commemorating, it was the personality and historical moment of April 16, 2009. And with a person—however insignificant he may have turned out to be once the game got under way—at the center.

Winner: New York Post

The board of the city-run Industrial Development Agency voted 11-1-1 in favor of the $259 million in tax-exempt bonds for the Yankees and 13-0 for the Mets’ $83 million, according to an IDA spokesman.

This set of bonds, which was the second round of bonds approved for the stadiums, provoked an unexpectedly loud response from a set of public officials who had not been critical of the projects in the past, particularly Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and, recently, city Comptroller Bill Thompson (who, as an IDA board member, was the lone “no” vote today against the Yankees).

The city’s Independent Budget Office said Wednesday that the two new ballparks were costing the city, state and federal governments about $1.2 billion through a variety of tax breaks and subsidies.

Between the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, IBO estimates the total cost of various city, state and M.T.A. subsidies at $762.3 million—$528 million for the Yankees and $234 million for the Mets. That's about 35 percent more than the $499 million that the IBO calculated in 2006 for the two projects (costs, particularly on infrastructure and parks for the Yankee project, increased significantly). Taken with federal subsidy on tax-exempt financing for the structures, the total cost to the public is estimated at $1.2 billion, according to the IBO. [Full figures in an IBO document here].

The Yankees and Mets pay the cost of building their stadiums, though subsidies come in the form of tax exemptions, infrastructure and rent abatements.

The latest round of bonds—and the cause for all the recent fuss—represent a small fraction of the total public sector cost. Between the city and state, about $3.6 million is lost in foregone taxes in the latest round, with the federal government losing about $90 million in potential tax revenue, according to the IBO figures.

Yankee Stadium is now slated to cost $1.3 billion, and Citi Field has a price tag of $800 million.

Not that it changes much, but it’s worth noting that the 2006 estimates were in 2006 dollars, while the IBO numbers from today are in 2009 dollars. The city has long held that the benefits are worth the investment and the financing is leveraging private investment and a large federal tax exemption at minimal cost to the city.

The IBO issued the figures at a somewhat tense hearing today, held by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.

The new trick in the bag was personal attacks, as Messrs. Levine and Pinsky attempted to portray Mr. Brodsky as being a petty, headline-grabbing politician who has no problem issuing press releases filled with exaggerations and lies.

In his prepared testimony, Mr. Levine said Mr. Brodsky’s “behavior in this entire matter is worthy of the Grandstanding Hall of Fame,” before he went on to imply a possible connection between tens of thousands of dollars in racing industry campaign donations to Mr. Brodsky and the Westchester Democrat's votes on gaming matters.

An exchange from the questioning:

Aside from bickering over procedure and whether or not documents were provided, much of the debate, at least in the first two hours, was rehash of previous points related to the issuance of tax-free bonds—a tax exemption that a city agency is slated to vote on (and most likely approve) on Friday. Mr. Brodsky has been highly critical of numerous aspects of the deal, which involves a complex structure where the Yankees pay back the bonds with payments in lieu of property taxes.

The Yankees do not pay taxes now, so the bonds are not directly depriving the city of money that it would normally receive (though there is a considerable amount of public money, mostly federal, that would go uncollected because of those bonds' tax-exempt status). However, Mr. Brodsky says that because the city referred to those payments as city dollars in applications to the Internal Revenue Service, the bonds amount to public subsidy.

Comptroller Bill Thompson also appeared and gave a testimony critical of the deal—a new position for him.