New York: where things happen! And not just sometimes, but every week! In “Here Is New York,” Intern Anastasia tells you about one of those things. Apologies to E.B. White.

This week: The Chinatown Garbage Tour.

She’s a brave, brave girl - and most likely caught an infectious disease.

CONTINUED »

The Chelsea gays are boring Mike Bloomberg, and the Williamsburg gays aren’t his style either. In fact, he’s tired of all gay New Yorkers. He wants gay tourists, and the city has embarked on an advertising campaign to lure them in.

NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, took out a three-page spread in the December/January issue of Out, placed spots on Logo and has launched a $30 million, 19-country initiative to attract international gays to New York.

Well the return of Broadway probably won’t hurt the mayor’s initiative.

• Your magazine editor husband is probably cheating on you with his intern. [Gawker]

• Fried chicken restaurants are not only dangerous for your inner thighs … people are burning each others’ faces off with lye now. [NYT]

• In NYC bartenders start to holla’ for a dolla’. Um, whatever you do, don’t leave 28 cents on the bar. Unless you want cocktail waitresses to throw olives at you and call you French. [Gothamist]

• Jehova’s Witnesses are seriously making Dumbo so uncool. [NYT]

• Yay, now the tourists can linger around midtown for an extra hour! Seriously, we’re happy. It keeps them from accidently wandering into a bar we might be having fun at. [NYDN]

Remember the days when a two bedroom apartment on Ave B and 11th St. was $1500/month. Well, those days are sadly, but obviously, gone. Which is painful enough as it is — everyone had a Boheme dream of living in what used to be an outskirt nabe.

Now the only fringe neighborhoods left are random Brooklyn locales like Greenwood Heights. Why? Because the tourists are renting your dreams.

As the city faces a serious shortage of low-cost housing for its own residents, building owners are turning existing units into hotel rooms, hostels and corporate housing for out-of-towners.

The trend is most noticeable in Manhattan neighborhoods where the supply of low-cost units was already dwindling and the demand for tourist rooms has shot up.

Landlords can up charge for rooms, and out-of-towners will pay $40-$150 per night, since it’s about half the price of most New York City hotels. Does anyone care that our city is going to be a circus from Midtown to SoHo and everywhere in between?

Pretty soon there will be fake LV bags in Gramercy Park. Oh, well, as long as the Frenchies are happy, and they keep pouring money into restaurants and shops. Too bad none of them were in Prada this weekend, right?

Tenants Losing to the Tourists, Room by Room [Janny Scott, NYT]

Oh, Sploid. You were only a day late for New Jersey’s state slogan competition!

STRIPPERS FOR BUTTS [Sploid]

It’s pretty hard to compete with a slogan that reads “I Love New York,” but New Jersey finally gives it a decent shot. After debating over tourism slogans for the state, New Jersey officials decided on: “New Jersey: Come See for Yourself.”

This new tourism campaign is an effort to shrug off the state’s grim reputation for traffic jams, mobsters and toxic waste dumps.

Honestly, we are more convinced by “Come Out to New Jersey: It’s Not as Bad as it Smells.” But, we’re still not goin.

New Jersey selects new tourism slogan [Reuters]

Tourists, Broadway crowds, horse drawn carriages, Conde Nast. Do you really need another reason to avoid Midtown? The city would like to give you one just as soon as they get around to building a boat ramp at Pier 78.

Only then will they be able to support ducks, those amphibious tour buses so popular in London and Philadelphia. It won’t be long before these half-car half-boat monstrosities are crusing the center of our fair city, then dashing off into the Hudson River.

But some, like us, aren’t so amused by the idea.

“Right from the get-go, the concern the board had was yet more traffic in an area we feel has got way too much traffic already,” Mr. Doswell said. As for being invaded by ducks, he said, “It all sounds a little strange, but I guess they figure people will pay money for this experience.”

Indeed, people probably will. Each year, more than one million of them ride the vehicles, encouraged by guides to quack like ducks or blow kazoos as they bounce and bob along.

And you thought the tranny hookers on St. Marks were bad.

Make Way for Ducks, in Manhattan? [New York Times]