Manhattan Monday

– On the market: a five-story, century-old, 18,500 square feet Upper East Side townhouse listing for $64M. You get 30 rooms including 15 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, and a grand ballroom. The home sold for a mere $7.6M in 2003. Now that there’s some flipping! If it goes for the asking price, it will eclipse the previous Manhattan townhouse price record of $53M.

– Bloomberg wants to close the city’s Off Track Betting parlors, which annually run a budget deficit in the millions. There’s an OTB near my apartment and the mostly-seedy crowd it draws really stands out on the prim Upper East Side. Kinda funny.

– Madonna, Lucy Liu, Bruce Willis, and Demi Moore are among hundreds of people contacted by the New York Health Department after a bartender at Manhattan hot-spot Socialista came down with hepatitis A. The celebs were at the club to celebrate Ashton Kucher’s 30th birthday, where the bartender handled drink garnishes with his bare hands. So far 90 people have come in for a vaccine shot.

– Would you buy wine from Staten Island? Didn’t think so.

– The Upper West Side’s Cafe La Fortuna, famous because John Lennon wrote many of his songs there, closed yesterday after 32 years due to an impending tripling of the rent.

– The PATH train celebrates its 100th anniversary today. Rides are free from 6am – 11pm. Now’s your chance to finally see Hoboken.