By JAMIE SCHRAM

A Bronx fire that critically injured retired Knick star Dean Meminger was not sparked by a crack pipe, sources said yesterday.

The blaze, which destroyed a row of houses in the borough’s Claremont section on Nov. 22, started in Meminger’s room.

“We have not found a crack pipe in his room,” said an FDNY source, adding that at least one crack pipe was found in the building.

That source also said the fire appeared to be accidental, although no official cause had been determined as of last night.

The new information contradicts a report that crack pipes were found in the room of the 62-year-old Meminger, who played for the Knicks in the 1970.

Rescued from the blaze by firefighters, he’s recovering at a Bronx hospital.

By C.J. SULLIVAN and JAMIE SCHRAM

A Bronx teen hanging out “with the wrong people” was shot to death yesterday when gunmen opened fire into a crowd in retaliation for a stabbing, police sources said.

Issi Dominguez, 17, was “as clean as a whistle” with no criminal record and had not taken part in the earlier stabbing, one source said.

Diego Plasca, a neighbor, said, “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.”

A family friend added, “This was a good kid, too good for this neighborhood.”

Dominguez was with about 12 people on East 182nd Street near Valentine Avenue, about a half-block from his Fordham home, at around 2:10 a.m., when as many as three gunmen opened fire. He was struck in the head.

ISSI DOMINGUEZ “Clean as a whistle.”

The shooters were seeking revenge for a stabbing about two weeks ago involving other people in the crowd, a source said.

The 196-acre Inwood Hill Park is now the backyard of artists and musicians who have made the area their home.
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Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan, is a place of hills and history. Inwood Hill Park, 196 acres of tree-filled landscape, dominates the scene, and traces of Lenape Indians and Dutch settlers abound. But there are relative newcomers, too, including opera singers and others who are attracted to Inwood’s burgeoning arts community. One artist who lives there — and grew up there — is Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Grammy- and Tony-winning creator of the Broadway musical “In the Heights.” The expedition begins at the 207th Street station, the terminus of the A train.

Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks play at Club Cachet, in the basement of the Edison Hotel. Scott McNabb and Elizabeth Kemble dance to the music of the Nighthawks.

There you are, texting away as you walk down West 46th Street in Midtown, and you nearly bump right into the big, bright gramophone on the sidewalk outside the Hotel Edison.

The antique prop is put out on Mondays to mark the entrance to Club Cache in the hotel’s basement. There, the clock is turned back to the Jazz Age, courtesy of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, a time machine powered by 11 rhythmically inclined men in tuxedos.

Most parking rules were still in effect on Friday, as Bill Palumbo, 72, learned the hard way after standing at a fire hydrant.

For many in New York City, the Friday after Thanksgiving is a day to digest turkey, jostle with shopping hordes — and curse the fresh parking tickets tucked beneath untold thousands of windshield wipers.

But not this year.

Because of a quirk of the calendar, Friday was a city-recognized holiday after all: Id al-Adha, a Muslim celebration. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules were suspended through Saturday, giving New Yorkers one more reason to offer thanks while depriving the city of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nathan Duke

TimesLedger Newspapers

City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) said he will continue to push for laws that protect city residents from overzealous traffic agents after the Council passed one bill he sponsored that would give a grace period for alternate side street parking.

Vallone said he co-sponsored two bills after hearing stories of traffic agents in Astoria using excessive means to hand out tickets.

He said he has been relayed stories from constituents in which agents gave a ticket to a driver who dropped off his elderly mother at a doctor’s office, a fine to a car in a funeral procession that just barely blocked an intersection and numerous occasions during which drivers were ticketed for being stopped to wait for a parking space.

One of the worst corners of the neighborhood for parking tickets is close to his office on 31st Street near Ditmars Boulevard.

“It’s a pursuit of revenue that’s gotten out of control,” he said.

ON Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday of November to be a national holiday of Thanksgiving. That came just over a year after Lincoln made another more historic proclamation, one that directly concerned my family and their future: the Emancipation Proclamation, which had freed the enslaved in any territory “in rebellion.”