••• “Police are using no-standing and truck-loading zones, along with other illegal spots in northern Battery Park City as their own personal parking lot, abusing city-issued placards to flout the law and create unnecessary hazards, residents claim.” Placards are being abused on pretty much every street downtown. —Downtown Express

••• “The U.S. Marshals Service sold convicted felon Jason Galanis’ former home at for $9 million, filings recorded with the city Friday show. The buyer is hard money lender Emerald Creek Capital, which had held debt on the property. The 8,000-square-foot triplex apartment at the American Thread building has 10 rooms and an original Keith Haring mural.” —Real Deal

••• “A man strolled into a Tribeca police station house this week and said, ‘I have to make a confession’—then admitted to chopping off his girlfriend’s head four years ago, authorities said Friday. Ricky Gonzalez, 34, told First Precinct cops Tuesday that he fatally stabbed 58-year-old Maria Quinones inside their Bushwick, Brooklyn, apartment in 2014 in a dispute over money. He said he then dismembered her body and disposed of it in the garbage, according to court documents.” —New York Post

••• Actor Jason Biggs and writer Jenny Mollen were “unwitting owners of lot-line windows” when they lived in Tribeca. —New York Times

••• “John Winterman of Bâtard was so frustrated by [diners staring at their phones], he wrote a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post saying he’s beginning to feel it’s his duty to grab people by the scruff if their neck and introduce them to their dining companions. ‘You walk by a table and there’s somebody playing a video game,’ Winterman told CBS2. ‘Or people made a note they’re celebrating their anniversary and you barely see them speak to each other over the course of the two and a half hour dinner.'”

••• “New York City launched its sixth ferry route Wednesday, completing the first phase of the service’s expansion and opening up the waterway to people who live and work on the Lower East Side.” It runs between Pier 11 in FiDi and Long Island City, with stops at Corlears Hook, Stuyvesant Cove, and E. 34th St. Also of note: “New York City Economic Development Corporation, which oversees the ferry service, is expected to launch a feasibility study this fall to determine possible routes for a second phase of expansion, according to development corporation officials.” And that’s despite this: “The city pays an estimated $6.60 to subsidize each ride. It has spent hundreds of millions more on boats, ferry landings and other infrastructure investments. At its current spending rate, the ferry service will have cost the municipality about $700 million by 2023, according to city figures.” —Wall Street Journal

••• “New York City’s Finance Department is reopening a huge can of worms on completed deals to bring in additional taxes, causing havoc for REITs and shareholders. Vornado Realty Trust is challenging a New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal decision that could cost it over $20 million. […] The city retroactively applied a larger tax to Vornado’s multi-step acquisition of a 50.1 percent stake in Independence Plaza in Tribeca—a complex with over 1,300 middle-income apartments.” The one-bedrooms available now run from $3,600 to $4,500 per month. Is that middle-income? “When those transfers took place in 2011 and 2012, Vornado was the white knight keeping the properties out of foreclosure. No good deed goes unpunished. Vornado now says it will cost $23.8 million or 11 cents per share for both deals [Independence Plaza and 1 Park Ave.], including the interest.” —New York Post

••• “Trinity NYC Hotel LLC purchased the vacant development site at 50 Trinity Place in 2012 with plans to build a 173-room Aloft-branded hotel. According to a suit filed in Manhattan State Supreme Court on Thursday, the developer hasn’t been able to secure permissions from its neighbor, a three-story building owned and occupied by the diner George’s New York, to begin the work. Trinity NYC Hotel claims that the owner of 11 Rector Street has asked for exorbitant sums of money to allow the developer to protect the property with equipment such as netting as it erects the hotel.” —Crain’s

••• “Sales Launch on Lofty, Full-Floor Tribeca Condos at 391 Broadway.” —City Realty